Читать книгу Under Pressure. Living Life and Avoiding Death on a Nuclear Submarine онлайн

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Before joining Resolution I was security vetted to within an inch of my life by a bespectacled, ruddy-faced man in a double-breasted pinstripe suit in a small office somewhere in HMS Dolphin. The office was well lit and looked particularly unforgiving as I entered: two chairs, his across from mine, two plastic cups and a notepad on my side laid out on a plain white table. Initially I heard footsteps in the distance – sharp, unforgiving strides as the man’s steel-tipped shoes announced his imminent arrival from some distance away, reminding me of Lee Marvin in Point Blank. Am I going to be on the receiving end of those? I wondered. He entered the room, we shook hands and he proceeded to inform me that he was a vetting officer. Vetting officer, my arse. He was a member of the security services based in London, and it was his job to make sure I was of sound temperament and had no skeletons in my closet that would make it impossible for me to serve on the nuclear deterrent.

He asked a wide variety of questions, some about politics, others about family, starting with, ‘Are you a communist?’