An Old Spy Story Read online

  Monkey Puzzle

  I start this page after two days of sitting and drinking but I have not slept. It is a struggle to clear my mind sufficiently to write and I still have a long way to go.

  Sleep, I believe, is a pastime of the young and of those whose energy is consumed by physical and mental endeavour. Insomnia, on the other hand, is an affliction of the old and those whose energy remains untapped. These latter souls – and I am one – will sit, think and drink, and with lights still blazing deep into the night, spend useless hours wandering in circles around the house. I have become such a depressed wanderer.

  It is hard for me to admit this but, in my effort to explain things, I will swallow what remains of my pride.

  You see, over the last few months and years, I have spent hours peering through the curtains of the upstairs windows like a nosy old woman. I am well aware of the pathetic creature I have become. The only thing left of my manly persona is the whisky bottle I am usually to be found clutching in my hand.

  This peering from the bedroom window first began when Sarah became ill and was confined to bed. I have spent hours watching Sarah asleep in the bed. There is little that is more depressing than watching someone with their eyes shut, unaware of your presence and who seems to have entered a sort of time warp where nothing is happening. It is an interesting scientific fact that contemplating a universe where there is absolutely nothing goes nowhere. But Sarah barely moved once she fell asleep.

  Towards the end, she barely moved during the day either but, at night, she was particularly still. Towards the end her breathing also became irregular and noisy. But I would perch on the edge of the bed near the pillow looking down at her although if I had had a drink or two I tried not to get too close in case she smelt it. Sarah’s nose, you see, was one part of her body that still worked. But if I was sober, I would often stroke her forehead or her hair and talk to her even though she was asleep.

  Then I might go to the window.

  I would part the curtains, wipe the condensation from the glass and peer out into the darkness. Last autumn, just before Sarah died, I was watching as a mixture of wet snow and rain fell onto the road below. Large, wet, snowflakes floated through the bare cherry tree on the overgrown lawn. First, they seemed to fall downwards then, as the swirling wind caught them, they were swept upwards again, disappearing back into the darkness. The long grass of the lawn looked orange in the street light but everything was still too wet for snow to settle. A car drove slowly past, its headlights picking out rain mixed with snowflakes and reflecting off the wet road. And, in the distance over the rooftops opposite, stood the cathedral, already floodlit for the season, its spire outlined in a dimmer, foggy light. A Christmas tree lit with tiny red, blue and yellow fairy lights stood in the window of the house opposite.

  The Carringtons at number 26, now named Grey Walls, always wanted to be the first to show how Christian and festive they were and it was only November.

  I once told Sarah, “The Carringtons would put up a Christmas tree at Easter, if competition really hotted up.”

  I had not spoken to Fred Carrington for weeks. Mrs Carrington had been in hospital and I only knew that because Fred told me. We sometimes met in the local shop where I would spot him scanning the racks of the wine and spirits shelves with a guilty expression on his face. The poor man would be furtively glancing around as though he feared Mrs C might be lurking, somewhere in the vicinity. But standing there, watching what little life there was unfold from behind the curtain, I wondered who, if Mrs C was still in hospital, had put up that tree. I was immediately disgusted at my interest in such petty issues but such, you see, is the intellectual height of insomniacs who ponder on such trifling matters and so fail to tire their brains.

  Fred, I decided, didn’t seem the sort to have done it himself as the competitive streak undoubtedly came from Mrs C. Perhaps his wife, whatever her other name was, was better now. Perhaps Fred had been forced to fix the tree in place in a bucket, wrapped it in coloured crepe paper and Mrs C had done the more interesting part of decorating it.

  The house to the right of the Carringtons, number 28, now called The Laurels, was always in darkness. As I write this I can see it through the curtains but I have no idea who lives there. It was once rented out to a family who shouted a lot and appeared to own at least six cars which they parked on the pavement between the garbage bins.

  The house to the left was number 24 but I can’t tell you its name if, indeed, it has been given one. But it, too, is in complete darkness. Such is the mysterious lifelessness that depicts certain streets like this.

  I often look at the monkey-puzzle tree that stands stark against the gap between numbers 24 and 26. It is clearly visible in the street light against the orange hue from the low clouds that seem to constantly hover over the city and I often ponder about monkey-puzzle trees and about those who thought they were useful adornments for urban, English gardens.

  They are, as trees, so brutal, stark and unbending and I have never seen it move even during a gale. This is a particularly dirty tree that looks depressed but does not know how to die. It is a tree that appears lonely, homesick and out of place in England – a tree that should probably have stayed at home in South America. But it had not been given a choice. It, or its parents, had been brought to England, shipped here like an unwilling immigrant by someone with distorted ideas of interest and beauty with ideas to exhibit it in grand, English country gardens. It had done its best. In fact, it had made the most of its new home. This was, in fact, a particularly courageous specimen that might, if it could speak, admit that true happiness had eluded it since it came to Gloucester. If it could speak it might also tell you that it possessed undying patience and tolerance in abundance but that now it only half-believed the stories it had been told of high, snow-topped mountains in its birthplace of Chile and Argentina. It may have heard from other, older monkey-puzzle trees about soaring condors and of how its cousins provided nesting sites amongst their spiky armoury for far more exotic birds than the local sparrows that it was familiar with. It knows nothing of the stark terrain to which it is so much better suited and I am sure it dislikes providing shelter for the ugly, rusting shed and it tries its best to ignore the concrete post and the street light that shines at night.

  In fact, I think it hates its safe, suburban life. I think it would have preferred the risk and adventure of coping with wild gales and other forces of nature. Its life is too mundane, you see.

  Standing there, peeping from behind the curtain, I always feel sorry for that tree. Perhaps it also saw the eyes, peering like a ghost from behind the curtains of the upstairs window opposite and sympathized. That tree and I were like friends who had never spoken.

  The view from the bedroom window is not one I would have chosen, but it is, I suppose, better than the view in Croydon, where the far horizon could be measured in yards. But a detached gable-fronted house in Gloucester had been the only sort affordable when I finally sat down to count the savings. It had been close to essential amenities, as Sarah used to call the shops and post office. But it had also been close to Robert, my son, and his family, which was the real reason for Sarah – that is before Robert decided with just a hint of guilt, to pack up and move to America within weeks of our arrival. The post office, too, has of course, now moved away.

  But for Sarah, she was returning to somewhere closer to her Gloucestershire roots, and the house had given her a sense of comfort, which I saw no reason to undermine.

  Personally, I would have found it far more exciting to live in a mountain hut in Chile next to a Monkey Puzzle tree or in Cape Town, Cyprus, South East Asia or any of the sixty odd other countries I have visited over the years. You see, I still prefer to feel hot sun on my face, not cold, wet, sleet. And I still need space and fresh air to breathe. But I owed it to Sarah to do what she wanted, not what I wanted. It was her turn, so to speak, to decide what we should do. She said she felt safer there and I now know why.


  So, instead of buying a much larger villa with several acres of land in Cape Town we used all my remaining resources to buy a gable-fronted house in a side street of Gloucester.

  Even Cheltenham would have been better and I tried hard to persuade Sarah of that. Cheltenham still has a certain ring of sophistication and affluence. It possesses an air of grandeur left by generations of retired military who have traveled the world, seen a lot, done their bit for King or Queen and Country and finally come home to roost in manageable apartments in Georgian streets. Cheltenham gathers secret intelligence by clever electronic surveillance of distant lands.

  Cheltenham also calls itself the gateway to the Cotswolds. Certainly, it feels closer to the higher hills and the watery, more southerly valleys of Stroud and Painswick, of Cider with Rosie villages and stony cottages. Cheltenham is spring and summer – a town of glorious flowers in sunny parks. Gloucester, on the other hand, is like autumn and winter – a city of wet sleet, of oily water slopping about in old, disused docks, of dull brick terraced houses and industry.

  But back in November, as I was peering from behind the curtain, I remember Sarah moaning in her sleep. I turned to check her as she moved just a little and settled once more. Her hair lay across her forehead, her face just a little orange in the reflected light from the street lamp. I watched her mouth move and heard her mumble something. It was the familiar sound of Sarah sleeping that I had listened to for nearly sixty years and I listened to her for a while longer.

  That night, it was the only sound in the world. Sometimes, I decided, I had not heard her because, wrongly, I believed that what she was saying was not important. I had listened but had not heard. Sometimes I did not hear because I did not understand. Sometimes I did not hear because my mind was distracted and too far away. And once, but only once, I did not want to hear because we had argued. I looked away, back towards the window. I looked away because Sarah had known about Kings Cross. And Kings Cross was where Donaldson had started to turn the screw.

  Hanky Panky

  “The address is on there.”

  That was Jack pointing to the usual, scribbled message on the back of an old, brown envelope.

  “Pick it up before you get the train. It’s just a package I understand. D wants it taken up.”

  D was Jack’s occasional name for Donaldson.

  “So, what has she got?” I had asked Jack.

  Jack had shrugged. “Search me. Works for the Israelis but going back to Tel Aviv tomorrow I gather.”

  “M?”

  It was another ridiculous initial because we loved codes. M was Mossad. Jack had known what I meant but he shrugged again, said nothing and looked away. Later I took the underground to Kings Cross Station. It was late one evening in July and still light and I was getting out of a taxi and looking around at street numbers, finding 46, and ringing the bell next to the name that said Weizmann. A woman in her mid-twenties had come to the door and let me in. I followed close behind her as we walked, round and round, up three flights of dark stairs and entered an airless flat that smelled as though it may, until recently, have remained unoccupied for months.

  I remember that room so clearly. It had one high window open to the deep blue sky from the heat of the summer evening. But the bed looked slept in and the gas stove held a kettle that was steaming. A small suitcase lay on the floor, clothes tumbling from it. And a brown briefcase lay on the bedside table beside the only electric light that was switched on.

  She had introduced herself as Leila and asked me if I would like coffee. Then she had filled the kettle from a single, cold water tap over the white, porcelain sink. I had sat on the only space available, the bed, and waited while she talked and washed two cups.

  “We have to wait for Simon to arrive. We don’t have everything yet.”

  She spoke in a husky Arab-Israeli accent tinged with American and pronounced Simon first in the Arabic way – Semaan and also in the more familiar Simon.

  “Simon should be here very soon.”

  I asked her a few questions but knew it was unwise to pry too much because I was merely doing favours – my innocent courier role as usual.

  “I go home tomorrow,” she said, “El Al. You fly El Al before?”

  We talked similar generalities and she came to sit beside me.

  It was high summer, as I said – a hot July evening. The warm, eastern Mediterranean sun was shining from her dark brown eyes and I knew she was wearing nothing underneath her open necked shirt. Her smooth, brown, bare legs were parted at the hem of her short skirt. I remember her sighing and constantly looking at her watch as she continued with small talk.

  “If he is not coming by ten o’clock, then maybe he is not coming until morning.”

  I have to say her manner of speech and accent was very appealing so I used the time to practice my few words of Hebrew with a few remembered words and sentences. She seemed to like it and laughed and joked in Arabic. “My Arabic is now better than my Hebrew.”

  And then we both told a few jokes about Arabs and Israelis, then a few more, but less political. Her Arabic was, indeed, good and I had started to wonder about her precise nationality but was too cautious to ask outright because I was only there as a trusted aid for Donaldson. She laughed again and seemed to like touching my leg with her own, just like Gladys Hargreaves used to do when I was eleven at school.

  But time passed and Simon had still not arrived by ten.

  After another mug of Leila’s delicious coffee, though, I remember nothing except feeling unusually relaxed and tired and lying backwards on the bed with my head on the pillow. I must have passed out and it was many hours later that the sound of people talking woke me. It was six in the morning and a man, presumably Simon, had arrived with an envelope and had let himself in with a key.

  But I found, on waking from a sleep that was far, far deeper than normal, that I was missing my trousers and shirt. I was partly covered by a bed sheet but mostly I was covered by Leila’s bare arms, legs and long, jet-black hair. I also had a severe and throbbing headache.

  But Simon had seemed surprisingly unconcerned and went about the task of making coffee for himself while Leila dressed beneath the sheet and I recovered my clothes that I could not recall having removed, from the floor.

  Then, later that evening, after a long and tedious train journey to Edinburgh with my headache only receding slowly, I arrived at Donaldson’s mysterious office in Morningside.

  I gave him the sealed, brown envelope and he asked me how I had got on with Leila.

  Then he winked at me.

  I remember Donaldson’s winks. They were always made with a sideways nod of his head and a smug grin. Donaldson never smiled much but, when he did, he exposed a row of big, yellow teeth.

  “Jolly energetic bit of totty, don’t you think, old chap?”

  I hated the suggestive nature of Donaldson’s words and I told him I did not know what he was talking about. But the worst bit was to come.

  Donaldson went on.

  “Sarah rang the hotel in George Street because you failed to ring her last night. Tut tut, old chap.”

  I had looked at Donaldson, puzzled.

  “Sarah?” I asked. “But Sarah has no idea I’m in Edinburgh, least of all where I might be staying.”

  Donaldson looked unconcerned.

  “Ah, yes, sorry, old man. Jack would have told Beaty to phone your wife to ring the hotel in Edinburgh, as it was urgent.”

  I looked at him, my heart now starting to beat in my chest.

  “But I’m telling you my wife didn’t know I was going to Edinburgh. Neither did Beaty. And what, on earth, could have been so urgent?”

  Donaldson then turned his back on me.

  “Well, I don’t know, I’m sure, but everyone seems to know something now, old chap.”

  Donaldson then turned around again, walked over, slapped me on the shoulder and looked at me as though he was about to reveal more. He did.

  Donaldson retrieved th
e papers from the envelope that I had brought with me but had not opened because it was not mine to open – naïve devotion to Queen and Country you see.

  Donaldson sat, inspecting the contents while I stood and meanwhile worried, in advance, what I would say to Sarah when I got home.

  And so, it was, two days later, that Sarah and I started to argue about who, what, why, when and where. As usual I made a complete mess of explanations, as the only person in the world that I could never deceive with words was Sarah. I may not have always told her everything but what I did say was always the truth.

  But my real anger lay with Donaldson who knew full well that I never talked to Sarah about my other life.

  But Donaldson had got what he wanted. He held up something that he pulled from the envelope, placed it on the table, leaned back in his squeaking chair and read from the scrap of notepaper that was inside.

  “Ah. Yes. You see. Just as I thought, Leila liked you – a lot.

  She says here that you didn’t tell her your name but she asks me to tell you she would love to see you again next time she’s in London. She likes the photos you took of each other. She says to tell you she’ll keep them as a memento – until the next time.”

  It was the only time I had argued with Sarah but it was not the first or the last time with Donaldson. It was the first and only time I met Leila. But Donaldson often found time to talk about her and the photographs and I knew full well that Donaldson was the only one keeping them as a memento.

  “Seen Leila lately, Ollie? Good job Sarah doesn’t know about you, you rascal. But she’ll soon see the photos if you ever step out of line. Mind you, I wouldn’t mind a bit of Leila myself sometime. What?”

  The visions in the darkened bedroom window disappeared and were replaced again with the pale reflection of my own face and at the equally pale form of Sarah still sleeping in the bed behind me.

  So, I wandered downstairs again, filled my glass once more and sat staring into the log effect gas fire wondering if those photos still existed somewhere. Perhaps they were filed in a box in some dusty cellar somewhere and had been turned up by a couple of cleaners or low grade civil servants tasked with reducing the volume of paperwork still in storage.

  “Seen this one, Bert? Quaint bit of hanky-panky and other goings-on in the corridors of power. Must have been a few years ago though, Bert. See? The girl’s mini skirt is half way up her arse – and look, no bloody knickers. Dirty old man whoever he is. Lucky sod! Ha ha!”

  But Donaldson had started to turn the screw.

  Reynolds

  Some months after Kings Cross, Donaldson gave the screw another turn.

  I had been to Algeria again on business but then flew to Amman in Jordan because Donaldson had apparently set me up with an appointment with the Ministry of Defense.

  When I returned to my hotel from my usual evening visit to the souk on the lookout for a small gift for Sarah, a bearded Arab in smart white dress was waiting for me.

  It was the reception clerk who pointed him out and I can remember the occasion as clearly as if it was a week ago. The man was sitting in a chair, running a string of brown coloured beads between his fingers just as I was fingering my new found present for Sarah in my pocket.

  “Salaam Alekum,” he said and stood up, his hand outstretched.

  There was the briefest of pauses. “Mr Thomas?”

  Now, this had been surprising because my passport for immigration and visa purposes when I arrived in Amman had been a special one, prepared and given to me by Donaldson in London. It was all done in readiness for the meeting he had arranged with the Jordanian Armed Forces the next day.

  The new passport was in another name, one David William Reynolds, a company director, born in Sheffield on February 4th 1918 and I had not shaved whilst in Algeria and Egypt so as to better match the photograph.

  I remember the reception clerk scratching his head. Perhaps he went to consult his guest list because I had also checked in as David Reynolds and been welcomed as Mr Reynolds every time I collected my key.

  I knew my Oliver Thomas passport lay secure behind the lining of my black case. In fact, I held three passports in the name of Thomas although I normally only carried one. The others would have been at home or lodged with Embassies awaiting visas for future trips. On this occasion, the lining had been the hiding place for the Reynolds passport until just before my plane landed in Amman. Then, just before touching down, I had hidden the Thomas one, recovered the Reynolds one and passed through immigration as David Reynolds.

  Faced, then, with a visitor in the hotel lobby addressing me as Oliver Thomas, I was, at first, unsure how to respond. I decided on caution.

  “Alekum essalaam. And you are?” I asked.

  “Derhally, sir. Fouad Derhally. Major Donaldson informed us you were staying here,” he said.

  His English was good.

  “Major Donaldson?”

  “Yes, sir. I think you know him, sir.”

  I decided on maintaining my caution. “I do?” I said.

  “Yes sir. Mr David Reynolds also confirmed you were staying here.”

  This was odd, because I was, ostensibly, David Reynolds.

  “Mr Reynolds?” I asked, again checking.

  “Yes, sir. He is coming from England,” the man said in his Arabic way.

  This was true, but it was still very odd.

  “And where is Mr Reynolds at present?” I asked the man.

  “He is coming from the British Embassy, I believe, sir.”

  “Is he? And how do you know Mr Reynolds?”

  “He is arriving yesterday, sir. He was fly to Amman from Algeria.”

  Even now, years later, I remember exactly how the man spoke. But it was me who, as Oliver Thomas, had flown from Algeria, just the day before. The confusion combined with the heat of an afternoon in the middle of July in Amman brought on a sticky sweat. But what happened afterwards has been a recurring nightmare that produces regular sweats even in December in England.

  I walked with the Arab to the corner of the hotel lobby and we sat, briefly, by a potted palm and ordered coffee. We talked pleasantries until it arrived in a pot and was served by a bearded man in white robes and a red sash into tiny cups on a brass tray. Little was said and the coffee ritual only served to extend the time I spent with the man. But eventually he said: “So, sir. There is an appointment for you, as arranged. You will meet General Najib Jamal tomorrow. At eight in the morning, sir.”

  The man spoke to me over sips of the coffee but never looked directly at me. I know his eyes were black and that one manicured finger bore a fine gold ring with a blue stone. But there was no eye contact. Then, with an over vigorous shaking of hands, he left.

  It was ten hours later that the man called again and escorted me to a black, official looking car parked outside. Sometime later, we arrived at the gate of what I took to be a military headquarters with guards and guns outside. We were ushered through and then I was asked to get out. The black car drove off leaving me standing in the heat of the hot morning sun, but I was immediately met by another man in army uniform and taken across a compound, past flat roofed buildings and through a door into a surprisingly plush office.

  I can recall everything about that room.

  The General, or whoever he was, because he had discarded the jacket part of his uniform and so the badges and ribbons were not apparent, was seated at an elaborate desk with a gilt framed picture of a young King Hussein behind. He was flanked by three younger, military men, who wore khaki uniforms and off set berets. And there was a fourth man in a crumpled, dark, grey suit and tie, looking not unlike myself but with a better developed beard, who looked distinctly English and also distinctly nervous.

  The view of that office is imprinted on my mind.

  Perhaps it has been embellished by time, but despite the briefest of minutes I spent there it is still very clear. There were other ornate frames bearing inscriptions – passages from the Koran drawn in gold
and red and conveying messages probably of peace and praise and loyalty to Allah. But the room itself did not convey a message of peace, goodwill and loyalty.

