The Falklands Intercept

by Crispin Black

  ‘Blackbuck Three, sorry about that sir. We got distracted by the in-flight movie. Don’t worry we’ll make it this time. Out.’

  It was a text-book short landing. The pilot dropped the aircraft hard on the runway right at the edge of the tarmac, slammed the engines into reverse, deployed a parachute to increase the drag and crunched to a metallic and smoky halt with fifty metres to spare before the red marker post. The rear ramp came down and a platoon of soldiers from the same regiment as the garrison took up fire positions around the plane. Jacot noticed one of them throwing up. A bumpy flight and a spectacular landing were hardly the best way of keeping breakfast down.

  ‘There we are. I think we have proved the point. Provided we can fly aircraft from Ascension then these islands are safe. We need a drink Colonel Jacot. Do you army types drink pink gin?’

  XV

  Falkland Islands

  – self-governing British Overseas Territory, South Atlantic

  The fourth day of his visit Jacot had arranged for personal matters and the military had kindly laid on a helicopter. As he ran towards it at the helipad just outside Government House it was so windy Jacot hardly noticed the downdraft. Tucked away inside his combat jacket were two beautifully wrapped bunches of flowers. The last time he had been in a helicopter in the Falklands he was being evacuated to the field hospital at Port San Carlos – “The Blue and Green Life Machine” – called after the completely marvellous Royal Navy and Royal Marine medics who staffed it. Put together partly in an old sheep shed it was a far cry from the sophisticated medical facilities available to the contemporary British Army and it took many hours for a casualty to get there.

  Jacot’s painful journey as a casualty had been interrupted by another Argentine air raid coming in. The immediate action was to land the helicopter as quickly as possible to avoid becoming a target for the air-to-air missiles carried by the Argentine Skyhawks and Mirages. Jacot thought they were going to crash and had nursed a dislike of helicopters ever since. As the helicopter took off from Government House it was buffeted by the strong prevailing Westerly winds. It would be a bumpy, lumpy journey to his three destinations. At each of the first two the helicopter deposited Jacot and returned after half an hour spent on navigational exercises.

  The first stop was the Celtic Guards Memorial at Port Louis. Twenty or so miles to the north-west of Port Stanley and with a fine natural harbour the small settlement had been the first established on the islands, by French sailors from St Malo, in Brittany – hence Isles Malouines in French and Islas Malvinas in Spanish and, more recently, American usage. Charles Darwin visited, twice, but the capital moved to Stanley in 1845. It was a pretty little place lucky enough to be completely bypassed by the Falklands War until a few days before it was over. A stark granite Celtic Cross in the shape of the regimental cap-badge overlooked the bay where the Oliver Cromwell had been attacked all those years ago. Jacot came smartly to attention in front of it. His burned hands snapped in salute to his fallen comrades. Although alone, he said the Lord’s Prayer aloud in both English and Welsh according to regimental custom and laid a small posy of daffodils at the foot of the cross. There was no card – he didn’t have to identify himself to these men. He stood absolutely still at attention for nearly half an hour until he heard the sound of the returning helicopter, saluted again and got back on board.

  The same process was repeated at the next destination the main Argentine military cemetery at Darwin. Jacot had wanted to lay flowers in the beautiful Argentine national colours of pale blue and white but anything suitable was difficult to come by this far south and daffodils would have to suffice. Once again he saluted, and then stood absolutely still for nearly half an hour. The wind buffeted his body and the short slightly greying hair underneath the army beret ruffled in the wind. As the hum of the rotors came to his ears once again his arm snapped upwards to the salute and was then brought down to his side once again. Longest way up, shortest way down as the instructors at Sandhurst had shouted during drill periods.

  And then he climbed back on board the helicopter for a third time en route to the southernmost tip of East Falkland, Porpoise Point, dramatically overlooking Drake Passage: the stretch of water that separated the islands from the Antarctic Continent.

  There it was, a solitary cottage with a corrugated iron roof held down by turf slabs. There was smoke coming out of the chimney. A huge bear of a man came out of the front door and made for Jacot roaring a happy hallo. But he didn’t stick his hand out in the usual way but just stood close and looked Jacot directly in the eye.

