Appetite for Risk

by Jack Leavers

  *

  Two hours later, the young officer who had appeared with a laptop, printer, and bundles of papers finally indicated to Chapman he’d finished. Chapman himself had asked questions and directed the wording of my statement, while the younger guy, Williams, did the work on the laptop. I assumed Roper wasn’t a dab hand at typing and shorthand.

  Despite maintaining a posture like he had a rod up his arse, Chapman became noticeably more amenable during the evening. He was especially pleased on hearing I had been a Terrorist Recognition Instructor during my time in the Corps. At the time in 1990, the course in Folkestone was interesting and put to good use during my tours of Northern Ireland. I could never have foreseen that fifteen years later it would help swing a decision which kept me from being whisked into a hell of accusations and jail time if I was lucky, hoods and waterboarding if I wasn’t.

  ‘Before I can reveal any further details regarding the potential task, you are required to sign this,’ said Chapman as he presented a wad of papers.

  As I looked through, he continued.

  ‘You’ll see the Confidentiality Agreement you signed in 1997 at SBS, plus an addendum that reinforces your previous undertakings under the Official Secrets Act and some additional clauses related to any information to which you might become privy as a result of our new relationship.’

  It wasn’t that I didn’t trust them, I just didn’t trust anyone when it came to signing documents pushed under my nose.

  ‘I should really take legal advice before signing anything.’

  It would be kind to call them blank stares from the other three men sat round the table, but suffice to say the message was obvious and received loud and clear.

  ‘But this is pretty straightforward, so I’ll take a few minutes to read through.’

  We might have been getting on better than our original, frosty exchanges, but I wasn’t going to try pushing my luck.

  With the laptop and signed documents stowed away in a locked case, we had finally reached the moment of truth. Time to hear what crazy shit I had signed up to. I’d been forced to agree they could intercept my phone and email communications, which really pissed me off. Even while I signed the form, I considered ways to circumvent it. I didn’t have anything to hide, but I didn’t like the idea of these clowns snooping on everything I did. My use of encrypted Hushmail was likely to upset the apple cart, although no need to mention it there and then.

  Even after all this time, Chapman still looked immaculate in his three-piece suit and Windsor-knotted tie. His house master at Eton or Harrow would no doubt be proud.

  ‘Abu Saif al-Tikriti is the nom de guerre of a man believed to be a senior lieutenant to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, head of al-Qaeda Iraq. It is understood he is the Shadow Emir, effectively the second-in-command to Zarqawi and potentially the next leader of AQI once Zarqawi has been eliminated. Unfortunately, the identity of Abu Saif has not been confirmed and there are no clear photographs from which we can identify him. It is therefore our intention you will accompany our people when appropriate to positively identify Abu Saif and allow us to take it from there. A simple and straightforward task, for which you will avoid a great deal of unpleasantness.’

  It might have sounded simple and straightforward, but I started picturing scenarios where I might be sent in to PID (positively identify) Abu Saif on my own, up front and centre. I’d met the guy before, fine. But I didn’t know he was some kind of ninja bad-ass back then. If all this was compromised – and the whole Sheikh Mustafa working with British intelligence hadn’t escaped my notice – then I might well end up walking into a fitting for an orange jumpsuit and a neck shave that would involve my head and body becoming two distinct entities on Al Jazeera. Fuck.

  I assumed my misgivings weren’t stretched all over my face because Chapman and Roper shook hands with me as we bade our farewells. Chapman reminded me I wasn’t to discuss our meeting with anyone. Not George in the bar next door, my wife, former colleagues, or anyone else. He also told me I had to report any contact from Faris or the guys at Al-Nura immediately. When I said I planned to travel to Kurdistan in the next few days, he thought for a moment and quickly warmed to the idea.

  ‘Very good. Let’s hope an opportunity arises to acquire our target while you are already in Iraq. It would make the logistics much easier.’

  As for the next steps, they told me it depended on unfolding events. An email or a phone call from my contacts in Baghdad or Dubai might prompt action, or Chapman and his colleagues might engineer a chance to target Abu Saif by their own efforts. If they needed me to meet with them, a message would be left as a draft at an email account for which they provided the password. Rather bleakly, the message would say:

  Your father is ill and I am going to the hospital to visit him tomorrow.

  Which meant a meeting was set for 6.00pm local time the following day at one of the meeting locations. If in the UK, I was to make my way to the taxi rank at London’s Waterloo Station. After a flurry of phone calls and deliberation, it was decided if I was in Kurdistan there were two possible meeting locations. In Erbil it was the newly opened Erbil International Hotel; 200 kilometres away in Sulaimaniyah it was the Sulaimaniyah Palace Hotel. I had to confirm my attendance at the meeting by adding the following line to the draft message:

  Please keep me informed.

  ‘How about if I’m unable to make the meeting?’

  Chapman’s eyes narrowed. ‘Make sure you do. If your confirmation has not been seen by nine am local time on the day of the meeting, you will receive an SMS from a UK number with the same message, with the timing changed to today indicating the meeting will be at 6.00pm that day. Reply with the same confirmation. If the opportunity arises, it is vital we take it. We may not get a second chance. Do not make us have to come and find you.’

  And I thought we had been getting along nicely.

  ‘We’ll be monitoring the location of your phone, so keep it switched on and get to the nearest meeting location at the designated time. If you see Roper or Williams, then the validity of any instructions they provide will be immediately clear. If you are approached by anyone else who mentions my name, then you must call this number immediately to establish their credentials. It is doubtful we will meet again until after your involvement, so I will wish you Godspeed now, although you can be certain you’ll be in the safest of hands whenever the operation does materialise.’

