Mario told me that you only needed to tell them once. ‘They do not know much English. It is enough to show them by hand where to go and what to do,’ Štefan the translator told me. He added that if I had a problem, I could bring the girls to Mario and he would sort.
‘Will there be any problems with the girls?’ I reiterated.
‘No problem. I can trust them and they can trust me,’ he reassured me. He suggested paying the girls between £250 to £350 per month but charging the punters between £300 and £500 a time, depending on what they wanted. It was clearly a well-worn strategy.
Back down in the bar, the pressure was off. I had met Mr Margate but I had two girls in the bag – one beautiful, one not so beautiful. I didn’t really give a toss. There had been no whiff of any problem. I thought I was within a whisker of getting them. We had one meeting left. Within a fortnight, we were going to collect them from Bar 26 in Margate. Just one thing stood in our way – and we had no choice about it.
If they rocked up in Margate with the girls, then we had to hand them over to the Police Welfare Unit. It was time to tell Kent Constabulary we were about to buy sex workers. I was slightly wary of sharing our intelligence, for fear they might scupper or take over the op, but in the bigger picture, the professional standards of the BBC were all that counted. Thankfully, Kent Constabulary said that they would pay the money but we would run the show. I was more than happy with that. However, I did have a very big concern. They should have seen the schoolboy error that they were making – how and why was I introducing another person to the deal right at the final stage? That was why Sangita had got jettisoned with Harry. It was too late in the game. You simply didn’t introduce a new player so close to the deal. I wouldn’t know their undercover cop any more than the Slovaks would, and that meant there was none of that natural acting chemistry that Paul, Dom and I could carry off to a tee. If he misread me at the key moment, then we would look pretty stupid and be cursing ourselves forever.
On the Saturday before Margate, we went to meet the police to see if they had any better master plan than us. Dave Clark from the City of London police had been my initial contact on the story just before Christmas – he sent an unmarked car to fetch me from home just after half seven in the morning. I loved that – cruising round the M25, pretending to put the blues and twos on. I was itching for a go. I even asked if I could pull some muppet over just for a laugh. I could never travel on the M25 again after this – speed down the hard shoulder with your lights on – what the hell had everyone been complaining about all these years? We were genuinely running a little late. I took great pleasure in barging everything out the way on our way to meet the detective sergeant (DS) and the undercover cop (UC).
The car was one thing but imagine how much I loved running the meeting with the police. One problem. The undercover cop didn’t show – he was running multiple identities too, and was on another job. The way I saw it, we could only really work him in as the money man. I would have brought him down especially from London to deliver the loot. But you can’t work backwards from the sting with your cover story – this late introduction of the UC meant that I had denied myself the chance earlier in the piece to tell Štefan and Mario that I was too important to travel with the money. It was plausible to have someone carry my cash, but it was far from watertight. It would have got us in the shit big time if I had started messing around in Luník like this, but on home soil, given their readiness to meet plus the frequency of the meetings, it was a chance I was prepared to take.
It left me slightly uneasy; I was a control freak when it came to work. And rightly so. Someone had to have a plan and lead. I didn’t deal in uncertainties. Also, the circle of knowledge on a sting like this is tiny: you never add people, you only lose them. Štefan got that – he had binned Rudolf the Muscle for the Gatwick meeting once Mario stepped up to the plate.
I loved it though – I was told the UC guy was a good man, a true pro and I was running the show. The alternative was that I handed over everything to the police and had to watch it play out from the back of the control room. On the ground, they would go on my shout. Thankfully, Annie the producer had been firm with them – this was our sting, and they would bathe in its propaganda glory if it all came off. End of.
The meeting lasted a couple of hours. Crucially, we agreed when we would call the mission in. The cops would have a van at the end of the road. On the exchange of the money, they would storm Bar 26 in Margate and arrest everyone. It was a classic military ops meeting. The DS would run the team of twelve on the ground. Richard Bilton and Annie were down the road listening. I loved it. I would take any opportunity I could to bark orders at the cops – this was a once in a lifetime opportunity – the stuff wannabe action men like me always dreamed of.
