The Big Breach

by Richard Tomlinson

  I glanced in the mirror to see the familiar lights of Jon and Baz's underpowered Land Rover crawling up the hill behind us. Reaching down to the stereo I flicked off Jim's tape and grabbed the Motorola from behind the instrument binnacle. `Baz, do you reckon this is the right road?' I asked.

  There was a pause while he consulted Jon, before the Motorola hissed back. `Keep yer keks on. Just round the next corner we should come to that burnt-out Scroat village.' Baz sounded confident and as he had done the trip three times with Roberts I trusted his judgement. I put the Motorola down just as Jim clambered back into the vehicle, slapping his hands together to brush away the bark and leaves adhering to them. He clunked the vehicle into first gear and pulled away.

  Round the next corner there was no burnt-out Croatian village, just another fallen tree, much bigger than the first. Beyond that, I could see another, then another. Undaunted, Jim prepared to jump out of the vehicle to move them, but I grabbed his arm. `No, this isn't right,' I said. This was not the work of a storm. The trees had been laid across the road for a purpose. `Baz, Jon, turn round immediately, we've taken a wrong turn,' I ordered down the Motorola.

  Jim detected the urgency in my voice, and had already launched the Discovery into a three point turn. He'd just got it pointing the other way when Baz squawked on the Motorola `Hey Rich, we've got trouble.'

  The comms-wagon was about 100 metres down the road, halfway through the three-point turn. With no power steering Jon must have been cursing trying to get the heavy vehicle turned round, and he'd been too slow to get away from the militiamen. Two were standing over the bonnet, pointing their AK47s directly through the windscreen at Baz. Two more were at the driver's door, perhaps talking to Jon or, worse, trying to force it open. More were at the rear door, peering in through the window at the computers and communication equipment and pulling at the handle. Other shadowy figures were emerging from the woods, making purposefully towards the vehicle, weapons held out menacingly.

  There was no time to reply to Baz before our vehicle was also surrounded. The barrels of two AK47s loomed at me through the windscreen, their owners just dark shadows. There was a sharp tap on my side window and, looking round, a pistol gesticulated for me to open up. Trying not to make a sudden movement, I slipped my hand round to feel for the button on the top edge of the door - Jim would have tripped out the central locking when he got out to move the tree. I pushed it down, praying that the unreliable system would work. There was a satisfying clunk as all five doors locked up. The pistol crashed threateningly against the window in response.

  The situation was awkward rather than desperate. Thankfully most of the soldiers were clean shaven, so they were not from the Afghan Mujahideen group that was known to be operating in the area and who would not hesitate to execute infidels. Our lives were probably not in danger - even the worst Bosnian militia groups were unlikely to murder UNPROFOR soldiers as it would lead to severe retribution. But I was worried about the vehicles and equipment. Only a few weeks earlier a group of French journalists had been ambushed a few kilometres from this spot, ordered out of their Land Cruiser at gunpoint and left at the side of the road as their ambushers drove away in the new vehicle. It would be a disaster if the same thing happened to us. Losing the Discovery and comms-wagon would be bad enough but the KALEX HF comms equipment, though outdated, was still classified `TOP SECRET'. Still, I thought to myself with a weak smile, they would be in for a nasty surprise if they tried opening my briefcase. The metal box that contained the encryption OTPs and other classified material had an inbuilt incendiary device that would destroy the contents with a satisfying bang if it were opened incorrectly. I hoped that they would not get that far.

  Grabbing the Motorola I got on to Baz. `Don't get out of the vehicle at all costs,' I shouted.

  `Gotcha,' Baz replied, not as cockily as before.

  The pistol banged against the side window again and an order was barked in Bosanski. Stooping slightly so that the pistol owner's blackened face was visible, I shrugged and held up my hands. `I don't understand. Ich verstehe nicht. Je ne comprends pas,' I replied, cursing for the umpteenth time how ridiculous it was for personnel to send me on a posting of this nature lacking even rudimentary language training. The voice barked out again and a rifle butt smashed into the right headlight, breaking the lens. I got the message and reached for the steering column stalk to flick out the remaining light.

