Step by Step

by Simon Reeve

  At lunchtime they unlocked the office door and escorted me to the lift so I could pop out for a sandwich. I dodged around a corner, hopped into the Tube and never went back. It caused something of a furore. I’d spent a morning photocopying secret documents and then I vanished into thin air. A day later two plain-clothes police officers showed up at my parents’ house and identified themselves as Special Branch. I could hear them talking to my mum at the front door.

  ‘Do you know where your son is, Mrs Reeve? We really need to find him.’

  Mum stalled for me, muttering something about how I might be out.

  ‘Mrs Reeve? We would really like to speak to him.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, officers,’ she said politely. ‘But I don’t think he wants to see you.’

  I got off my bed, opened my door and called down. ‘Mum,’ I shouted, ‘tell them I’m not coming out. And I’m not going back.’

  Short of getting a warrant to search the house there was little they could do.

  I sank back into a brief period of depression. I had applied for countless jobs, been ignored, rejected and sacked. After walking out of the only employment I might have been able to hold down I wondered if I would ever manage to find a proper job.

  Dad came to the rescue. We’d had our huge, pathetic and violent differences but I knew he wanted the best for me and wanted to see me make something of my life. He didn’t pull a few strings, call an old school chum to get me a job, or ring his wealthy friends, because he didn’t have any. Instead he helped me find my way in life by spotting an advert in the back of The Sunday Times. The newspaper wanted a small team of post-boys and -girls and was holding out the possibility of some journalism training for anyone who worked hard. I thought it was a job that was completely out of my league. I hadn’t gone to private school or university, let alone Oxford or Cambridge, still where so many media people are drawn from. There were thousands of over-qualified graduates jostling for any job in the media. But this ad was aimed specifically and exclusively at non-graduates, at people who weren’t from traditional media backgrounds or influential families. I had a chance.

  I put my all into my application. I had time on my hands and nothing to lose. I turned my CV into my own newspaper and sent it in with an essay I’d written on Schindler’s Ark. An exec at the paper called me in for an interview on a busy, chaotic Friday and they seemed to like me. I had never lost interest in what was going on in the world and perhaps I was able to impress them with a little knowledge despite my nerves. I was keen, even desperate. They said I fit the bill, that I was exactly the sort of person they had in mind when they placed the ad. It turned out it was the idea of the editor, Andrew Neil. He’s had his critics over the years, but I owe him my career. More than 5,000 people applied for the five positions. Two weeks later I was offered one of the jobs. I couldn’t quite believe it. Old fears kicked in, of failure and making a fool of myself. This was the most prestigious newspaper in Western Europe – how on earth would a pathetic lad from Acton fit in?

  I knew I had to overcome those fears, otherwise they would cripple me. I had to decide that my fear of regret if I didn’t take the opportunity was greater than my fear of failure. I decided I had to be just a little bit more positive, hopeful and optimistic. I would take the job, embrace the opportunity and overcome my nerves by taking everything gently and slowly . . . step by step.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Foot in the Door

  If going for an interview at the Sunday Times had been nerve-wracking, travelling there for my first day was horrendous. In the days before I started I suffered from regular panic attacks: dizzy spells, uncontrollable fear, shaking and then incredible nausea. To get there on my first day I had to take my mum along on the Tube for support. I was eighteen, I had been suicidal, depressed, unemployed and out of school for nearly a year. I was a bag of nerves.

  The building itself was daunting, a huge old rum warehouse in Wapping split into various departments with the editor Andrew Neil’s office at one end, then the picture desk, newsroom, foreign department and investigations, and the post room next to the photocopiers and toilets in the middle. Business, sport, the style section and travel were at the furthest end. The newsroom had a sense of immediacy and urgency you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere else. There was drama and activity, and it constantly felt like a war-room.