Next stop: The Hilton, Maidstone, a few days later. 14 January. Time to go.
Kent Constabulary had taken over two business suites. We were all in plain clothes and with plenty of time to kill. It was only 11.00. I walked everybody through the story one more time. This was my first joint mission with a police force – there was a lot riding on this for the various forces and individuals concerned. Kent Constabulary had an awareness of the sex trafficking scene, but were doing little more than keeping an eye on the story. When I showed them pictures of the Štefans and Mario, it was the first time they had laid eyes on them. They had no reservations. I was sure we knew more than them and it was in their interests to help us make them look very good indeed. While we gave them everything we had from the Kent end, they shared very little back. If they had, between us, we may have nailed that link back to Košice – they would only say that Margate, Chatham and Rochester were the UK hubs, heavily populated with Slovaks. In short, we were potentially doing them a massive favour.
Likewise, this was exactly what the BBC stood for.
I rigged up my covert gear. I had no two-way comms – they could hear me and talk to me but I couldn’t respond. I felt the unmarked van was over the top but that was just the way nowadays. They would have three guys – we assumed – to take out. Then they had to make the girls safe. I was also very specific about one thing – when they burst in, they were to nick me, too. I wanted the whole thing to look real to the last possible moment and my credibility had to be good to go again. Remember Harry? Let go within hours. Has he surfaced again? Probably, in one of his other countries. The same could happen here. They could even beat me up if they wanted. These were three players who I’m sure were linked to Košice and we still had that on the back burner. For the sake of any knock-on effects of this op or any future Paul and Dom projects in Eastern Europe, they had to cuff me. Plus, from the point of view of my personal entertainment, it was a must!
Paul had got the confirmation by text. We were still on for 19.00. Nobody in the Hilton would have any clue a major operation was going down.
Unbelievably, it was only now that I met the undercover cop. That was rubbish. But he was a pro, and clearly could run several ops at the same time. On first impressions, I liked him professionally. His handshake gave me confidence. Dave Clark in London told me he was very experienced and I trusted Dave. It did concern me that it sounded like Kent Constabulary only had one undercover guy. When I showed him the maps and photos and passed him the intelligence, I also got the message back that he could see we had done the work – probably a lot more than Kent Constabulary. Most importantly, though, he looked the part.
We spoke for half an hour. He had no problems with his role or the plan, telling me he had played the money man before. I assured him we would blur him out of any shots if he got caught up in anything. My instructions were that he wouldn’t speak beyond the introductions and handing over the cash. Then we had our own meeting without the cops. Editorially, I had to be sure again. If the tapes ended up in court, I had to make sure again that nobody would say I had put words in anyone’s mouth or that we had manipulated the edit.
That lasted another thirty minutes, then Paul, Dom and I
went for lunch – pre-op, I was starving. Dave Clark was at the bar – he told me to play the part. ‘They will arrest you and might be a bit rough with you.’ He said what I wanted to hear. ‘They know you are filming so go along with it.’
I loved it. I was dreaming of these 6ft 2 bobbies storming through the door and nicking me, and me mouthing back at them in the role. My blood was pumping and I couldn’t wait to get started. We had three more hours to kill. What do you do so close to an op? I retired to my room for a rest and to rig myself up. I blasted out some Springsteen to get me fired up. Another day, another job. The first time you go to war you think about it a bit – likewise an op like this. The second, third, fourth time you do it, you just find the zone and run the drills like a pro. It’s what I did and I wouldn’t change it for the world.
Maidstone to Margate was forty-three miles. It was time to go and pick up Štefan the Translator. The undercover cop was driving. In the car, he got chatting, asking me about the Štefans, finding his role for the evening. In reality, the less he knew the better because, as the money man, then he would know less than nothing.
