In case you hadn't seen it, here's the
New Yorker piece which came out today.
You may be familiar with the basic elements of the story, but this is the first time some of the background details have been publicly aired. And some of them are gruesome.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/25/the-spy-who-loved-me-2
It tells the story of Jacqui (previously referred to as ‘Charlotte’), the woman who once upon a time fell in love with a dashing animal rights activist named ‘Bob Robinson’.
In reality, ‘Robinson’ was Robert Lambert, a career-long veteran of Special Branch, who in 1983 was sent deep undercover to infiltrate political groups on behalf of the secretive Special Demonstration Squad.
Almost immediately after being deployed on the ground, complete with the stolen identity of a dead child, Lambert sought out Jacqui at a protest, and began to woo her - which helped ease his way into animal rights groups that she was on the periphery of. Pretty soon they were an item, and by Christmas of 1984 Jacqui fell pregnant with Bob's son.
But in 1987 the relationship fell apart, as Bob became increasingly distant, argumentative, provocative. He began an 18 month relationship with another woman, ‘Karen’, who not part of any activist scene. In 1988, he disappeared completely from the lives of Jacqui, ‘Karen’ and all the people he had befriended during his adventure as a spy - ostensibly on the run in Spain to avoid the clutches of Special Branch, who had already arrested two other members of Bob's ALF incendiary bomb gang.
Between 1988 and late 2012, he made no attempt to remain in the life of his son. It was only when Jacqui realised that her long-disappeared ‘Bob Robinson’ was the same man as the former secret policeman Bob Lambert who had been accused of having set off a firebomb that gutted a department store whilst an undercover policeman, and tracked him down, that he showed any interest in his own progeny.
And that, in a nutshell, is the “genuine personal feelings” that the Met Police, recently forced to admit that Lambert was one of its spies, thinks drove Lambert to seek out an impressionable young activist, pester her into a relationship, impregnate her, emotionally bully her, dump her and then disappear from her life and the life of their son.
[Cross-posted]
