Bodyguard

by Craig Summers

  Like I said, there would be confrontation. We all knew it was coming. It didn’t matter that John, Oggy and I knew that essentially tonight would be waffle. The kudos and the sense of victory, coupled with the ‘watch this space’ tease of what would come in the next few days, meant that if John Simpson could get on the Ten and deliver his ‘live in Zimbabwe’ report then he had won. The whole world would be watching. That wasn’t about ego – John was from another era where reporters were qualified and were drawn to the story, not the limelight. He didn’t care for a second career on Strictly. As with bin Laden, Gaddafi, Mugabe, he was attracted to evil. It really was a lifetime of showing up the bad guys to as many people as possible. It was impossible to say no – whether you were his confidant like myself or one of these old Colonials whose house it was and who had seen him broadcast from the most impossible places in the world.

  ‘That’s not the end of the world,’ Dirk confirmed. ‘But John needs to be aware that we need some time to activate the second safe house.’

  Considering we weren’t even meant to be here tonight, frankly, we were making life very difficult for ourselves. The new plan was to move first thing in the morning.

  I went back in to give John the lowdown. He also knew me too well. I would tell him if it was a risk, but I would do everything I could to enable him to break a story. So, this time, he knew it was coming. ‘Okay, this is where we are John. We can do a quick hit. It’s got to be round the side of the house. Minimal lights. Then we move tomorrow.’ I was making it up on the fly. ‘In the meantime, I need to be working on an escape plan, if we have to move tonight.’

  John had his way – as he knew he would. In the meantime, Steve went to fetch the broadcast equipment in his truck. This, for me, was the risk.

  Steve assured me that actually it was quite easy to drive around the neighbourhood because he was well known. ‘Even the blacks know me,’ he said.

  While Steve set up, Dirk, TT and I discussed our plan for when we went live. Could Mugabe’s people triangulate the signal and sniff us out? What if they came down our dead-end road? John was only going out on the Ten – that helped. Airing on BBC World could have scuppered us.

  We walked round the back of the house. There was one garage and a wall leaning over to the house at the back. TT and Dirk attached a ladder over to the house – the neighbours were on side and said we could park a car on their drive. We would run for it, climb over and take the car from there if we had to. It wasn’t the world’s greatest plan, but at least we had an option. Remember, too, these were huge houses on massive estates. I calculated there was enough time to flee.

  It was good enough. I briefed John again. This time, I had to put friendship aside. ‘Look John, whatever you do, you cannot say we are in Harare.’ I was as blunt as Craig Summers could be.

  ‘Well, what can I say?’ He was asking me. After all his years in the game. To his credit, John knew it was a team effort. Moments later, I heard him sign off. ‘John Simpson, BBC News, somewhere in Zimbabwe.’

  He was ecstatic – still buzzing after all these decades. He couldn’t have many ambitions left, but to say those words reduced the list by one. I knew it meant a lot. And it had been a long day. Out came the whisky. That was him saluting the team. Mugabe would be watching, and John Simpson was on his tail.

  The next morning, Dirk and TT grabbed me. The owner of the house was happy, but we couldn’t be doing ‘lives’ from here at night. It would just attract too much attention. Deep down, we all knew that. Now that John had declared our hand, we would always be on the move, looking over your shoulder. The boys had a Plan B – their contacts were incredible. I respected that. They knew a Welsh guy who had lived out here most of his life. His wife and kids were away so it wouldn’t be a problem. If we needed to do ‘lives’ there was an office space we could work from. I relayed all this to Nigel and Oggy. As a pro though, I had to go to check the live position. There was no point making them safe if I made them redundant. That was the paradox of the job.

  It was even better. I couldn’t move in quick enough. Nick, the owner, showed us the tennis courts and swimming pools. The guest rooms were palatial. With a huge electric fence around it, it was the dog’s bollocks. It was clear we could broadcast safely and easily. Nobody could see in and one of Steve’s mates had a pad out here. Perfect! As much as I liked it, I was aware we could run out of safe houses if we carried on doing ‘lives’. I hoped this would be good for forty-eight hours or so and we would take it from there. I didn’t want to move every night and we were all desperate to hang on until the election. That would be some feat, to survive until polling day.

