You can pre-order the book at:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0970554788/intelmilitgoverw

-PART 9-

'Emergenza! Emergenza!" cried the overweight figure perched on the tip of a ladder swaying just below my balcony. "Gas leak, get out of your apartment immediately!"

The police had been knocking on the door of my third-floor apartment on the Rimini seafront for two hours. I had encrypted everything important on my laptop, defragmented the hard disk for good measure, and hid the Psion memory disk inside the television set.

With everything secure, I went out on the balcony and opened up a book. They eventually called out the fire brigade, and now the police chief was peering up at me from his wobbly perch, hoping to trick me into opening the door.

"You've got the wrong building," I replied from my sun-lounger, "This building is electricity only!"

"Open the door," he ordered, producing a police badge and sending the ladder into a worrying sway.

It was Wednesday, May 17 - the day that Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5, confirmed that she intended to publish her memoirs. Unlike me, she had not been arrested. Sky News had booked me for a live telephone interview at 3.30pm to discuss this jaw-dropping hypocrisy. The phone started ringing as the police burst into my flat.

"Up against the wall," screamed the two Italian heavies who led the charge, their pistols pointing at my chest.

"All right, calm down," I urged them. It was my 10th police bust and I had my hands against the wall and feet apart before they'd even recovered their breath. Five other officers entered the room.

Their sweaty chief arrived a few minutes later, introduced himself as Inspector Filippis of Rimini DIGOS, the Italian special investigations police, and presented two British Special Branch officers.

These jobsworths waved a warrant that empowered them under the Mutual Assistance Act to confiscate anything they wanted. My computer and Psion were first in the pile. Then my CD collection, both music and software, my legal papers, my mobile phone and the television remote control.

They loaded it all into one of my suitcases. The only thing they couldn't get in was the television, containing the precious disk.

Filippis interviewed me for six hours before he realised that I had done nothing illegal and that the British police had abused the Mutual Assistance Act. By then the jobsworths were on their way back to London with all my belongings. They returned my suitcase, but I never saw my computers, software, CDs, mobile phone or TV remote control again.

A few days later, Filippis wrote asking me to go back to the police station. I ignored his request. I had just applied for registration in Rimini, which I needed in order to legitimise my presence in Italy, and I presumed that Filippis wanted to tell me to leave.

"Why didn't you come to see us the other day?" he inquired politely when I bumped into him in the town centre. "Your permit is ready. The British embassy in Rome rang us and asked us not to give you one, so we decided to give you it immediately."

Where will this end, I thought to myself, unsure whether the story was farce or tragedy.

© Richard Tomlinson 2001

You can pre-order the book at:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0970554788/intelmilitgoverw