  The voice barked out again, so I dropped the window a crack, hoping that it would be taken as a gesture of conciliation. `How can I help?' I asked feebly in English. The voice screamed again, more aggressively this time, and the vehicle rocked as he pulled hard on the door handle. Other soldiers tried to force open the rear door too. Winding down the window another half-inch, I tried to identify myself. `UNPROFOR, UNPROFOR. British soldiers,' I said, holding my United Nations ID card up against the window.

  Meanwhile, I could hear that Jim was also getting an interview, though his inquisitor spoke a few words of English, and I glanced across. `Manchester United,' the face uttered proudly, grinning into Jim's window. `Bryan Robson,' the face beamed even more broadly, giving a thumbs up.

  Jim, a fan of Liverpool, swallowed his pride. `Yeah. Man United. Very good, best team in the world.' He gave a thumbs-up sign and the face grinned with appreciation.

  But the voice in my window, which I took to be the commander's, snapped out another order and I turned away from Jim as the soldiers milling around the front of the vehicle sprung forward, the windscreen bristling menacingly with AK47s. My eyes were getting accustomed to the dark now that the headlights were out and I could make out the faces peering down the barrels at us. They looked tired and pissed off. The commander barked another order and the sound of 7.62mm rounds slotting into the AK47's breaches sent my stomach churning. The young soldier in front of me slipped the safety catch down on to the first notch - automatic fire on the AK47. His face was no longer pissed off, but tense and frightened. I resigned myself to losing the vehicles and turned to Jim to give the signal to get out.

  But Jim had other ideas. Smiling like a teddy bear on a grand day out, he reached down the side of the transmission tunnel and pulled his Browning from its holster. Like John Wayne in the OK Corral preparing for a final showdown, he pointed it skywards, paused for a second, then with his left hand pulled back the slider, driving a round into the barrel. `What the fuck are you doing? Put that down!' I gasped.

  `Nah, they're just bluffing,' Jim replied. `Watch . . .' The Manchester United supporter's weary face cracked into a smile, then a smirk, then an infectious giggle, as Jim waved the pistol at him. `See, they're more scared than we are.' One by one, the tension in the other faces ranged against us lifted and the barrels drooped as the laughter spread at Jim's grossly disproportionate response. The commander alongside me shouted something in Bosanski as he sensed the mirth on the other side of the vehicle, but nobody paid any attention. A moment later he realised that he'd lost face amongst his undisciplined rabble and, turning away angrily from me, skulked off back up the road.

  I watched for a second through the rear-view mirror. `You are a crazy bastard,' I said to Jim, as soon as I was sure that he was gone. `What the fuck possessed you to do that?' I said, trying to hide my admiration for his coolness.

  `That Man U supporter told me not to worry,' Jim replied. `Apparently that O/C's a right cunt and his bark's worse than his bite.' Jim tucked the pistol back into the holster as most of the soldiers drifted away, leaving just a couple hung around our vehicle, now relaxed and friendly. The Manchester United supporter grinned at the window and Jim lowered it.

  `You go now,' the Bosnian smiled. `You lucky. You nearly cross front line. Serbs . . .' He gesticulated to the next corner, his English failing him. `That captain . . .' He gestured up the road, made an O with thumb and forefinger, and pumped it up and down in an internationally recognised sign - `Fuck him, nobody like him.' I reached over with a pack of Marlboros - we always carried them for such occas
ions though none of us smoked. He took one and lit it up and I thrust the rest of the packet at him as soon as he had put away his lighter. `Follow me,' he urged. `Mines, that's why trees.' He set off the way we had come, occasionally indicating us to keep well away from one verge or the other. Only then did we realise that we had had more than one lucky escape. After our guide had tapped the window to signify the all-clear, we continued down the road in silence, reflecting on our good fortune.

