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However, Toshiba kept him for six months because whenever his bosses there asked him to come up with a solution to a problem, he invariably delivered the goods. He struck them as smart, but something told them to keep a close eye on him.

Of an evening, Mert would be called in by his control at the Intelligence Agency and asked to give a forensic assessment of various hard disks and computers, which they had conjured up seemingly from nowhere. He was supposed to gut the files, crack passwords where possible and deliver any incriminating materials. The Agency's primary responsibility was for Turkey's domestic security and it was tasked with monitoring the wide range of organisations that the government deemed were engaged in terrorism.

Towards the end of 2006 Toshiba sacked Mert - his attitude was not right, he boasted a little too much about his dubious exploits with credit cards, and yet he was also constantly asking his colleagues for loans or bonus payments.

Mert claimed that he left Toshiba on the instructions of his handlers at National Intelligence. They were working on finding him another cover job, he said.

Just before he began work at his new post, his handler brought him a hard disk that formed part of a highly sensitive investigation. Control wanted to know everything about each file on the disk, whether visible or hidden, accessible or encrypted. The disk belonged to a senior member of a left-wing underground organisation known by its acronym, the DHKP/C.

During the 1990s and early 2000s the DHKP/C had been one of the most violent and effective left-wing organisations committed to armed struggle in Turkey. The Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front (the Party was the political wing and the Front, in theory, the military wing) was a splinter group from Dev Yol, the larger revolutionary movement, which bore the brunt of military repression during the 1970s and 1980s.

This group was no tinpot outfit - it took its politics and its terrorism seriously, concentrating primarily on attacking the collaboration between what it denounced as NATO imperialism and the Turkish military establishment. It carried out successful assassinations against Turkish, American and British citizens who were either influential businessmen or linked to the military. In contrast to most leftist armed