Dialogue: Lifting the lid on the Cruise carrots

They're a hard mob at the British Ministry of Defence. They will clobber anybody they've coerced into signing the Official Secrets Act even if that person has tried to publish the menu from the ministry's staff canteen.

The ministry made me sign one night after giving me the water treatment and threatening me with the dreaded electrodes. The officers thought they had got what they wanted but they never knew the real truth.

Now it can be told and to hell with the Official Secrets Act.

You see, I was always in Soviet "deep cover." Even while serving on attachment in New Zealand from an elite branch of the RAF catering police, I was a full colonel of the old KGB.

I had been trained straight from school at the notorious 34 Dzerzhinsky Square. Then I infiltrated British forces to do a few years' square-bashing at a secret RAF recruit training base at Padgate in northern England.

It was upon my early release (because of flat feet) that I was forced to sign the Official Secrets Act. Having returned to Moscow by way of a discount holiday on the Costa del Sol, I was later landed as a sleeper agent from a Russian trawler on Hatfields Beach in 1966.

My task was to infiltrate a Massey University cell involved in the growth of pure nylon fleeces on Astroturf-grazed Perendales.

I rapidly came to realise that life in this country suited my socialist ideals, so I became a New Zealander.

Fortuitously, the nylon-Astroturf programme fell into disrepair as a result of the successful "Eat More Wool" campaigns of the late 70s, and the KGB and its successors never made contact with me.

Nevertheless, I was always on the qui vive and I was aware that the spectacular failure of Soviet Scud weapons in the Gulf War had alarmed the Kremlin. Plans were laid to rectify shortcomings.

Two areas of need had to be addressed. The first was to discover the secrets of the American Patriot missile.

An agent (well known to the old KGB as the Gorgeous Georgian) was sent to El Paso, where Patriot missiles were manufactured. There she was able to infiltrate the cheerleaders of the Irvin High School Rockets football team.

She became a familiar sight around Fort Bliss and the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico and feed back high-grade information about the Patriot, through a specially adapted Walkman concealed in the heel of one of her Reeboks.

She may still be in place. Russia has now taken over Soviet operations.

The second area of need was to develop a new generation of missiles that could be produced in large numbers, able to evade the Patriots' inboard heat-sensing computers, and accurate and small enough to drop down the periscopes of American nuclear submarines.

It had been known for some time in international circles that New Zealand had been developing its own missile arsenal but the extent and nature of it were puzzles to Russian analysts.

However, a young Ukrainian student, on a cultural exchange visit in mid-1990, observed, while lying on her back ground-hugging with a Swiss ski instructor in a paddock near Ohakune, a carrot travelling at immense speed 2m above and parallel to the ground.

She would probably not have thought this remarkable had she not noticed that the carrot, about 300mm long, bore letters and numbers and a small kiwi emblem on its side.

Her suspicions were further aroused when, on a late-night walk down Ohakune's bustling main street, she saw an Army truck loaded with gigantic rubberbands turning into the driveway of the town's main carrot farm.

Further investigation determined that the "Cruise carrots," as they have come to be known, were being test-launched from huge rubber catapults through holes cut in the roofs of packing sheds.

This courageous woman reported her findings and Moscow attempted to activate me. Unfortunately, those in Moscow could not get my phone number from Telecom inquiries and gave up, having spent a considerable time listening to plastic music.

All this time, the Ministry of Defence was under the impression that I was on its side. I decided to get sweet with the department by reporting that the missiles were also being tested in the Mackenzie Basin, where they were partly successfully targeted at warrens (many pre-RCV rabbits are known to have been killed by "smart carrots" while looking out of their holes to see if the coast was clear).

Time having passed and, I thought, healed, I decided to write my memoirs and as my Soviet masters had disappeared while working on clean-up gangs at Chernobyl, I submitted my manuscript to you-know-who at the Ministry of Defence. Blow me if the ministry didn't threaten to sue and block publication.

Stuff them, I say. Here in good old New Zealand, High Court judges give British blimps short shrift. So I'm looking for a publisher. Any takers?

* Don Donovan is an Auckland writer.