  Thereafter, we ensured that we made no further navigational mistakes by avoiding driving on unfamiliar roads after dusk. Others who made similar mistakes in Bosnia were not as lucky. A few weeks later, a British captain took the same wrong turn as us but ran over one of the anti-tank mines and was killed instantly. In March, a group of ODA workers were ambushed by a Mujahideen group just outside the town of Zenica in central Bosnia. They were driven to woodlands a few miles away, forced from their vehicles and made to kneel at the side of the road. Their captors shot one victim dead with a bullet to the back of the head. The others ran for their lives, diving into a freezing river to avoid a hail of lead, and were lucky to escape with only minor wounds.

  We were able to establish contact with STEENBOX in Tuzla later on that first trip and thereafter we made the three-day trip to see her every two weeks. The logistics of each trip were in the capable hands of Jon, who loaded up our two vehicles with the comms equipment, supplies, a small armory of an SA-80 rifle and Browning 9mm pistol for each of us, flak-jackets, helmets and spare parts for the vehicles. We took camping gear in case we had to rough it, but slept whenever we could in the mess halls of the various UNPROFOR bases that dotted Bosnia, or in the few hotels that remained open, catering to aid workers and journalists. Jon plus two others accompanied me on every trip, the fourth member taking it in turn to stay at Divulje barracks to operate the fixed KALEX. They always looked forward enthusiastically to the trips up country, the highlight being the traverse of the front line between the Bosnian-Croat forces and the Bosnian-Muslim militia at Gornji Vakuf. Both sides liked to snipe at UNPROFOR vehicles passing through the bombed out town, then to milk the propoganda points by blaming the other. Soft-skinned vehicles such as ours were obliged to travel through the town in convoy under the protection of two Warrior APCs, which returned fire enthusiastically and spectacularly at any suspected sniper position. In the dozen or so traverses of Gornji Vakuf that we made, we were lucky that neither of our vehicles were hit, though we regularly came under fire.

  STEENBOX proved a problematic agent to debrief. The information she gave about the intentions of the local militia was not CX but merely the official propaganda of the Bosnian VIth army in Tuzla. At one meeting, just after dusk in a small caf‚ in Tuzla, a group of senior Bosnian militiamen walked in and ordered coffee at the bar. As they had not yet noticed us at a small table in the corner, I whispered to STEENBOX `I'd better get out of here - it'll be dangerous if they see us together. I'll meet you in 20 minutes in the caf‚ opposite the town hall.'

  `No, no, it's OK,' STEENBOX casually replied. `They're friends of mine and they already know that you are Kenneth's successor.'

  There was clearly no point in pretending to Whitehall officials that information from STEENBOX was CX, as it was being passed to me with the blessing of the VIth army command. They were just using her and me as a direct route to disseminate their propaganda into Whitehall. I sent a series of telegrams to String Vest arguing my case, but he would have none of it.

  `We are convinced that STEENBOX is reporting without the knowledge and approval of her superiors,' String Vest wrote in one telegram, without substantiating his position with evidence, `and her information is valuable CX.' String Vest's intransigence was due to new obligations he was under as the P officer for the Balkans. A year earlier, under pressure from the Treasury, MI6 had admitted a team of specially vetted management consultants to look at productivity. They treated CX and agents as widgets and introduced an `internal market' system. P4 was given targets for how much CX his section had to produce per month and how many agents it had to cultivate and recruit per quarter. In the last six months of 1993, he had to have CX-producing agents in the Serb, Croat and Muslim factions of Bosnia, and one under cultivation in each. If STEENBOX was written off through my argument, then he would be behind on this target. Rather than do that, he preferred to distribute her propaganda as CX.

  String Vest was equally adamant that I should attempt to recruit John Vucic, a young Australian-Croat who was working in the headquarters of the Bosnian-Croat faction in the town of Posusje. Vucic was a 26-year-old second-generation Croat accountant from Sydney, who worked as a clerk in the headquarters. Vucic had good access and would be a useful source if he could be recruited. String Vest was adamant that I should try. `As an Australian national, you should play on his Anglophilian interest in cricket to pursue a recruitment,' he wrote in one telegram. String Vest ignored my protests that Vucic was more extreme than Attila the Hun, resolutely defending human rights abuses by his beloved Croatian people. String Vest was blatantly ignoring my judgement as the officer on the ground so as to satisfy targets imposed by faceless management consultants.