  “Mr Thomas. Please come with me.”

  I can hear the order even now. There were no pleasantries, hand-shakes or invitations to sit, because the General was already standing. I was taken through to another room. The others followed, including the Englishman who appeared reluctant but said nothing. Then came the invitation to sit. An outstretched hand pointed. The seat was hard, with no arms and I sat with my hot, sticky hands clasped in my lap. The General, if that is what he was, talked whilst the others stood around him in their smart uniforms and shiny boots.

  The Englishman, for that is what he proved to be, was standing beside one of the soldiers furthest from the main group. It was then that I saw the handcuffs and heard the words that I still remember to this day.

  “This is Mr Reynolds, Mr Thomas. Mr David Reynolds. Mr Reynolds has made a few mistakes. He talked too much to the Israelis, Mr Thomas. Far too much. About what is not important. What is important is that from today we would like you to become Mr Reynolds. It will be very useful for everyone. You can also be Mr Thomas. But for certain tasks related to the ongoing situation in the Middle East, of which you are well aware, it has been decided that it will make things, what shall we say, easier – no convenient – no, efficient yes, that is it, efficient. It will be more efficient and convenient if you are able, occasionally, to take over from Mr Reynolds, for the goodness of international relations – officially.

  “What is more, Mr Thomas, our mutual friend Major Donaldson approves of this bold plan. That is also what we say – official. Ha.”

  The General finished by laughing a little as though embarrassed. I, myself, stood up, objected and asked for a better explanation. But the General just raised his hand. No more explanation was forthcoming. But the menace came all too quickly.

  “Your wife – Mrs Sarah, isn’t it, Mr Thomas – and your children, they are called Elizabeth and Robert, isn’t it Mr Thomas? They must not know. Do you understand? No one must know. No one knows about this most important decision even now, except our mutual friend Major Donaldson. Major Donaldson knows. Major Donaldson knows everything, you see. Major Donaldson is a good friend to us. He has arranged everything. Even our young King does not know, Mr Thomas. “Some things are best dealt with in – how shall we say – in strictest confidence. It is best for everyone. Even your Queen and your own Prime Minister – no one knows. No one then has to deny knowledge about your legitimate business activities and you can run your other very useful assignments as Mr Reynolds whenever it is appropriate. It is safer for you. That’s it – safer and better. It will be easier for you also. And it will be very useful for relations, you understand. You see how it is?”

  I had not understood at all, but I had, suddenly, become David Reynolds and was about to become further enmeshed in a sticky web of intrigue that lasted years and where struggle meant even more entanglement. I had been caught like a fly in a spider’s web although it felt more like barbed wire.

  But things had then happened very suddenly.

  The General nodded to the soldier who was fastened by handcuffs on his left hand to the silent Englishman. The man undid the bottom button of his khaki jacket with his free, right hand and a shiny black pistol was taken from a leather holster inside.

  The real and mysterious Mr Reynolds who had, so far, said nothing, froze. He stared with wide eyes at me, his fellow Englishman and apparent replacement and the blood visibly drained from his face. But still he said nothing. The gun was raised to the side of the head of the real Reynolds. The poor man closed his eyes and seemed to clench his teeth. Then there was a bright flash and a loud bang as the man’s head twisted violently over his neck. A red hole appeared above the ear and the body slumped to the ground with one arm still upright, attached to the uniformed assassin. Blood gushed from the hole onto the floor.

  I admit I was in too much of a state of shock to say or do much after that, and what happened in the minutes after-wards is unclear.

  I remember Reynolds’ body being dragged away by the handcuff that held him to his killer and being pulled through a doorway to a darker room with what looked like a plain concrete floor. I saw the soldier who had shot him release the handcuff from his own wrist and the body of Reynolds slump to the floor. I remember the line of fresh blood that ran from just a few feet from me across the floor to the other room. I also remember the General taking me by the arm and me pushing him away. But what I said or shouted I cannot recall. I then remember both my arms being held by the other soldiers as I tried to fight myself free, but it was pointless because my legs and body felt weak from what I had just seen.

  But, as I was marched back out into the sunshine, I remember the General talking non-stop in short, incomplete sentences as though it was just a routine morning’s work.

  “Such a pity,” he repeated probably ten times and there were other words that I think he spoke. “But that is the way of life.”

  “We must all obey our orders.”

  “At last, we now have a very fine replacement. This is good.

  It is best for everyone. We must carry on this good work.”

  “This will be better now, you will see. Insh’allah. Things are clearer now.”

  “Major Donaldson, he will be pleased with this. I shall report immediately.”

  With that, and with me still in a state of shock but not wanting to instigate a fight when I knew I was totally outnumbered, I was bundled into the same black car I had arrived in and, in a daze, I was dropped off at my hotel.

  I felt completely numb.

  I went to my room, still in a state of shock and there I removed my glasses, washed my face and stood before the mirror looking at my new appearance. The fact was that, even to myself, I didn’t look like Ollie Thomas anymore. I suppose it was the light beard and my hair which was plastered down with a parting on the wrong side. Then I went to lie on the bed, took out my Oliver Thomas passport and laid it next to the Reynolds one.

  I picked up the phone to call the British Embassy, thinking they might help but then stopped myself because I was already afraid of what I had got involved in.

  Then, in my mind, I went over and over the words spoken to me earlier.

  “This is Mr Reynolds, Mr Thomas. Mr David Reynolds. Mr Reynolds has made a few mistakes. He talked too much . . . It will be very useful for everyone if you are able, occasionally, to take over from Mr Reynolds, for the goodness of international relations . . . What is more, Mr Thomas, our mutual friend Major Donaldson approves of this bold plan.”

  And then the threats: “Your wife – Mrs Sarah, isn’t it, Mr Thomas – and your children, they are called Elizabeth and Robert, isn’t it Mr Thomas? They must not know. Do you understand? No one must know.”

  I remember thinking about Sarah back at home and looking over at my white shirts hanging in the wardrobe and remembering that Sarah had carefully washed and ironed them before I left home and I remember tears coming to my eyes.

  What the hell had I become involved with?

  I thought about phoning home but then thought better of it because of the threats.

  “No one knows about this most important decision except our friend Major Donaldson . . . Major Donaldson is a good friend to us . . . He has arranged everything . . . Even our young King does not know, Mr Thomas . . . Some things are best dealt with in strictest confidence . . . Even your, Queen and your Prime Minister . . . No one knows . . . No one then has to deny knowledge . . . You can run your other assignments as Mr Reynolds whenever it is appropriate . . . It is safer and better . . . It will be easier for you also . . . It will be very useful for relations. You see how it is?”

  Oh yes, I was really starting to see how it was and what I was involved in.

  I stayed in that hotel room for more than a day before finally venturing out and going to the airport to catch my scheduled flight home. A
nd all the time I thought I was being followed. On arrival at Heathrow, I still felt too upset and afraid to go home immediately so I stopped off at my Croydon office and fell onto my familiar seat behind my desk.

  It was past five so Beaty had already left.

  I had never ever phoned Donaldson in the past but I had a London phone number in my book that Jack had once given me “for emergencies” although I had no idea where this phone was. I dialed the number. But it rang and rang and I gave up.

  I gave it ten minutes and tried again until someone eventually answered it. To this day, I do not know who it was, but it sounded like a young boy of around twelve years old. I asked to speak to Major Donaldson but there was a silence from the other end and whoever answered, hung up.

  So, I tried Jack’s number, again one that he had told me I could use in an absolute emergency and to my amazement, Jack answered. I remember blurting out to him what had happened as he listened mainly in silence broken by platitudes like “I see”, “I really don’t know,” “that’s really surprising” and “that must have been such a shock”.

  I then started to blow my top at Jack.

  “Surprising? A bloody shock? That’s a fucking understatement. What, the hell, is going on here?”

  Jack fumbled with words in his usual pathetic style.

  “Yes, it can be a very messy business at times,” was about the only sentiment I could extract from him.

  “Messy? So, what the fuck’s Donaldson playing at? Where the hell is the fucking bastard, I want to know?”

  “I understand he’s in Scotland on business. He is expected back in a few days.”

  “On bloody business?” I shrieked, “I thought this was the bloody Foreign Office or civil service! Manned twenty-four hours, seven days a week, Christmas and New Year and never closed. I, myself, have even been phoned on a Christmas Eve.

  And I was in bloody Teheran! But when it’s me who needs something, they’ve bloody well gone out.”

  “Yes, what I mean is he is on Government business in Edinburgh as I understand.”

  It was useless. Jack’s uncertainty about the whereabouts of Donaldson was clear. I went home.

  That night was the first time I mentioned to Sarah about moving the business abroad and starting again. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her why but I didn’t get a chance anyway.

  “But, I was about to break the good news to you, dear.

  Robert and Anne are getting married soon.”

  “Are they?” I said, shocked by more fresh news. “No-one told me.”

  “No dear, you’ve been away a lot. But we can’t possibly just pack up and move. Not now and, anyway, we’d need to talk about it a lot more.”

  And that was it for three days until I eventually got Jack to fix it for me to meet Donaldson at the Regent Street office. Beaty clearly knew something had happened but, as usual, after just one question to ask if I was not feeling well, she was all for trying to focus on the business.

  “Mr Farouk telephoned from Paris, Mr Thomas. He was anxious to meet you. I told him you were away so he said he’d phone again when he’s next over.”

  “We’ve had the results of the Tunisian tender we quoted for. We didn’t win it, I’m afraid.”

  “The Letter of Credit came in from Kenya, Mr Thomas, but the expiry date is so short I don’t think there’s any time left. Shall we ask for an extension?”

  “Many of the bottles of hospital disinfectant we shipped to Syria were broken on arrival and the customer rejected it. There is a dispute now on whose insurance it is covered by. What do you think, Mr Thomas?”

  Clearly there was not much good news, but frankly I couldn’t have cared a toss about the business at the time. I was far too worried about how to deal with my other problems and my mind was on what to do about Donaldson.

  Naturally Jack was also present when we met in Regent Street. Jack was the most unlikely person to intervene if it came to a physical fight but Donaldson knew that Jack’s presence meant he could control things to his own advantage. I was in a rage even before I got to his office.

  “What the fuck is this, Major? What the hell is going on? Is this the way the Government treats its agents? Who sanctioned it? You? Who the hell was this poor guy Reynolds whom I’m supposed to impersonate? Is this just one big game? Does her Majesty’s Government endorse assassination in the name of security and intelligence? And what are these threats to my family? I assume you know about this?”

  I went on and on as Donaldson sat there behind his desk, picking his yellow teeth with the corner of an empty packet of Craven A and scratching his head as though I was boring him.

  Jack watched, standing in the corner by the door.

  Even then I was behaving as though I still believed Donaldson was perhaps just another pawn in some sort of high level game played out by politicians and senior Civil Servants and that this was just the smelly downwind side of anything to do with International Intelligence. I still believed that he had his own bosses lurking somewhere in Whitehall.

  “You knew about this before I went to Amman, didn’t you, you bastard? What more do they want from me? And what if I don’t go along with it? What will happen then? What are you going to do, Major? Shoot me? Shoot my family? Go to fucking hell!”

  Donaldson still sat there.

  “You can all go to fucking hell! I’m finished,” I repeated and turned to go to the door.

  But there was a scraping sound behind me as Donaldson pushed his chair back.

  I heard a hissing sound and saw Jack visibly jump from where he was standing.

  “If you walk your fucking stupid arse out of here I warn you, Ollie Thomas, you’re bloody finished.”

  I turned.

  Donaldson was standing now, his hands resting on the bare desk, his face having turned puce. A strand of greying hair had fallen across his forehead and a blob of white spit shone on his fat lower lip.

  “You’re in this shit up to your fucking neck,” he scowled.

  “Sit down!”

  “Fuck you,” I said and turned and put my hand on the door knob. It didn’t turn. I rattled it. I shook it. It was locked.

  “Sit the fuck down!” Donaldson roared and sat down himself but his face was still bright red.

  Jack cowered close to me and I looked at him. He seemed to nod at me.

  “Sit down,” Donaldson ordered again.

  I still stood.

  I looked at Jack again. His hand was now out towards me, palm down, as though trying to make me relax.

  “As I said, you’re in some bloody big shit, Ollie,” Donaldson said, slightly more quietly, “But stop a minute and think, you stupid bastard. Yes, I knew something about Amman. After all, we fixed your nice new passport. Fact is Reynolds made some mistakes. He went native so to speak. But we still trust you, Ollie. Otherwise you might well have met the same fate by now. Someone else might be carrying an Ollie Thomas passport today.”

  He stopped, perhaps waiting for that sinister message to sink in. “Trust me?” I shouted. “Since when has trust had any place in all this fucking crap?”

  “We’ve trusted you for several years, Ollie. You’re a good agent. Useful. Valuable. Very clever in your own way. Your big advantage is your business, Ollie. Reynolds was an employee. On the books, so to speak. You’re more of a freelance. Not so easy to spot. Look on it as an opportunity. Carry on. Don’t be so bloody nervous. If it all turns out you never know what other opportunities might crop up.”

  I stared at him, hardly believing what I was hearing.

  I heard Jack coming across as though he, himself, was already more relaxed. It was as though Donaldson had just convinced him by such a brilliant acting performance that he was certain that I would also be totally convinced and that all my concerns would be completely deflated.

  “Opportunities,” I heard Jack say quietly and he nodded pathetically.

  Donaldson glanced at him out of the corner of his eye.

  I wi
ll remember this single word from Jack Woodward for the rest of my life, not for the support or encouragement he was offering but as an example of the sort of person Jack was. He was an office boy and a yes man who ran errands and who behaved, as I have often imagined him to be, like some sort of creep.

  I suspect he was in the quick sands as well but he was such a creep that he could live with it.

  But echoes from the pistol that shot Reynolds have ricocheted around my own skull for years and I have lived with the implications of that shooting ever since, as you will see.

  I can barely remember what happened immediately after that argument with Donaldson but, suffice it to say, I knew I had become totally enmeshed.

  To struggle at that stage was pointless and to explain to Sarah was impossible.

  I had to face this alone.

  But I left determined that one day, somehow, I would get my revenge.

 

  Jack Woodward

  The drinking sessions leading to my nightmares usually start in a fairly civilised manner. Sometimes I start off thinking about people from the past while drinking a cup of tea and munching on a plate of toast and Marmite. But then I progress to the whisky as I’ve given a lot of thought of late to Jack Woodward.

  The last time I saw him was twenty-five years ago, in London at the Cumberland Hotel on Marble Arch. Somehow, he had found out about our newly acquired Gloucester address and I received a letter with a phone number and a note suggesting a meeting. I wasn’t at all keen on the idea and even considered writing “moved away” on the card and sticking it back in the post but I mentioned to Sarah that an old friend wanted to meet up and she suggested I go.

  “It’s nice to meet old friends, dear. You mustn’t lose touch.” I didn’t mention it was Jack or explain our connection but I think if she had known more she may not have been so encouraging. But, anyway, I took the train up and we met.

  It hadn’t been so long since we last met but he looked so much older and arrived propped up on a stick. I remember him waving it. He was also nervously rubbing his chin as usual – a man who had spent his entire career under the control of others and completely out of his depth. He also smelt, strangely, of cigarettes but never seemed to smoke.

  Perhaps he lived with a smoker. I sometimes wondered about that but I never knew anything about Jack’s private life.

  Had Donaldson been there it would have been pints of beer, but when Jack was alone it was gins and tonic as though he had a different side that he didn’t like showing to Donaldson.

  There had also been crowds of people in the hotel with some sort of conference going and it was clearly an unsuitable meeting place, but Jack and I found a corner. Looking back, I remember that last meeting because of what Jack seemed to be trying to ask me amidst the surrounding chaos of babbling conversation, chinking glasses, lemon slices and cherries on sticks. But it was ideal territory for Jack who preferred the anonymity that crowds provided.

  Jack was probably nervous about meeting me. After all, he had witnessed some pretty fierce arguments between Donaldson and me that had almost come to murder. So, I suppose, with the crowds around him, he felt safer if I should suddenly turn on him for being party to everything Donaldson had done.

  But I think Jack was actually just as much in the shit as me and so I behaved impeccably.

  We reminisced a little although it was too noisy for anything detailed.

  I think we may have reminisced about Cairo because Jack liked Egypt and the sights, sounds and smells of Egypt are still as clear in my own mind as they were fifty years ago, when I first visited.

  I was then in my thirties, lean, tanned and healthy, energetic and needing the excitement. It was a place, not of cars as now, but of thin, brown, underfed horses pulling carts with colourful harnesses and of camels tethered in rows. I can still see the tall palms on their slender trunks and feel the hot sun from the endless, cloudless, blue sky. I would walk down dark, shadowy alleyways with shady traders selling everything from frightened, bleating sheep and goats to gold, perfume and unseen women and watch value being meticulously added to raw Egyptian cotton by men sitting, turning the handles of black and gold Singer sewing machines and making anything to measure. I can still see the busy River Nile with snowy white sails drifting at less than walking pace in the windless heat. The dusty, flat roofed buildings, the colour of the encroaching desert as though they were deliberately camouflaged. From the air, they were often just that – blocks of stones, the same colour as the Pyramids but with dubious, military functions.

  It had been Jack who had asked me if I was interested in supplementing what little income I was then drawing from Thomas Import Export Ltd. Looking back, I realise it was Donaldson who had made Jack put the proposal and they knew all along what bait they needed to catch their fish.

  Being fresh out of the air force and with the war still on everyone’s minds, doing something more for King or Queen and Country was the only reason I needed at the time.

  Later on, of course, I thought of myself as a fish caught on a line.

  I was like a small fish in a big pond tempted by a thin worm called patriotism and held in place by a sharp but invisible hook called industrial espionage or plain, old fashioned spying.

  It may have been both naïve and stupid but it was utterly typical of me at that time.

  I admit to still being an unusual mixture of a reliable, faithful little puppy and a Rottweiler with a mean streak.

  I also know I’m also a bit of a conniving bastard myself especially if I detect the slightest reason to be a bit impatient of others as you will discover.

  I suppose the older I got the bigger the conniving swine I became.

  But it was the company I was keeping, you see.

  Jack and I continued during lunch in the grill but with silences that grew longer and longer. Jack did enquire about Sarah, if I recall, but, in the way of things, I would not have gone overboard with descriptions of our domestic life.

  “Well, thank you”, that would have been my response, because she was – at that time.

  Jack had never met Sarah so to him she was just a name. But then some concern had shown and I was surprised.

  “So, you’re not moving abroad then, Ollie?”

  This was also unusual for Jack. It was far too personal.

  “No, Jack. Sarah prefers England.”

  In fact Sarah didn’t even have a passport. I ran with four different passports at the same time once. We did get as far as the Isle of Wight ferry once but she hated the thought of flying anywhere.

  “She gave no other reason, Ollie?” Jack was pressing me. It was strange.

  “No. She just feels safer in England I think.”

  “Did she say that?” Jack persisted. “I can understand the need for feeling safe. The tentacles of the past can sometimes reach a long way, Ollie.”

  As usual I failed to pick up any signs.

  Looking back and watching the nightmares from behind closed eyes, I now read much more into what Jack was saying.

  He was prying. He was checking. He was trying to find out if I had plans to move away or disappear.

  So, had he been sent to the Cumberland Hotel? Did his invitation to meet come from the kind heart of a past work colleague or was he there because he was a trained poodle and a yes man who was still being hung on a string?

  Twenty-five years is what I have found I need to realize what was going on under my nose.

  In my ignorance of what was motivating Jack, I probably found myself laughing. In fact, I know I laughed because I did not understand what he was talking about.

  But I needed to say something.

  “Ah well. You know women, Jack. They like their home comforts.”

  But did Jack know women? Probably not. I assumed he was single because he never mentioned anything about a family. In those days one was left to think that someone like that might well have other tendencies but if so it was not a subject for polite conversation. Looki
ng back, I wonder if Jack was being blackmailed because of past illegal practices. It seems highly likely.

  But Jack then summed up our brief conversation about family matters.

  “Knew where she was better off then, Ollie,” Jack said and we left it there.

  Perhaps Jack had decided he’d got the answer he wanted by saying it himself.

  Then it was back to current affairs I expect, as Margaret Thatcher had just come to power and was talking to Mikhail Gorbachev.

  But Donaldson was never mentioned. Not even by reference to D.

  The Voice Inside

  I only have a few friends who are still alive but one of them lives somewhere in my sub conscience.

