Quick-thinking MI5 agent pretended to be on the lookout for a paedo after dangerous gang realised he was wearing a wire
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A FORMER MI5 agent who went undercover to bring down a notorious gang has revealed he pretended to be a cop on the hunt for a paedo after the thugs found out he was wearing a wire.
The MI5 agent – who writes under the pseudonym Tom Marcus – describes the thrilling moment in new book Soldier Spy.
While posing as a homeless man in a park in Moss Side, Manchester, the group of seven men in their 20s approached him.
The gang leader demanded: “What the f*** you doing round ’ere?”
Marcus recalls his thought process during the nail-biting incident in his memoir: “OK, enough was enough. I’d have to take this guy out.
"I couldn’t hear my team leader on my radio but I knew he would be closing in to help me, so I’d probably have to fend these guys off for no more than a minute.
"A minute is a f***ing long time, though, if you are losing a fight against a gang of seven who clearly are used to this life...I needed to act fast,” he reasoned.
'Lads, I’m looking for a paedophile who tried to snatch an eight-year-old boy from this park earlier today'
Tom Marcus
At this point in the action, the dim gang leader grabbed the seasoned spy and spotted his radio by chance, telling his followers: “He’s 5-0, he’s got a radio, look, look!”
In that moment, quick-thinking Marcus decided on a lie to get himself out of trouble, telling the group of louts he was an undercover cop on the lookout for a paedo.
He told the gang: “Lads, I’m looking for a paedophile who tried to snatch an eight-year-old boy from this park earlier today.
"Everyone universally hates paedophiles, and it showed on the faces of these lads as most of them bought the story straight away – apart from the one or two that clearly still wanted to bounce my head across the park.”
In a bid to back up his story, Marcus made a big show of receiving a message on his radio that suggested the fictional perv had moved on to Oldham, and then left before his backup even had a chance to help.
It was only once he left that he noticed “scratches on [his] arms and two large fist-shaped bruises on [his] chest.”
Marcus wrote: “That f***er from the park must have hit me with more force than I had realized.
“I couldn’t even remember him or anyone grabbing my arms, yet I had three very distinct scratch marks around the insides of both biceps.
"Why couldn’t I remember that? Surely it wasn’t that traumatic?
“But my brain had somehow blocked that memory.”
— Soldier Spy, by Tom Marcus, published by Michael Joseph is released on Thursday, priced £20.
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