Deception Read Online Free Page B

misspelled) in Dublin (another address for a Southern Union company, in Northampton, was also misspelled). 28 Britain’s Security Service started an investigation but soon dropped it. It hunts spies, not criminals. Although its officials punctiliously refuse to discuss operational matters, on or off the record, I infer that it believes Mr ‘Sugden’ to have used a rather sloppy mixture of SVR techniques for commercial, not espionage purposes. If so, that exemplifies the blurred boundaries between Russian officialdom and wider business interests.
    What is clear, however, is the damage done to entirely innocent bystanders. Steven Sugden’s name is still listed at Companies House as a director of three defunct companies (Southern Union, Intercon Trading and Africa Connection). The real, Kentish Steven Sugden is not directly out of pocket, though investigating the issue has cost him and his family considerable time and worry. Anyone doing a credit check on him might note, for example, that the companies had on occasion been less than punctilious in submitting their annual reports and accounts; an outstanding loan of £ 12 , 000 might also affect his creditworthiness in some eyes. Companies House is unwilling to delete him from their records; the police are unwilling to accept that a crime was committed; Britain’s Security Service (MI 5 ) has asked him to cease his own investigations into the matter in order not to jeopardise its own, which has fizzled out. The blameless Mr Farrell, and the Crowe family that own 12 Rossmore Grove, have had the addresses of their properties used in a way that is certainly fraudulent and looks sinister. In short, law-abiding people can have their identity and address stolen by the Russian secret service or (at a minimum) its officers’ family cronies, and used for clandestine, or even nefarious, purposes, and when this is uncovered, nobody will do anything to help. I return to this subject in the conclusion. None of these awkward questions has clouded Ms Chapman’s return to Russia.
    For a profession that prides itself on obscurity, publicity is a sign of shameful failure. Most spies retire quietly to the shadows after they are exposed. Not so Ms Chapman. Her metamorphosis from a provincial teenager to life as a go-getting émigré, then as a failed spy and finally to being her country’s leading political sex symbol says only a little about her, but a lot about Russia’s attitude to spies, the West, women and its own rulers. The spy scandal in which Ms Chapman featured came at a bad time for Russia’s rulers. The country had suffered the harshest recession in the G- 20 in the previous year, and in the summer of 2010 an outbreak of wildfires had shamed the authorities. A thick, stinking smog enveloped Moscow, making one side of Red Square invisible from the other. Blame fell on the poorly privatised state forestry services, which had all but abolished the vital function of fire prevention. Contempt for the regime was growing elsewhere too. Promises of modernisation had proved empty. Trust in the security services and the police had plunged since Mr Putin took power.
    The spy scandal thus cast an unwelcome light on two of the regime’s weakest points: corruption and incompetence. The illegals appeared to be an expensive throwback to old Soviet tactics. They had – at least according to the published version of events – failed to gain any secrets and had been under American observation from the start of their mission. Despite the failure of their mission, some of them deserved praise for their personal talents and dedication: Heathfield’s brains, Semenko’s language skills, or even Lazaro’s decades of service all stand out; among the women, the professional career of ‘Cynthia Murphy’, a financial adviser to rich Americans, was a solid achievement. Yet from the beginning it was the most junior and incompetent of the