We were due to meet Štefan at 17.00 – at the side of a road. Bang on time, he was there just before the junction in the most unglamorous of RVs.
I wound down the window and showed him my money man. ‘We’re happy to do business,’ I announced. There was twenty grand in the boot – with trackers on the case to follow the trail. ‘Are the girls coming?’ I said to Štefan the Translator.
All he was interested in was his money. I had also concocted some bullshit that I would keep him on as an interpreter. I loved doing that – promising people an afterlife once they had led other souls into hell. I got off on their big eyes dreaming of riches – you can’t underestimate the motivation in seeing their faces when it all went tits up. Selling other humans for cash was disgusting – I couldn’t wait to nail them. The extent of their crime was doubled in my eyes by their disappointment when their greed failed to come good.
We pulled in at the services between junctions seven and eight on the M20. Paul needed a piss. We were also way too early. When we headed back to the car, Štefan the Translator was not his bubbly self. My sixth sense kicked in. I told him that if he did well for me tonight then we could see what happened but he was suspiciously quiet. My guard was on.
Then his phone rang. He answered in Slovak and hung up.
‘Everything all right?’ Paul asked. ‘Everything OK for tonight?’
‘Yeah, yeah, everything still good,’ he replied.
Paul and Dom tried to inject a bit of life into him. ‘Who was that?’ Paul asked.
‘It was Štefan.’ He had told him who was with us. ‘Paul, Dom, the Boss and the money man.’
On those words, I lost my confidence. I had been 100 per cent certain. Štefan, asking who was there, made me nervous. In his eyes, who was this money man? There was nothing I could do. I had to pursue this, we were too far in, but something wasn’t right.
We knew Bar 26 on a Monday would be quiet. All we could do was agree a cut-off time if it wasn’t going down. Crucially, circumstance had played into my hands – my fictional houses were ready. The Slovaks were aware that day was coming – I had always said first week in January. Both parties knew we were in the end zone. We were all set up to go.
When we arrived in Margate, we pulled up two cars down from the unmarked police car. That was a tactical park. The money stayed in the boot – the supposedly romantic couple keeping watch would always have their eyes on the rear of the car, leaving the cash there for Dom and the UC to go and get it on my word. That’s when they would storm the joint.
Bar 26 on the promenade couldn’t have been more depressing on a dark, cold Monday in January on the British coastline – it didn’t get much worse than Margate in the winter. The bar was deserted, Margate a ghost town. Inside, there was a solitary barmaid and a couple of people drinking. The football was on the big screen but it couldn’t have been deader.
Paul and Dom took Štefan to the bar; the UC sussed out the toilets and the exit at the back. I waited by the wall. I don’t know if the bar was better for us for being quiet or if it had been rammed. There was something eerie about it, but equally it was perfect if you wanted to go unnoticed. There was nothing to do while we waited, so I did what any bloke would do in this situation – chatted up the barmaid. She was a bored blonde student type who didn’t really care for customers – she wanted an easy life painting her nails. I bored her senseless, telling her I was a builder on a job. She must have been wondering what the hell we were doing in there – to me that meant we were playing the game perfectly. Štefan never came to the bar to hear any of this.
By 19.45, the other couple had left and I was getting increasingly edgy – they were close to an hour late. ‘What’s happening, Štefan?’ I asked him.
‘They’re coming, they’re coming,’ he replied.
‘We need to know. I’m not hanging around here. I’m here to do business.’ I was spitting inside.
Štefan said he would call. I made sure Paul went out with him to watch his body language.
‘They’re definitely coming; they’re just running a bit late,’ Štefan told Paul. ‘He’s just doing a bit of business.’
I looked at the UC. We were both thinking the same. Events were following a familiar pattern. Half eight became nine and Štefan was starting to get agitated. We were probing him every five minutes.
‘He told me, they are definitely coming,’ Štefan insisted.
