by Geoff Wolak
‘Yes, Mister President. We work well together, and we will organise joint training exercises often with your men.’
‘Good, good,’ came back from the President, the Prime Minister nodding.
‘Captain Moran,’ I called, turning, and Moran invited the President forwards in French, and began to give a rundown of the operation in French.
I faced the Prime Minister. ‘We need to talk, sir, just us, off the record.’
Suddenly grim faced, he glanced at her aids and then reluctantly led me a few steps away. ‘This about 14 Intel?’
‘Yes, Prime Minister, and this is off the record. To start at the beginning, they were always very ambitious, and at one point petitioned the government to have the SAS placed under their control.’
‘I remember it, yes.’
‘Well, as you’re also aware, they’ve lost a lot of men in Northern Ireland and have a chequered past, and the good money would bet on them having set off bombs and killed people, making it look like the IRA.’
‘I’m aware of the rumours, yes.’
‘More than a year ago, one of their men went missing, and turned up south of the border with an INLA cell, all of them killed in a gun battle. The good money would bet on Mi5 having blackmailed the man into becoming an IRA double-agent.’
He glanced at me. ‘That would not surprise me.’
‘14 Intel blamed me for the death of their man, since they believed that few could pull off such a job and leave no evidence behind, and I was very active in the province at the time.’
‘If they thought you responsible, then they considered that you acted without orders?’
‘That’s the puzzler, since I always follow orders. Since that time they’ve had a bad attitude towards me, and it’s got back to me that they’re jealous of my successes in Northern Ireland, and mad at me because I uncovered Captain Bromley.’
‘Uncovering a spy – they should have thanked you.’
‘A normal person might, but they were very embarrassed by it. They also knew that I did jobs for Mi6, and seem to have joined the dots and considered that my aim had been to undermine them – which it never was. It’s rumoured that they’re jealous of my unit’s successes around the world, when they themselves would like to do some of that work – and enjoy the publicity.’
He nodded.
‘Rumour has it, they recently sent a man to kill me.’
The colour washed from his face. ‘And ... that man?’
‘Rumour has ... that his body will never be found.’
He stared back. ‘Is there solid evidence against them?’
‘Yes, but we’d never use it, since it would harm your government in the press. Various agencies have gone to great lengths to keep this out of the press.’
‘And this week they made claims against your team.’
‘My team, sir, will defend themselves if attacked. Prime Minister, if nothing is done, then within a week you could see a large scale gun battle on a British street.’ His eyes widened. ‘And for you to explain it would be ... difficult.’
‘You’re right it would be, but I know what these groups are like, I’ve seen the inter-agency rivalry before, but this is madness.’
‘They’re out of control, sir, and if not stopped...’
‘I’ll be dealing with this as a matter of priority. I understand the petty jealousies well enough, it comes with the job.’
‘They’ve made threats against Mi6, who they want disbanded-’
‘Disbanded, so that they take over that role? Who do they think they are?’
‘They’re soldiers, sir, but they sure as hell don’t follow orders from the top down.’
He took a moment, and studied me. ‘And that lady, Pamela, in Mi5?’ he posed.
‘If she had not accidentally fallen down a lift shaft then she would have stood trial, that trail being the most painful episode of your time in office, sir.’
He nodded. ‘Little shits trying to justify their budgets.’
‘When I first won the London Marathon, or nearly won it, men conspired to break my legs with metal bars, for no reason other than petty jealousy. It taught me a valuable lesson for later life.’
He considered that. ‘Try being Prime Minister, my own trusted civil servants want my legs broken!’
I led him off with Moran, Moran now translator for the President, and we greeted the medics and explained their roles, the SBS, then moved inside, and to a room with a large map set up. I described the operations in detail, Moran giving the French the same detail. I did not mention trying to blow up the mine.
Many of the groups were photographed with the Prime Minister and the President, my detachment photographed from behind, and with the President and Prime Minister thanking us and waving they flew off.