  ‘It’s good to see you young man after all these years. I hope your hands are more comfortable than when we first met. Come on in.’

  Jacot had not seen William Say for nearly ten years. They had first met thirty years before when Will had been helping at the field hospital near Blue Beach at San Carlos. Nearly overwhelmed by the burns casualties on Oliver Cromwell, some of the local inhabitants had volunteered to change dressings, reducing the burden on the military nursing staff. In agony and waiting to be evacuated to the hospital ship SS Uganda Jacot had been helped and comforted by this no nonsense Falklander. Like many big men Will was both light on his feet and nimble with his hands. His sense of humour and light touch meant that Jacot and others had found the ordeal of changing dressings and reapplying the glutinous Flammazine paste just about bearable.

  From the moment they were put on board the helicopters at Port Louis the casualties had been doped with morphine. But you can only rely on morphine for a short space of time. Within a day or two all but the most severe casualties were weaned off it – except at night. Jacot had fainted the first time his dressings were changed without morphine. He was still slightly ashamed of it. But once Will became the main dresser for his little group things really did seem to improve. Will had also written a short note on a “Bluey”, the nickname for the official military air letter forms, to Jacot’s widowed mother who had assumed that her only son had been killed. The butcher’s bill on Cromwell had been high particularly among Jacot’s regiment but not as high as some of the initial reports suggested.

  They had kept in touch and on the twentieth anniversary of the war Will had visited London. It was the first time he had ever left the Falklands. Jacot and various other casualties Will had looked after enjoyed showing him round London. His wide-eyed and innocent admiration had been a joy to behold. It had all been, on the surface at least, a little like that great Aussie film of the 1980s, Crocodile Dundee. Jacot’s liver had barely survived and Will and he had rekindled their relationship of years before over numerous visits to the opera. Will had insisted on seeing live performances of every one of Mozart’s great operas and Jacot had been happy to organise it all. He had been a great hit with Jacot’s friends who both liked him and were grateful for his spontaneous kindness to Jacot and his wounded guardsmen during the Falklands War. Will had stayed at Jacot’s flat in Marylebone. They had had a ball. Of course it turned out that Will was no ingénue from a remote half-forgotten colony at all but a highly educated and highly sophisticated individual. In his remote settlement on East Falkland he had made a serious study of Mozart’s operas that put Jacot’s dilettante interest in the shade. Also, he knew his history of England – king by king, queen by queen, battle by battle. He was, like Jacot, both devout and an ardent patriot. But unlike many of those in the modern world who clung to their faith and their monarchy inwardly but didn’t make too much of it in public – for a quiet life – Will had no embarrassment at all about these pillars of his personal and professional life.

  They had kept in touch by Christmas card and then email. There were few weeks when Jacot’s inbox did not have some outrageous message from Williamsay@falklandislands.com in it. Unlike Jacot he had married and had a family who were his pride and joy. Jacot was envious. The children were away at school and his wife was in Stanley. They got inside the house.

  ‘It’s good to see you but we could have met up for a few beers in t
he Upland Goose. Tell me what have you come for?’

  ‘Well it seemed a shame to waste the helicopter. The governor here is clearly either keen on or frightened of my boss. Actually, I need your help Will. I have got a kind of hunch about something. It’s a delicate matter. National security and all that stuff.’

  Will smiled.

  ‘You were busy during the war weren’t you?’ said Jacot, deadpan.

  ‘Well amongst other things I helped out at the hospital if you remember.’

  ‘No. I don’t mean that I meant your then hobby – the radio.’

  ‘I am still very much an amateur radio man to this day and even in this crazy technological age they still call us “Hams”. But yes you were right those were the glory days. In a way I was On Her Majesty’s Secret Service listening in to the Argentine radio transmissions and passing on what I could to the Task Force. If they had found out I think I would have been shot. It was like being in the French Resistance. The Argentine military government had banned the use of amateur radios and confiscated a lot of the equipment but they didn’t get my stuff, though they had a jolly good look.’