  We were in a C-shaped building. The live position was in the inner bit of the C, surrounded by its own building, and we didn’t need to rig it for lighting because we could take the natural aspect from the house. Nor could it be seen from the road. John loved it, too: to be live once in Zim was good, but was far from enough. He had set the bar high. I knew what else was coming. There was no way that John Simpson was going to sit in a palatial safe house in the middle of Harare and not be on television.

  ‘We don’t want John to come up before the elections. We don’t want to jeopardise anything.’ I was sick of hearing this from London. ‘It’s your call,’ they would say.

  Did they realistically think John wasn’t going to broadcast? John was with people he trusted and I wasn’t about to abandon him. We regularly spoke about it, often joked about it, and we both had faith in our local guys on the ground. There was no way any editor of the Ten worth his salt wasn’t going to take a live from him in Harare. None of them would ever say, ‘I don’t want John Simpson on tonight.’

  Yes – during the day we would lie low. John knew his day began at night. We would have a breakfast meeting every morning. Nigel and I would go out and do some general shots. We could send back radio, and John would scribble, but ultimately it was about keeping him hidden. Occasionally, John would push it and ask to go out – he wanted to go to Faraday’s, his favourite shop in Zimbabwe. I told him we would take each day as it comes. After all, who has a favourite shop in Harare? He also wanted to go and have tea with the Meikles family. They were very famous in Harare and John knew them from way back.

  I consulted with TT and Dirk. It seemed an unnecessary risk but TT also knew the family. We agreed to plan. There was no way we could get giddy on an old school tie. There’s an old saying that you seek local knowledge wherever you go; TT and Dirk could pull rank in my eyes, however much John wanted to revisit the Empire! On the other hand, John would soon get frustrated not gathering news material himself. It would keep him sweet to give him a little treat out.

  By lunchtime that day, we were installed lock, stock and barrel in the new compound – once we had avoided the added security of a ferocious Rottweiler keeping guard. John relaxed in his new imperial suite, while I took a sleeping bag and tossed it on the floor anywhere that would have me. Dirk and TT stayed in the house across the road. I told everyone to always be packed and ready to make a quick exit. In the middle of the day, it was always about the night and the Ten.

  John had to write – BA’s High Life magazine were waiting on copy and obviously that was crucial! Oggy and Nigel were talking about getting some shots downtown. This was now the norm – John and Oggy would suggest something crazy and I would consult with TT and Dirk.

  ‘What do you think?’ I would ask them.

  ‘Crazy,’ they would invariably reply. ‘But we can pull it off.’ I loved that. There was no point doing anything by half.

  They wanted to film drive-by shots at Zanu-PF headquarters in Harare. ‘You get one shot at this Nige,’ TT said. ‘They have their Central Intelligence guys on the side of the pavement outside and the corner of the road, and where we are going to drive down will put us real close to where these guys are.’ It sounded like close to the knuckle stuff. ‘Film from the back seat from the side window. Craig, you sit in the passenger seat, and we will shoot over your sho
ulder. You’ve got one chance, Nige.’

  Two vehicles went out. TT counted us down to the building. ‘It’s on the left. Two hundred metres, one hundred metres … that’s it now.’ I have never seen so many dodgy people hanging around, shifty behaviour the norm.

  Dirk rang the mobile to ask if everything was OK. I told him we needed posters. We drove past and pulled over further up the road. Nick had tipped us off that near the racecourse there was loads of ‘Vote Mugabe’ propaganda. We did exactly the same again, in and out in seconds – always keep the car moving. That was all we could risk before heading back to the compound.

  Imprisoned, John was by the pool writing with just Oggy for company. Straightaway they were desperate to see the footage. Nigel had had one shot at it and his rushes were brilliant, especially the images of Zanu-PF headquarters. He was just a natural with the camera – you either had it or you didn’t. You could tell on instinct if the images were any good or not, and both John and Nige knew. They’d worked together many times in war zones over the years. Even though TT and Dirk had been used to working with an Australian cameraman, Nige proved you could show your worth when you only got one bite at the cherry. John and Oggy abandoned what they were doing – they wanted to make a package immediately.