  When I started most of the staff on the paper seemed to be Oxbridge or Ivy League. I was the least educated person in the room. I often still am today. Everyone on the paper seemed frighteningly clever, brilliant and ludicrously worldly. Some were legends. I’d watched films about two journalists on the Sunday Times. One of them was Jon Swain, a foreign correspondent for the paper who had served in the French Foreign Legion, been kidnapped in Northern Ethiopia and held for months in the desert by a group called the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, and been immortalised in The Killing Fields, the Oscar-winning 1984 film set in Cambodia during the slaughter carried out by the Khmer Rouge, which I and millions of others had watched in numbed horror. The other was Peter Hounam, the chief investigative reporter at the paper. I’d seen a TV movie dramatising an investigation he conducted which revealed the existence of Israel’s secret nuclear weapons programme. It was a global scoop. Mossad, the Israeli secret service, had kidnapped his source Mordechai Vanunu and smuggled him back to the Middle East. I was going to work near these people. I was supposed to be sorting their mail. Walking in there on day one left me feeling completely awed. My knees quaked.

  My nerves and fears lasted for the first few weeks. I shouldn’t have worried, but I did. Then I would start feeling nauseous. To avoid being sick I’d skip meals. Yet slowly I realised that I didn’t need to be dominated by fear. I was a lowly post-boy, but I felt welcome and useful right from the start. It was a ferociously busy place full of hard-bitten, ambitious hacks, but I posed no threat and from the beginning almost everyone was welcoming and friendly. They made me feel as if I was part of a team, and we were all on a mission. For all my trepidation and churning stomach, the office felt exciting. Even I could sense something tantalising: possibility.

  Initially little was expected of me except to be there, often early, and make sure I did what was asked. The four other non-grads who joined at the same time were all at least a few years older. We would either work an early shift starting at 7 a.m., or a later one starting at 10. The early shift collected the first post delivery of between ten and twenty sacks of mail from the loading bay, shifted them into the central Sunday Times post room in a trolley or over shoulders, and then sorted them by hand. It was a mountain of mail that took hours to clear and I worked at it day after day. I had no pretensions about who I was or what I should be. Never for a second did I think that sorting mail or running errands was beneath me. Quite the opposite. I was bloody grateful for a job and I threw myself into it with gusto.

  The end wall of our post room was lined with around a hundred pigeon-holes, which we would sort mail into and then empty every few hours and deliver the contents to people at their desks. It was mundane but perfect for me. I wasn’t ready for anything more challenging, and sorting the post gave me an insight into who everyone was and what they did. Most people on the paper were chained to their desks, but I walked miles every day around that old warehouse delivering mail and packages. I knew every inch of the place. I couldn’t have asked for a better grounding. It put me in the perfect position to take advantage of the situation.

  Right from day one, I realised this was the biggest opportunity of my life. I had a foot in the door. I set about trying to make myself useful, initially just by learning how to use the fax machine and the photocopiers. Long before everything went digital, proof copies of the newspaper pages were made on huge A1/A2 photocopiers and passed to the senior executives for their checks and corrections. The copiers were ancient and forever breaking down. I learned how to fix them and kept them running. In a paper that completely depended on the copier churning out the page proofs i
t was a critical skill. Being the only one who could keep them alive made me unsackable.

  Back then I had nothing going on in my life except that job. I lived at home. I didn’t have a girlfriend or see many friends. I would work a full shift sorting the post, then hang around talking to people, volunteering help and slowly, little by little, step by step, picking up confidence and contacts until people were asking me to do small gofer chores for them. Perhaps picking up a package from the couriers, collecting newspaper articles from the cuttings library or getting them tea and a sandwich when they were on a deadline. Then I would offer more help. Cuttings had to be returned at the end of the day, so did they want me to photocopy them? All of them? I’d copy cuttings not just as a bodged job, but carefully and thoughtfully, placing them on the machines so they could actually be read. I remember taking time over those smallest tasks. And never moaning or complaining or getting above myself. I was enjoying everything. I would have worked there for free. And that showed. It made a difference.

