Having spent the last week formatting, a lot, here you will find the FULL prologue to The Post Office. Enjoy!
Prologue
In the run up to the Arab Spring I was assistant attached by the British home office and loosely, MI6, to CIA operations in Iran. My job was the same as it had always been, to babysit. For the benefit of those who remember the reports at the time, the demonstrations, the rebels and revolutions, conflict and politics, most of the details surrounding the uprising have been left completely undisclosed, suppressed and forgotten in the hope they never see the light of day in a published manuscript again.
Enough time has passed that those that may cause me the most harm for writing this, are now dead. Even now I am still breaking the official secrets act and as such have had to suppress certain identities and particular dates to protect those still sensitive details and active operations. Under the circumstances I request that the reader grant me this liberty.
It would be an understatement to say I found my memory of events were more accurate than I'd expected. From the outset, I hadn't intended to take notes of the operation at all, indeed, it is drilled into operatives to never write anything down and as much as possible, keep one’s lips tightly shut. I started to take notes when I suspected something fishy was going on, deciding to do so in case I needed to protect myself and partly, just to try and figure out what happening at the time.
Drawing from my own notebooks, it took over a year to conduct and put together interviews from others, hearing their points of view and perspectives. Over the course of my research I'd collected three full file boxes of photos, recordings, documents, reports and clippings before I'd even put pen to paper. Any intelligence agency worth it’s salt would agree these boxes a veritable gold mine and yet, here I am, laying it out for all to see.
I always considered myself an untidy scribbler and though I have written many things in my time, never have I come across something that deserved a finished product more than this particular chain of events.
The most difficult obstacle was gaining permission for publication from the service, to disclose certain important points. I was advised I could 'Infer possibilities' but under no circumstances allowed to publish under my own name or reveal intelligence on active / ongoing operations. I did the best I could.
Those at the centre of these remarkable events deserve credit to which they are due. Despite a persistent and resolute dedication to the call of duty, one individual in particular is not likely to have his identity openly revealed while he himself is still alive. If nothing else, let this be a record so that some essence of a nameless man’s work may be remembered.
There are one or two details the reader should be aware of concerning modern espionage techniques and operative work. The west is simply too far advanced in certain areas to worry about the opposition any more. Having said that, espionage and intelligence services around the world are more active today than those operating during the halcyon cold war, largely due to the increase in Cyber espionage of recent years and ever spurring terrorism. Britain in particular is one trying to catch up. GCHQ relocated to 'The Doughnut' in Cheltenham in 2004 and now runs more than 50,000 employees, listening to everything, everywhere, whenever possible.
MI5, the domestic department of the Secret Intelligence Service have to comply to certain homeland rules where MI6, working abroad, essentially do not. Most of their tips, their information and afferent intelligence now comes directly from and thanks to GCHQ. These departments in turn make up part of JIC including an admiral, general, minister, Police Commissioner and Civil Servant who decide which department gets to deal with what and delegate.
Aside from protecting themselves and their friends against China and Russia, most of the work being conducted at this time is in preparation for what will be popularly known as the Arab Spring. MI6 and the CIA liaised some time ago and ever since, had been working more and more closely together on this one, particular project. It isn't unheard of for the Americans to pass on a little white lie here and there to their closest allies, nor was it impossible for them to entirely pervert the truth. We needn't look too far back to see the effects of intelligence sharing before the invasion of Iraq to get an idea of such scenarios.
Never the less, the two agencies enjoy a close relationship, even when tensions become strained at times thanks to each other's cock ups. 'The Service', is a generic term coined to incorporate the intelligence departments of the British government from civil servants to JIC; GCHQ, the armed forces but is generally understood to refer to MI5 and MI6. At times, there can be such a blur that unless you have an actual desk job at Thames House one can never really be sure for whom one is working. In most cases, it's a team effort by all, each department doing their part.
My intelligence career began after time served in 40 Commando Royal Marines, Taunton. After a tour with the Special Air Service, my face didn’t fit and I was returned to unit under recommendation for the Intelligence Corps, picked out for my aptitude in languages and sent for eight months training at Sandhurst. I managed intermediate Hindi, Mandarin and Arabic dialects but the blade rusts over time. There are dozens of avenues for specializing in the armed forces, for an officer at least.