  Jacot giggled like a schoolboy at the memory. ‘It was hidden under a sheep pen. Very clever for a Falklander.’

  ‘Yes. And the Argies were too dim to find it. They were a grotty lot, most of them. Especially the conscripts from the wrong side of the tracks in Buenos Aires. Felt a bit sorry for them. But they did not like going anywhere near piles of damp and gooey sheep shit. It was still risky setting it up as they did have a direction finding capability. But I was mainly listening and went to the other end of the point to transmit. They were never quick enough off the mark and in the end I hid the whole apparatus up on the rocky outcrop you can just see from this window. Job done. I think I made a proper patriotic contribution to the war effort.

  ‘Actually, I was a bit disappointed when the Task Force landed as there was no further requirement for me to listen in. So as you know I switched to monitoring our own military transmissions – just for fun mind. It was amusing to spot the difference between the official transmissions and what the soldiers and young officers were actually saying on their own nets. You explained it all to me I remember. One tone for the battalion radio net. All “Yes sir, no sir, very good sir. Things are going well sir.” And another for what you young officers called “chat nets” on obscure frequencies where you could communicate without the knowledge of your rather heavy handed superiors.

  ‘I can remember hearing your voice somewhere before you ended up in the hospital’, said Will. ‘And I have got recordings of some of you guys. Didn’t give them to the inquiry into the Cromwell disaster – you would have all been court martialled for cheek and dissent. The language was rather shocking too I remember. What did they teach you all at your fancy schools? I made some recordings on my old tape recorders. More than two hundred hours in all. Thought it might be in the historical interest.’

  ‘Where are they now?’

  ‘Oh I got rid of them long ago. The tape recorders I mean. But the recordings themselves are still around, digitised, as you would expect for a techie like me.’

  ‘It’s those chat nets that I am interested in Will. I don’t know if you have heard about the death of General Verney in rather Agatha Christie-like circumstances a couple of weeks ago in Cambridge. Not the ones with me and my mates mouthing off about life. But others, with perhaps more senior officers talking amongst themselves. 21st Infantry Brigade transmissions and Celtic Guards transmissions for the night 8/9 June 1982. And I am looking for a particular voice, a Captain Verney. Now General Verney.’

  ‘I’ll help you but you have to tell me why.’ His face held no expression but the eyes were serious. He knew enough about what Jacot did for a living to understand the implications.

  ‘OK Will, I’ll let you in on the secret but please don’t go blabbing about it in the Upland Goose after a few too many beers. And if you defect to the Russian Embassy in Stanley, my career is finished.’

  Will got up, went into the small kitchen and re-appeared with a bottle of whisky. ‘Famous Grouse is what you young officers used to drink. It’s going to be a long afternoon looking for your dead general’s voice. We might need a little help.’

  The wind buffeted the small house, little more than a shack.

  ‘William, consider yourself back on Her Majesty’s Secret Service and here’s why. I have been tasked by my boss, the formidable Lady Nevinson, to check up on the circumstances of Verney’s death just to make sure that everything is shall we say “kosher”. She was not originally a spook herself and basically views most members of the intelligence establishment as lying, devious, double-crossing scheisters.’ He knocked back a large whisky and laughed. ‘I’m exaggerating of course but you get my drift. Anyway, Verney’s death looks innocent enough. Just one of those things for a man in late middle age. He smoked a lot too. The tests and all that suggest that he died of a heart attack or some kind of seizure on his own inside a locked room in a Cambridge College. End of chat as they say. I have been able to find nothing suspicious… except a connection to the Falklands War. The head butler in this college was in my regiment and lost a brother on the Cromwell which he himself was lucky to survive. It’s a sad story which I will spare you. The details will have us crying into our whisky. Verney was a staff officer of some sort I think, and I just wondered if there was any connection between him and the ghastly affair of the Oliver Cromwell? I certainly remember his name at the time. It’s a long shot and it’s not really why I am here but let’s give it a go.’