  `Slow down a bit, Tosh,' I urged. `Baz'll be effin' and blindin' at you, trying to keep up on these roads.' Tosh lifted off slightly, but I knew that I'd have to remind him again ten minutes later. The heavily laden comms-wagon with its underpowered diesel engine struggled at the best of times to keep up with the powerful V8 Discovery, but with the impetuous Tosh at the wheel Baz and Jon's job would be harder. We were hurrying into Sarajevo with a busy few days ahead of us. I'd been unable to get into the city for the past ten days through a combination of circumstances. The Serb besiegers had shut down completely the sporadically open land route into the city after a tizz with the French UNPROFOR contingent; then the airfield had been shut through heavy fog, and when that lifted, the Hercules that I was about to board at Split went unserviceable on the runway.

  DONNE was long overdue for a debrief and String Vest had been sending increasingly irate telegrams of complaint. Also, two senior FCO diplomats from the Balkans desk wanted a meeting with Karadzic in his headquarters in the village of Pale just outside Sarajevo to understand better his negotiating position in the ongoing ICFY talks. As there was no other British diplomatic representation nearby, String Vest asked me to organise the trip. Getting permission to travel from Sarajevo to Pale was not easy, as it meant negotiating a safe passage through the Bosnian-Muslim and Bosnian-Serb front lines, not to mention clearing the trip with the obstreperous French UNPROFOR contingent in Sarajevo. I'd arranged a meeting with them at 1800 that evening, but we'd been held up when a Spanish UNPROFOR APC crashed in front of us, blocking the road.

  `We'll never get there unless we leg it,' Tosh answered back.

  `Listen, Tosh, this is your last warning, if you don't lift off a bit, I'll have to drive,' I slapped down the sun visor against the low winter sun which was reflecting from the day-old snow that covered the abandoned fields and returned to my briefing notes.

  `Shit, Jon's lost it!' shouted Tosh urgently, slamming on the brakes of the Discovery.

  I spun round in the seat to see the comms-wagon completing a somersault on to its roof, 50 metres behind us. Tosh brought the Discovery to a juddering halt on the ABS and gunned it into a three-point turn to get back to the accident scene. As we skidded to a halt alongside, Jon and Baz were crawling out of the wreckage, dazed and shaken, but thankfully not hurt. `Yer bastard,' muttered Baz as he got to his feet and surveyed the remains of the comms-wagon. `We'd better call the AA.' The vehicle had rolled twice before ending on its roof in a ditch, and even if it could be repaired it would be off the road for several weeks.

  `Black ice, there was nothing Baz could do,' Jon apologised to me.

  We now had to replan the next few days. `Tosh, set the HF up,' ordered Jon, `We'll have to get Jim to fly the spare comms-wagon up from Split.' There was no way that the French would give us permission to travel from Saraje
vo to Pale for the Karadzic meeting in a single vehicle, so it was imperative that Jim acted fast. I left Jon and Baz to guard the crippled vehicle against scavengers until the REME (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) recovery unit arrived, and set off with Tosh in the Discovery for the meeting with the French.

  The 48 hours were a whirlwind of meetings to debrief DONNE and sort out the Pale trip. The recalcitrant French commander eventually agreed to allow the diplomatic visit, but not until his decision was eased by two bottles of Scotch. Multiple meetings with the Bosnian-Muslim militia and several cartons of cigarettes eventually secured a safe passage through their lines, though they were deeply opposed to British diplomatic contact with the Serbs. Finally, Major Indic, the temperamental Bosnian-Serb liaison officer in the PTT building, agreed to give us permission to travel onwards through Serbian-held territory to Pale, though, to show who was boss, he made me wait in his office for six hours before he would agree.