After six months active duty I gained a field promotion in the Marines at the battle of Tora-Bora. By the time I was done with the Intelligence Corps, retired a Captain. Joining the Intelligence Corps was a breath of fresh air and when I went on first active duty, was to spend the next ten years driving people around, passing on messages and baby sitting a host of very strange individuals. It did allow me to travel to more appealing parts of the world than I'd known in the infantry. Out of the hot zones, spending many an hour in five star hotels, first class travel and expenses at the hospitality of the tax payer while doing my duty at the same time. I won medals for other people’s work but never promoted high or fast enough for missions or operations of consequence. When I made Captain, they became more important but my job stayed the same.
I was considered by my superiors quite good at looking after other people. Having heard more than one or two scandals that saw colleagues out, investigated or a Court martial for negligence, I kept my mouth shut, got on with the job, quiet and content in my own space. As experience dictated, I would be groomed for Middle East operations out of Turkey, Egypt and finally Iran having accidentally become the best at what I did. Though Hindi and Chinese may had fallen by the way over the years, the time I’d spent listening to Arabic and deciphering code into Arabic and French then into English left me with no other opportunity than getting sent along with the CIA's newest Iranian consignment.
Told from all quarters it was a fool’s errand and I'd be lucky to come out alive, the service had little faith the Iranian draft would be a success and had long lined up several eventualities should the whole conspiracy go to hell. The Americans were on the other hand, enthusiastically optimistic, putting their can do attitude to work and following the operation to the letter. There was always scope for imagination but they never used it, the beginning of the end and epicentre of their downfall. My job was once again sitting on my rear end outside briefing rooms, passing on calls and making coffee.
The plan began to unravel. The CIA had a minister set up to get between the President and the Ayatollah, acting and speaking on behalf of the most powerful clerics in the country. Having gotten to them, one by one, we persuaded each that the government institution did not have the best interests of the country or religious ideals at heart while our minister kept the leaders busy elsewhere. It took years to moderate them all and the Yanks had done the job brilliantly. It was however the smallest of oversights, that the minister showed himself to possess a rather impetuous character. He had not been prepared well enough, believed wholeheartedly in what he was doing but simply wasn't aware of the importance of timing. Acting upon the good of all and the future of his country, he took it upon himself to intervene long before he should have. The CIA wanted the President and Ayatollah to get close, as close as possible while they warmed up the Clerics. By the time the minister had caused a rift, the Clerics were only lukewarm and soon after backed out entirely. The minister disappeared one Monday afternoon. Repairing the situation was near impossible, simply too late in the day. The CIA decided to try and pull them back but the damage was already done, too much distrust between the pair over these provincial rumblings.
The Americans managed a few protests, stirred up some extra support and agreed the Clerics would campaign to both sides. Nothing came of it and once Libya had started, the team skulked back to the states with their tails between their legs, balls soon to be cut off.
I was pulled out shortly after the mishap with the minister and didn't exactly want to be there as it was. Iranians have no shame executing spies with a scimitar and that's considered a good way to go. I agreed to be scapegoated for the minister mishap and flown back home the next day. The Iranian team failed two years later. By this time I'd been discharged from the service, albeit dishonourably there were extenuating circumstances, and begun spending my time with security work and trying to put together my own details.
It was insisted security be strict to the point of stupidity. Even on Operation Parr I wasn't officially on any orders, just attached from MI6 and let in on very few other details. My security clearance was non existent and when communicating with London, I was handed code to encrypt and then decrypt back into code to then pass on. There was very little for me to do beyond when I had to debrief a new agent or to consult with the Americans, it all seemed either too straight forward or I entirely missed the purpose of our job at hand.
Working security for Blackwater a major upset in Iraq saw me back to England. A convoy carrying several high ranking officials and contractors, ambushed on my watch. Despite the ability to calm the situation and evacuate all personnel without injury or fatality I was again blamed for the débâcle, assured there was no leak on the contractor's side and by the process of elimination, the leak must have come from me. I was destroyed, couldn't even find work as a doorman once I landed back in London.
I discovered for the first time, life as a civilian living in Britain. I'd been to London on business, passing through but never the opportunity of living and working in the massive, sprawling city. My savings dwindled rapidly and I'd lost and spent valuable time chasing a certain account and savings fund in New York for my security outfit. Blacklisted by the service and taking time out from a fortnightly schedule of petitioning Kensington Council and the Department for Work and Pensions left me living out of shared rooms in a hotel, homeless, penniless and damn near destitute.
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Roger
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