“David, Howard, Aaron, Charles, Sergei… I’ve been informed that we have a spy amongst the group.” Spying has long such been a mysterious grey area that intrigues people, although I suppose that is the point - if a spy was to reveal every facet of their duties, together with a neon sign pointing to them informing all and sundry that they are a spy, then they would be doing something of a poor job.
Spies are something that, in my own mind at least, tend to be associated with Russia and the old Soviet empire. The last three international stories that I can recall regarding spies all involved Russia – although to be fair, Russia may not be linked to spies more than any other country, it could just be the case that Russia’s spies are inherently terrible at their job and get found out far too easily.
Last week a story broke regarding an alleged Russian spy ring, which had been uncovered by the American authorities, with ten people taken into custody and whilst an eleventh remained at large. The methods that these spies used were traditional, brush-past bag swaps in public places was one of them, writing coded messages in invisible ink was another one – one person who read my blog recently suggested that I should type in invisible ink, in order to make my blog a better quality read…
Another technique used was the utilisation of code words, this has been a long held tradition for spies, here are a few code words from both the past and present:
- “England back four” was a phrase used predominantly in the second world war, it meant “the Germans are coming; so we must separate out and fade into the background for the next 90 minutes”.
- “Coalition Government” is a phrase used when the spies are running short of supplies, it means “pool our resources together… and proceed with all the worst bits”.
- “New iPhone” is a message that goes between the spies on the ground and HQ, it means “I think my telecommunication device has got a poor signal, but I could be holding it wrong. I’ll send a carrier pigeon to be on the safe side; in the meantime, I’m playing on Angry Birds”.
- “George Michael” is a critically urgent message sent to all spies on the ground, it means “there is a rouge sleeper agent on the road, please move indoors for your own safety - to be fully free from hazard possessed by this sleeper agent, please ensure you don’t go to a public toilet”.
My earlier assertion that spies are often linked to Russia also relates to the case of Alexander Litvinenko, a man who went out for an enjoyable meal of sushi in a London restaurant in November 2006 and returned home with a radiant glow in his cheeks. This radiant glow was due to him being poisoned, and sadly, he subsequently passed away. He wasn’t allowed to be cremated due to fears that the crematorium would turn into a small scale Hiroshima and become uninhabitable for years to come – even though, most people in a crematorium are dead anyway. Hence he was instead buried, his grave is apparently kept in a nice condition – rumour has it that his is the only grave in the cemetery that has no weeds growing on it.
As a side note, I was once in the toilet of a hotel and an Eastern European gentleman was talking to an English teenager. The chap from Eastern Europe spoke to the young lad about being part of the Russian secret service and said that he had met Alexander Litvinenko. I didn’t really want to remain in the room with a potential member of the underworld, however, given that I was currently going to the toilet, I was unable to make a quick getaway. To this day I have no idea what that man was doing in the restroom – The only thing I can rule out is that he hadn’t just been given the George Michael codeword.
The travel arrangements for spies must be increasingly difficult. Post 9/11, airport security is far tighter and when 11 members of Mossad allegedly hunted down and killed a senior Hamas figure in a Dubai hotel in January 2010, details of the alleged perpetrators were published very shortly afterwards, together with their routes in and out of Dubai – this was done on a diagram that looked like one of those end of year football transfer webs that often appear during the off season, or if you don’t like football, it was like a diagram plotting the marriages of Zsa Zsa Gabor.
Something else causing problems for spies are the security checks in place at airports, due to the increased risk of terrorism. The most recent attempted airborne terrorist act was committed around Christmas time 2009 when a bomber attempted to detonate a bomb that was in his underpants, that said, the clues were there to spot this terrorist – he spend 2 hours going around the airport saying “I’ve got a 7 inch weapon in my pants”, however, everyone just thought he was a highly sexed pervert. Obviously for the bomber, that whole escapade would make for a superb anecdote to tell his future grandchildren – unfortunately for him, he blew his testicles off in the making of the story.
With all that in mind, travel restrictions should now make spying much trickier for the Russians, however it doesn’t… these Russians all still travel together… starting with the largest spy, who has inside him a slightly smaller spy… who in turn has a slightly smaller spy inside him… who in turn has a slightly smaller spy inside him…
* Hopefully I will be able to blog again and I won’t be bumped off by a member of the underworld.
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