Intro
My story begins one infernally hot summer in 1995. It is not a true story. Well, no one will believe it is. My name is Milton Pike and I served Her Majesty by being an agent in Section 5 of Military Intelligence, better known as MI5, from 1993 till 1996 when I retired early due to medical reasons.
My personal history is not important. But due to clarity of this story I will share that I was recruited right after I finished high school, because I was what others like to call a "prodigy". It wasn't just the highest grades coupled with impressive athletic results that earned me that title, but also the fact that I could build a computer from scratch when I was only 7 years old. I was of a very inquisitive nature and I couldn't rest until I knew exactly how everything around me ticked. Which meant that I was always studying something, be it computer components or a book about numerology.
That being said, some analysts in MI5 whose duty was to find potential recruits by tracking school records and keeping an eye out for gifted children (yes, they really do that), dropped my file onto some important person's desk. And so, during the period in which my biggest life dilemma was whether to go with Oxford or Cambridge, I got a letter inviting me to a job interview for a position of "Surveyor of Polytechnic, Informatics and Electronic Systems". The letter was ridiculous, but I was excited because it was my first ever job offer, and with a why-not attitude I showed up on the given address. The "job interview" was, of course, some sort of a psychological assessment, which must have produced the expected results because they offered me to join the service of Her Majesty as a spy right then and there. Naturally, they used some lame euphemisms and technical language, but I knew they were saying "spy". For an eighteen year old, refusing such an offer would be in a serious disagreement with the accepted characteristics of teenage nature.
The first two years of service were uneventful, the Cold War being officially over, most of my spook colleagues were spending their time with their feet upon their desks, convinced in the "end of history" and a world free of serious security concerns. Of course, the world was still a dangerous place, but because the Soviets and their apocalyptic war arsenal were no longer a threat, they were more than willing to dump most of the work on us younger folks. But just like with every other honeymoon-phase, it did not last forever.
Like I said before it all started in 1995. It was an unnaturally hot summer. I was tasked with following a certain individual, who might pay a visit to someone who might know some arms dealer whom we were tracking. The senior officers were in their air conditioned offices, barking orders left and right, sending us rookies to do all the footwork, while they simply compiled all our hard work in files, which they would pass on to functionaries and get a commendation. Naturally, we younger agents were a tad displeased at the said system, but we couldn't do anything about it. That's how I found myself at that particular place at that particular time.