  Perhaps I’ve become a sort of psychopath with a dual personality and it’s just another symptom of Thomas’s Disease. Whether it is a different person or just a carbon copy of me I am not sure but sometimes I talk to him as a separate entity and at other times I consult him as if I am my own doctor or psychiatrist.

  I admit to spending an inordinate amount of time considering my physical and mental health, although I suppose that’s natural for someone of my age who constantly wonders whether he’ll manage to wake up next morning. Perhaps this explains the short naps of the elderly in that they wake up regularly in order to check that they are still alive.

  The phenomenon of the other personality is especially noticeable when I doze off after if I’ve had a drop too much. Whatever the cause, the conversations with him are highly stimulating and I feel I need to explain in order for you to understand my mental state and my reasons for writing this.

  Spending far too much time sitting in the chair by Sarah’s log effect gas fire with a glass of Bell’s, or even a bottle, in my hand is not a good start. But after a glass, or two, I often find myself talking aloud.

  I often talk about Sarah, although if she had been sat opposite me instead of upstairs, she would have been shocked at my dishevelled appearance with the wet stains of whisky around my crotch. But the drinking has been a distraction really.

  If I am giving an impression of a long term drunken layabout or an uncaring husband who beats his wife, then the truth is quite the opposite. In the same way that I tolerated Donaldson for so long, I also went along with Sarah’s wishes even though they have often led to me sometimes feeling depressed and unfulfilled with my retirement.

  Sarah seemed content with a quiet backwater life in Gloucester. I didn’t want to retire to live in Gloucester. My plan was to move somewhere interesting like South Africa or South East Asia but Sarah told me so in no uncertain terms that she saw no need to move.

  She cried about it once when I may have pushed the subject too far.

  “Please, dear. Stop it. I don’t want to go anywhere. Robert and Anne can come without any problems. It’s fine here. I like it. I feel safe here. We’re both safe here. Please don’t keep on.”

  Perhaps Jack had known Sarah better than me when he said: “She knew where she was better off then, Ollie.”

  In my efforts, not to worry Sarah with my own problems, I failed to realize that she had too many worries of her own and that these were caused by me and what I was doing.

  Hindsight is a terrible thing and can be a trigger for all sorts of nightmares.

  But I believed that Sarah liked our domestic life the way it was.

  In days gone by she would sit at home, reading, sewing, listening to the radio or enjoying the novelty of watching our new black and white television whilst waiting for me to return from my travels.

  She grew accustomed to it I suppose and felt comfortable and at ease with the familiarity. She carried none of life’s baggage that had weighed me down with all its hypocrisy, stress and worry. She liked a simple life and sought no great adventures. I was the opposite. I found suburban England monotonous and grey. I still do. Even high summer here cannot be guaranteed to produce reliable sun. And even when it shines it seems to cast dark shadows on brick and concrete.

  What fun is there in that? There is no colour here. It is so bland and so depressing.

  I used to enjoy summers here but they are far too short.

  How much more pleasant and enjoyable it would have been to spend nine months in sunshine and return here for the summer.

  But, despite Sarah’s problems with Croydon, I felt we’d moved from Brick View, Croydon to Brick View, Gloucester. She didn’t like that joke.

  Croydon, in the early days had already become a multi-coloured, multicultural society and Gloucester is catching up. Parts of Gloucester have become like the back streets of Karachi, Dacca or Trinidad with local stores selling halal meat, frozen Bangladeshi fish, Pakistani vegetables and herbs and shelves stacked high with tins of bamboo shoots, tamarind, green leaves preserved in brine and half fermented gourami fish. It has, in some respects, become a more varied and interesting place to live, but it is the drab English way of life that I dislike and the backward steps the country seems to be making in so many other respects.

  I am a very long way from being what is, these days, called racist, though. Some of my best friends have been Arabs, Africans and others from widely different cultures and I miss them. I miss them badly.

  How much better to sit drinking Metaxa after dinner with my old friend Alex in Athens or sharing a bottle of icy arak with Farouk in Baalbeck or sharing just a bottle of Black Label with George in Ghana.

  These days, I think I prefer the flair, the imagination and the dynamism of those our politicians have decided, in their bizarre attempts to instil tolerance, that we should call the ethnic minorities. But politicians breed intolerance with their stuffy attempts to address the matter. Every official form I see these days seems to require me to identify my colour or my racial origins. Of what good is that? Surely, it’s racist just to ask the question. When the census forms come around, I usually put Bedouin in the “other” box under ethnic origin but nobody notices.

  I decided, long ago, that it was the natives of Britain who have changed over the last fifty years. Other than a brief phase in the sixties, where now is the flair and style? Where is the imagination? Where is the energy? Where is the sensible but radical thought and determination to change the world for the better?

  I am probably just a cynical old man but the young seem to have been de-politicized by excess and too much wealth. They have become less inspired and less adventurous because they have too much.

  They go on so-called gap years to Bangkok or Bali after three years learning golf management or public administration at University. They go with their credit cards, mobile phones and health insurance, with their hair styled and gelled, their teeth looking like rows of piano keys and dressed like film stars. And they send email messages to Mum and Dad back home, who like to show they fret about them even though they are probably in the midst of a messy divorce anyway. And even when they have an adventure, such as getting lost for a couple of days in some tame woods, somewhere, the world’s press or TV seem to descend on the area in droves to report it.

  That is not adventure. To die in some remote spot with your body discovered a century later is the way to leave your mark because it leaves behind a mystery.

  But neither is there a patriotic determination to strive because it is removed from their sense of purpose by excessive wealth and social security. Society has changed. It has been replaced by one in which entitlements supersede responsibilities. It has been replaced by a society that lives risk-free knowing it can depend on a safety net of social security.

  This is the type of thing that goes on in my mind even during rational, sober moments. But during the more intoxicated times I can wake up thrashing around in the chair by Sarah’s log effect gas fire to find myself groaning aloud in anger and frustration about the way of the world or its injustices.

  I have become a cynical, depressed, old man who gets just as mad about my own past life as I do about the current lives of others.

  I didn’t used to be like that.

  This is not a sig
n of good, mental health. So, is it yet another characteristic of Thomas’s Disease or of old age in general?

  The psychiatrist living in my head tells me I need to do something before it’s all too late.

  He asks me if I care if I die in the process. And I say no because frankly I couldn’t care less. Not one bloody iota.

  But after all this dreaming, drinking, dozing and mental l turmoil, I wake up. But then I feel uncomfortable, sweaty, angry and frustrated and I stink of stale whisky.

  So, I often have a quick glance around the untidy clutter of the sitting room where I half expect to see three bloody porcelain flying ducks on the wall and have another swig, perhaps direct from the bottle.

  I then might relieve myself with a blast of wind direct from my arse and carry on where I’d just left off. But then the nightmares about Donaldson can start all over again.

  But there are still one or two things I like, although I have to wait until I am soberer to appreciate them.

  One of them is my car.

  I have owned several in my time and they always provided a small means of escape from the depressing feeling of being housebound whenever I returned from overseas. My itchy feet are legendary.

  Even Sarah enjoyed drives into the countryside and odd weekends away when I first retired and we moved to suburban, bloody Gloucester. But it was only ever temporary, short-lived relief. She would complain about the price of petrol and I would go into the garage and talk to the car and say things like, “Oh well, old girl, perhaps we’ll go out next week.”

  But I used to think of those occasional country drives with Sarah like a vase of fresh flowers. You arrange them so prettily in a vase and enjoy them briefly but they die so quickly. And what is left? The empty vase again. I thought, too, that in later years when age caught up with both of us that even the car would have to be garaged for good or, worse, sold. But I’m still a bit of a rascal and I admit it.

  Sarah, bless her, would have a fit. But when the feeling takes me and I feel particularly morose, I have been known to take the car out.

  I probably shouldn’t at my age – but what the bloody hell.

  The Jaguar is getting on a bit now – twenty-five years old, in fact, but I still tinker with it, as Sarah used to say. The phone rang once whilst I was in the garage and I heard her say: “He’s tinkering with that infernal car of his again.”

  But I check it, charge the battery up, switch it on, rev it up and give it a polish. The smell of leather seems to have disappeared over time but perhaps that’s my sense of smell. It’s still in good nick. One hundred and sixty thousand miles on the clock and it purrs like a kitten with its V6 engine.

  I check the oil and often sit in it, even when I myself am also well oiled. One night recently I was so pissed that, even though it was three in the morning, I sat in it and looked at myself in the mirror. I turned the ignition key and, of course, it fired immediately and ticked away like a Singer sewing machine. Then I opened the garage door, reversed it out and walked around it and looked at it in the street light. A few nights later, I drove off in it and, before I knew it, I was in Stroud. I drove out on the Painswick Road as I hadn’t been there for months. It was eerily quiet, but a lovely clear night with a bright moon. I stopped and went to look over a gate into a field and watched a fox walking across the field in the moonlight. I was tempted to drive out towards Cirencester and on and on and on. But I suddenly thought about Sarah. So I got back in and drove home. But Sarah had barely moved since I left her.

  I slept like a log that night.

  It was extremely therapeutic.

  But, more often than not, because I didn’t like leaving Sarah, I would sit there getting pissed and listening to the only sound I could detect – the blood flowing through my fucking ears.

  Blood running through your ears seems to hiss like a river in a meadow. You can hear it bubbling over the pebbles and rocks, like the babbling brooks of old poetry, though, I used to think that maybe the description was better suited to the babbling I did with myself.

  I am a babbling Thomas – a quite distinct species to the other type, the doubting Thomas.

  Some days I spent hours listening to my ears. Sometimes I moved or fidgeted a little to create another sound but mostly it was because the confounded chair had become so uncomfortable.

  Time would pass, minute by minute and I seemed to descend into a state in which it was hard to imagine another world outside the sitting room window. And all that for a man who had been travelling the world for forty years and wished he still was.

  I would spend hours trying to imagine those outside in the darkness who were perhaps far less fortunate even than myself. I would imagine the homeless, the sick, those working to keep the wheels of industry turning and those who keep the gas flowing in the pipe that leads to Sarah’s beloved log effect gas fire.

  I envied them because they were still contributing something and I wasn’t.

  But after Sarah died I decided there was still time left for me to do something.

  There was a big piece of unfinished business to deal with.

  Assignments

  “Leave the package with Moatassim who will meet you at the airport back in Luxor. Make your own way back to Cairo. You’ll know Moatassim. He’s one of our best chaps – Sudanese fellow. He’ll use a code. No need to worry. Jack will tell you later.”

  Those were the sort of instructions I continued to be given in the Feathers.

  Most of the time, everything went as smooth as silk although my dislike for and suspicions about Donaldson grew more and more intense. But I was too busy to sit and decide what to do about it.

  That first meeting with Moatassim was the start of a good friendship and we met several times over one period of two or three years with talks about starting a joint business venture some time. But it never happened. Moatassim was a bright and intelligent Sudanese Moslem with deep tribal scars on his cheeks, but with a strange and touching desire to be British, white and Christian and play cricket for England.

  “I like to be the stump, Mr Oliver and I can make very good leg spinning.”

  I remember Moatassim’s smiling face even now but like other similar friends, Moatassim just disappeared – suddenly. Perhaps he went back to Khartoum. Perhaps he went to Saudi Arabia. Perhaps, more likely, he fell foul of others less enchanted with Western customs.

  But during the years after I had acquired the additional identity of David Reynolds I rapidly learned that my particular style and approach seemed to offer all sorts of opportunities. I was actually very good at it and admit that it was all quite interesting although sometimes a little risky. But I often sought out situations well before they were likely to find me.

  In fact, I became pro-active rather than re-active as they say these days and I soon found myself able to offer information even before it was being sought.

  Clever that, oh yes.

  I become very adept at it.

  You see, I was still an entrepreneur at heart and quick to see an opportunity. But the better I got at it the more the assignments I was given. At one point they were coming so thick and fast that they were dominating my life to the detriment of my business.

  As soon as I arrived back from one overseas trip, Jack would be on the phone with another request for a meeting at the Feathers.

  By then, Beaty had become very familiar with Jack’s calls although she still showed signs of nerves on the odd occasion that Donaldson himself phoned.

  “Mr Woodward for you, Mr Thomas.”

  “Thank you, Beaty,” I would say.

  And Jack, never long in getting to the point he had phoned for, would say things like: “Fancy a look at some good quality figs in Algeria, Oliver?

  Catch up with your friend with the parrot?”

  Or it might be: “How about trying to sell a few of your tractor spares in Nigeria, Ollie? We’ve got a good contact with a local chief, and anyway, the Department wants someone to pop up to Kano and then do
wn to Port Harcourt on an assignment. Bit of local trouble with the natives I hear.”

  Or: “We’ve had a notice about a commercial opportunity for lorry tyres in Damascus, Ollie. Any interest? For the army, I gather. Might be a few other bits and pieces of interest and a few leads – commercial and otherwise, if you get my gist, once you get there. Build on your connections. What do you think?”

  And another time: “Heard there’s some medical equipment needed in Baghdad, Ollie. X-ray equipment and the like, but with a few alternative openings for a vivid imagination like yours. You should get out there. Pick up the tender documents. Meet your old friend the General while you’re there, Ollie.”

  Some of the earlier calls had genuine business opportunities attached to them and this is what attracted me but gradually they became coded calls to get me to go up to the Feathers for a meeting with Jack and Donaldson. And the longer it went on the more concerned I became for the effect on my business. But Donaldson would often use his grotesque forms of humour to remind me about the photographs he held or what had happened to Reynolds.

  “Best to fly out before Friday, Ollie. Assad needs everything in Beirut by Friday midday prayers latest otherwise we’re all in the shit again – you especially. No need to go into the city of course. Keep your fucking head down and don’t even think about changing sides and working for the competition. The consequences of getting caught can be very, very, nasty for everyone – you, me, your family. So, you don’t want to get caught out do you, Ollie? Ha ha.”

  In the very early days, and in my innocence, I thought Donaldson’s warnings were just idle chat about getting caught out by foreigners. Little did I know he was warning me not to stray from his, own agenda.

  But why should I have thought otherwise? Bear in mind that this was in the middle of the Lebanese civil war and few people were mad enough to go anywhere near the country. But I was. Beirut itself was seriously off limits for a time, but Cyprus was close enough and I could always get a taxi from Amman up to the border.

  Does this sound like fun to you? But that was my life at the time.

  But when Donaldson wanted something done to suit himself it became Ollie this and Ollie that.

  I had become Ollie after only a few months of knowing Jack and Donaldson. I had become Ollie for Jack, as I had for Sam and the rest of them in the RAF. Everyone else called me Oliver.

  Or Mr Thomas.

  Or David Reynolds.

  Sarah called me Oliver, but only when she was serious.

  She called me “my husband” if she was talking about me to friends. She would call me “Sir”, when she was mocking my seriousness. She would call me “sweetheart” sometimes when she felt like it and “Mr Thomas” when she was joking.

  But it was “dear” most of the time.

  “Go down, now, dear. I’m all right. No need to fret yourself.

  It’s not too bad, today.”

  I loved her calling me “dear”. When addressed by others as “dear”, the word seems to acquire a different meaning. It seems flippant, derisory and sometimes insulting. I feel as though the word has been stolen from the only person who knows what it means and, so, is the only person who is allowed to use it.

  I usually call her “my love”, because that is what she was. I called Donaldson a bastard.

  I had been calling Donaldson that to his face for years because that was a fair and accurate description of him. He would laugh.

  Later, I started calling him a fucking crook as well but, by then, he and I had stopped laughing altogether.

  Jack, on the other hand, was still a company man, ready to kowtow to officialdom rather than break out of the mould or take on board views that ran counter to the corporate view. Except, of course, that it wasn’t a Corporation but, somehow, linked to British Intelligence.

  And Donaldson was the sordid crook who ran the Mafia side of it.

  That much I slowly grew to realize although it took me far too long to fathom it out and by that time, I had become firmly entangled in it myself and it was difficult to cut free.

  But that is probably why I became a conniving bastard myself.

  It was a sort of means to an end.

  Operation Chrysalis

  “Never mention retirement to your wife unless you’ve got enough money to live on.”

  Those were my wise words to someone in a bar somewhere, forty years ago. I certainly avoided mentioning it to Sarah for as long as possible but it wasn’t just the money. I had to be very careful. And it wasn’t just Donaldson. I was, I felt, a scapegoat in waiting for certain, other individuals.

  Some of those people had very long arms.

  I was already deeply involved with Libya when Gadaffi came to power and was at the peak of his international infamy. I became known in many circles only as David Reynolds. I would fly out of the UK as Reynolds and enter Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq or Iran as Reynolds.

  And on my return home I would still be Reynolds, a businessman according to my passport and business card and operating, for the purposes of security from a Post Office Box number in Victoria, close to the station.

  It was something I had not got around to mentioning to either Sarah or Beaty. I suppose this is a good example of my duplicity but I saw it as just trying to make the most of my predicament. I was trying hard not to be beaten you see.

  But I would be Oliver Thomas if I went to Israel, parts of Western Europe or Africa.

  Thomas Import Export Ltd was the business I ran from the Croydon office, a legitimate business with interests in thirty odd countries – more if I had had the time. The turnover was never as much as I wanted or, indeed planned, but this was mostly due to the fact that I really wasn’t able to devote enough time to it.

  Thomas Import Export was always on the lookout for opportunities, whatever they were.

  I would even deal in certain types of military hardware if an opportunity arose and this was why I kept the POB address in Victoria. But don’t misunderstand me. This was very small scale arms trading, things that came my way and oiled the wheels of relationship building. It was easy because I had built many contacts over the years and, anyway, the main business needed the revenue.

  For whatever reason – duplicity or connivance or the desire to provide my wife and family with what I felt they deserved my life rapidly became a bucket of worms and I now want to explain my connections with Malta and Libya as an example of how a bucket of worms became a snake pit.

  But is all my thinking misplaced? Perhaps. In hindsight since Sarah died I now wish that I had had the common sense to be more open with her about everything. But I suppose I was too frightened. Direct or hinted threats against me and my family from Donaldson were increasing. He himself was changing. He was becoming even less likeable, if that was at all possible. He was changing from someone who I genuinely believe started out working for British Intelligence to someone who worked for himself. Donaldson, too, was running a business.

  Donaldson was where most problems originated and the starting point for the Malta and Libya episode was, as usual, a phone call from Jack to the office where Beaty took the call.

  “Mr Woodward called, a while ago, Mr Thomas. Would you meet him tonight, at the usual place?”

  That meeting, as always in the Feathers, led to me flying out to Athens as David Reynolds to pick up a package at a café in Piraeus to take to Cairo. It was easy, routine work and a few days later I was in Dokki where I met up with a man from the American Embassy. Despite his obvious Middle Eastern appearance, the man appeared to be an American national and I decided that he probably worked for American Intelligence.

  But, with no questions asked, I handed over the package as instructed at the hotel bar and, job done, flew first to Benghazi being closest and then on to Tripoli on some Thomas Import Export business.

  But it was something the American and I had chatted about during our meeting – the growing concerns about plane hijackings and terrorism – that I was to b
e reminded of over the next few days.

  This was also a time of fighting and bombings in Northern Ireland and the time when Gadaffi and Sadat were busy talking big ideas designed to put the fear into the West and create Arab unity where none existed.

  I met Gadaffi twice.

  It was always very brief and unplanned and he would have known me as David Reynolds. Looking back, I think Gadaffi had been briefed that I was some sort of agent for an anti-British, anti-American establishment. I was, of course, completely the opposite and motivated by the singular and antiquated desire to serve my own Queen and Country. But on both occasions, the Colonel had wandered into the tent where I was meeting some of his entourage. We hardly spoke more than five words and I did not need an interpreter.

  You may wonder how I was able to get so close, but I always kept a few trade secrets up my sleeve. They were small snippets of information about where someone might go to buy a few North Korean torpedoes or a few tons of German fertilizer or French antibiotics by bypassing normal controls.

  I had honed a habit of deliberately dropping a word or phrase into conversations like scattering wild seeds in a garden. I’d forget about it for a while but be astonished to find when I came back some weeks later that a few seedlings had sprung up and someone was wanting advice on how to make them produce a few flowers and seeds of their own.

  I was, I discovered, running a rather specialized, free consultancy.

  I never bought and sold anything obnoxious myself, of course, but I was so well connected I could have if I so wished.