  They drank whisky through the afternoon. Laughing as they heard Jacot’s young voice chatting in colourful terms to another young officer. They didn’t just talk about the war. They discussed the present. Say seemed unconcerned by the posturing of President Kirchner. ‘The Malvinas are a kind of crazy national G Spot. Every shady Argentine politician eventually can’t resist pressing the button and President Kirchner is no different. Good-looking lady mind.’ Say laughed and drank more whisky. ‘Hell’s teeth, if I said that in the Upland Goose the lads would throw me into Stanley Harbour.’ But the humour was gone as he expressed forcefully what he and some others believed – that the Americans were backing Argentina in the dispute because of the massive oil reserves being discovered in the islands’ territorial waters. ‘It’s oil. It’s always oil with the Americans. They can’t help it. We are going to have between 8 billion and 60 billion barrels of the stuff. If the islands belonged to the Argies how convenient would that be for the big American oil companies. A guaranteed supply on their own continent.’ He returned to the war. ‘You didn’t like the people in charge of you did you?’

  ‘No we didn’t. And that was even before things turned rough’.

  It was a peculiar experience for Jacot to hear his voice from thirty years before. The conversations he was having with his brother officers provided a ribald and disaffected commentary on the events unfolding around them. You could hear though the sheer excitement of a young soldier going to war for the first time. Jacot felt nostalgic.

  And then a couple of hours into their search, many whiskies and many belly-laughs later… suddenly there was Verney’s voice. The other voices were not clear but Jacot suspected who they might have been. The group were apparently organising the transport of some mortar tubes and ammunition on some kind of ramshackle tractor and trailer over a steep hill. It was a task that Verney clearly found absurd, saying over and over again ‘This is ridiculous. Why don’t we just wait and do this in a properly organised way?’ His indistinct interlocutors agreed. It was hardly of great interest, merely the tedium, tension and strain of war. Not everything goes wrong but just about everything becomes more difficult than expected and that’s without the enemy even being involved. The recording became more and more difficult to decipher. They could hear the fierce wind in the background and the occasional offstage voice and squelch as groups of guardsmen came struggling past on their way up the hill.
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br />   The recording was briefly more audible. It sounded as if another officer on the net had asked a question. There was a pause. The wind abated. You could hear a number of guardsmen walk past. Then another pause and the rasp of what sounded like a petrol cigarette lighter repeatedly struck. Then Verney taking a deep drag on his cigarette. His tone was infinitely weary and sarcastic:

  ‘Why don’t we just make it look as if the thing has broken down?’

  The hairs on the back of Jacot’s neck stood up.

  ‘Play it again.’

  Will looked startled.

  ‘OK. OK. Calm yourself.’ Will fiddled with the machine.

  He listened a second time. ‘Why don’t we just make it look as if the thing has broken down?’ It was definitely Verney.

  Jacot stood up and walked to the window. He stood still looking out and flexing his burnt hands.

  ‘Anything wrong Dan?’ asked Will.

  ‘Yes, there is something very, very wrong. Dreadfully wrong. But I’m not sure how or why.’

  ‘So what if Verney called off some half-hearted, half-baked attempt to drag ammunition over a hill close to the landing beaches. It’s thirty years ago now. Imagine someone in 1975 agonising over some mini-incident in the Second World War in a not very active theatre. Who gives a tinker’s fart? You can’t define your life by it.’

  ‘Quite. Most of us moved on long ago. But just because a single incident in a small war long ago does not define me does not mean it is the same for everybody. Far from it, single events do categorise some people – being a murder victim for instance. Things that happen in the past pursue people far into the future. It wasn’t the marching that stopped us getting over that mountain. We were ordered to turn back because we could not take our mortar tubes and ammunition with us. Each man was carrying two mortar bombs in his pack but that was not enough. If we ran into trouble we needed more. If Verney stopped that tractor from getting its load across the mountain that’s the event that kicked off the chain of events that sees us all blown to kingdom come. It’s like the ignored ice warnings on the Titanic. But this is more. It wasn’t sloppiness or fatigue – forgiveable perhaps. This was disobeying a direct order not because of new circumstances or using his initiative but because he and others thought they had a better idea. If anyone had found out it would have been fatal to his career.’