Graham Yuill

Graham Yuill is a former Royal Military Police corporal trained in close protection by the SAS, army marksman, physical training instructor, covert counter-intelligence proficient and six times Army and Combined Services Chess Champion. Known by the codename G6, his main task in Northern Ireland had been to act as personal bodyguard of Brigadier General David Miller, then head of the Ulster Defence Regiment. When the Commander went on compassionate leave in July 1979, he was ‘hand-picked,’ to lead a three-man ghost squad designated ‘Operation Toothpick’ and took place over three days from 29 to 31 July 1979. It was coded top secret because MI5 had determined that IRA informants had infiltrated the Irish Police, the Garda, who were providing details on Mountbatten’s modus operandi. ‘Operation Toothpick’ was to assess Mountbatten’s security at his summer home in the Republic of Ireland - that is Earl Louis Mountbatten of Burma, Admiral of the Fleet, last Viceroy of India, and second cousin to the Queen. His recommendations go unheeded and his report lost. Three weeks later a 50-pound bomb planted on his boat by the Provisional IRA killed Mountbatten. The security failing is covered up. He signs the Official Secrets Act and is posted to Hong Kong.

Two years later he is relocated at NATO HQ in Belgium, as head of security for recently promoted Major General Miller he becomes acquainted with seven Russian translators on an exchange programme. He was aware, as is Major General Miller, that the seven young Russians on an exchange programme at the NATO base are not merely translators, but spies testing their wings on their first mission. He passes intelligence to MI6 on Russian translators in Belgium and becomes the lover of a suspected Russian agent posing as a linguist who carries a revolver concealed in her underwear. While she plays him to extract intelligence, he plays her a dangerous game of cat and mouse that remains a haunting presence still in his mind to this day.

When double spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found dying after a nerve agent attack in Salisbury in March 2018, he immediately suspected Russian involvement and a cover-up by the police. As he follows media reports on the Skripal attack, he finds the same level of cover up and contradiction that obstructed the inquest into the murder of Mountbatten. He kept his mouth shut for thirty years after the IRA bombing. Not this time. With his sceptical girlfriend Lizzie, a nursing sister, he sets off for Salisbury to begin his own investigation. With archived material compiled from across the world, combined with evidence obtained through the Freedom of Information Act the story of Colonel Skripal unfolds layer by layer like a mystery thriller to provide a more credible account of what really happened that spring day when Salisbury was visited by Putin's Assassin. If the powers of the state covered up system failures that killed the Queen’s second cousin, what did that tell us about the slow confused drip of information about the attempted murder of Colonel Skripal and his daughter Yulia on 4 March 2018 in the streets of Salisbury? Time to find out.