  I realize now that my own intelligence information was worth a huge fortune if I had been willing to sell it. But I was usually only after using my knowledge to curry favours to carry out the fun job of building contacts.

  As I write this, I am still puzzled by my own behaviour. It is the subject of much of my nocturnal self-psychoanalysis.

  Was it an extension of patriotism into the realms of naïve fantasy?

  Should I be condemned for failing to exploit the value of what I knew for my own and my family’s benefit?

  Is it a punishable offence that I should not admit to, least of all write about?

  Would this admittance so impress a self-respecting, hardnosed businessman that it would turn him into a soft bellied, nodding and understanding being with a social conscience?

  The fact remains that I had become uniquely well placed.

  In hindsight, I feel I often acted as if blindfolded and so I couldn’t see who I was really dealing with.

  I dreamed once that I was selling butchers’ knives to a parish priest but the priest suddenly transformed himself into a wide-eyed fellow with red horns and a khaki uniform.

  My mother had seen it coming when I was nine.

  “You should know better than to listen to that nasty boy, Oliver.”

  At arm’s length, this latest nasty boy seemed totally mad but strangely likeable.

  Gadaffi mostly lived in a large Bedouin tent similar to what you imagine King Arthur might have lived in with his Knights during country pursuits around Wessex.

  Not only was the man himself often to be seen bedecked with exotic caps, multi-coloured ribbons and golden buttons but the tent itself was hung with trinkets and laid out with plush carpets and cushions that covered the packed sand floor.

  On the first occasion, I met him he gave me just the quickest eye to eye contact before grunting and disappearing once more as though he knew there was an Englishman in the tent and wanted to have a quick peek. As he wandered in pushing the tent entrance to one side everyone, myself included, got up from our cross-legged positions on the carpet and bowed our heads.

  The second time, about six months later, after I suspect word had got around that I had returned, he did more than grunt.

  In he came and, as before, we all stood up and went silent.

  It was probably a sign of fear.

  Then he raised his hand and wandered over towards me and I briefly thought my time was up.

  If you’ve ever seen a recent photograph, you will know that he has a frightening smile that produces a deep crack in his face like an over-baked double split loaf. This feature was apparent even when he was much younger.

  I nodded, tried to smile and held out my hand in my British way. But he did not take it. Instead, he stopped just beyond hand shaking distance and stared at me for a few seconds, his facial cracks disappearing somewhere in an instant. Then he spoke.

  Strangely, as I thought then, he asked me, in Arabic of course, if I liked Irish people.

  Quick as a flash I said, “Yes, but I trust Moslems more than Catholics, Sir.”

  It was utter bullshit as I have no preference, either way, and it was a very brief response spoken in my very best basic, slow Arabic.

  But I had made a point and Gadaffi seemed to smile again, somewhere amongst his craggy features. He did not look at me again, or reply, but just nodded and sauntered out of the tent leaving me with Mohammed Saleh and the others.

  We remained standing after he had left and they muttered things amongst themselves. Then they all came over to shake my hand once more and to pat their chests with their right hands. I knew I had done rather well and my trust ratings had shot through the roof.

  But that is how I excelled – if you can call it excelling. I excelled at bullshitting.

  But I have, as I write this, decided that Colonel Muammar Gadaffi would be a useful case study for psychiatric analysis of the sort I practice on myself when under the influence of Mr Bell although I doubt whether he’d be such a compliant patient as I am with myself.

  Gadaffi would be very unlikely to appreciate the consultant’s final diagnosis and, if asked, I would advise any psychiatrist not to hang around to wait for his fee.

  But Gadaffi’s Irish question had intrigued me and when I later left to return to Benghazi I thought deep and hard about it.

  You see, at that time, Gadaffi was still young and ambitious and desperately trying to cobble together some sort of union with Syria and his much bigger neighbour to the east. But it was uncertain how genuinely interested Sadat really was.

  More likely, Sadat regarded Gadaffi as a nut case but that is only my own opinion.

  But, on the occasion when I last met Gadaffi I had come with no specific purpose in mind, other than to meet up with a few friends and Libyan oil industry contacts in Benghazi.

  The next day I met up with a man called Farid, with whom I had become very friendly over the months.

  We met in the foyer at the Omar Khayam Hotel in Benghazi, drank some bitter sodas and then decided to talk more over lunch.

  Now, in those days, lunch or dinner at the Omar Khayam, inevitably started with sheep’s brains and I have to warn you that I have dreamed about Omar Khayam lunches many times over the years.

  One morning, before Sarah died, and shortly after I had been dreaming, I even suggested to Sarah’s doctor that he try eating sheep’s brains. I forget how we got onto the subject but I told him I thought it was his duty to eat them as part of his right of passage into the medical profession and that he might have found it educational to dissect them on his plate or put them under a microscope to check for scrapie before devouring them.

  Sometimes, if brains were in short supply, the Omar Khayam would serve sheep’s eyes but I much preferred brains, especially if I was hungry as there is so much more goodness in them – not much taste but far more nutritional value.

  I have often wondered if the onset of Thomas’s Disease can be traced back to the past consumption of Libyan sheep brains, although my diet was so varied at times that the disease could probably be linked to many other meals. After all, I have eaten sheep’s brains in Iran as well, but food hygiene in Tehran was not as good as in Benghazi. In Tehran I had to call the waiter over to point out that a cockroach seemed to have got its feet stuck in my brain although it had clearly managed to wriggle free having left one of its legs behind. But I digress.

  Farid and I slurped ou
r way through our plates of brains although all the while I was concentrating on how to use him. Perhaps you can add exploitative to the growing list of my faults but my main reason for meeting him was his closeness to Gadaffi. In reality, of course, Farid hated Gadaffi as much as I hated Donaldson but that was what made him so useful.

  Farid slowly told me he had been asked to do a job that looked as though it might be linked to activity of the sordid type that Gadaffi specialized in.

  I didn’t delve because I don’t think Farid knew what it was either but as the job required him to make a quick trip to Malta we arranged to meet there in a few days for another chat.

  After lunch, which stretched well into late afternoon, I took the last flight of the day to Tripoli, stayed overnight in the Libya Palace Hotel and, next morning, I was in Malta.

  Now, bear in mind, no-one back home, least of all Donaldson, Beaty or Sarah would have known where I was and I didn’t bother trying to telephone anyone as it was nigh on impossible getting phone calls out.

  And what would I have said anyway? This was my frequent dilemma.

  Should I have phoned to say that I had just met Colonel Gadaffi and was now enjoying a few days in the Maltese sun?

  Should I explain my meeting in Cairo with someone I suspected of being from the CIA?

  I suppose I could have phoned Sarah at home in Croydon but to tell her where I was would have meant nothing at all to her and all I might have got back would have been a lengthy description of the poor quality of Brussels sprouts to be found in the Co-op.

  Perhaps we should add the effects of long term culture shock as another possible cause of Thomas’s Disease.

  So, I spent two days walking the dusty streets of Valletta and drinking coffee and whisky in bars.

  But I wasn’t bored as I will explain.

  Britain and Malta were not on good terms at the time and much of it was related to Gadaffi’s influence just a stone’s throw away across the water. Newspaper headlines were full of it and, one morning, as I waited for Farid to turn up I bought an English language newspaper to catch up on developments and, always liking to soak up the local atmosphere, I sauntered into a cafe along the promenade in Sliema and sat outside in the sun reading my paper.

  Malta was one of those places I had always wanted to take Sarah.

  It would have been ideal spot to set up shop and build my North African business. It’s a sunny paradise although you can almost throw a pebble from the beach on one side of the island to a beach on the opposite side. The Maltese are good people and remind me of Greeks for some reason, though it’s probably the way the old men gather to sip their coffee and chat.

  So there I was, soaking up the warm morning sun among a group of such elderly Maltese men seated at the next table.

  But behind them were three others, whom I soon realized had Northern Irish accents. Their words, although quietly spoken, wafted over to me in the still air and above the sound of chinking cups and saucers, seagulls and the rustling sound of my newspaper.

  It was as though the soft Belfast tones were amplified by the morning air and a surrounding, stone wall. The group was huddled together, their cigarette smoke wafting in my direction. The accents were heavy but, hiding behind my newspaper, I found no difficulty in picking up odd words.

  And it was the name Cahill that made me look up from my newspaper and glance innocently in the opposite direction towards the Mediterranean.

  I put my paper down on the metal table, beckoned the waiter and ordered myself another coffee using just three simple words of Maltese that I knew so that the Irishmen were not distracted by an English accent.

  And, before I knew it, I was on the spot ready to pursue yet another job for Queen and Country, which, to my continued personal regret would prove once more to Donaldson the unique talents of the little fish he and Jack Woodward had netted so many years before.

  But Donaldson, of course, was already starting to build his own business and, with my naivety running high, I fell – hook, line and sinker.

  “Right place at the right time, dear fellow! Don’t know how you do it, old man.”

  That’s how that bastard Donaldson put it. But what should I have done?

  Shrugged and walked away?

  Perhaps I should have left my newspaper lying on the table, walked all the way back to Valetta and got the next flight home. But it was not my style to stifle inquisitiveness and what I did next only went to further substantiate the snippets of information that Farid brought with him later and add to all the other bits of scattered tittle tattle that had come my way.

  So I stayed there, sitting in the morning sun, later sliding my chair back a little into the shade partly because it was getting hotter by the minute and partly because I needed to retain my anonymity.

  I even went as far as to lean over and pick up the Maltese language paper lying on the table next to me to appear to be enthralled by Dom Mintoff’s latest protestations so that it would appear to anyone looking in my direction that I was Maltese. Regular doses of hot sun had given me a permanent tan anyway and by then, being fifty-something and with two days of stubble on my face because I was fed up with shaving, I probably looked surprisingly similar to the genuine, but much older, Maltese sat at the next table.

  I strained to listen, wishing I had come prepared or better equipped.

  But, after two more coffees and gathering boredom with the newspaper that I could not read, I was pleased to hear one of the three Irishmen call for the bill whilst the other two got up and made to leave.

  They passed within a couple of yards of me and on the right arm of one of them was a blue tattoo.

  The third man paid the bill whilst still sitting but then he, too, got up and joined his friends who had walked over to lean on a stone wall looking out to sea. They all stayed a while, lighting more cigarettes before strolling off towards a taxi rank.

  I, too, paid my bill and stood on the pavement looking up and down the street, glancing at my watch as though I had been stood up by my girlfriend.

  The Irishmen eventually wandered off, one of them undoing his shirt buttons because of the heat.

  I followed them at a safe distance to a small hotel in Valetta, not far from my own. Then, because I was still waiting for Farid and had nothing better to do, I stayed. I leaned on a wall, but watched the reflection of their hotel door in a shop window.

  After what seemed like hours, a blue and grey Vauxhall Victor taxi drew up outside the hotel and disgorged two other men.

  Now, to someone who had visited the Libyan Arab Republic too often and had, in fact, only just arrived from there, it was obvious to me they were Libyans. What’s more, I was certain I knew one of them. It was the limp in his right leg that gave him away and I could even put a name to him – Ben Youssef.

  But there was little more I could do at the time so I went back to my own hotel to check if Farid had left any messages.

  He hadn’t, but next morning he phoned to say he had just arrived in Malta and we met in a coffee shop close to the Grand Harbour looking over towards Fort St Angelo.

  Farid was full of fresh information.

  He described to me how he had been in a meeting two days before with some of Gadaffi’s closest contacts in a farmhouse on the outskirts of Tripoli and had heard about a vague plan to blow up American and British planes on the ground at airports in Europe. He had heard about an audacious plot to hijack a plane just after take-off at Heathrow and crash it into the Houses of Parliament or Buckingham Palace. And he had heard rumours of plans to ship guns, rocket-launchers and ammunition to Ireland to add to the chaos, death and disruption of anything to do with the British because Gadaffi liked that sort of thing.

  These plans were well advanced.

  And as they were drinking illicit Scotch whisky and getting more and more loose-tongued, one of the more fanatical members had started describing ideas for bombings, hijackings and suicidal plane crashes that were coming out of Beirut.

&
nbsp; Naturally, Gadaffi had not wanted to be left sidelined and had particularly liked other ideas being touted to steal crop-spraying planes in USA to drop anthrax spores or chemicals on residential areas and government complexes.

  In the coffee shop, I ordered more drinks and asked Farid, “How are you able to stay inside?” meaning how was he still able to appear to remain part of the group and still get away to Malta.

  “Because I have jobs to do,” Farid said. “Today I have to drop papers off to a shipping company. “

  “What are the papers about?” I asked him. “I don’t know. They are sealed.”

  “Why did the Colonel ask my views on the Irish recently?” I said, testing Farid.

  “Ah, he is very keen to help the Irish,” Farid said, “I think the papers I am carrying are connected to this.”

  “So, you are passing these papers to a local shipping company?”

  “Yes.”

  It was clear now that something was going on and it was logical to link it to what I had heard and seen just the day before.

  “You want to help, Farid?” I asked.

  “What do you want?” he replied.

  “I just need more information. For instance, you mentioned guns, rocket-launchers and ammunition going to Ireland. Can you help?”

  Farid looked at me, stroked his chin and said nothing. In fact, he looked away.

  But I immediately recognized the problem.

  Money.

  That hot, still and cloudless Maltese morning is still so clear in my mind and I spent the next few days and weeks risking my life for something that, even now, has never been adequately reported or understood by the British Government. I was on another slippery slope.

  “So, can you help, Farid?”

  “Maybe, he said. “But it is risky.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I know. But let me speak to someone about this. We can probably do a deal. OK?”

  “OK,” said Farid.

  Farid’s advantage was in being a member of a large Libyan family of some influence and in a position where he was able to pick up snippets of valuable intelligence. What’s more, Farid held some IOUs from certain people of power within Gadaffi’s regime which, he was starting to believe, were well worth calling in.

  Also, Farid wanted out of Libya if he could make it.

  He wanted to buy some property. Like other Libyans, Farid had been finding it more and more difficult to leave the country but his previous short visits to Italy, France and Switzerland had left a taste for, perhaps, a villa on Lake Geneva, a small place on Majorca or even an apartment off the Champs Elysees. Farid, what’s more, had a few girlfriends dotted around who were proving expensive. So Farid’s personal requirement had been for cash in a big way and he was well placed to offer services to British or American Intelligence if they could be persuaded that his information was worth paying for.

  Farid, you see, typified the sort of person I would often discover and befriend during my travels and this was what made me so useful to Donaldson.

  I thought about the problem for a minute and decided, for lack of any better and urgent solutions to phone Jack Woodward.

  Phoning Donaldson’s mysterious number and expecting a direct reply was pointless.

  But I decided that if I could tempt Jack with some well-chosen words Donaldson would quickly get to know and would suddenly appear on the end of a phone like a genie from a lamp.

  I left Farid at the coffee shop and went across the road to a phone box with a big pile of coins. First, I phoned Jack, got through unexpectedly quickly, span him a quick yarn and told him to contact Donaldson urgently and that I’d phone back in twenty minutes.

  It worked like clockwork.

  Twenty minutes later I was speaking to Donaldson on a crackling phone line and, as expected, he jumped at the idea.

  I always suspected Donaldson had found a sort of officially sanctioned Government slush fund somewhere that he could dip into occasionally. Raiding the fund for straightforward intelligence gathering was unlikely to get him too worked up but if there was something commercial in it, his eyes lit up.

  Farid was still sat waiting in the coffee bar across the road from the phone box.

  I replaced the receiver, backed out of the phone box, walked over to the coffee bar and sat down.

  “It’s agreed,” I said. “What you get will depend on the quality of your information. You might ask how the quality is judged. It’s a good question. But, for instance, if they can intercept an arms shipment, you’ll get twenty percent of its estimated value paid direct into the Jersey account I set up for you. If you can get names of Irish people involved, you’ll get a thousand pounds per name.

  “But don’t just invent Irish-sounding names, Farid, OK?” “OK.”

  A wide grin spread across Farid’s unshaven, brown face.

  Thoughts of villas, swimming pools, apartments and strings of easy European girlfriends were going through Farid’s mind at that time.

  But my mistake was by involving Donaldson again.

  I can see it now but I should have spoken directly to someone in the Government or in Northern Ireland because, looking back, the bastard had clearly only seen it as yet another self-serving commercial opportunity.

  But it was urgent.

  Sitting with Farid, several ideas of what to do passed through my mind. And none could be dealt with urgently from a coffee shop in Valletta.

  I thought about speaking to others in a more clear-cut part of Government but I had no real wish to break my cover as I wasn’t sure of the implications.

  I thought about phoning my local Member of Parliament from Valetta, explaining where I was and what I was doing. But the idea was laughable. I had read that the man had proved totally inept at resolving minor issues within the Croydon Social Services Department. So, the chances of getting him to deal satisfactorily with a case of international terrorism by phone from Malta were remote. And I would have had the same problem with him as I had with Sarah in not knowing where to start to explain. I certainly had no desire to inform him that one of his constituents was working undercover for a mysterious part of the Government’s Overseas Intelligence Services.

  So, I had done the simplest thing and sorted something, however unsatisfactory, with Donaldson.

  Farid and I parted.

  He went back to Libya to see what he could find out and I went back home with plans to return yet again as urgently as possible.

  Naturally, by lunchtime the following day I was in the Regent Street office with Donaldson and Jack.

  “Operation Chrysalis”.

  That was the ridiculous code name Donaldson had invented later when I explained more of what I had stumbled on. The fact that I had instigated it and then ran it almost single handily had no bearing on Donaldson’s penchant for codes. And my part in it was finished by the time he had named it.

  “We’ll code it ‘Chrysalis’, old chap. Moths crawl out of chrysalises like flutter byes don’t they, old man?”

  And the brilliant reasoning behind Donaldson’s invention was that one of the Irishmen I had come across had a nickname – “Moth”. His surname was O’Halloran and police records showed he had a poorly drawn tattoo, supposedly of a Death’s-head hawk moth on his forearm.

  I was eventually able to confirm this as I soon got far too close to the man.

 

  Farid

  Sarah, bless her, never understood all of my coming and going and had long given up asking me. Neither, or so I thought, did Beaty understand.

  My traveling, around this time, had little to do with my business, which was what I was paying Beaty to run in my absence. My own income was suffering and I found it hard to explain to Beaty. I often ran out of good excuses. Looking back, perhaps I should not have worried but Beaty would always appear to be concerned about the efficient running of the business in my absence. She would seem agitated if I said I was going abroad again before I’d even had time to ask her for a report o
n the past few weeks.

  “But Mr Correia is coming from Lisbon, Mr Thomas and bringing with him the sales people from his Angolan office.”

  “Yes, I know, Beaty, but they’ll just have to stay on in London till I get back. It’ll only mean them delaying things by a day or two.”

  “But, Mr Thomas . . .”

  “Never mind, Beat. Don’t fret. They need us more than we need them. They’ll wait, you see.”

  That was the sort of thing I used to say although I knew it was very poor management. In fact, I needed them far more than they needed me. But my priorities had become completely distorted by the stronger drive to do these things for Queen and Country and Beaty obviously knew it. But my flippant words to Beaty were just easy banter and came from someone who was now used to wearing two identities and was self-trained in the art of diversion and a small bit of honest deception of my own.

  I was no longer the person I had once been but once I had the scent of something in my nostrils, there was be no stopping me.

  It was 1971 when I first met Farid in that coffee shop and agreed his commission.

  It was a time of riots in Ulster, IRA threats to bomb the mainland and other disputes and I was up to my ears in it as a shadowy businessman carrying a case with a concealed lining and several passports.

  But Farid and I met again, as planned, less than two weeks later.

  We sat in the same pavement coffee shop with its umbrellas sheltering customers from the hot, July sun. I wore my horn-rimmed glasses with their plain lenses, my hair parted on the right and an unshaven face. I was David Reynolds, because that is who Farid thought I was. Farid was speaking in his soft accent.

  “Yes, I know Abu Hassan. We have met many times. He has told me many things. Our big leader is very keen to give help but he will expect many favours in return I think.”

  “Who is he helping?”

  “Your Irish friends.”

  “And what sort of help is he offering?” I asked again.

  “Arms, ammunition, of course. By boat.”

  “A boat coming from where?” I asked.

  “Benghazi,” Farid said.

  “And going where?”

  “Somewhere in Ireland.”

  “And it still involves Malta?”

  “For sure. Malta is very convenient for them. And I am hoping it is a big boat David, because of my commission.”

  “So, when? Who is involved?”