  John was chomping at the bit now. ‘Shall we do a piece to camera?’

  He was desperate to get out there. but this time I talked him out of it. ‘We’d rather wait – let’s see what occurs,’ I urged.

  We were that close to the elections – a package would do without John needing to lay down anything more than his voice. Of course, if they were on to us, it didn’t now matter that he had signed off ‘somewhere in Zimbabwe’ last night. There was no mistaking the headquarters of Zanu-PF. Clearly, someone was in Harare, and if they had half a brain, that was John and a small team.

  Still nothing from Mugabe’s people – we were able to book in for another night.

  You could see John wanted to get out there. He would grumble about it every now and then, and there was only so long he could carry on holding court, entertaining our hosts and Dirk, Steve and TT with stories from the life of John Simpson! As evening wore on through dinner, I had seen this many times. As exciting as those tales still were, I never got tired of hearing them. Everyone always wanted a piece of him and he knew how to serve it up, but he was never exclusive. It wasn’t just the John show. He would always say, ‘Ah Craig, do you remember the Friendly Fire?’ – they were our stories together. We had seen a lot in each other’s company. We had killed a lot of time as we were now, as well as chasing down the story against all the odds. Nick loved it – in his eyes John Simpson could stay forever, and the cycle would repeat itself. By the time we had cleared off, Nick would be sitting round a table telling stories of how he and John had sat round this very table telling stories. Over the years, the stories would get better, and Nick, inevitably, wouldn’t stop telling them.

  The next day, John was back on my case, asking to see the Meikles family. He wanted to get out. One thing I knew for sure – we couldn’t turn up all heavy-handed. We couldn’t go in convoy, and that would mean I couldn’t go at all. That meant I wasn’t really doing my job but I trusted TT and Dirk and their excellent local knowledge and contacts.

  The Meikles epitomised the story of South African wealth. Their house had a driveway longer than my street. On the walls, paintings were worth more than my own home. They owned one of the most famous hotels in Harare. We couldn’t go in there – businessmen allowed into Harare would stay there but it was the kind of place where lots of dodgy people frequented the reception, watching you. That was a definite no-go.

  They were gone for an hour. John would get his high tea after all. As contemporary as his act remained, this was just a little John throwback to a time when reporting was a different ball game and the Commonwealth still vaguely stood for something. He had thousands of contacts in hundreds of places. A lifetime’s work was never complete. He probably knew somebody important in every country in the world. And they knew him. It was a risk getting him out there but it kept him sane.

  It didn’t stop there. We sorted the trip to Faraday’s too. He shopped like he might never be back – and that was a real possibility, of course. It was an old hunting store that had been around for years and he splashed £500 on boots, bags and wallets. God knows how he thought we would get the stuff back. John knew the owner there, too. At 1 p.m., he closed the premises as he would always do for lunch. There was hardly anyone on the streets. John had a shop all to himself. We literally pulled up outside, Dirk and I on either side. John had saved his biggest hat for disguise! As much as this wasn’t part of any risk assessment, I felt I couldn’t say no.

  ‘That would be splendid if you can arrange it,’ he would say in a way that was politely persuasive. I took the decision to give it a green light on the basis that if my duty was to look after John, I didn’t want him to go nuts either. Plus, I was attracted to the danger. I would have filmed it, too, just for the two fingers it would stick up to Mugabe to show John Simpson shopping freely in Zimbabwe, but I didn’t want to put anyone at Faraday’s under any retrospective retaliatory risk. I had done well to keep him under wraps up to now. This would probably settle him for the next couple of days until the election.

  Unbeknown to John, TT, Dirk and Steve were working with me through their contacts to get us into the Dutch Embassy. This was where the opposition to Robert Mugabe was supposedly living under the protection of the Netherlands. Dramatically, Morgan Tsvangirai had just pulled out of the election. The race was on to get to him.