  After a few months the arts editor David Mills, who was always seen in a three-piece suit, usually tweed, and a homburg hat, asked me to go through the cuttings and find the worst reviews of West End shows to put into a small article. It was a laborious job. I found a few to show him and to check I was getting it right.

  ‘That works, that one doesn’t, that one does,’ he said, mainly to himself, as he glanced through them.

  I could have just nodded and checked my watch to see what time I could leave. Instead I said simply: ‘Why?’

  He was rushed off his feet. He didn’t need to explain himself to me. But he flicked back through the articles and pointed out what he was looking for. He was happy with what I’d already found, but I stayed there until after midnight in the airless, windowless cuttings library deep in the bowels of ‘Fortress Wapping’ and went through hundreds of articles and reviews looking for more juicy or malicious quotes, wrote them out, and then presented them to him the next morning. I actually found a few that made him laugh. So instead of just working them into an article he put them into a marked-out box on a page in the arts section and added my name underneath. It was my first ever byline, a tiny ‘compiled by Simon Reeve’. Well, I could hardly have been prouder if I had written the splash on the front page. My grandma cut it out and framed it.

  Funny how even just a morsel of success can make a person hungry for more. A few key people started to pick up on my enthusiasm. Looking back now, I think I became a bit of a project for some of the older hacks who had entered the profession with ideals and were delighted that some youngsters had been brought into the paper from different and mostly ordinary backgrounds.

  One afternoon Peter Hounam, the chief investigative reporter, came to get his mail while I was sorting the post. Peter was big, bearded, kindly, and something of a hangover from the past. A union man through and through, he conducted old-school long-term investigations into corruption, arms dealing and organised crime by doggedly pursuing leads and sources. We started chatting and I mentioned I’d love to help him in my spare time.

  It was nothing major at first, just photocopying more cuttings, but it quickly developed. Every success I had led on to something else. Soon I was searching phone directories for him and tracing people he wanted to find who had been involved in dodgy deals, or going out to public record offices and libraries hunting through the electoral roll.

  I had only been at the paper for four months when I had my big break. John Witherow, the foreign editor, came marching through to the post room and called me over.

  ‘You’ve been doing lots of research for Hounam and other people, haven’t you, Simon?’ he said. I was amazed he even knew my name. ‘We’ve got a lead on something. Might be a story. Not sure. Might need you to go to Boston.’

  Boston! I stared at him. I’d never even been on a plane.

  He said it as casually as if he was asking me to pop to the canteen and get him a prawn sandwich.

  ‘You’re free at the moment, aren’t you?’

  I nodded nervously.

  ‘I’ve just got to go into [the editors’] conference now. I’ll give you more details in a minute. Just get ready.’

  He marched off. I wondered whether I should just follow him and tell him I wasn’t even sure I had a passport.

  I took some post down to the news desk and told the secretaries where I might be going, trying to impress them. I told some friends on the picture desk. They were excited for me. Then I told the researcher on features, the deputy managing editor, the production department and the secretary from the arts section. It’s possible I also told one or two of the journalists in home news.

  I trotted over to see Peter. I had a pile of cuttings for him. He could see I was flushed with excitement.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

  ‘You won’t believe this,’ I hissed, nodding towards the foreign desk, ‘but Witherow wants me to go to Boston. Boston!’

  Peter cocked a quizzical eyebrow.

  ‘I don’t know if I have a passport. I mean, I must have a passport but I have no idea where it is . . .’ I rambled on.

  Peter cut in.

  ‘Simon, um . . . he means Boston in Lincolnshire. Sorry. They were talking about it after conference.’

  I felt like a bit of a plum, but also slightly relieved.

  Witherow called me to a side office for a quick briefing.

  ‘We’ve had a tip that two South African neo-Nazi terrorists who are on the run might actually be here in the UK.’

  ‘Neo-Nazis?’ I queried, stopping him in mid-flow. ‘Terrorists?’ I remember saying the words very slowly, taking it all in.