  “They are already here, for sure.”

  “Here? In Malta? Now?” I asked, shocked at the timing.

  “Of course. These things are very efficient. You need to be ready.”

  I was always surprised how fast things sometimes happened. On this occasion, things happened very fast indeed.

  “One man – I think his name is O’Halloran – he is arriving from Rome,” Farid said. “He will meet with others. I don’t know who but they are probably Irish. Then they all meet one called Ali Ahmed, also Ben Youssef, the man with one short leg, you know.”

  “You know where they’re meeting?” I asked. Farid had no idea.

  “Is O’Halloran an Irish name, David?”

  “Yes, so that’s one thousand pounds already. Well done!”

  After that we probably joked about the size of the shipment.

  It would have been bizarre humour, the sort that discussion about other people’s plans to impose death and destruction always seemed to encourage.

  But it had not been lost on me that the British government was already concerned about sponsored terrorism and that Libya was a prime suspect. There was internment in Northern Ireland. Hundreds of IRA supporters were being rounded up and the British military involvement in the province was at a high level. Fear of terrorist activity abounded and innocent lives were already being lost.

  Farid and I said goodbye shortly after that.

  He went his own way, probably back to his small hotel in Sliema to await developments and, probably, to see a girl and drink some whisky. I found a taxi and went directly to the airport to check on flights from Rome.

  Waiting and watching people coming and going at airports was something I was well used to doing. I still have one of my old briefcases, a hard, steel one that doubled as a seat when waiting at small, busy airports like Luqa where seats are in short supply.

  This faithful companion became very battered over the years but it always provided a very comfortable seat and always contained some torn-out pages from the ABC Flight Timetable so that I always knew how to change an itinerary from the back of a taxi.

  People seem to use mobile phones these days, but my system was far more efficient. During those years of too much traveling I also kept a mental version of parts of the timetable in my head and at Luqa I sat on my briefcase and worked out all the possible routes from Rome.

  These were days of crackly arrivals and departures announcements but Malta was a popular holiday destination and, being July, I found myself mingling with families as they emerged from the baggage room in large groups.

  It was getting late, around ten in the evening and the latest crowd was already dispersing, when, as I sat on the case with my back against the wall appearing to read my newspaper, I saw a dark, tousle haired man wearing a short sleeved white shirt and carrying a small, black bag and a jacket. He was wandering, alone, through the arrival hall and looked about him as though unsure whether someone might be meeting him. Then he reached into the pocket of the jacket he was carrying and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and what looked like a lighter.

  I followed at a safe distance as he walked out into the night to stand under a streetlight near the taxi rank where he lit a cigarette.

  And there it was – in the light from the street lamp and his cigarette lighter – I saw a tattoo on his bare right arm. Standing, as I was, twenty-five yards away in the dark shadow by the closed newspaper kiosk I was unable to see the detail but it was, undeniably, one of the men I had seen during my first encounter at the café.

  Meanwhile, the airport, both inside and outside, became unnaturally quiet as everyone departed.

  I still stood, unmoving, in the shadow and watched as he waved away two taxi drivers who approached him as though he was waiting for his own transport. Then he started to pace up and down, glancing at a watch on his left wrist. He would wander a few yards from his black bag, turn and come back to it, standing astride it, before looking at his watch yet again.

  Eventually, a two-tone grey Austin Cambridge car pulled up. The front passenger door was opened from the inside. O’Halloran, for that is who turned out to be, picked up his bag, opened the rear door, slung the bag on the back seat and climbed into the open front door beside the driver and slammed it shut. For a moment, nothing happened as though they were sat inside greeting one another. Then there was a crunch as the driver put the car into gear, a puff of smoke from the exhaust and the car pulled away.

  From my shadowy retreat, I had already worked out what to do once O’Halloran left. I picked up my faithful Samsonite and my newspaper, emerged from the blackness, walked briskly to the queue of waiting taxis, got into the first one and asked the driver to follow the Austin Cambridge.

  “Your friend, sir?” the taxi driver asked me. “Yes, no room inside for me,” I replied.

  “No problem, sir. You know where they’re going?”

  “No, so don’t lose them,” I said as we headed off into the darkness.

  We followed the other car into Valletta, past quiet squares, along Republic Street and into some side streets where it suddenly turned into a smaller side street with high balconied houses, a few empty, dark shops and then turned once more into what looked like a cul de sac. I touched my driver on the shoulder.

  “OK, go past. Drop me just passed the street light,” I said, pointing, as the other car turned into the cul de sac and slowed down in front of a red lighted sign that merely said “Hotel”.

  I searched in my pockets for change to pay my driver and, at the same time, turne
d in my seat to look out of the rear window as the Austin Cambridge pulled half onto the pavement between two other cars. Its headlights went out and doors opened on both sides.

  I, too, opened my taxi door, thanked my driver, paid him through his open window and waited as he did a three-point turn and drove back the way we had just come.

  As he drove away I watched two men, one with the bag, get out of the Austin Cambridge and then disappear up some steps into a doorway – the entrance to the small, cheap hotel.

  I stood for a while in the shadow of the high stone building behind me but then moved out into the street light and, still carrying my briefcase and newspaper, wandered up the road to the hotel sign, passed it and glanced inside. It was dimly lit but two men were leaning on a reception desk as though checking in. I walked across the road and back again onto the other side. Then, while standing in the shadows outside wondering what to do next, the two men moved away from the desk towards a flight of stairs. It was eleven thirty and very quiet except for voices coming through the shuttered windows of a ground floor apartment behind me.

  I decided not to wait and, instead, took a brisk walk back to my own hotel hardly more than a block away.

  But by seven the next morning I was back.

  Whenever I sensed the call of duty, you see, I was never one to shirk the responsibility. By five minutes past seven I was standing, leaning on the stone wall of the apartment block while the black shadows cast by the rising sun, grew shorter and darker. People passed by on their way to work, some boys came to kick a football and a woman came out to clean the stone steps with a bucket of soapy water and a mop and at seven fifty a short, overweight man appeared and sat on the wet step to chat to the woman as she leaned on her mop. At seven fifty-five both went back inside.

  How I can recall such detail from so long ago I don’t know but it must be one of the symptoms of Thomas’s Disease, referred to earlier. How Sarah, for instance, seemed to have so little recollection of even recent events was a constant puzzle to me.

  So please, have pity on a man afflicted with such a terrible memory and I ask to be excused for the detail that follows. But the experience was nerve-wracking and so is indelibly imprinted on my mind.

  At eight o’clock, three men emerged from the hotel.

  One was O’Halloran. The second was one of the other Irishmen I had seen in the coffee shop and the third was the Libyan with the limp and known to Farid as Ben Youssef. They stood on the pavement in the full glare of the morning sun, smoking and apparently waiting. Then, whoever it was they had been waiting for, emerged from the hotel entrance. It was another European, a man I had not seen before. I sauntered a short distance down a narrow alleyway into the darker shadow for a few yards to be out of sight. When I walked back again, just a minute later, one of the men was stamping out a cigarette on the pavement and unlocking the driver’s door of the Austin Cambridge. Thinking I might be about to lose contact with them, I walked to the end of the cul de sac to where it joined the main road and, as luck would have it, found a taxi that had just dropped off another passenger. I hailed it, climbed in and told the driver to wait.

  Minutes later, the Austin Cambridge appeared from the cul de sac, turned into the road and stopped almost alongside where I was sitting in my own taxi. The four occupants were deep in conversation, their arms outside, leaning on the open car windows and they were already lighting up fresh cigarettes. Blue smoke drifted through the open windows.

  I wound mine up quickly. I hate stale cigarette smoke. “Where you want to go sir?” My own taxi driver was getting impatient.

  “Follow that one,” I said and, with that, we followed them a short distance into the centre of Valletta and Republic Street where it parked outside a stone office block. I paid my taxi fare and stood on the pavement and watched as all four men got out, went up some steps and disappeared through an open black door. I then wandered past to see, on the wall, next to the steps a brass plate with a company name written in English, Italian and Arabic: “Sicilian and Mediterranean Shipping Company Ltd”.

  By now I was very hot, very hungry and very thirsty.

  Because I was devoted to doing my bit for Queen and Country, I had barely eaten since breakfast the day before but found myself in a busy street full of coffee shops, restaurants and cafes with the smell of coffee and warm, fresh bread all around. But duty was calling and so, as usual, I stayed at my post, watching the street.

  But it was then that an idea struck me.

  One block further down on my side of the street was a shop offering motor bikes for hire. So, with one eye still on the black door opposite I went in, paid cash to hire a moped, signed a form, came out and sat astride it, wondering whether I now had time to quench my desperate thirst. But, in keeping with the life of any good, unpaid undercover agent I was still sat wondering what to do when the four men emerged yet again, got into the parked car and drove off.

  I followed on the moped, although I have to admit I nearly fell off as I worked out how to drive the wretched machine and find my balance. But, ten minutes later, we were back at their hotel. They parked the car once more and went inside. I watched them go up the stairs and then propped my moped against the kerb next to two others.

  But, by then, I knew exactly what I was going to do.

  I walked straight into the hotel behind them.

  At the entrance, I fumbled with my keys and nothing in particular in my jacket pocket to waste time as I heard them talking somewhere on the wrought iron stairs. Then I heard a door shut and it all went quiet. So, I strolled inside, across the black and white Italian tiles and up to the small wooden reception desk where I hit the brass bell and waited.

  A short, fat, balding man in a black waistcoat, the same one I had watched earlier sitting on the steps, emerged. I asked him for a room in English and checked in as David Reynolds because that was the passport I was carrying.

  The manager took my passport from me, as was the habit at the time, promising to return it later that day. The practice always concerned me but I was well used to it.

  The name of the hotel, too, was only apparent once I got inside. “Hotel Belmont” it said in more wrought iron across the reception desk – not that I had ever seen any beautiful mountains in Malta.

  I was handed a key to Room 3 on the first floor and made my own way to a small room, clean but sparsely furnished, just how I always liked them. The washing facilities, though, were in the Italian style of large taps, rust pocked bath, chipped black and white tiles and big, ornate mirrors and were of the shared type. The toilet, too, was just an updated version of Thomas Crapper’s original design with water that gushed like a waterfall once a chain that looked as though it could have held the Titanic to the dock, was pulled. Everything was for the use of all residents on the first floor and I did wonder who I might be sharing it with but I wasn’t planning to spend much time there.

  I spent the first few minutes listening to the sound of feet walking about directly above me. Then, because it was hot and the single ceiling fan did not seem to work, I went downstairs, out into the street, bought a bottle of water and a newspaper and returned to sit on a chair near the reception desk. As I sat there, the black telephone on the reception desk rang and the fat manager appeared from the room behind, took the call, first in Maltese and then in Arabic, as he seemed to realize the nationality of the speaker.

  I heard him say the name McDonnell, quite clearly.

  Then, as the man ran a thick finger down the front page of his registration book, I heard him say the name O’Halloran. It was pronounced less well than an Irishman might have, but it was enough. The fat little manager placed the heavy black receiver on the desk and, with a groan of someone who hated climbing stairs, struggled up the steps, holding on to the iron railings to the second floor. I heard an echoing knock on a door on the floor above mine, followed by voices.

  Then the manager made his ponderous way down again followed by another who seemed even slower. By th
e time they arrived in the foyer, I was standing on the stone step outside with my back to the inside. I knew the effect it would have from inside, a black silhouette against the bright sunlight outside, but I was listening hard.

  The man who had followed the manager down picked up the telephone on the desk.

  It was the Libyan, Ben Yousseff with the limp, which explained the slow walk down stairs. My Arabic, as I have said, is not very good but it is more than sufficient to follow the gist of conversations. I heard Ben Youssef pick up the telephone receiver and it was soon obvious that the man on the other line was Ali. The caller was doing the talking. I heard Ben Youssef reply in monosyllabic grunts.

  “Ayawuh – Ayawuh – Bookra – Shookrun.”

  Youssef was receiving instructions and he repeated “bookra” (tomorrow) several more times. Then Youssef, himself, started talking, a few longer sentences liberally scattered with names and words I could still follow.

  “Ayawah, insha’ala. Talatta, O’Halloran, McDonnell, Callaghan. Hotel Belmont. Sicilian Mediterranean Shipping Company.”

  Then I had heard a new name, Guido Perillo.

  The Italian name Perillo had been on a separate brass plate alongside the shipping company’s office. Guido Perillo was registered as a lawyer but Perillo was a name I knew well.

  Having a few friends in Naples whom I visited from time to time, meant that I knew that Perillos were everywhere driving tipper trucks, running back street car repair outfits, providing scaffolding for small construction jobs, travel agents. You name it, they were running it. Perillos were prominent by their sheer numbers and the one I knew was up to no good on a hillside leading up to Mount Vesuvius.

  That the fat manager of the Hotel Belmont was also Italian or, more specifically, Sicilian had already struck me.

  Over the years, you see, I have developed a fine ear for recognizing nationalities. I could even pinpoint accents even if I did not properly understand the language. Arab nationalities are easy. Libyans, Egyptians, Syrians, Jordanians, they all have different accents. But I could also separate Milanese, Roman, Neapolitan or Sicilian Italian.

  I also had a nose for smelling trouble and I knew at that very moment that I might very well have checked into a Maltese Mafia stronghold.

  For information, I often stayed in a similar hotel in Naples, near Somma Vesuviano, as the plumbing upstairs had just reminded me. This is why I had also recognized the common Neapolitan family name of Perillo. But the Hotel Belmont seemed to have the additional merits of having Irish and Libyan terrorist connections.

  Meanwhile, I was still standing on the stone steps, facing the street, my ears straining to pick up words of the telephone conversation going on behind me. It finally ended in a ring as the receiver was replaced. But it was already enough.

  I walked away, down the steps and out into the hot street to think yet again.

  That was the way it was for me at that time, in the late sixties and all through the seventies. I can relate a dozen similar stories if you can be bothered to read a second edition of this record.

  This story will probably suffice for now because it was the most frightening but, you see, one experience would lead to another. One event would merge with another and somewhere down the line, weeks, months or years later, things would always link up.

  It was the lonely lifestyle of travel.

  It was keen observation. It was the outcome of years of mixing with people of all nationalities, politicians and businessmen of all types and shades. It was an ear for unspoken messages and a nose for smelling trouble or insincerity – unless, of course, the insincerity was directed at me, in which case I had a nasty talent of sometimes completely missing it because it was so close.

  So add this one to your list of weaknesses as well – intermittent short-sightedness in one eye.

  But the talent of keen, observation combined with a certain sense of bravado meant I would often quite deliberately put myself into situations such as the one I found myself in, in Malta. This was what made explaining things to Sarah, or anyone else, so difficult when I returned home.

  It was impossible for me to know where to start.

  I would often arrive home completely culture shocked by the familiarity of my home surroundings and had no desire to start explaining everything to Sarah the moment I walked through the door. My mind would be buzzing with people and things that I had just left behind, things that I knew were still going on and things that I needed to attend to as soon as I got away again. This is not the way a good husband should behave.

  And, even after perhaps a week, when I was once more acclimatizing myself with domestic matters, something else would get in the way and the opportunity to explain would be lost forever.

  Recently, in a fit of disturbed sleep, I dreamed of a time when I watched Naira notes fluttering down from an upstairs room of a hotel in Kano. But this was not a dream. This was a nightmare of clear visions and memories resurrected from the past. I had been hiding in the back seat of an old Peugeot car, looking up through the side window. I could hear gunfire all around me and watched thousands of notes of Nigerian currency mixed with US dollars fluttering down past the window like confetti. People were running, shouting with red dust, smoke and a fire raging, somewhere. The story is long, complicated and beyond any simple explanation. So should I also write about this?

  Probably I should in order to explain myself and, after all, it was all mixed up with that bastard, Donaldson.

  But how long should this statement last?

  If I did tell you, perhaps it would explain money laundering, Donaldson style, laundering that, on that occasion, had gone badly wrong because someone panicked and emptied a suitcase of the stuff out of the third-floor window of an office block so they could deny possession. But Donaldson, as he always did, engineered a situation that enabled him to be far removed from this fiasco and was able to relax in his Regent Street office and laugh in his usual grotesque manner at my explanation of what I had seen. After I left, he probably picked up his telephone, swore at someone at the New Nigeria Bank and threatened to come around and remove their testicles unless they sorted it.

  So does this start to explain the direction we are taking in this statement?

  But then there was Beirut, of course, but we will return to Lebanon later because it features in a later episode.

  But, in passing, let me just ask if you have ever sat in the front passenger seat of a car and ducked your head in the nick of time before a bullet embedded itself with a crack of glass and a thud into your headrest? Perhaps you have. But, with your head buried between your knees, have you then had to put up with the sound of more bullets bouncing off the car door and the screeching of tyres, as those responsible sped off through rubble-laden streets in a cloud of concrete dust?

  Try telling that to your wife a week later when you are back home and still hearing loud bangs in your head. Especially if you are in the middle of eating cottage pie and your wife is asking if you’d like custard with your apple crumble!

  A Mugging

  But let me return to the streets of Valletta and a description of me as I walked, still carrying my rolled-up newspaper away from that hotel.

  I knew exactly what I wanted to do and I knew it would be very risky. But I and I alone knew what was going on. I had no need of advice and there was no one to give me any anyway. Perhaps that was part of the excitement and motivation. But, in fact what I did turned out to be one of the most dangerous and stupidest things I have ever done. Even now I wonder how I got away with it.

  I stayed away from the Hotel Belmont until mid-afternoon by sitting in a bar, watching others, thinking, and replacing my badly depleted calories by eating bread, goat’s cheese and tomatoes.

  Afterwards, I returned to the hotel, retrieved my Reynolds passport from the fat manager and went upstairs to my room where I lay on the bed with the shuttered window wide open listening to the sounds from the street below.

  The hotel, itself
, was very quiet.

  There were no sounds of feet upstairs and I knew the fat manager downstairs was having his siesta as he had pottered back to his office chair after handing over my passport.

  So, I got up, crept downstairs to the marble-floored reception area in my socks and stood for a while to check if anyone else was around. The manager was asleep, his head in his arms on the table inside the office behind the reception desk. A fan was blowing the man’s few, dark, straggly hairs and a couple of meat flies buzzed around a plate bearing the remains of his lunch.

  All the keys to the nine guestrooms, except my own, were hanging on hooks behind the desk in front of small, individual, wooden compartments for mail and messages.

  It was the only evidence I needed that the room above mine was currently empty. I thought about taking the keys there and then but thought better of it and, instead, crept upstairs to the second floor to stand outside the room above mine to check. It was quiet. I carefully checked the handle but it was, as expected, locked.

  I checked the lock, an old one, strong and unlikely to break without an unacceptable amount of noise and force. So, I crept downstairs again and this time took the key to Room 6 and crept back.

  I was still in my Marks and Spencer socks, which were, according to Sarah, a Christmas present from my sister Meg in Walton-on-Thames. I had been away that Christmas having got delayed in Karachi so had failed to receive them in person. But I thanked Meg later by telling her they had come in useful when creeping between hotel rooms. Both Meg and Sarah had looked shocked when I told them. I forget how my explanation was eventually accepted.

  So I opened the door and went in, shut the door quietly behind me and looked around. It was similar to my own room except that there were piles of dirty clothes on the floor. It smelt strongly of cigarettes and there were signs that several people, not one, were using it. A crumpled pillow lay on the floor in one corner and a prayer mat and towel in another. And, underneath the bed, was a black bag that had been pushed almost out of sight.

  I heard a noise in the street below and went to check but could see nothing.

  So, I pulled the bag out, opened it and looked inside.

  There was a bundle of yellow cloth at the bottom and I touched it. It was hard and I lifted it out, unfolded it and stared at the pistol that lay in my hands.

  I have never liked guns. I have handled them and used them, but still hate that heavy, metallic feel and the dreadful feeling of pain and death they convey. I sniffed it, folded it back into its cloth and put it back.

  There were papers with notes that I quickly glanced at.

  There was a notebook. I flipped through it.

  There was a letter written in Arabic and a small, pocket-sized address book with names and addresses in Belfast,

  Londonderry, Dublin, Liverpool and London. And there was a list in English. It was the sort of list that I was very familiar with – a shopping list.

  But this was way beyond the sort of list I had been given before – the sort suitable for some tin pot group of poverty stricken natives, hell bent on settling a minor grievance by adding to their usual arsenal of sharp sticks with a few more modern instruments.

