How our deadly deadlines continue to work their weekly agent/victim magic! Back and forth, back and forth, the sharp weapon (el cargado puñal / der Dolch geladen) urgently shuttles between us, undercover, and as if on some kind of mission except we have forgotten who it was who gave us our instructions, and sometimes even how best to pass the parcel, HANDLE end first, PLEASE!.
Undercover – Agent Heros, or Post-traumatic Stress Disorder Victims?
Two instructive examples of the agent/victim puzzle happened to be on display in last weekend’s press:
– The "Who are You?" Story of Mark Kennedy / Mark Stone
A police officer; he had spent seven years as "Stone" as a police infiltrator inside the world of ‘extreme’ environmentalist groups in the UK before being unmasked in 2009. He is now seeking redress against his employers. Is it possible to do the job without becoming paranoid, the weekend interviewer asks, I’d use a different phrase, he replies, I never became complacent.
– The "Who are You?" Story of Anna Chapman / Anna Kuschenko
A Russian agent; arrested in New York as "Chapaman" on suspicion of spying, and deported in 2010 as part of a swap. Since then, she has worked as a successful model, investment adviser, charity promoter, and TV star, and may shortly decide to run for Parliament. If all of us were joyful, she says, we could do something useful and new.
The first thing to be observed about the overlapping experiences of Mark and Anna is the disapproving reaction they have both received from their respective sets of ‘colonels’. One the one hand, Mark has been heavily criticised by members of the police establishment, especially for going “rogue”, to such an extent that he has begun to doubt who he really is, or so he says. On the other hand, Anna’s making fast fame and fortune for herself through her comely cleavage and scanty panties has brought some loud hisses and boos, of course delivered off stage and from the shadows, from the professional spying fraternity… of which she may… or may not have been a member.
The next thing to observe is how both Mark and Anna have responded to their positions of being first outed and then criticised by continually ‘upping’ the publicity. Mark has engaged the publicist Max Clifford to help him present the ‘unfairness’ and ‘trauma’ within his situation. Anna interviewing with BBC’s Moscow correspondent on the wireless, as well as fronting the Observer Magazine being photographed in 007 Bond-girl style, has continued to play on the tease about her spying, I will never deny, and I will never confirm the fact…
At first sight Mark appears to be more in the victim role, more suffering, and Anna more in the agent position, more happy and in control, but in the undercover world nothing is that straightforward… The Colonels are always threatening 'to take us out'…
… And it is worth recollecting that there is a common saying which goes as a warning among us in the undercover world, It all unreals.