This story is based on factual events. In the late 1960s I was sent to Holland by my employer. On the weekends I journeyed to Amsterdam where I met a Soviet agent, who told me that he was head of security at a Soviet radio station. I envisioned a uniformed security guard at a radio station playing folk songs, perhaps spreading a little Soviet propaganda, but nothing could have been further from the truth. It transpired that the radio station transmitted, and received, coded signals, while intercepting and breaking the coded signals of foreign governments. I befriended the Russian, and we toured the bars of Amsterdam together. When it was time for me to leave he asked if I would work for the Soviet Union in an intelligence gathering capacity. I asked what I might contribute that he couldn't read in a British newspaper or a library book. He answered that I would be surprised and hinted that I could be placed into positions of mutual benefit. I declined, but often wondered what might have been the consequences if the Russian had refused to take no for an answer.

Roy A Higgins