  ‘Do you think John would be interested in interviewing him?’ Dirk had said casually over a cup of tea. I nearly spat my drink out. Neither Dirk nor TT was particularly media savvy. They were both ex-military guys whose job was to look after the client. I had told them we needed to look for stories, contacts, meetings, whatever they could come up with – it wasn’t enough just to be here. But he just dropped it into conversation like asking me how many sugars I wanted.

  Steve Fielder was actually very well known to and within Tsvangirai’s party – the problem was that we had to keep the network of knowledge small to protect both Tsvangirai and, of course, John. The fewer people who knew about this, the better, and when you are dealing with the leader of the opposition, the chances were that a few people were going to get to know. Many of Tsvangirai’s party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), were ex-farmers. Some, like Steve, had had their land taken off them. That is how he had the access.

  Andrew Chadwick, a former correspondent himself for the British press, had now taken on the unforgiving task of becoming Tsvangirai’s spokesman. That looked like a job where you might get a knock-on the door in the middle of the night – if they were even being that polite. Initially, when we discussed getting into the Dutch Embassy, his response was ‘pretty difficult’. From my point of view, I didn’t even know where the embassy was nor how much surveillance it was under. Clearly, the secret police and Zanu-PF were watching it and him like a hawk. How would I get John there in the cold light of day? We had to tread very carefully. If we were on, I knew too that I wouldn’t be going, much to my disgust. It would be Nigel and John only – we couldn’t risk any more in the head count. To make things worse, the Dutch didn’t want the BBC on the premises.

  That night, just before John was about to do a live, Andrew Chadwick called. ‘Could he talk about the meeting?’ he asked Steve.

  It was on.

  Chadwick knew the game and knew it was worth it. If he could get a message out to the world on the eve of the election, the trusted John Simpson was the man to deliver it. It was a win–win situation. Simpson would look good and Chadwick’s background enabled him to understand that; as the media aide, he knew the world would be reminded of the violent and dodgy democracy that Mugabe was orchestrating. At home, there were bigger stories – many had questioned why we were so obsessed with Iraq and not Mugabe. Oil was always the obvious conc
lusion. Now was a real chance to turn the spotlight back on this awful dictator. These moments came along rarely.

  It was time to tell John. Then, in his giddiness, to remind him not to blow it now.

  There would no more shopping trips etc. He was to remain nonspecific in his location. We were that close, both to election day and to interviewing one of the few people brave enough to stand in front line politics against Mugabe, that we couldn’t risk compromise now. We were way past the point of day one, where just to be here was the story. Now, the story was coming to us and meeting us half way. In my head, it was time to start making plans to leave. My brief to the guys cranked it up a notch. No messing now, and we are gone as soon as we had everything we needed on election day.

  TT and I got up to leave. We met Andrew Chadwick in the car park of a Chinese restaurant a few blocks away. I had to assume that he was being tailed and we were now under a very serious threat of acquiring one ourselves, even though there were only two other cars there. Chadwick would have used this place before, I’m sure. I trusted him and TT that we were as safe as we could be.

  I pulled up next to him and wound the window down. Like so much of my BBC life, it was like something out of the movies. We didn’t have time to muck about. He got straight in the car, and cut straight to it. ‘It’s on,’ he said. ‘Morgan wants to talk.’ I drove to keep moving and spot a tail. We left his car there. John Simpson was going to love this. Well, until he heard the next bit. ‘Morgan wants to know what questions you are going to ask him.’

  He was playing a game and we both knew it. As a former press man, he sussed that John wouldn’t agree to that, however much he wanted the interview. It was all part of the game. That, to John, was like being embedded with the Yanks in Iraq. ‘Look, we can’t really discuss that,’ I said on John’s behalf.

  Chadwick knew I could fob him off, but that word would get back to John. What did it matter anyway? The image of John and the inevitably defeated opposition leader would beam around the world – that was almost enough to warrant the story. And in return, the politician would say what he wanted to say, regardless of the questions. We all knew how it worked, and that both sides were doing each other a favour. To talk to the British, too, when everything Morgan Tsvangirai did or said was monitored, must have been some comfort to him. If you can’t trust your own nation’s media, you could still, at least, believe most of what was on the BBC. I warmed to him – maybe it was the British connection or perhaps he was just a rare human being in politics.