Free Undercover: The True Story of Britain's Secret Police by Paul Lewis, Rob Evans

but particularly worried for her son, who was then aged just eight. The boy had now effectively lost two fathers.
    Distraught, Charlotte became desperate to find Lambert, believing that he could help their son get through the mourning process. Lambert had always promised he would return to look after his son; now they were in dire need of his assistance. One of Charlotte’s friends recalls how the young woman was sure that Lambert would return, reuniting the family. ‘She needed him so much in her life, she was so devastated,’ the friend says. ‘She was so damaged that she just wanted Bob to help her with her son.’
    Charlotte enlisted the help of social services and the Child Support Agency, the government department responsible for tracking down absent fathers and making them pay their share of child maintenance costs. Time and again, official state records drew a blank. It was as if Bob Robinson didn’t exist. Charlotte’s only remaining hope was that Lambert would keep his promise and get in touch. Although she had moved house, her parents lived in the same property, and she knew it would be easy for Lambert to quietly return from Spain to track the family down.
    When she realised Lambert was not coming back, Charlotte felt she was at fault. ‘I felt guilty,’ she says. ‘At that time I blamed myself a lot for the break-up and for the fact that my son had lost his father.’
    By then of course Lambert was not in Spain, but just a few miles away, behind a desk at Scotland Yard. Following his SDS deployment, Lambert was transferred to a Special Branch department known as E Squad, which investigated terrorist threats from around the world. By the time Charlotte had lost her husband, and begun searching in vain for Lambert, he was back at the SDS in a senior position. Lambert’s infiltration of the ALF and London Greenpeace was considered a stellar performance and hewas recalled to work as an SDS manager around 1994. The titular head of the SDS was by then a detective chief inspector, Keith Edmondson. But it was Lambert – controller of operations – who had the respect and the day-to-day control of the squad.
    Lambert was now a spymaster, using wisdom gleaned from his years undercover to guide the next generation of SDS spies. He was adamant that other spies should follow his example in disappearing abroad at the end of their deployment. One classified SDS report written by Lambert once he was in the post stressed the importance of managing ‘carefully crafted withdrawal plans’ to convince ‘increasingly security-conscious target groups of the authenticity of a manufactured departure’. He added: ‘Inevitably this entails travel to a foreign country. Given our collective experience of problems which can arise when less careful attention is given to withdrawal strategy this policy appears manifestly justified.’
    To many of the new SDS officers, Lambert was a patriarchal figure, whose reputation was an inspiration for those who served under him. He took to the role with ease, giving his men practical and philosophical advice about espionage. He informed his squad that ‘with experience and expertise comes legitimacy and credibility ’. Lambert was the gaffer, deciding when, where and how SDS operatives should be deployed. He was pulling the strings like a puppet-master.
    One undercover officer who looked up to Lambert was a young, headstrong recruit with a ponytail who used the alias Pete Black. At the time he was full of praise for the man he describes as the ‘operational governor’ of the SDS. ‘I chatted to Bob about everything, everything,’ he says. ‘You used to go in with any sort of problem, and if he could not work out how to get you out of the shit, then you were fucked.’
    Lambert stepped down from the SDS in the late 1990s, after managing dozens of undercover officers. His career, likethat of the Special Branch, took a dramatic twist in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the