Chapter 2 introduction

For many years, I have been wondering, when a person is on the verge of doomsday, what kind of feeling does he have in his heart?In January 1976, after twenty years of working in the British Security Service, I returned to the real world of human beings. This was the last time I was at the Euston Road tube exit.The winter sun shone warmly and pleasantly.I walked across Gower Street towards Trafalgar Square.I walked about fifty yards from the square and turned into an unsigned entrance.This entrance leads to an unnamed block of offices.Here, the headquarters of the British Counterintelligence, squeezed between an art college and a hospital, looks very unremarkable.

After I showed my ID to the guarded policeman standing at the door of the reception room, I boarded the elevator with special procedures.This kind of elevator is specially used for high-ranking officials to go to the secret room on the seventh floor.After I stepped out of the elevator, I walked silently into the corridor, and went straight to my work room which was separated from the director's office by a wall. All offices are quiet.In the distance came the rumble of a train full of passengers bound for the city's west end.I unlocked the door, and the room was facing some basic facilities needed by intelligence personnel—a desk, two telephones, one of which was equipped with a scrambler to prevent calls from being intercepted by outside lines.On one side of the room is a large green metal safety lock, and an oversized combination lock is installed on the cabinet door.I hung up my coat and started mechanically arranging the last things.I've seen many retired intelligence officers at cocktail parties who like to kill the time with a few tidbits and gossip.I've seen too much of this.I am tired.I want to take a break, go to Australia, and start a new life as a Wrangler.

I turned the dial on the combination lock, and the heavy safe door slowly opened, and what I saw in front of me was a pile of documents borrowed from the archives and stamped top secret.Behind these papers, neatly stacked small combo boxes.Over the years, I have borrowed thousands of documents, but this is the last time I will do this kind of work.In the past here, I have been surrounded by countless routine reports every day, such as the latest report of the Computer Work Task Force, the latest analysis of the Interim Intelligence Research Service, and so on.There must be an answer to all the papers, and I feel powerless to give them.The papers of the Russian diplomats have been sent to me by a young official.Do I recognize this person?Not sure.It was a case of double agent that went unsolved for years.What am I supposed to do with this?Not sure either.When you first enter the Security Bureau, you will find that each case is different, but when you leave the Security Bureau, these cases look the same.I signed the papers carefully and surrendered them one by one for my secretary to return to the archives.

After lunch, I started to organize the materials kept in the combination box.I took these boxes out one by one.The first box contains detailed specification material for the microphone and radio receiver, which I still have from the fifties.I was MI5's first science and technology officer at that time.I sorted out these files and sent them to the technical department.An hour later, the head of the technical department came.He came to thank me.He was a scientist in a modernist government agency: tidy, cautious, and obsessed with money. "I keep bits and pieces of little value," I said. "I didn't think you'd use them. They're all Sputniks now, aren't they?"

"Oh no," he replied, "I just like to look around." He was a little embarrassed.I didn't really get along with him.We're from different worlds, I'm just a jack-of-all-trades officer, a handicapped handicap from the war, and he's a munitions contractor.After we shook hands, I went back to sorting out the safe. In the remaining box, I kept the documents after I entered the counterespionage headquarters in 1964.It was the peak period of spies caught by British intelligence services.The general flow of spies—lists of suspects, details of prosecutions, lists of traitors, final verdicts—was densely recorded in manuscripts and typed diplomatic memorandums.The documents were endless and anticlimactic, leaving traces of my espionage career between the lines.

Finally, my secretary came in.She handed me two notebooks with blue covers. "Your diary," she said.Together with her, I tore the diary into pieces and threw them into the paper bag for burning documents next to the desk, waiting for them to be reduced to ashes. I went to the confidential office.The duty officer handed me a file containing a list of my existing confidential clearances.I started signing those little receipts.I signed up for SIGINT and SATINT loans first, and in turn closed out classified loans for the large number of cases I had.Gathering secrets is such a personal thing, and leaking them is a nerve-wracking bureaucratic consequence.Every time the pen in my hand moved an inch, I felt in a trance that the door of the Security Bureau was closing to me.Half an hour later, this secret world that I had lived in for many years closed its doors to me.

As it was getting dark, I hailed a taxi and went to Leconfield House in Mayfair.This is the old site of MI5.MI5 is currently in the process of moving to new premises at the end of Curzon Street.But the staff bar, the Piggy and the Eye Club, remained in the Leconfield Building.My farewell party will be held here. I walked into the old building.It was in this teak hallway and those cornice offices that Philby, Burgess, McLean, and Brent were all arrested.Here we have confronted some of the suspects.They are an as yet undiscovered secret group within the heart of the Security Service.This confrontation can be regarded as MI5's most secretive battle.Our suspicions center on Mr. Roger Hollis, ex-MI5 chief, but we have never had any evidence.Friends of Hollis were unhappy with the prosecution, and the two sides feuded for a decade.Like medieval theologians, they were driven by intuition, passion, and prejudice.

In the 1970s, many leaders retired one after another.The civil war did not end until the Security Service moved to a new location.When I walked in the corridors of the Leconfield Building, I still felt the smell of gunpowder here. The scenes of swords, swords, swords and mutual killings are still vivid in my mind. My farewell party was very peaceful, without any spectacular scenes.People are constantly saying flattering words to me.Commissioner Michael Hanley gave a pleasant speech.I have received many cards with parting messages written on them.Lord Cranmores, MI5's counterintelligence expert, said in his farewell message that my departure was "a very sad and irreparable loss".The loss he was referring to was MI5's loss, but I think the real loss was mine.

That night, I spent the night in a flat on the top floor of the Gower Street office building, being woken by the noise of the train arriving at Euston station.Early the next morning, I woke up.After getting dressed, I picked up my briefcase.It was the first time the briefcase was so empty.I walked downstairs to the front door.I said good-bye to the policeman at the door and walked out, down the steps, and up the street.My espionage career was over.A sad and irreparable loss.