The RAF senior staff had a few questions for me on logistics and planning and joint exercises, and we held a mini half-hour session, and I still had my rifle with me.
Back at the coaches we put away rifles and webbing and bandoliers, and I returned to the apron, chatting to the medics and thanking them, to the 2 Squadron officers, the Hercules pilots, many invited to the function that evening, and early evening it would be, a 6pm kick-off in a hotel outside Swindon.
The coaches took us there with our police escorts in tow, and still in uniform we met Henri and his men, beers soon flowing in a large ball room, tables and chairs at one end, plenty of food laid on.
Over the space of three hours I chatted to most all of those involved, the Air Commodore and senior staff hanging around for an hour, and when drunk the French soldiers sang, few other than Moran aware of the words otherwise we would have all been thrown out of the hotel.
At the end of the night it was just my detachment and the French, the French to be billeted at Brize Norton one night only, and we helped get their drunken carcasses onto the green RAF coaches. Henri and his buddy Jacque had placed their bags on our coach when we arrived at the hotel, and we carried their limp bodies to the coach after the staff at the hotel had gotten very fed up with us, the coach drivers none too happy either, our police escort ready to shoot us.
Back at base, we put men onto camp beds in the interest room, the more sober lads off home or slipping into sleeping bags, Rocko and Rizzo soon snoring away, Henri and Jacque out of it as I made a cup of tea with Moran. O’Leary had been drafted, and he would be awake and sober all night, and armed just in case 14 Intel came calling, Captain Harris due on duty at 6am.
Sat with a cup of tea, I chatted to Moran, and told him about my chat with the Prime Minister.
Moran nodded. ‘You know ... I used to have a friend, a captain in the Paras, and ... I would go back and see him, but ... I can see the jealousy in him now, so now I don’t bother.’
I nodded. ‘Jealousy is a powerful force. If you do well, there’s always some cunt ... who will want to cut your legs off. But I don’t understand 14 Intel. Bromley the spy was not my fault, their man the double agent was not my fault...’
‘We’re doing jobs that they want to be doing,’ Moran noted.
‘So why don’t they petition the Army, why fuck with us, eh?’ I thought out loud, easing back, my feet on a chair.
‘Maybe they did petition the Army, and the Army said that we were doing a good job of it. They need to discredit us first.’
I sighed long and loud. ‘It’s never easy, is it.’
‘My girl has gone, and ... and now this is the only family I have,’ Moran noted, looking across at the line of sleeping drunks.
‘Fuck, if I had Rocko and Rizzo as brothers-in-law I’d be worried,’ I told him. ‘Be staying away at Christmas.’
He laughed loudly. When he settled, he said, ‘You know, I sometimes dream of being shot.’
‘That’s a worry, when you should be dreaming about girls.’
He smiled widely. ‘I see the bullet coming.’
‘So why stay, you could go elsewhere, make it to colonel, you have the experience and the fame, more so
than most officers.’
He considered that. ‘Why do you stay?’
‘It’s not a case of staying or not, because the only way I would leave is in a box, I know too much. They’d never let me just walk off.’
‘What about me? Would I be in any danger from the likes of Bob Staines?’
‘No, you have a career ahead of you, they’d not touch you. You haven’t done what I’ve done, and I don’t talk about it back here. But my days are limited anyhow. Bob Staines, and the Government, they like the newspaper headlines, so they’ll keep sending us out – the selection destruction cycle, and someday real soon I’ll catch a bullet or step on a mine.’
‘Does that not keep you awake at night?’ Moran asked, cradling his tea mug.
‘No, it helps me sleep. I’ll never get old, grey, or retire, I’ll die in some place like Djibouti a year or so down the line, probably less. And my daughter, she’ll read about me in some book written by some former trooper who claimed to have known me. My great grandfather died in the First World War, and my grandfather must have grown up just hearing tales about him, maybe went to visit Flanders. It’ll be the same for me, a faded photograph for her to look at, her famous father.’