  ‘Yes.’ He looked sideways at me, perhaps wondering whether I was ready for this. I tried to look more confident. As if this was normal.

  ‘They blew up queues of people waiting for taxis in the townships. Some say they were given weapons by a rogue South African intelligence unit that’s trying to undermine the peace process. The South African police are after them. But we think they left the country overland on false passports and have since flown here. One of them has family in Lincolnshire. We’ve been given a number,’ he said, producing a hastily written scrap of paper. ‘We know it’s in Boston, but nobody is answering. I’ve just tried it again. It’s probably a dud lead but why don’t you head up there? We’ll try to find an address for the number and then you could pop round and knock on their door. Oh, and you could keep trying that number for us,’ he said, almost as an afterthought.

  My mind was spinning.

  ‘If you speak to them tell them you’re from the Sunday Times. We think they want to talk to us. After that it’s up to you. Use your judgement and if you think they’ll talk to us and they have something interesting to say, phone me.’

  He gave me the slip of paper, the foreign desk manager gave me some petty cash and I grabbed my bag and jumped in a taxi to the station. I was breathing heavily, almost hyperventilating. But not just with nerves. With excitement as well. I was a post-room boy on a mission. I felt a real sense of purpose. As I’d been leaving another reporter on the paper told me the men were on the run from the South African secret service, and they were probably being hunted by an armed ANC unit. It was possible MI6 knew they were in the UK or had even let them into the country and was encouraging them to talk to us.

  At King’s Cross I found a quiet payphone and rang the number Witherow had given me. I expected it to ring off the hook. It was answered almost immediately, but only with silence.

  I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. ‘Hello?’ I said nervously. ‘Hello?’

  Silence.

  ‘Hello?’ I tried again.

  ‘Who is this?’ said an accusing voice with an Afrikaans accent, guttural in my ear.

  Inwardly I gasped, then tried to speak. For a second nothing came out. And then everything just clicked into place.

  ‘My name is Simon Reeve. I’m calling from the Sunday Times newspaper in London. I gather you mi
ght want to share your story with us,’ I paused for effect. ‘I’m on my way to Lincolnshire. I hope we can meet up, face-to-face.’

  My confidence surprised me. I was speaking completely differently, replacing my laddish West London accent with a deeper tone. But I had heard Peter and other investigators talking in this direct, almost commanding way and milking the name of the paper for all of the authority it carried.

  There was silence, and the sound of clicks on the line. My God, was somebody else listening? ‘Where shall we meet?’ I said, a little less certainly.

  ‘Where do you suggest?’ said the voice.

  It was working. Bloody hell. I had to think quickly. I looked around for inspiration.

  ‘Let’s meet on the station platform?’

  ‘In Boston?’

  ‘Yes. I can be there in three hours.’

  ‘How will we know you?’ The voice was rasping.

  It came to me quickly: ‘I’ll be carrying a copy of The Times under my left arm. You do the same.’ There was a grunt of agreement down the line. By the time I hung up the phone I was shaking.

  I took the main line north and then switched onto a branch line to Boston. The train was full of farmers, country gents and schoolchildren. And then there was me, en route to meet two South African terrorists. I must have looked faintly ridiculous, a wide-eyed eighteeen-year-old just a couple of years older than the schoolkids, wearing a leather jacket bought from Shepherd’s Bush market and a tie my mum had bought me from the Makro cash and carry. But I felt a surge of pride, and a strange feeling I had rarely experienced before: a sense of purpose and meaning. I was on a mission, and it mattered.

  I was late to meet them. I had arrived early but walked into the small market town, not to check if I was being followed or anything professional, but to send a postcard to my mum, telling her I was out of London. When I realised the time I fairly scuttled back to the station with my newspaper tucked firmly under my arm. Boston station is not a large place. There were no trains and no other passengers, save for me on one platform, and two neo-Nazis on the other. It was a surreal moment.