The Sandbaggers

- Season 2

(1980)

When Sandbagger Two Tom Elliot is sent to Sofia on a operation to meet a Bulgarian agent claiming he wants to give information to western intelligence, everything goes wrong and Neil Burnside and Willie Caine go in to try and help save Elliot.

After having delivered the bad news to Tom Elliot's parents, Willie Caine considers leaving the Special Ops unit. Down to two Sandbaggers once again, Burnside is tasked with locating Sir Geoffrey Wellingham who, while in Brussels, disappears on his way to NATO Headquarters. He dispatches both Sandbaggers to Brussels despite direct orders from the Deputy Chief to send only one. Working with their German counterparts, they seek out the terrorists responsible but are having difficulty identifying just which group that is. Burnside is also concerned that he lent a top ...

Willie Caine and CIA agent Karen Milner are aboard a Malaysian Airlines plane that is being held by terrorists, while Neil Burnside frantically tries to get his superiors to send in the SAS on a raid to end the hostage taking.

When Sandbagger #2 Mike Wallace has a run-in with the Head of Station in Warsaw, he finds himself called on the carpet back home. While Burnside accepts his version of events, which puts the botched Warsaw operation clearly at the door of the local station, the Deputy Chief insists on a proper investigation. On another front, the SIS learns that the number two man in their Stockholm Station, Pat Bishop, is passing information to a British businessman who is known to have ties to the KGB. Both Sandbaggers are sent to investigate but when Bishop suddenly changes his ...

Burnside and the SIS face a particular problem when they learn that a senior Cabinet Minister and protégé of the Prime Minister is a spy for the KGB. Burnside's CIA friend has recently been complaining about the FBI and expressed his belief that they were involved in the wave of assassinations in the US in 1960's. When Burnside realizes that the Prime Minister, who refuses to take action, already knows all of the information about the MP he broaches the subject of taking action on their own, 'for the good of the Nation'. He and Wellingham agree that this is not the ...

When "C" announces that he is stepping down for health reasons, speculation is rife that the job will go to John Tower Gibbs, a one-time senior officer of the SIS who has in recently years been working at the Foreign Office. Burnside and Gibbs have anything but a cordial relationship going back to when Burnside, as a Sandbagger, investigated Gibbs who was at that time abroad as a Head of Station. Burnside decides to play kingmaker by promoting the prospects of the Deputy Chief, Matthew Peele. He subtly tries to influence Wellingham who demonstrates that he is still ...