He coughed out a laugh. ‘We so ... need our fucking heads examined.’
‘Yep, that we do.’
He grabbed a marker pen from the white board as I observed, stepped over sleeping men, and wrote “TWAT” on Rizzo’s forehead, O’Leary taking a look and smiling. Moran left the marker pen near Rocko. There would be a reckoning in the morning.
The next day I got in late, few about, and it was officially a day off anyhow. O’Leary looked tired and would be having a half day after having baby-sat the hung over rabble I called my detachment. And Rizzo, he had driven home without noticing his forehead, nor anyone mentioning it.
Bob called me at 2pm. ‘There’s a senior Cabinet Office civil servant in a helicopter, on his way to see you, not quite sure what it’s about.’
‘Any damage to that hotel last night?’ I teased.
‘I don’t think they’d send a civil servant for that, and this morning all operations at 14 Intel were halted, a large team of SIB officers moving into their various offices in Northern Ireland, all of the files being taken away.’
‘I had a quiet word with the Prime Minister, before you did something that cost you your career. He has some of the detail, and he’s probably very worried.’
‘Then the civil servant is coming down for a Q&A, and maybe 14 Intel sent them some information about you.’
‘Well, we’ll see when he gets here, maybe I’ll be off to prison again.’
‘Let’s hope not.’
Sat with a mug of tea, I stared out of the window, thinking, and wondering why I was not concerned, and why I was not calling General Bennet right now. I had become over confident, and I wore that confidence like a suit of armour, and I felt secure inside it, I felt I could do almost anything, and I wondered about the mental state of troopers over the years – and all the resulting problems, and men like Captain Nichols.
Nichols was good, very good, yet also unbalanced, but how did you train a man to be like me, yet to be sane, a family man, a man who checked his car tyres before driving off. How did you make a man a killing machine ... then expect him to be normal at home? I could see how some troopers went off on one, killed wives and girlfriends, even became mass murderers. They had been wound up too tightly, trained too hard, and they had snapped.
I still had my sense of humour left, and my sarcasm, and that helped to keep me grounded I considered. I cared for my men, I did not want to see them hurt, and I cared about getting good results, and that tempered my excesses - I guessed at as I sat there.
An hour later my guest arrived, his helicopter putting down on the pad and shutting down. I led him inside and made him a tea, using the second office and closing the door. It was just the two of us, my guest elderly and grey haired, glasses perched on the end of his long beak of a nose.
He began, ‘14 Intel are under investigation as we speak, and we have some of the detail, but what I would like – off the record or not – is a fuller picture.’
‘I’ll try and answer all of your questions, sir.’
Over the next fifteen minutes I gave him the background story. I concluded, ‘They’re ambitious, sir, and would like to see Mi6 disbanded and the SAS and SBS under their control. But such ambition is misplaced, since such a reorganisation would come from necessity or from screw ups, yet I see no necessity, and 14 Intel are the ones making the screw ups.’
‘Indeed, yes, a long list of embarrassing actions and newspaper inches. Now tell me, the missing files from their homes; do you think they might land up on my desk by any chance?’
‘The next time I’m in the sewer I will chat to the rats, and should the rats have them ... I’ll ask that they’re sent to you.’
‘I colourful metaphor. You ... have no love for the rats?’
‘They are what they are, but I like a stand-up fight; I’m a soldier more than a spy.’
‘But your spy work has received great acclaim.’
‘It’s something I do well, but not something I would choose to do. I follow orders and help out, I certainly don’t volunteer for such things.’
He nodded. ‘What sane man would, eh. Now, the deaths of the INLA men south of the border ... is there any evidence floating around?’
‘None. In fact, solid written evidence that I was elsewhere. Should some evidence surface then it could be proven to be false.’