  The shopping list that I held in my hand in that dingy hotel in Malta would have been ideal for someone running a sophisticated and large-scale civil war.

  So, what did I do?

  I stuffed everything except the pistol into my pocket and crept out. I locked the door behind me and went downstairs to my room on the first floor. Then, after just a quick look at my spoils, I made a decision to check out of the Hotel Belmont very quickly. I wrapped everything I’d found in my newspaper because I had no suitcase or belongings with me and had left my steel briefcase at my other hotel. Then I went downstairs, still wearing Meg’s socks.

  The manager was still asleep.

  I hung up my own key and that of Room 6, left some cash as payment for the few hours I had spent there, put my shoes on and rode away on the moped which was still parked where I had left it outside.

  Then, because I was not sure what to do next, I took a ride along the coast road. I rode to a point where I could look over towards the island of Gozo and there I sat in the shade of some rocks to think once more until the sun sank like a red ball in the sky.

  Two hours later I had decided to try to find Farid and to leave Malta as soon as possible. I had no desire to sit around, knowing that three IRA gunmen and their Libyan and possibly Mafia backers were looking for one David Reynolds who had briefly occupied the Hotel Belmont, rummaged through their belongings and run off with a shopping list of armaments.

  I found Farid later that afternoon in his usual coffee bar.

  It was my nature not to talk, at least immediately, about what I now knew. Experience had proved it was far better to keep things up a sleeve to pull out when it suited, rather than come out with it immediately even if one’s own mind was bubbling with things to say.

  But Farid had had his own pieces of information obtained by means, which he, too, did not seem to want to talk about.

  “Trust me, David,” he had said. “I spoke to someone today. A boat left Benghazi.”

  “Already?” I said, shocked by the news.

  “Yes. It was all planned some time ago, before we got to know,” Farid said.

  “When did it go?”

  “Two days ago.”

  “Where is the boat going?” I asked.

  “Palermo, I think,” Farid said. “After that – who knows –can you guess, my friend?”

  I remember Farid shrugging.

  “Is it the boat we knew about?” I asked him.

  “I believe so,” Farid replied.

  “And the name of the vessel?”

  “Licata.”

  The name had slotted in place like a piece of jigsaw. It was my geography again. I had always been good at it, even in school. In fact, I knew Licata. It was a small town on the southern coast of Sicily and it all tied in with the Sicilian shipping agent in Valletta.

  “But, David . . .” Farid stalled and then went on: “I think it will change its name soon – maybe somewhere off Malta. They will change the shipping documents. They will paint a new name on the boat. They will change everything.

  They have played that trick before.”

  “Do you know the new name?” I asked.

  Farid shrugged again.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t know.”

  There was not much more that Farid could offer. The rest of the information lay carefully wrapped in my folded newspaper on the back of my moped.

  I left Farid for what turned out to be the very last time shortly after that.

  I rode to the airport to confirm a flight out for the following morning.

  Then, at eight o’clock I drove to the motorbike rental shop opposite the Sicilian and Mediterranean Shipping Company. I handed over the keys and, after a last look at the brass plate and the name of the lawyer, Guido Perillo, found a café and relaxed for an hour or so before starting to walk the half-mile back to my original hotel.

  But my problems were only about to start.

  In Valletta it was nearly midnight. The streets were quiet. It had become cooler with a fresh breeze coming in off the sea. It was as I was walking into the side street, the last hundred yards or so before my hotel came into view, that I saw someone standing in the shadow of a shop front a short distance from the entrance to the hotel. My adrenaline level was already high and my reflex reaction was to slip into the shadow of another shop doorway and stand there. I was less than a hundred yards away from the other shadowy character and only carrying a rolled-up newspaper containing stolen property so I stayed there in the shadow, sweating, thinking and with my heart pounding.

  My first thought was that I was over reacting and imagining things. My second, more realistic, thought was that somehow, I had been seen or that someone knew what I had done, had found out where I was staying and was planning to administer some retributio
n. But then, I thought to myself, how could anyone know about me and relate my presence to the loss of a notebook and other bits of paper from a bag left at the Hotel Belmont?

  At the time, I could not explain it but later I could.

  I had checked in at the hotel as Reynolds.

  My Thomas passport, though, was in its usual hiding place behind the lining of my case and I hated the thought of losing that by not returning to the hotel. It was vital I got back. So, I stood there for ten minutes, occasionally peering around the shop wall into the street. Whoever it was did not move from the other doorway. Now and again, I could see the red tip of a glowing cigarette and a plume of smoke blowing from the doorway in the breeze.

  Then I thought I saw the tips of two glowing cigarettes and decided that the smoke drifting out of the shop entrance looked like it was made by more than one cigarette. What looked like two pairs of feet moved on the pavement and the more I looked, the more it looked like two people, not one.

  And the more I thought about who it was waiting there, the more nervous I became.

  The problem was that the street was another cul de sac. There was no other way in or out of the hotel and, even if there was a back way in, I decided it was unlikely to be open at this time of night.

  So, I decided to take a chance and walk boldly towards the hotel.

  But I still had the bundle of newspaper under my arm and the contents were going to be a give-away if I got into a tangle with either the law or worse. So I looked around my dark doorway and then I saw a possible solution – I suppose it was luck, but it had happened to me once before.

  In Algeria once, armed with a roll of newspaper containing more than simple newsprint I had been faced with a similar situation of not wanting to be found with anything on my person. I remembered what I had done then and, looking around the shop doorway, the same solution seemed a distinct possibility.

  In Algeria, the streets were often littered with the detritus of the daily routine of human life. So, the only problem in leaving a bundle of old newspaper held down by a piece of stony rubble alongside a rubbish-strewn public highway was to remember which stone hid the bits you wished to recover.

  The streets of Valletta were far cleaner and swept more regularly but a bundle of old newspaper was, I thought, still not a bad place to hide stolen goods, if only temporarily. I looked around my hiding place in the shop doorway and, as luck would have it, above the door to the shop was a ledge. Above the ledge was a wooden sign showing the shop owner’s name but the sign was shabby and in dire need of a coat of paint. What’s more it was falling away from the stonework, leaving a small gap and I found I could just reach it by standing on the stone sill of the side window of the shop. So, it was there that I stuffed the newspaper, spreading it flat so that most of it slid behind the sign. But hiding the newspaper was only the first problem solved.

  My next problem was to return to the hotel.

  The third problem was to be sufficiently alive next morning to recover the newspaper.

  But, I couldn’t wait all night so I decided to walk briskly towards the hotel as though I had just returned from a happy evening spent in a bar.

  Perhaps the decision had been wrong. But no other options had come to my mind and, as I approached the other doorway and could almost smell the cigarette smoke, two men sprang out and bundled me roughly back into the doorway. With a pair of big rough hands around my neck I was pushed backwards so hard that my head hit the stone wall with a thud.

  Stars flew around my head and in front of my eyes and I had to gasp for air through the small remaining gap left in my throat. The throttling hands then came up to force my chin back and a knee kicked me violently in the stomach.

  It all happened very quickly.

  For a second nobody spoke. I couldn’t have spoken anyway but when I heard the voice I knew that although this was Malta, far from home, I was involved with a couple of thugs who were probably quite used to night-time forays in the back streets of Belfast.

  “Who the fuck you think you are, messin’ ‘round here? Who the fuck are you, huh? You bastard. Where the fuck is the stuff?”

  The words were hissed rather than spoken and a smell of beer and cigarettes on his breath wafted over me. But I then felt something sticking into my ribs. Perhaps it was the gun that had been in the yellow cloth but I never saw it, just felt it.

  It was forced between my ribs so hard that the pain was almost worse than that from my throat and my head. Through the red mist and stars, I then saw a face streaked with greasy, strands of black hair just inches from my nose. Then the other face came into blurred view, the one I had already seen at the airport. O’Halloran’s hair looked better groomed, thick and wavy but as I tried to focus a muscular arm came up and the back of a heavy fist landed on my cheek. But, just before it hit, I saw the tattoo. To me it looked like a skull and cross bones as the brains inside my own skull rattled and the cheek bone felt as though it had cracked. That mugging seemed to go on for hours. The pain in my head and cheekbone was the worst although both my arms were up behind my back and felt as though they might also crack at the shoulder blade at any second.

  O’Halloran said something amongst the noise in my head. “OK. Shut the fuck up. Lost your fucking voice, have ye?”

  Even in the middle of the assault, the words struck me as typically Irish and under different circumstances I might have laughed and told an Irish joke. But this was no time for humour. “OK, Sean, that’s enough,” O’Halloran, said, seeming to show some pity, but his face was only an inch from mine and the spit from his mouth and the stale tobacco breath was taking over as punishment.

  He moved to three inches away and, with Sean still holding my two arms up behind my neck and his knee in my back, O’Halloran hissed more oaths through his yellow teeth.

  Hissing was probably wise, though, in that the shop owner and his neighbors in the apartments above were probably fast asleep. I suppose I could have screamed but, despite the circumstances, it seemed unmanly. If I was going to die I wanted to be found with a mouthful of blood and broken teeth not with my mouth open screaming as if I’d been raped.

  Screaming was impossible anyway because my teeth were pressed on the stone wall and I could feel the skin of my scalp starting to tear as the hair was dragged out in tufts.

  “Like he says, you bastard. Who the fuck are you? Fucking English! MI fucking 6 is it?”

  He clearly didn’t understand how British Intelligence worked they use unpaid volunteers – but the words were hissed into my face as a statement not a question and proved they knew something about me because I still hadn’t spoken a word.

  “OK, Sean, let the fucker speak. Where’s the stuff you bastard?”

  I felt my jacket pockets being checked and my wallet was pulled out. The Reynolds passport came with it. There was little else. There wasn’t much in my wallet either, as I never carried much change and my traveller’s cheques, business cards and other bits of paper were at the hotel.

  “Let’s see that. That’s him. Just as I thought. Mister fucking David William Reynolds. Fucking company director. What sort of fucking company director comes raiding fucking hotel rooms? Speak you bastard. What’s up? Where’s the fucking stuff you filched?”

  The language was not good and Sarah would have been shocked to know I mixed with such people but the grip on my throat lightened just enough even though the back of my head and ribs felt badly bruised.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I think I managed to say.

  “The fucking papers – you stupid fucking sod. Where . . . are . . . they?”

  The last three words were spoken slowly as though O’Halloran thought he was talking to an imbecile.

  “I’m sorry I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I mumbled as saliva and probably blood ran down my chin.

  The grip on my throat lightened a little more. So, did the pain in my ribs, but only because the gun was now pointing directly at my forehead.


  “OK, you fucker. Stop messin’ We know you were at a hotel earlier. Some fucker broke into our room. It was you. Comprennez? Got it now?”

  And so, it went on for several minutes more. I denied everything. I tried to grab my wallet and passport back, thinking this was the most likely response of someone who was the subject of a common assault rather than someone who really had stolen their personal property earlier.

  But, miracles do happen and I was saved by another stroke of luck.

  Having now slumped onto the dusty ground with two faces inches from mine, a gun at my head and my wallet and passport already inside the unyielding hands of the greasy one, my luck changed.

  For above the hissing voices and the pounding in my chest and ears I had heard a car coming. The two Irishmen heard it as well. The greasy one stuck the hand that was not holding my passport firmly over my mouth and nose and pushed my head hard against the ground.

  “Shut up, you fucker. No fucking move, do you understand?”

  The taxi stopped, out of sight, up the road somewhere probably near the first shop doorway and my hidden newspaper. I could hear other male voices, some laughter and the taxi engine and above the din in my ears a dog barked somewhere. Then there was the sound of footsteps, of people walking towards the shop doorway where I was lying with two Irishmen sat on top of me. I heard the taxi as it probably did a U-turn in the road and subconsciously wished I was not staying in a cheap hotel in a cul de sac. O’Halloran then hissed through his teeth, directly into my face.

  “OK, bastard. Get up. Walk, out of here, that way. No fucking tricks OK? This’ll be right behind you.”

  Again, I felt the gun, this time in my ribs as O’Halloran pointed up the road towards where the footsteps were approaching but away from the sanctuary of my hotel. His friend Sean managed to get one last punch into my right kidney, but I was grateful for the chance to stand up straight with my head away from the wall.

  “Quick, now, you stupid sod. Walk. Just watch your fucking steps.”

  I remember emerging, staggering slightly, from the shop front to see two men walking towards us. They both wore white shirts and dark ties undone at the collar and both carried their jackets and brief cases in their hands – foreign businessmen returning from a late-night meeting somewhere. They looked like Laurel and Hardy but they were talking, laughing and having fun and, suddenly, I wanted to live again.

  The Irishmen followed me out, closely, the gun still digging into my back.

  Even now, I remember the next ten or twenty seconds.

  I remember the two businessmen looking towards me. One of them stepped off the pavement into the road near a parked car clearly to give us room to pass and, as we passed, I took the only chance that was likely to come my way. I ducked, broke away and ran behind the two businessmen who had stopped chattering and, not surprisingly, were looking startled. The Irishmen too, looked stunned and were probably uncertain what to do. To shoot at that point would have been pointless. It would not have brought back their precious possessions and any attempt at using the gun might well have resulted in one of the innocent chaps, behind whom I was now hiding, being shot.

  In the split seconds they had, the Belfast men clearly thought better of shooting. But they weren’t going to give up.

  They pushed away the two businessmen and tried to re-grab me. But with my adrenaline level running at maximum, I found I was surprisingly quick. I ran. I sprinted across the road, dodged behind another parked car and then ran, keeping my head down before re-crossing the road and sprinting for my hotel thinking that at any second a bullet would embed itself in my back.

  And, as I ran into the open hotel door I remember glancing back where the two men in white shirts and ties were standing looking up the road watching the two Irishmen walking the other way. One of the white shirts picked up his briefcase, which had been dropped in the fracas and then they resumed their walk towards the hotel, still looking behind them.

  The hotel night porter came over to me. I was panting. “Are you OK, sir?” he asked me.

  “Yes, thank you. Now. Thank you.”

  I was sitting in a chair, holding the back of my head, my nose, my chin and my ribs when the two businessmen walked in.

  “You OK, señor?” one of them asked me. “You have problem with zees men, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “You wanna polizi come, señor, yes?”

  They were slightly drunk Spaniards.

  “No, thank you. I’m OK,” said.

  “I shink very homosexual, señor? I shink you lucky we come den, I shink.”

  This was, perhaps, the most amusing part when looking back, but at the time I had not felt like laughing.

  I thanked them went to my room and bathed my wounds. Then, at five thirty, having first taken my Thomas passport out from the lining of my briefcase I checked out of the hotel. On my way up the street with dawn only just breaking but still feeling nervous in case they had waited for me, I recovered my newspaper together with its intact contents from the doorway of the shop I had hidden it in, hailed a passing early morning taxi and went to the airport. I wasn’t going to wait for my reserved flight to London so I took the first available plane out, this time in the name of Thomas.

  I soon found myself in Nice.

  Aftermath

  It was while I was on the plane, still nursing aching ribs, a badly cut lip and a swollen, blackening eye, that I started to ask myself how the two Irishmen had known about me and where I was staying.

  I knew it should not have been easy for them to trace me. But someone somewhere had tipped them off.

  Donaldson seemed unable to explain it when I got back. “Bad luck, old man. Never mind old chap, still in one piece.”

  That had been the extent of Donaldson’s concern.

  “So, we’re passing all this on?” I asked him, in my purest innocence whilst still wincing from the pain in my ribs.

  “Leave it with us now, old chap. You’ve done your bit. Go home and nurse that black eye.”

  But I never did find out what Donaldson did with the information I brought back.

  As for me, I had read through the notebook and other notes that I had found in the Hotel Belmont on the plane to Nice and over and over again on the connecting flight to Heathrow. I memorized names and addresses and can still remember some.

  The information was quite clear and was invaluable.

  There were several names – Arab, English, Irish and Italian.

  The name Perillo was listed several times with telephone numbers and addresses of people in Dublin, Belfast, Tripoli, Naples and even New York. There was a note of the name of the boat name Licata and beside it another name, MS Bally as though this might have been its changed name.

  There was a sheet of paper with what looked like a map of a coastline and the name Donegal. To me, it seemed highly likely that the boat that had left Benghazi, passed through Palermo, changed its name somewhere off Malta and then offloaded most of its cargo in a small bay near Donegal.

  I was not inexperienced in things to do with moving things around by boat but no one asked me and as far as I know the boat was never tracked and never stopped.

  There are charges that should still be brought.

  Questions still need to be asked of things that happened around that time and one reason for me writing this statement, however belated it is, is to request a proper investigation.

  My clear mistake was in involving Donaldson but, as I have explained, there wasn’t time.

  I should have spoken directly to someone in the British Government or in Northern Ireland. But, looking back, I can see it now.

  Donaldson was already on his way to becoming a serious crook.

  “Operation Chrysalis” as Donaldson himself called it for the few weeks that he maintained any interest was eventually forgotten although I deliberatelyand provocatively mentioned it in passing whenever another code or name was invented for a job.

  I found Do
naldson’s penchant for inventing code names and using initials for people and organizations quite ridiculous. I told Jack this once. Jack didn’t like what I said but at the time I couldn’t help myself.

  “Are you sure Donaldson’s isn’t sexually aroused by his fucking codes and initials?”

  Perhaps there is a pathological explanation for this type of obsession but in Donaldson’s case, this was no disease.

  The only obsession Donaldson had was in making any reports he ever made to those higher up the chain sound important and vital to national security and if using codes and initials helped to create this impression, he was all for it. To be frank, though, it was another sign that the man was a fraud, hell bent on preserving his own official job title whilst leaving bags of room to run his own private agenda.

  But I had risked my life.

  I had found out who was involved, how the shipment was to be made and even the name of the vessel. I knew that it would leave from Benghazi, and when, and I think I know where it had been delivered and who had taken delivery because, later, I also recovered some shipping documents through contacts I had at Lloyds.

  That shipment had arrived in Donegal in early autumn. Some of it had probably been hidden in farm buildings near Donegal. They were never searched although I had made some very astute suggestions about where they might look. Instead, a great deal of it had been distributed and was on the streets and in the hands of the Provisional IRA by early 1972. Of that I am sure.

  But I had done my bit for Queen and Country.

  And what happened to Farid and his promised commission?

  Farid was a good man, living under very difficult circumstances.

  His heart was in the right place and he was a very good friend to me.

  He never got to buy his fancy apartment in Majorca because six months later his body was washed up on a beach near Leptis Magna with a bullet hole in his head and a rope tied and wrapped around his body and neck.

  No one who didn’t have other good, Libyan friends would ever have known about this murder. But I know about it.

  So who blew the whistle on Farid?

  And what was my reward?

  Well, there are two things that I remember.

  Firstly, I got a replacement David Reynolds passport, even though I could well have managed without it.

  “Don’t worry, old chap, we’ll report it as lost. Not go into the sordid details of who rifled your pockets. Forget it old chap. All in a day’s work, eh? Ha ha.”

  But my second reward came some months later.

  I was reminded of this just today when picking through old newspaper cuttings from around 1972.

  February 22nd 1972 was the day the IRA bombed the 16th Parachute Brigade headquarters in Aldershot at lunchtime.

  March 21st 1972 was the day that six died and one hundred and forty six were injured whilst out shopping in Belfast. And there were others – similar reports of atrocities committed around that time. The cuttings were held together with rusty paper clips and had lain unread for forty years in a box upstairs in the spare bedroom.

  But I had sat and torn them from newspapers just a few months after my walk around Valletta.

  And there was another cutting from March 3rd 1973.

  I had been minding my own business and innocently walking from somewhere to Victoria Station with my mind probably on things I’d been reading about the war in Vietnam or the referendum on British rule in Ulster when I happened to pass the Agriculture Ministry in Whitehall.

  I had already heard police sirens but it was nothing unusual at the time and I carried on my way to catch the train back home to Croydon. It was just after I’d passed the Ministry building when I heard a scream and, almost simultaneously, a huge explosion and I found myself knocked to the ground by some sort of invisible force from behind. I must have been miles away in my thoughts but all sense of where I was or what had happened seemed to leave me.

  Everything then went silent but my stomach was hurting.

  I opened my eyes and knew they were still working as I was staring at the pavement with dust and bits of glass and metal falling all around me. I then realized that the pain in my stomach was because I was lying on top of my briefcase with the arm and my hand that had been holding it trapped beneath. And I knew my nose was still working because I could smell burning as a thick cloud of black smoke swept past me.

