SUNDAY IN MEMORY LANE (Episode 28)

Pinstripe Spy

I had achieved the impossible by purest luck it seemed.
Being in the right place at the right time but especially, with the right, somewhat bitter, state of mind.
I was covering a maternity leave for a PA who worked for the Company Secretary of a prestigious City insurance corporation.
I had very little to do it seemed. Just field phone calls and type out a few memos and letters. I was bored stiff by lunchtime.
After a few weeks, I was invited to lunch with the Managing Director's secretary and the Chairman's secretary, both of whom were almost at retirement age and very astute ladies indeed. We adjourned to the beautiful dining rooms within the building.

These two ladies quizzed me a bit and I did my best to gain their approval, but the thing that impressed them the most was my offer to help them as I did not have enough work to fill more than a couple of hours a day.

I was given a key to the archives and the board room’s private filing system when I expressed an interest in the history of the company. I was placed on a rota of board level secretaries who were to provide minute-taking duties during meetings which took place there. My curiosity had roots way beyond personal. I was thinking of Stop The City, of course.

After a couple of months, my kindly gentleman boss called me into his office and stated that his secretary was returning from her maternity leave. He announced that there was a permanent position within the company which they wanted me to consider. He took me to meet Dr Elisabeth Muller, the inventor of Inmarsat.
I had no idea what Inmarsat was, but I soon found out.

I retained my keys to the archives and board room when I moved to my new office which happened to be immediately adjacent to the board room and very conveniently situated for overhearing the general office buzz.

During daily afternoons without work to do, I had begun to research the origins of this famous corporation by delving into the archives. I had uncovered some very interesting information about the founders and present owners. My notes, typed up into a reference file were developing into a thesis.

Dr Muller was a stout, short German lady with a thick accent. She needed help with constructing speeches about her invention and she gave me access to all the background information I needed about Inmarsat. I learned that it was a newly launched International Maritime Satellite System which would eventually link all ports, airports and cities in a communications network, providing essential information to all the members of an exclusive and extremely lofty 'club' consisting of governments and intelligence agencies worldwide.

It was 1988 and I was learning how to use email via the Inmarsat satellite, which was entirely in-house and international, but not public at that time.

When my turn to take the minutes of a Board meeting arrived, I quietly slipped into the Board room and took my position. I was barely noticed by the men who were loudly arguing whether Singapore or Bangkok would become the new far eastern hub for their business interests after Hong Kong was ceremoniously given back to the Chinese at the agreed time, 1997.
I appeared to be distracted with my paperwork but was actually feverishly taking verbatim shorthand notes of the entire conversation.

By the time the meeting was called to order and the dull matters on the agenda raised, I had the measure of these arrogant gamblers.
I shivered at their power.
I felt quite nauseous but nobody noticed.

Within days, a desperately dull day in the office found me flicking through my list of phone numbers. I could phone a friend but most were at work and busy, unlike me.
I phoned my Dad to catch up on family gossip. "Your brother is dating a Thai Princess!" he claimed with a chuckle lurking under his breath.
I immediately assumed this was one of my Dad's tall tales and laughed.

"Oh really?" I said, imagining the long-suffering expression on my step-brother's face when he heard he was the butt of one of Dad's feeble funnies.

"No, seriously!" said Dad, proceeding to explain that the King of Thailand was father to many children and the brightest of them were British educated. This princess had been a friend to my brother since University. I listened carefully, made a few remarks and then feigned a distraction at work. I ended that call with my mind racing.

Instead of catching the train home that evening, I got the tube to Camden Town, parked myself in a small café opposite my brother's home and waited for a light to appear in his window.
"Wow!" he gasped, shocked to see me when he answered his doorbell. We hugged and went upstairs. I asked about the Thai princess. He laughed and said that, for once, Dad was not messing about.

Casually, I began to talk about the hand over of Hong Kong to China and he said he had read about it in the newspapers.
"The smart investors are quietly buying up waterfront properties in Bangkok and Singapore, hedging their bets. They believe one or the other of those cities will become the next far eastern business hub." I delivered my news as if it was common knowledge in the City. My smart brother picked up the inference immediately and frowned.

We chatted about family matters until I had to leave to catch a late train back to Clacton on the Essex coast. My message, though casually delivered, would be passed on. I knew that.

My intel gathering in the work archives had led to a new understanding of the City of London. I hadn't known that it was independent from the United Kingdom. I had not known that the country did not benefit from this HQ of globalist predators in our capital city, quite the reverse being true. The one square mile, City of London was perpetually sucking Britain’s life blood dry, just as it did, without conscience, to every other country on earth.
It offended my streetwise cockney soul and my sense of morality. This greedy machine wasn’t part of the Britain that I had previously believed I lived in. It was precisely as ex-army Dougie had explained to me during long nights of debate, all those years ago. It was immoral, devious and mean-spirited. It was the epitome of evil materialism and I detested it. Above all, it caused me to feel shame of my oblivious nation for harbouring this international criminal cabal right in the heart of our capital city.

I witnessed banter and jokes between executives in 1st Class carriages of trains, at dinners in posh restaurants and at drunken office parties. I knew what they thought of ordinary working class people.
It was not pretty. I knew they thought of their secretarial staff as empty headed bimbos at best. Potential mistresses at worst.

Several months later the brazen globalist gamblers in the Board rooms of London were bemoaning an unexpected turn of events and I listened carefully to the gossip and news filtering through the informal chatter around me at work.

The King of Thailand had implemented new laws.
A male foreigner may marry a Thai woman and purchase land.
However, when he does, the ownership goes to the Thai wife.
Alternatively, a foreigner may buy a Thai property by forming a company and buying property through the company.
There is a strict condition on these purchases.
It is that the company should be at least 51% owned by Thai citizens.
The new Thai laws allowed foreigners to own only 49% of the company at the most.
Several deals had collapsed, significant funds lost. Bangkok was not going to be plundered and dominated by any globalists for the foreseeable future.

I sat back, triumphant in my humble corner of the open plan office, shorthand pad bulging with verbatim recordings of everything I heard. To anyone else, my shorthand was illegible squiggles and dots on a page. I had an irrepressible, satisfied smile on my lips and a big fat sparkling <YES> in my heart.

"More coffee, gentlemen?" oozed from my innocent and apparently unintelligent working class face.