‘14 Intel are said to have a tape recording or two of SAS men confirming the story.’
‘Many think I did it, and they gossip like old ladies.’
‘Why ... do they think you did it?’
‘First off, that INLA cell were the ones that came for me here in Hereford and killed two police officers, so I had motive. Second, I was in the province. Third, few believe that anyone else could have pulled it off.’
He nodded. ‘The Garda have no evidence worth a damn, neither does anyone else, so it’s speculation.’
‘The tower at Newtownhamilton has my radio logs, they saw me go out and come back, so ... unless you believe that I walked thirty miles and back unseen there’s contra evidence.’
He nodded. ‘Somalia, the men you shot in the hills.’
I shrugged. ‘It could be argued that it was unnecessary, but I was under direct orders from Mi6 to thin them out, not just get to the hostages, but there is very little evidence either way, only my men were there.’
He nodded, making notes. ‘Firing off RPGs from the roof and sniping?’
‘They were shooting at us, we fired back, and we made use of the RPGs against vehicles to create diversions and start fires, giving us time to get away.’
‘And the explosion?’
‘We were a bit negligent in that we didn’t consider the consequences, but we had no idea of the blast radius, or what they had stored down there. A dropped match could have set the explosion off without us.’
He asked about North Africa, then came back to Northern Ireland. ‘Anything you did in the province that could come back to embarrass us?’
‘Plenty, if certain Intel officers or SAS officers blabbed about it.’
‘Does 14 Intel have any of that information?’
‘No, just speculation.’
‘Don’t forget their fondness for tape recording your men,’ he pointed out.
‘My men don’t blab, the regular SAS do, and they distort and exaggerate, and they’re not in possession of any information that could be a problem.’
Again he nodded, then took out a black and white photograph, handing it to me. ‘You recognise her?’
‘She ... does seem familiar. Who is she?’
‘Lives near Catterick, has an illegitimate child that she says was the result of being raped by an RAF Regiment gunner, 1986.’ He waited as I studied the picture with a frown.
‘Her name?’
‘Betty Houseman.’
I smiled widely. ‘Betty, known as Blowjob Betty.’
‘And her claims? 14 Intel have suggested that it was you, and just this week the Yorkshire police re-started an old investigation.’
Smiling, I said, ‘Have a DNA test done, and don’t worry about the results. But first, have her make a statement under oath.’
‘You’re confident that it’s not your child?’
‘Very, so give them some shit, sir.’
He made a note. ‘That’s good to know, not good to have decorated officers up on rape charges.’
‘Sir, I kill people most every week, and some of the things I’ve done for Mi6 would cause you a great deal of lost sleep, but I have not raped a girl.’
‘Good to know, but that brings us onto the hostage drama, and your ... sexual assault of several ladies.’
‘Yes, character acting. I had to be the man I was supposed to be, and he was a very bad boy – known for sexual assault. If I had been soft with hostages then the Russian gunmen would have doubted me and killed me. And some of the things I’ve done whilst pretending to be that man ... well, let’s hope they never come out.’
‘And would 14 Intel know about any of them?’ he pressed.
‘Not unless they’ve penetrated Mi6 at a high level.’
‘And the men here?’
‘Would not even have a clue who the character was that I pretend to be, I don’t discuss that back here with anyone.’
‘Why not?’ he puzzled.
‘Because you’re sat in front of me, and some day the shits at Mi6 may screw up and leave me getting the blame. So I’m very tight-lipped about all of my operations for Mi6.’
‘Good to know.’ He eased back. ‘So, all in all, 14 Intel don’t have much mud to throw, let alone make it stick.’
I shrugged and held my hands wide. ‘If they tapped my phone illegally there could be a problem, but other than that ... I don’t see what they could have. And, sir, everything I’ve done has been under orders, so should I ever end up in the dock I’ll make that very clear – I don’t go off and do espionage as a hobby on my day off.’
‘Yes, yes.’