  Everything was silent because my ears were still not working but I knew what it was – a bomb.

  I struggled to my feet, checked for signs of blood and decided I was still in one piece. I rubbed my ears because I still couldn’t hear. Instead I turned around to a scene of devastation.

  Smoke and flames were rising from what was once a car, debris was lying everywhere and so were people. Men who, a few seconds earlier, had been wearing pin striped suits were now sat or lying in what looked like dirty rags not five yards from me. A woman was lying with blood trickling from her head. Another man was crawling toward her. Further away and closer to the burning car, bodies lay, some moving, some still, some with smoking clothes. Smouldering debris was everywhere and a black shoe was lying almost next to me and next to the shoe a piece of red tissue which looked as though it might once have been a hand.

  But still I couldn’t hear and I felt dizzy.

  I remember going to the stone wall of the building and leaning on it with my briefcase at my feet whilst I rubbed dust from my eyes and sound back into my ears.

  But within seconds’ other people were running towards the scene. People were coming out of the Ministry office door, a porter in his uniform standing with his hands on his forehead staring at the scene in disbelief. I did likewise for several minutes as I stood alone trying to recover my senses.

  That newspaper cutting showed that one person was killed and about 250 injured in London that day after car bombs outside the Ministry building and the Old Bailey.

  I was, I suppose, fortunate.

  I was in no fit state to help anyone but declined any need for hospital treatment. My hearing slowly returned, I dusted myself down and walked away towards Victoria Station.

  Police, ambulance and fire engine sirens were now everywhere and, due to police advice and rumors of other bombs, train timetables were disrupted.

  So, I found myself with about a half a dozen other shell-shocked individuals in a pub near Victoria Station where we sat around exchanging stories about near death experiences.

  But during the inevitable silences between forcibly assembled groups of survivors I sat with my ears still echoing and my gritty eyes staring into a glass of Bell’s whisky.

  It was then that it registered with sufficient impact that Donaldson had known where I was staying in Valletta that night.

  Donaldson may not have actually planted the bomb that had nearly killed me but he was involved. Reasons for everything that ever went wrong pointed backwards through tortuous and convoluted pathways to Donaldson.

  So, my second reward for uncovering this IRA gun running activity was to find myself very nearly a victim. Perhaps the Irish muggers in Malta were still after my scalp, although I suspect Donaldson would have put them off trying because for him I was, at least for now, far more valuable alive than dead.

  That was my life during the sixties and seventies.

  The IRA Malta Libya story will suffice for now because to relate others about Nigeria, Ghana, Serra Lione, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq or Syria will require a second edition or an extension to this statement to equal War and Peace. But sometimes I got so mad with things that I had a desire to close the legitimate Import Export business altogether and see if, by concentrating on my other life, I could do just that as well, or better, through taking bribes or dubious commissions. I could probably have become an international version of Farid. But, then, look what happened to him.

  To hell with it if I got shot, I would sometimes think to myself. And to hell with it if I was caught and slammed up in some rat-infested jail in Karachi or Khartoum wit
h the other local riff raff and got fed bread and water. Perhaps I’d be there until some British newspaper got wind of it and managed to take a photo of this thin, bearded old chap wearing a loin cloth who spoke English as if he had once lived in Croydon but who had forgotten who he was. But so be it.

  Fuck the lot of it, I thought.

  If you can’t beat the bastards, then become one yourself and join in the fun.

  And hearing Jack’s words ringing in my ears like some creepy, hand wringing character from a Charles Dickens novel didn’t help.

  “Opportunities, Ollie, opportunities.”

  Yes, I really did stop caring for brief moments – until I thought about my Sarah of course.

  Sarah was like a rock on which I stood to scan the wider horizon.

  Fortunately, things always looked better from that higher position and so I never did join the bastards but I was very close sometimes.

  But for an organized chap like me, my emotions were starting to go all over the place.

  For instance, it wasn’t so easy making phone calls from places like Maiduguri or Ouagadougou thirty or forty years ago.

  I would telephone Beaty occasionally if I had an hour to spare to sit in my hotel room dialling and redialling. By the time my middle finger was red, sore and blistered I might get through. By then I’d have forgotten what I wanted and the shock of speaking to someone with an English accent didn’t help. I’d often start off talking to her in pidgin.

  And then Beaty would try to engage me in trivial conversation, about who had written, or who was in town, or who wanted to meet me. All this, too, on a poor, crackling line that was likely to break at any second and when all I really wanted Beaty to do was to convey a simple message to Sarah.

  But even that, I found impossible to do through Beaty, as my message was far too private.

  But Beaty was only doing her job, or so I thought at the time.

  On my return, she would badger me to write letters or suggest in her own unique way, that some clients had been disappointed not to meet me when they had visited London. The fact that I might have spent a week talking to sordid characters in Lagos or Baghdad about exports of spark plugs or cans of fly spray whilst also dealing with something Donaldson had thought might be interesting was not something I felt able to tell her.

  But still I kept going and, more often than not, I was travelling in the guise of David Reynolds.

  Donaldson even stopped calling me Ollie.

  He would sometimes address me as, “Ah! Dave, old chap” and sneer.

  It angered me, intensely and I would argue with him about it. Jack would, of course, just look away, embarrassed.

  “Reynolds, Thomas, David, Ollie, good Lord, what’s the difference now, dear fellow. No need to be so fucking sensitive. Indispensable! An asset! Can’t think what we’d do without you.”

  And I recall, now, what I once said in reply.

  “In case you’ve forgotten I have a wife and family who know nothing about all this bloody nonsense.”

  But Donaldson’s response was yet another that I have never forgotten. He had shown no mercy or sensitivity.

  “Can’t see it makes any difference, old chap. Not now, at any rate. She’s married to a bloody spy whatever she might think.”

  That description really hurt.

  It was the first time Donaldson had used the word and, despite Jack being present, the argument developed. Even now, thinking about it, the anger wells up inside me.

  When Donaldson called me a spy I felt sickened to the core because my real responsibility, whom Donaldson had just dismissed almost as an irrelevance, was, at that time, sitting, waiting for me at home.

  I had phoned her earlier and I knew Sarah was cooking our evening meal because I had said I would try to get home early for once.

  “That would be nice dear. We’ll wait for you. Robert is doing his homework but I’ll make us an apple pie. Doris gave me some lovely Bramley’s yesterday.”

  Phoning Sarah would always bring me down to earth once again and I’d long to rush home to be with her.

  Guilt

  I started by writing a statement but perhaps it is also a private confession.

  I have had some restless nights recently and now there is something I need to get off my chest.

  After I’d finished writing the statement about the IRA, Malta and Donaldson last Tuesday afternoon I finished off my stock of Bell’s whisky. So, I took a stroll to the off license to replenish it.

  Two days and three bottles later and I feel able to continue although, in the meantime, I have had some really bad bouts of Thomas’s Disease and still have a serious headache.

  My current mood is just a little sombre.

  Last night, for instance, as I was nursing a bottle and staring into Sarah’s log effect gas fire, I heard buzzing like a swarm of bees in my ears.

  The whisky was probably to blame, I am sure, but tropical rain was thundering on to a tin roof almost deafening the real thunder from the skies above.

  In my mind, you see, I was sitting on a hard, concrete floor, dizzy, just as then, and a toxic, clear liquid of almost neat alcohol made from palm fruit was being handed around in a dirty, chipped cup.

  For geographical references, this was me having a nightmare about or dreaming about or just thinking about – I can’t remember which – sunny Nigeria. This will certainly explain the weather, the building and the company I was sharing.

  The sun doesn’t always shine in Lagos and, on this occasion, the heavy rain had started while I was at an open-air Night Club – the Pink Coconut.

  The band was still playing somewhere outside, protected from the downpour by some sort of corrugated shelter. Even though I was staring at the log effect fire, I could hear it. The sound of drums and a saxophone was pounding in my chest and a strong smell like stale sweat filled my nostrils. My head had been spinning then just as it was by the log effect gas fire.

  I was in a very mixed gathering – a noisy one, and mine was one of only two white faces.

  There was an intermittent light of sorts – not firelight, but flashes of blue from the lightning outside.

  Sat there, as I was, in Gloucester, forty years later and with a fuddled brain, I struggled to remember and imagine how it was. Then, as it all became clearer and I remembered, I desperately struggled to forget. This is a classic symptom of Thomas’s Disease but, by then, it is too late. This is how nightmares start.

  The flashes of lightning were one sort of light. The other was a yellow flicker from a dim bulb that dangled in the corner. Two wooden chairs stood either side of a wooden table the only furniture in the room. Suddenly it was all starting to come back and I remember fidgeting in my chair by the log effect gas fire in Gloucester because the concrete floor in Lagos was so hard and uncomfortable.

  There was a bluish haze that came from half a dozen glowing tips of strange smelling, hand rolled cigarettes. There was a hissing and splashing like a waterfall, for water was pouring in sparkling torrents from the tin roof, past the window into a deep, muddy flood that was streaming in through the open door. Mice the size of small rats had scampered for cover when I had staggered in with the others to escape the deluge and my shirt was clinging to me like warm sweat.

  Once inside in the dim light and with my eyes barely focusing, I watched an army of nocturnal ants moving across the floor near the wall, up the table leg to a plate of chicken bones – the remains of someone’s dinner. A small lizard was benefitting as well by picking the ants off with its darting tongue as they passed by.

  The occupants of the two chairs were already dozing with their heads lying in folded arms on the table. One arm moved, struck an empty beer bottle and it started to roll. It rolled in a semicircle and fell with a thud onto the floor but did not break. Instead it came to rest with a clinking sound against the table leg.

  The only other white man present lay, apparently asleep, with his mouth ajar. His head lay partly on the bare, dark brown knees of
one of the girls whilst she curled her fingers in his long and greasy hair and leaned back on the wall. Next to her was another man whom she was looking at, rapidly, up and down, up and down, with wide, inviting black eyes and she smacked him provocatively with her spare hand. She was shouting and laughing, laughing and shouting.

  The laughter was loud and coarse, laughter to encourage him, and he then responded by sticking his hand into the depths of her lap.

  “Aye, keep them hand away, man. You be get too much drunk, man, ha ha.”

  The men, too, were punching each other in drunken gusto – the same gusto that was bound to lead to a fight later if something was said the wrong way or a woman showed a preference. Meanwhile, the short, fat, handmade cigarettes glowed, the smoke billowed around and my wet shirt still clung to my back and front.

  I looked around, my eyes alighting on the other white man. Frank Marshall was English. This was confirmed by his grey socks, sandals and his pale but grubby safari suit. Like me, but even more so, Frank had fully succumbed to the beer of earlier so he was now missing out on the local liquor. And around Frank, on the floor, sat or lay perhaps a dozen others, mostly men, some in sweaty, open necked shirts or with unnecessary ties that had become twisted or untied. They were dark figures who mostly ignored me because I had already achieved my objective of being accepted into their company – and, anyway, they were now too drunk to care.

  The “being accepted” part of relationship building had taken me the best part of two days. We had chatted and laughed and drunk and now some drew on cigarettes, which they sucked once, between thumb and first finger before blowing the smoke into the air and passing it on to the next man. Then they punched each other in drugged shows of false affection, their eyes wide and penetrating and the white parts going pink.

  I knew some of their names, like Yemi, Onje, Augustus and Bola and I had their business cards tucked away somewhere.

  Others were new.

  They shouted in a mixture of English and Yoruba, but the conversation, if that is what it was, had strayed a long way from sober ideas to divert government funds into overseas bank accounts into drunken jokes about women, sex and the merits of several wives. Someone had shouted at me across the floor for my views. But they had been much too far gone to hear my quieter, muttered answer that one was already more than I could possibly hope to manage.

  Except for one person, that was.

  She was sitting in the corner. She was sober so she was smiling politely and not laughing but clearly trying to avoid my eye.

  Her long, dark brown legs were together, outstretched on the floor and wrapped in a tight and colourful dress that I had watched her hold up out of the muddy water when we ran in the rain. The hidden legs pointed in my direction, but the bare toes flickered up and down, up and down, like the long eyelashes that circled her eyes. She looked just a little out of place. Perhaps it was shyness.

  I watched her through the smoke.

  Her black eyes, surrounded by that brilliant whiteness, caught the light, shone and sparkled and, now and again, they clearly glanced in my direction. They were alert, thinking eyes, intelligent with a touch of sympathy in them. They seemed filled with worry about where she had suddenly found herself and I knew she sensed my own discomfort. Her look invited me to make a decision. The black skin of her face glowed with a satin smoothness, because she was sweating less than the others were. Her lips were pink and her long, bare arms stretched from strapless shoulders to lie between those straight legs that pointed in my direction and she sat, upright, not leaning on the man next to her, not slapping or punching or laughing or shouting.

  And I had already seen her long black fingers, with the wide gold rings, that waved away the cigarette that was offered. Her hair was a miracle of artistry, full of miniature plaits interspersed with rows of tiny, multi-coloured beads that sparkled like her eyes. She listened and watched and now and again I saw her glance at a gold watch on her dark wrist and then at me. She was also distracted by the noise.

  Shrieks of high pitched laughter were coming from the other corner where two men in the crumpled remains of business suits lay with two younger, black women, one in a short, tight, floral dress.

  One girl looked as though she had already started to discard some clothing but it was so dark and the girl so black that I could not see for certain. But I knew the one who was still dressed. She had earlier introduced herself as Mary. She had sat on my lap at the Pink Coconut and had got as far as sticking a hot, pink tongue into my ear. She was already high on something but whether it was alcohol or some other concoction I did not know.

  But after the searching tongue had failed to impress she had pressed thick lips to my cheek, breathed beer and spicy joloff rice over me and hissed noisily into my ear about sharing the air conditioning back at my hotel. I didn’t like to tell her that the power had failed earlier and there was no air conditioning but, all the time, she was running her fingers up and down my inner thigh. I had excused myself at that point by going to relieve myself in the bushes.

  Oh yes, such were the excitements on offer during visits to Lagos in the seventies.

  But, as I sat there in the chair in Gloucester remembering Mary’s tongue and still smelling the chilli and fish that escaped alongside it I felt something heavy in my bladder as though the need to relieve myself in the bushes was now a necessary reality.

  The half-asleep status had become a quarter-asleep status, as my extended bladder seemed fit to burst.

  Had it been three, four, five or six large glasses of whisky?

  Perhaps I had had no glass at all and was just taking it direct from the bottle but I really had lost count. For years, I had been getting up at least once per night, sometimes twice.

  So, I moved to try to ease the weight on my weakening sphincter as my mind still flitted between past and present and my hand that held the whisky flitted between my lap and my mouth. Someone, somewhere, was telling me that I was sitting by the fire in Gloucester and not in Lagos and that there were no bushes and that a proper bathroom with a flush system and Sarah’s pink towels were available if I needed them. But it all became just a rumour that died as the more exotic reality of dreaming took over once more. So, I gave up worrying about my bladder for a while, took another mouthful of Bell’s and returned to the past in Lagos.

  Such are the symptoms of a really bad bout of Thomas’s Disease.

  Inside my head, everything was dark with just small patches of oscillating light reflecting off moving, black bodies, pink eyes and crumpled white shirts. My own closed eyes could no longer penetrate the gloom.

  So, in my mind I took the cup that was being passed around.

  I licked my lips, swallowed and then passed the cup to the next man, who laughed and punched my arm.

  “Hey, that good stuff man, eh? You like Nigerian wine eh?

  Better than that French shit, eh? Ha ha ha. You wanna puff as well?”

  I shook my head and probably tried, unsuccessfully, to laugh.

  But my lips were dry despite the drinking and so I glanced once more into the corner of the room where the black girl with beads in her hair sat with her legs outstretched and now, just slightly, apart. The girl again looked first at me and then at her watch.

  You see? Dare I continue to type this and so record it for posterity?

  Why not!

  But nearly ninety years old, with an overfull bladder pressing on an enlarged prostate gland and still I sensed the erotic heat of equatorial Africa in my groin.

  But it was one of the other girls who had then crawled across towards me dragging her short floral skirt across the wet floor with her buttocks raised. She had raised her head to smile a drunken smile and pulled herself onto my lap where she pressed her half-exposed breasts against my chest and took my hand and pushed it up into the wetness between her legs. I knew what she expected me to do but I was now being watched by the other girl in the corner and, instead, I politely pushed her away, excused myself a
nd went outside for a piss in the tropical rain.

  And when I turned around I saw the sober girl from the corner standing at the door behind me, waiting.

  Forty years have passed and yet I still think about Angie.

  About Angie with the shining, black hair, the multi-colored beads and the long, long legs that later wrapped so willingly around mine.

  About Angie with the round and beautiful face, pink lips, white teeth and the radiant and beautiful smile that I remember as though it was yesterday.

  Angie was different from the rest and showed me the throbbing passion that was at the heart of everything that is good about Africa.

  With Angie I spent a long, long night in a cool, cool air-conditioned room and found the help I needed to see through one problem but found, yet again, how easy it was to forget the most important person in my life.

  I can still see Angie lying asleep on my crumpled bed at the Airport Hotel in Ikeja and still see her glorious African smile that filled two, dark nights with sun.

  Angie was all about laughing and talking and caressing and touching for hours and wanting to continue forever. Angie was the one, whose naked body I washed in the brown drips of Lagos water that we squeezed from the tap while trying to understand each other’s culture and knowing all along that there was so little difference between us.

  And when she fell asleep, I played with the tiny, multi-coloured beads and the finely plaited strands of black hair that hung across my own shoulders. As she slept, I stroked her dark brown face, looked into her black eyes and I kissed her. I touched and watched the movement of her pink lips and looked down her silky body to her hips and on towards her long legs, watching her firm breasts gently rise and fall as she lay beside me.

  But I lay there for hours, my mind troubled with what I should do about my wife, my family, my business and my other life. This was the defining moment when I felt I had to decide, one way or another.

  I was not just at a simple crossroad, though.

  I felt I had arrived at a complicated, multiple junction without a map but with signposts pointing in all sorts of different directions. Some pointed to places I knew I didn’t want to go, others to places that sounded good but I knew were cul de sacs. Others pointed to unknown places that sounded satisfactory but were shown as via this and past that and by way of somewhere else. And I couldn’t turn around and go back to where I had begun because the route was far too long and tortuous and I might lose myself yet again.

  The nice places to go meant giving up everything and starting again but still meant someone looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life in case I spoke out of turn or went to the authorities.

  And I still had not earned anything like enough to take an early retirement.

  I battled with the dilemma of whether to fly home or just fly away, trying to explain the guilt that was wracking my very soul yet building on the guilt just by lying there.

  I thought about completely disappearing, losing myself and adopting a new identity. But then, in my mind, I would see Sarah standing by the door still waiting for me to return home for years and years to come and I knew I could not live with that.

  And so, those few short days turned into a long, long battle with myself that began on the flight home with me imagining Sarah sat waiting at home. Guilt wracked my very soul.

  I knew if I phoned her from the airport on arrival to say I’d be home in thirty minutes, that she would be standing waiting on the pavement outside the front door when I turned the corner of the street.

  And before I was even fifty yards from the house I knew she would be walking or even running towards me.

  What does this tell you? I am eighty-six years old.

  But I have only just matured enough not to feel too stupid to write things like this. I have previously shied away from expressing unmanly feelings and still dislike writing words like the ones that are now starting to spill from my finger tips. But as I might be dead when someone gets to read it, I suppose it won’t matter.

  Despite what I had done, I still loved Sarah you see. I loved her deeply.

  I didn’t tell her, of course, but she was the one I would need when everything around me had returned to sanity and who I would need when I was too old to care anymore. And I was more than prepared to do my bit if she deteriorated before me.

  So, at that complicated junction in my life, did I eventually decide which road to take?

  Yes.

  I took the road to what sounded like a big, fine place of light and sanity where the signpost read: “Domesti City via the little village of Patience-while-I-sort-things-out.”

  And so, as I always did, I phoned her on arrival at the airport.

  And, of course, as I expected, thirty minutes later Sarah was standing there when I turned the corner and my guilt tripled in strength as I watched her run towards me to grab my hand and pull me towards the house.

  But I couldn’t make love to her that night even though I know she wanted me to.

  I couldn’t for too long and I know that Sarah knew something had happened.

  I remember her asking me more questions about that trip than was usual. I hoped that perhaps she thought I was just distracted by my work. I know, however, that I became a different person for a long while afterwards as I tried to fathom out what to do.