I’d had enough. ‘Phone him now. I’m not wasting any more fucking time here. You’ve got me down here to do business. This isn’t how I do business.’ I read him the riot act.
He looked like he knew the game was up – all along he had been sent to front this no-show, and now he was running the risk of ending up dead in the back of my car. At least he would finally get to see the money. Štefan did make that call. The line was dead. Straight to voicemail. I was furious.
With Paul outside having a fag with him, I told the UC it was off. He had been on enough of these jobs to know when you had been stood up.
‘I’m not a hundred per cent sure why, and there’s no point arguing about it now, but shall we abort?’ That was me being diplomatic. What I meant to say was that if the money man hadn’t been introduced, we might have had them. We decided to give it a little longer. I ordered Štefan to keep trying. At 21.45, I told him it was his last try.
‘You are dialling the right number, aren’t you?’ I glared at him. No answer. ‘I ain’t fucking doing business any more.’ Then I got up to leave. ‘Where are you going, mate?’ I asked Štefan, as he went to follow me. ‘You ain’t fucking coming with me – you haven’t delivered.’
I left Štefan there, and never saw him again. It was dead.
We debriefed back at the retail park, handing back the money. Kent Constabulary stood down their strike teams and we said goodbye to the undercover cop before chatting it through for an hour.
‘I think we’ve been spooked,’ I told Annie. How come it was all hunky dory then nothing? I’d heard Štefan say on the phone ‘the money man is with us’ and that was key. Štefan had clearly felt something wasn’t right and must have relayed that back. God knows what became of the girls, if indeed they were ready to go. For me, Kent Constabulary had ballsed it up. We had no choice realistically other than to get into bed with them. Doing so cost us.
A couple of weeks later, the DS and his team came to see us at Television Centre. We handed over copies of everything we had – they too had begun spending big cash on this and knew we were on to something. We agreed that if they got lucky, we would be back in to film the sting. We handed it over to them on a plate. They didn’t seem overly interested – or perhaps they weren’t showing their hand. That call never came, even though by December Kent Constabulary had jailed two other individuals for human trafficking offences. Two years later, even bigger sentences were handed out to gang leaders running the sex tr
ade out of the Czech Republic into the Channel ports. They were convicted, having been caught arranging sham marriages in Dublin. Ireland was always the key, it seemed – and we hadn’t even gone out there, despite all the clues. Among all this, in November 2008 Britain’s largest unit investigating human trafficking was shut because of cutbacks.
Paul did make one more call to Štefan the Translator and laid down the law – I was furious with him and he had blown any opportunity of big bucks in the future. He had stayed the night at a cousin’s in Margate; Štefan the Boss was no longer returning his calls and he didn’t know what had happened that night. Or so he said.
ZIM
To protect some of my former colleagues on future missions and so they may continue to operate in the name of free speech, some of the names and details in Zim have been changed.
The BBC had been banned from Zimbabwe since 2001; it seemed the obvious place to go next. John Simpson wanted to be broadcasting live from Harare on the day of the 2008 elections. This was the perfect pick-me-up after the botched job in Kent and a knock back from the BBC. I’d planned a fantastic exposé in Amritsar, and was all set to pose as an agent for a top sportsman who wanted his own clothing range. I would get in undercover with my fake website and bent business card and expose the sham coming out of these sweat shops. I couldn’t believe News had turned me down.
By mid 2008, this was becoming the way. It was harder and harder to justify funds. More and more paperwork would bury me at my desk. This particular foot soldier was useless if he wasn’t allowed in the field. So, when I got called to a planning meeting on 11 June, somewhat disillusioned, this was just what I needed.
Our only real presence out in Zimbabwe was a reporter called Ian Pannell, based in Cairo, who’d done some undercover work there. Ian would slip in from time to time and vaguely sign off on his reports without being location-specific. The Zimbabwean government had spent a lot of money buying top notch gear from China – they had some of the finest jamming equipment going. That was what we were up against.
Bodyguard Page 20
