A honeytrap blonde, a clandestine meeting in a Surrey garden centre and the heartstopping story of... The day MI5 trapped one of Putin’s spies with top secret papers stuffed down his trousers

RUSSIAN spies are the very best, which is why I used to love working against them when I was a deep-cover MI5 officer and surveillance expert. They truly understood how to operate on foreign soil as, under the guise of being diplomats, they operated out of the Russian Embassy in Kensington Palace Gardens.

They would hardly ever try to recruit members of the British Parliament because they knew the risks of being caught were incredibly high. Most of the time they were here to advance their country’s technical or military progress by targeting our defence companies and tech firms.

I grudgingly admired them, because despite them trying to undermine this country, they would do it in a way that was subtle. Stealing secrets with a feather, that’s how the Russians generally did it. No sledgehammers involved — unless it was a reprisal on one of their own defecting agents (as we now know only too well with the nerve- gas attack on double-agent Sergei Skripal).

Back in 2012, I’d been on this particular job for weeks, one of a team keeping surveillance on a Russian — codenamed Dirty Boot — every time his S-Class Mercedes with diplomatic plates left the Embassy. Then our main attention switched to his new contact: a tall, blonde-haired woman in her early 20s he’d recruited and was priming to spy for him.

She was a receptionist at an office of executive suites at Farnborough in Hampshire, just a stone’s throw from the premises of a top-secret tech company that specialised in satellite imagery.

She was vulnerable and was tempted. She’d left university with massive debts and had tried to supplement her income by taking on dodgy escort work. He drew her into his clutches by offering her a way out. He also promised her a new identity, a paid-for home and a job with the ministry in Moscow if she helped him.

On his instructions, she started up a passionate love affair with a particular engineer on the satellite project at the nearby tech company. He was flattered by her attentions, fell into her arms and their pillow talk produced information about his sensitive work on lasers and the means to hack into his emails, text messages and voicemail.

We’d planted eavesdropping equipment in her flat and at the engineer’s house and knew that he was unwittingly revealing enough about the top-secret technology he was working on for the Russians to replicate it back in Moscow and advance their country’s technology research and development by at least 30 years.

I was in my car keeping watch at Farnborough airport for Hungry Worm, our codename for the blonde. I had to be careful because, though it was unlikely that her Russian handler had given her any anti- surveillance training, I couldn’t follow her directly out of the car park if she left the building.

She was bound to be wary, given the furtive nature of what she was up to, and she might suspect something wasn’t quite right even if she wasn’t experienced enough to identify exactly what was wrong.

Word came through on the radio. There’d been a tip that the Russian was planning a meeting with Hungry Worm, probably so she could hand over secret documents she’d managed to get her hands on from her boyfriend.

But no one on our side knew where it was to be. He’d apparently left the details of where and when at a florist’s shop. ‘We don’t have any further intelligence, just a heads-up that it’s going to take place.’

She had obviously been told not to use her mobile phone to text him, hence we had no electronic intercepts to go on. Nor could we send an agent into the flower shop to see what the message was, just in case the florist was a Russian recruit, too.

But we desperately needed to monitor that meeting — and, if possible, photograph it — if we were to gather the proof to present to the Russian Embassy and kick this guy out of the country for trying to steal our technology. The problem was we had absolutely no idea where it was to be held.

I watched as a white courier van pulled up outside the executive suite where the blonde worked and a woman got out with flowers and took them inside to deliver. Van and driver then left. I saw the blonde leave the building and head off to a bus stop on the main road. There she got on a nearly empty number 82 bus.

We couldn’t send someone to follow her on board. That would be too much of a giveaway. Cars would tail the bus, but still risked being spotted, if not by her then by Russian counter-surveillance who might have been tracking her movements.

And what if she gave us the slip? We had to find out where she was going. I decided to act on my own initiative rather than await orders.

Though it risked compromising the whole operation if I was spotted, I walked into the reception area of the executive suite. A fresh bunch of flowers was on the front desk.

Trying to appear as if I was just waiting for someone, I strained to see the greeting card on the flowers. The message was upside-down but I managed to make out the words: ‘My beautiful lady, meet you same time at the Crescent.’

I turned away, spun an impromptu yarn to a security guard who’d asked me my business and left the building. Back in my car, I phoned in to base to give them the message.

It was enough for the boys there to rapidly check this new information against the pair’s known meeting places. The word came back: ‘Meeting place between Dirty Boot and Hungry Worm is believed to be at the RHS [Royal Horticultural Society] garden in Wisley, specifically the glasshouse.’

The radio net was now buzzing as everyone swung into action and reported in. ‘Hungry Worm is off

‘My beautiful lady, meet you at the same time’

the bus,’ said a message from the surveillance team covering the blonde. Apparently she was waiting by the side of the road.

Then: ‘Stand by! Stand by! Dirty Boot is in a black taxi and pulling alongside her.’

This could be a calamity. The danger was that the Russian was on to us and had been following us as we tracked her movements. Was he now warning her off?

But we need not have worried. The blonde got into the taxi with the Russian and together they sped off.

The whole team was directed to get to Wisley in Surrey as fast as possible, but without being seen. With Russian targets, you need to