  We had arrived at the village of Patience-while-I-sort- things-out, you see.

  But, as usual, she said nothing. It was though she was waiting for me to have a mental breakdown and come clean on everything. But I am too stubborn for that. Or perhaps I just have a masochistic streak which makes me plough on despite everything.

  For months, she watched me, she looked at me and she tried talking to me about nothing. But she never asked me outright.

  Perhaps I should have admitted everything including my other double life for Donaldson & Co. Perhaps an argument would have cleared the air.

  But my mind was still unsure about too many things.

  When at home I would sit there thinking, pretending to read the paper but becoming more, and more, angry about Donaldson and his increasing numbers of threats.

  By now I hated the man and was plotting things of my own.

  But I could never have told Sarah that what I was thinking might, if it all went wrong, be putting her own safety in jeopardy. It would have been like an admittance of failure of my career and business and I wasn’t ready to give that up just yet.

  During those long weeks and months, I thought that perhaps she had found out about Angie.

  Perhaps I’d said something in passing as a beer-driven joke to Jack or Donaldson or someone else and the joke had somehow got back to Sarah. Perhaps I had talked in my sleep.

  More likely, however, was that one of those intoxicated Nigerians in that rain lashed building in Lagos had been a lackey of Donaldson and he had said something.

  But what did Sarah do?

  Nothing, except continue to wash my sweat ridden shirts and dust covered trousers and iron my suit when I came home and continue to ask me whether I fancied roast beef on Sunday as a treat because I’d missed the last three weekends.

  Why?

  Well I suppose it was for the same reason that I would also run towards her when I came around the corner and saw her waiting.

  You see, since Sarah died I now realize that, all along, she knew far more than I ever thought.

  So, does this prove my naivety or does it show the way that Sarah and I knew what was best for each other?

  I think that is the case.

  Sometimes, silence is like gold.

  Perhaps silence is also like diamond, because it would have been that sort of wedding anniversary for us next year.

  These recent nightmares are caused by realizing that the one woman I knew I should not have deceived and with whom I should, undoubtedly, have shared my feelings more openly was probably far more intuitive than me. I now think she actually understood everything and she especially understood the acu
te depths of loneliness that can afflict a man who travelled alone and whose commitment to his job had meant he had become trapped and caught up in the same knots he was trying to unravel.

  But I think, too, she knew I loved her and would always be with her right to the end.

  And so, I was.

  For that I am very happy.

  But my eyes are now hurting because they have run dry.

  And this typewriter ribbon has also run dry.

  Written above in the last few inches of fading ink is my description of a personal guilt.

  What follows below, written in the darker, fresher black of a new ribbon, is another sort of guilt. What follows is my admittance to being an innocent accomplice to murder but I had no idea it was to be that serious at the time.

  You see, it was quite within Donaldson’s style to create situations where people who had become a nuisance either to himself or others would be dealt with in such a way that they were forced to retreat from whatever nuisance they were creating and become compliant. Donaldson was adept at this sort of thing as, having already become a victim, I knew all too well. Compromising photographs and being forced to use a false identity were examples of what kept me on message. But Donaldson’s inventiveness had no boundaries.

  I handled this one in a completely detached and unemotional manner as if it was just another routine business transaction. I discussed this with myself as I did all such transactions. I knew I wouldn’t get paid but the reward was in knowing that it would postpone any immediate impact on Sarah and my family.

  I took part because, at the time, I saw no viable alternative.

  For this job, I was a subcontractor who subcontracted it out to another.

  Of course, Donaldson was the one who had subcontracted it to me but I still don’t know if someone had subcontracted it to him or how far up the chain it went. But this is how things happened. Fortunately, sometimes, those that find a corpse lying at the foot of the mountain can point to the vultures living amongst the clouds at the top.

  Nevertheless, I still have a guilty conscience and so it forms part of my statement.

  But, frankly, whatever happens, I don’t really care anymore.

  For even now, when I turn the corner at the end of the road,

  I may be carrying some clinking bottles of Bell’s whisky, but the only thing I still look out for is Sarah running towards me.

 

  A Sub Contract

  I had talked to Angie about my friend Frank Marshall as we were lying in bed.

  I also mentioned another Englishman who was supposed to be arriving in Lagos the day after. But this other Englishman was not booked to stay at the seedy Airport Hotel where Angie and I were ensconced.

  Oh no, this man was very well connected in British Government circles and so, on the invitation of a Nigerian Government Minister, was booked to stay at an official residence in the better end of Lagos.

  And anyone with a nose for an opportunity to cash in was sniffing around as the opportunities provided by the arrival of this particular representative of the British government were endless. Imaginations were being triggered everywhere. And, of course, Donaldson was quick off his mark.

  It had started, as always, with a phone call and I had been summoned to Regent Street to meet Donaldson and Jack.

  “Mum’s the word, old chap. Don’t ask, there’s a dear fellow. We’re all in this shit and what you don’t know can’t come and bite you in the arse later.”

  “But it would be nice to know a bit more. I mean, I heard he was a . . . you know. Tell me more about him,” I found myself asking.

  Donaldson had grinned.

  Jack remained his usual serious, passive self.

  “Ah! The bloody homo. The fucking pansy. I know you like Israeli women and are a big fan of Africans as well, dear fellow, but don’t tell me you’re in to queers as well, old chap. Ha Ha.

  “Frank will fill you in once you get to Lagos. Fill you in! Ha Ha.

  “So sorry about the choice of words, old boy, but you have to laugh to keep sane. But not only is he a queer but a peer. So, what we have here is a queer peer, old chap. You’ve got to laugh.”

  I was, facing the familiar silhouette of Donaldson as he stood, his hands fiddling with something in his trouser pockets, before the open window of the Regent Street office. It was summertime and there was the sound of car and taxi horns outside as they all sat immobile in a traffic jam. There was some sort of official thing going on in London – the Queen or something. Security was everywhere.

  “He’s a bit lah de dah!” That was Donaldson’s next description.

  “Excuse me? Lah de dah?”

  “Homo, old chap. Bit slow on the uptake today, aren’t we? One for the chaps and not the bints. Like your friend, Mohammed what’s it in Tripoli that you once told me about. The one with the funny handshake you met in the park one Friday afternoon after prayers. Got it now, my dear fellow?”

  “And he’s a frequent visitor to Africa?” I asked.

  “Where there’s a big willy there’s always a little filly.”

  “What?”

  Jack now looked deeply embarrassed.

  “Better be careful, old chap. No direct eye contact, alright? Greedy little sod, from what I know. Gets off with anyone who looks him in the eye. Nice touch in cravats, too. Might take it off in Africa, I suppose, if he gets too hot under the collar. What say you?”

  “Good lord!” I said, with much innocence.

  “Yes, that’s it. He’s a Lord. House of Lords and all that. Got an inkling now who the blazes we’re talking about?”

  A few minutes later and it soon became clear that, in Donaldson’s devious mind, Frank Marshall was the ideal person to be involved here and I was being asked to subcontract out a certain job.

  “That’s it, old chap. Just fix the meeting with Frank.

  Nothing more than that really. Don’t need to know the sordid, bloody details.”

  But as usual, it was not enough for me. I needed far more and, under the circumstances, it seemed a reasonable request.

  “It would be useful – just a little more. What’s he done for Christ’s sake?”

  “No need to know, dear fellow. Just do your job. Check out the few details we need. Just for the record so to speak. Ask the questions. Make sure you swat up on your artillery and your pharmaceuticals. Impress him – though not too much, if you get my gist.

  “You know, old chap, you’ve done this sort of thing before. But think Africa. Think jungle, old chap. Think the dire consequences of widespread mud hut terrorism. Think sweat and grime. Think Mau Mau. Think about the famine and mass starvation that might follow an unauthorised coup. Just think you’re doing your Queen and Country proud, old chap.”

  “But the man’s well known – famous in fact.” I said with my usual utter naivety.

  “Infamous old chap. Think infamous.”

  “But what’s he done?” I repeated, knowing all too well what my persistence would do.

  Donaldson finally lost his patience and sighed.

  I heard him say, “Ffffff,” beneath his breath as he turned away.

  The slightest hint of humour was already gone, to be replaced with his usual bristling anger and impatience. The rustling sound from inside his pockets increased but then stopped altogether. The hand emerged. He turned back, pointing to his nose and the voice became more intense.

  “Frank will get the job done, not you. You just line it all up, understood?”

  “Exactly what job? What does Frank have to do? Does Frank know more than me?” I asked.

  Donaldson’s impatience went up another grade. In fact, he stepped forward and leaned on the desk, his face just a foot away and both hands now back inside his pockets. His voice was now a hiss.

  How I hated that bastard’s face.

  Even after all these years. I can see it now, as it reddened and his lips glistened with spit.

  “Frank knows where he is best off.
He just does his job, old chap. You could learn a thing or two from Frank. There’s serious money at stake here.” Then he quickly added, as if he realised he had just made a serious mistake: “Not to say lives of course.”

  But I stood my ground, facing him, nose to nose and I pushed Donaldson further, picking up on his mention of money.

  “Money? What money? Does Frank get any for whatever it is he’s doing? Do I get any? And, anyway, Frank is a friend of mine. He’s no friend of yours.”

  I heard Jack cough and move closer to the door.

  Donaldson stood up, exasperated, and walked around behind me, behind the other, spare desk and then back to the window. His black silhouette stood there for a moment and then he exploded.

  Frankly, it was as though something had finally burst inside the man. It was as though this particular case was giving him all sorts of private headaches.

  “For fuck’s sake, man. If there was an option, we’d take it.

  The man’s a national security risk. I told you before, the FBI, SASF, the French, they’re all starting to take notes. He’s a fucking liability. What’s more, he’s an international embarrassment. He’s been messing around in his dandy fashion with everyone from Gadaffi to Lumumba and from Ian Smith and Jomo Kenyatta to Nkomo.

  “He’s a political bloody fool but too close to you-know-who to get officially chopped. What’s more, we know he’s started taking money in the form of commissions, which he hasn’t even got the sense to realize is just a little on the side of improper. He seems to think it’s a perk. And what’s more he’s so bloody naïve that he’s started spouting on about it rather too openly and doesn’t understand that, if he’s not careful he’ll get it in the neck from someone sooner or later anyway.”

  Donaldson went quieter for a second, breathing deeply, as though trying to summon some patience from somewhere and perhaps also thinking he’d said far too much already. He stared with his back to me down into the traffic jam blocked street below with one hand in his jacket pocket.

  My own mind was still full of questions and what Donaldson had already said still wasn’t enough for me. The word assassination had not been used but it was perfectly clear to me that I was being asked to take a part in some sort of plot worthy of Guy Fawkes.

  Questions rattled through my head about what Frank was being asked to do.

  Did British governments really keep certain parts of the Civil Service in order to occasionally use them for jobs like this? Was this all part of their mandate to govern? Did actions like this involve other countries? America? France? Were things like this done with their tacit approval or was this a purely British problem?

  Why not just sack the man, I thought, or was a simple sacking impossible due to knock on effects elsewhere? I had no idea. After all, I was only a simple, small businessman.

  Then I remembered I had already witnessed one assassination. Was this to be another?

  I had been there when David Reynolds had been removed for reasons that were still very unclear to me. Unlike this new target, Reynolds had been virtually anonymous but, by imitating him, I had already become deeply involved in his death. Was Donaldson ordering me to help in another disappearance? Were Donaldson’s own instructions coming from higher up?

  I looked behind me at Jack who I knew had been staring at me. But he looked away and I heard him do something with the door handle.

  Then Donaldson turned to face me and I heard my own thoughts being spoken aloud.

  “I heard you’ve already done it once, old chap. So, you’re bloody used to it.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I asked.

  “You’ve got such a bad memory, Ollie. I heard you were the only one there when that poor chap Reynolds got it in the neck. Remember? God knows what went on there. But I heard you had him shot and then stole his passport.”

  He then turned away again.

  Behind me, I heard Jack do something more with the door handle and exit.

  It clicked shut and I was alone with Donaldson.

  “You fucking bastard,” I said and I leaned over his desk, knocking his phone and went for him but he seemed to anticipate it and moved just out of my reach. I was already half way across the desk and about to jump onto it as the phone fell with its bell ringing to the floor. Donaldson took another stride back to the window, turned to face me, put his hand into his jacket pocket.

  It came out holding a handgun.

  He pointed it straight at my head.

  “Calm it, Ollie. Believe me I won’t hesitate to use this fucking thing and David Reynolds will die for the second time.”

  I stopped half on and half off of the desk, but there was only one thing on my mind.

  Sarah.

  What the hell had I got involved with?

  I retreated from the desk staring at the gun and Donaldson’s red face. A big lump of white spit had settled on his lower lip. My whole body was trembling with anger and fear.

  And it was as though Donaldson was reading my thoughts yet again.

  “And if Reynolds gets shot, no one will know about it, Ollie, because he’s already dead and doesn’t really exist. As for fucking Ollie Thomas, it’ll be assumed he’s just flown off somewhere to fuck his African bitch and hide.”

  Neither Thomas’s Disease nor my most vivid of nightmares allow me to remember what I did or said after that.

  I think I felt just as I do now – a total numbness.

  I only recall a vision of Sarah waiting for ever for me to come home. Sarah was the most important thing to me and the only way was to continue until I could, one day, find a way out.

  But I still remember Donaldson’s final words: “So, better sooner than later, old chap. You’re going there anyway on your own bloody business, aren’t you? There’s nothing to it. All you have to do is to introduce the pansy to Frank. So, fuck off. Get out of here.”

  It was meant for me to know that he was in control.

  Donaldson had known that I had no reason to go to Nigeria for my own business. Not just at that moment in time.

  A few minutes later I left to find Jack still standing nervously in the corridor at the top of the stairs. Behind the closed door, I heard Donaldson laugh.

  I went home in a deep sweat to break the news to Sarah that I was going to Nigeria for a week or so looking for a few new agents.

  Instead, I found myself up to my neck in a sordid plot, which I did not understand. But, as usual, once involved, however marginally, there was always a risk of implications if things went wrong and it became another case that Donaldson would remind me of regularly over the coming years. There is no doubt about it. I was his shield. He was deliberately putting me between himself and any future implications.

  The man’s normal demeanour was one of a scowling, bitter but uncompromising man and rare attempts at laughter which normally only accompanied a lecherous leer towards a woman’s breast followed by a coarse joke which only he would laugh at. He rarely, if ever, laughed normally. The laugh from behind that closed door was one I will never forget. It was as though he had cracked a joke.

  But Donaldson’s jokes were not meant to be funny but to intimidate.

  To this day, I remember Donaldson’s laugh as like that of a ravenous hyena or one on heat calling for a mate. I once saw this in a David Attenborough film but far more often I saw it in nightmares. In these nightmares, it was a flea-bitten animal with yellowing teeth, a sloping back and with Donaldson’s face. It would stand, head lowered, sniffing around a carcass that was my own body left half eaten by African lions.

  In my sleep, I would cover my ears and try to deafen the noise of Donaldson’s laugh.

  But Donaldson’s allusion to African women had also got me worried as, until then, I thought this particular experience was a secret only between Angie and me. Sarah and I had, gradually, worked around my quiet, guilty patch and everything was back to normal. But it was at this point that I decided that Sarah knew something about Angie.

&nb
sp; Somehow, Donaldson had fed a snippet of something into a chain of Chinese whispers. There really was no end to the bastard’s list of ways to upset others by scattering distrust.

  I really have no wish even to recall Angie nowadays but she still comes back as though, forty years later, her own life, unlike my own, has stood still.

  But Thomas’s Disease means that my dreams know no boundaries and, as I have explained before, I am regularly haunted by ghosts, people long since thought to be dead, known to be dead or at least irrelevant. But they seem to return as though deliberately trying to remind me of the parts of my past that I have no wish to recall.

  In my mind, Angie still looks and sounds the same.

  She still has the same, husky, deep voice that reminds me pathetically of holiday brochures, of hot, white, sand and coconut palms that lean towards a flat blue sea.

  These days, I have to force myself to realize that even Angie would be in her seventies by now. Perhaps she is dead.

  Perhaps, she has young grandchildren who go to school in Lagos in navy blue shorts and white shirts carrying old-fashioned, brown leather satchels over their shoulders.

  Grandchildren who laugh and play and run and kick empty coconuts or Coca Cola cans with bare feet and who smile wide smiles at the world through perfect white teeth that they have inherited from their sensuous grandma.

  Perhaps they still laugh because, like all children, they had not yet learned what life holds in store.

  And, after my brief involvement, I also dream that perhaps they aren’t even black.

  Perhaps they are only light brown or even piebald.

  Perhaps their grandma, Angie, has already died, of old age.

  Perhaps she had died with secrets intact or died whilst being tortured to release her secrets.

  Most likely, dreams tell me, Donaldson knew far more than me. Perhaps Donaldson even knew about illegitimate children and where they were.

  Do you see the nightmare scenario that can arise through being a sufferer of acute Thomas’s Disease and having too much time for thinking and dreaming and drinking?

  But there is actually so little time left.

  I am now an old man and I am writing this just in case something happens to me.

  Fortunately, I have already got a good way through this statement but it is far from complete. There is far more to tell and explain and my fingers and hand are hurting although my typing speed has vastly improved. But my head is aching, too, and there is a pain in my chest.

  Perhaps it is, because I know what I am about to write about.

  On the other hand, perhaps this is my last sentence.

  I think I’ll stop a moment for a drink.

  Medical Report

  I‘m feeling better now and it’s heartburn I think although I thought you only got that by eating. It says nothing on the pack of Rennies about stomach acid being caused by whisky. My head still hurts but the brain inside it is brilliantly clear.

  In fact, my brain is far clearer now than before the drink. My brain is as good now as it was sixty years ago. And other parts of me that you might imagine are now completely defunct also still work. Just dreaming about Angie proves that point.

  But it’s when I stand before a full-length mirror, that I see the problem.

  For that is when I see a naked, depressed old man with poor muscle tone and a smooth, white stomach that restricts the vision of what hangs beneath. There are wrinkles in places where wrinkles should never be. My joints look misshapen and many of them crack and squeak like un-oiled hinges. Hands and wrists that were once permanently tanned and liberally scattered with dark and manly hair are now bare, blue veined and blotched with melanin. My nails are often brittle, broken and yellow and athlete’s foot is rife. I have knees that sometimes give out under strain and they hurt like hell if I stand up from kneeling down to mop the floor. I have a backbone that feels as though it will snap every time I stand up and I have such poor hearing in one ear, that my neck is permanently bent on the downwind side.

  After I’ve finished this section, I’m going to the opticians for new glasses. But I hate the bastards with their pure white, clinical attitudes and fancy machines that convey trust and highly honed medical skills but, in fact, prove nothing more than a dubious commercial shrewdness.

  “Would you like to try these on, Mr Thomas?” “How much are they?”

  “Two hundred pounds but you get your usual over sixty five’s discount.”

  “Fuck me! I only want to see through them, not look like Sophia Loren. I’ll leave it for now, thanks.”

  My hair used to be thick and black and held in place by Brylcream and combed into neat partings either on the right or left side depending whether I was Ollie Thomas or David Reynolds. Now there isn’t much left to cut but I also hate the fucking barbers who scratch across the thin skin of my skull with their sharp combs.

  I now cut it myself but my fingers seem to have lost all their precision. They won’t bend, especially when cold.

  I recently tried to pick up a coin that I dropped on the floor in the off license but felt like an elderly Calcutta beggar, desperately gathering scattered coins. And all the time my back would be breaking, my knees hurting and my eyes, far from concentrating on the location of the coin, would be trying to see how many other people were watching.

  The worse thing is if my bloody neighbour Fred Carrington sees me because the bastard smirks.

  My eyes run, constantly. Cold saline flows down my cheeks if I venture out in the cold wind and is one hundred percent guaranteed to find the only unblocked duct in my body. It runs into my nose forcing me to stop to wipe both red eyes and blue nose like a sobbing boy. With a white handkerchief, I look like a bloody Union Jack.

  And I often drop my stick. It slides off my arm. I know the blasted thing is going to slide before it slides. But it faces one with yet another dilemma of whether to concentrate on the running mucus or the sliding stick.

  When I eventually get to meet my maker, I hope it’s not a cold day and the Lord welcomes me with a running nose.

  But let me introduce you to Frank, Olga and another Lord.