argue a case either way—like a barrister. As the Service’s top recruiter, he had always had great success with these types. The flattery of being approached by Her Majesty’s Secret Service was all but irresistible, their thirst for intellectual challenges and new experiences inexorably compelling them to become involved. A small complication this time was his US citizenship, but that could be fixed with Grosvenor Square easily enough. Yes. Tom Bates it was. He was, in any case, the man closest to Barton’s affairs. The chase was on, and suddenly his mood lightened as he recaptured something of the old excitement of a new field case beginning.
The office door opened and his assistant came in. ‘The partners’ meeting starts in an hour and they want to brief you beforehand.’
He groaned inwardly, but his poker face showed nothing. ‘Fine. I’m ready whenever they are,’ he said, his tombstone teeth revealing themselves in a show of politeness. Over thirty years with the Secret Intelligence Service had ended two years earlier when he hit the service’s compulsory retirement age of 55, following his last major field operation, code-named Grave Song , in South Korea. In addition to compulsory retirements, public expenditure cuts, market testing and the so-called peace dividend had seen an unprecedented exodus of middle and senior ranking staff from both MI6 and its domestic opposite number, MI5. The loss of talent, however, had alarmed a great many wise heads in the Foreign and Home Offices, as well as a minority in the Intelligence and Security Committee. As a result, a number of pivotal people, like Perry Mitchell, had been found private sector front jobs, effectively keeping them on call for a few years yet. Mitchell’s ‘second career’ was with one of the world’s leading executive search agencies, Management International. He had in fact often before posed as a headhunter using the firm as cover. It was an effective means of approaching business targets who got to see people, or countries, of interest to the Service.
His area of responsibility there was international head-hunting assignments, with particular emphasis on the old Soviet bloc countries—especially Russia, Poland and the Czech Republic where business was booming. These were also countries he knew well from his many terms of operational embassy secondment. The job in return gave him cover for overseas visits, to international conferences, trade fairs and clients. But, more importantly, it also gave him access to priceless databases listing a wide range of businessmen and women, exporters and others, who regularly travelled the world, or were stationed abroad. The business community remained a hugely important humint resource for MI6, providing much of its non-electronic quality intelligence-gathering. Either as routine de-brief reports, or—as he hoped soon with Tom Bates—in response to a specific, short-term spying assignment on someone or someplace to which their job gave them special access.
‘ A word before we start, Perry.’ The UK’s managing partner had stuck his head around the door.
‘ Fine. I need you to mark my card. Get me up to speed.’ Mitchell had been playing the ‘new boy’ game since he arrived and knew it was now wearing a bit thin. He was rapidly approaching the time when he would have to start taking the headhunting job more seriously and actually contribute something. ‘I’ve read the papers. What do we need from today?’
The man was followed in by two more worried-looking UK partners. ‘Well. Given that the last Chairman chose you, as a newcomer, to review the way we work cross-border, only one thing matters to me. London must remain the base for all the international work.’
The internal politics here were almost as bad as in MI6, Mitchell thought miserably. The chairmanship of the global network of thirty offices rotated every two years, and an arrogant, bullying Swiss had succeeded the urbane
The office door opened and his assistant came in. ‘The partners’ meeting starts in an hour and they want to brief you beforehand.’
He groaned inwardly, but his poker face showed nothing. ‘Fine. I’m ready whenever they are,’ he said, his tombstone teeth revealing themselves in a show of politeness. Over thirty years with the Secret Intelligence Service had ended two years earlier when he hit the service’s compulsory retirement age of 55, following his last major field operation, code-named Grave Song , in South Korea. In addition to compulsory retirements, public expenditure cuts, market testing and the so-called peace dividend had seen an unprecedented exodus of middle and senior ranking staff from both MI6 and its domestic opposite number, MI5. The loss of talent, however, had alarmed a great many wise heads in the Foreign and Home Offices, as well as a minority in the Intelligence and Security Committee. As a result, a number of pivotal people, like Perry Mitchell, had been found private sector front jobs, effectively keeping them on call for a few years yet. Mitchell’s ‘second career’ was with one of the world’s leading executive search agencies, Management International. He had in fact often before posed as a headhunter using the firm as cover. It was an effective means of approaching business targets who got to see people, or countries, of interest to the Service.
His area of responsibility there was international head-hunting assignments, with particular emphasis on the old Soviet bloc countries—especially Russia, Poland and the Czech Republic where business was booming. These were also countries he knew well from his many terms of operational embassy secondment. The job in return gave him cover for overseas visits, to international conferences, trade fairs and clients. But, more importantly, it also gave him access to priceless databases listing a wide range of businessmen and women, exporters and others, who regularly travelled the world, or were stationed abroad. The business community remained a hugely important humint resource for MI6, providing much of its non-electronic quality intelligence-gathering. Either as routine de-brief reports, or—as he hoped soon with Tom Bates—in response to a specific, short-term spying assignment on someone or someplace to which their job gave them special access.
‘ A word before we start, Perry.’ The UK’s managing partner had stuck his head around the door.
‘ Fine. I need you to mark my card. Get me up to speed.’ Mitchell had been playing the ‘new boy’ game since he arrived and knew it was now wearing a bit thin. He was rapidly approaching the time when he would have to start taking the headhunting job more seriously and actually contribute something. ‘I’ve read the papers. What do we need from today?’
The man was followed in by two more worried-looking UK partners. ‘Well. Given that the last Chairman chose you, as a newcomer, to review the way we work cross-border, only one thing matters to me. London must remain the base for all the international work.’
The internal politics here were almost as bad as in MI6, Mitchell thought miserably. The chairmanship of the global network of thirty offices rotated every two years, and an arrogant, bullying Swiss had succeeded the urbane
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