  The London number I needed to memorise was based on my old Corps service number to assist me – very clever.

  I didn’t know if George was still at the club when I left because Roper guided me out of the building via a route that avoided the bar. Heading home I reflected on the events of the last few hours. The final months of 2004 had seen the customs debacle, problems between me and Claire, and now this fallout from Baghdad and Basra. I sincerely hoped things would improve in 2005.

  Chapter 33

  SOUTHWARK CROWN COURT,

  LONDON — JANUARY 2005

  At the end of January, I arrived suited and booted outside Southwark Crown Court for the latest instalment in the battle with Customs and Excise.

  In an unusual move, a joint motion had been filed by all our barristers to dismiss the whole thing by arguing we had no case to answer. Apparently, this was rarely a successful tactic, but they believed it had a chance in these unusual circumstances.

  Because Pete’s client had a QC (Queen’s Counsel – a silk), all the other barristers, including mine, let him take the lead. That was all very well, but unlike the others I hadn’t been involved in the impersonation nonsense or the dry run-through. My barrister didn’t seem to care though, and neither did he seem to have much idea about my role in the alleged crime.

  After taking the stairs up to the designated floor, I could see the other defendants and their families sitting outside the courtroom. Like me, Pete attended on his own. We were both keeping
our wives well away from this depressing bullshit.

  I hadn’t told Pete anything about my interaction with Chapman and the intelligence guys. When he’d asked me about the meeting at the club, I simply told him it involved my business in Iraq and a highly confidential matter. Even now, Pete remained optimistic someone would rock up and tell us the case had been dropped. That probably wouldn’t happen, but I hoped Chapman had found a way to snuff it out, for me at least.

  During the hearing, the judge heard arguments for and against dismissing the case. The customs barrister outlined the Crown’s case that a crime had clearly been committed and only a jury could decide if the defendants were guilty. Our defence barristers, led by the client’s silk, argued it was all simply horseplay between business associates which had been misconstrued. At one point, the customs barrister started making a big deal about the dry run-through in Berkeley Square being crucial evidence. I called my barrister over.

  ‘I wasn’t even at the dry run-through. If that’s the crucial part, then you need to tell them I wasn’t there.’

  Tentatively, he got to his feet when the judge allowed and tried to repeat the point I’d made. But he stumbled over the facts and got quickly shot down by the prosecution. He turned to give me a ‘well I tried’ look. Fucking useless. It felt like these big-time Charlies were playing a debating game with people’s lives at stake.

  I simmered with anger as I sensed the hearing slipping away from us, which would mean a jury trial in the coming weeks. Finally, both sides rested, and the judge said he would consider the arguments and reconvene the proceedings the following Monday to deliver his verdict. It was a surprise when he said the defendants were not required to attend. Fine. No way I’d be coming back to this circus if I didn’t have to.

  *

  Monday afternoon I got the phone call from my solicitor Denis.

  ‘The case has been dismissed. It doesn’t mean you’ve been acquitted, and customs could still prosecute with new evidence. As it stands though, the court case is over.’

  I had no idea whether Chapman had been involved in this decision or not. Regardless, it felt like an immense weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Now all I needed to do was patch things up with Claire and make a success of the business. Neither of those would be easy, but I’d be trying my damnedest to make both work out right.

  Chapter 34

  APPROACHING TURKEY/IRAQ BORDER

  EARLY FEBRUARY 2005

  ‘What do you mean we’ll see him at the border? Where’s my fucking passport?’

  My third land crossing of an Iraqi border in twelve months wasn’t running smoothly even though I was still some way from the Turkey-Iraq border crossing itself. Practice clearly didn’t make perfect.

  I was angry. Repeatedly demanding to see my passport every couple of minutes after handing it over to Ali, he’d kept promising me it wouldn’t be going anywhere. Now apparently someone I didn’t know was God knows where making the photocopies required for the border crossing. For some reason, this plan I hadn’t agreed to entailed us meeting near the border some thirty minutes away before the return of our passports and the necessary copies.

  ‘No, I want it back right now.’

  Of all the ridiculous bullshit I had experienced recently, there was no way I intended to risk losing my passport like this. But it was too late; we were now committed to this course of action because we couldn’t get hold of our mystery fixer on the phone.

  ‘He’d better fucking be there!’ I slammed the door shut harder than intended after jumping back into the car.

  Although I was clearly furious, Ali seemed to take it all in his stride. He appeared confident we’d both see our passports again in Silopi, even though he admitted he’d never met this fixer before.

  ‘He’ll be there, don’t worry. The taxi driver knows him very well.’

  I wasn’t reassured, but it was done now. Against my express wishes, but it was done.

  Nearly an hour later my passport was back in my hands as promised and Ali had the bundle of copies needed to get us through both the Habur Gate on the Turkish side and the Ibrahim Khalil border crossing on the Iraqi/Kurdish side. To his credit, he didn’t have an ‘I told you so’ look on his face when he handed my passport back as we made our way the last mile or so to the border.

  Perhaps it was because we’d upset their mid-morning coffee break that the Turkish border officials were sloth-like in the processing of our passports and forms. It took over two hours of to-ing and fro-ing between the various offices within the Habur Gate complex before we finally had Turkish exit visa stamps in our passports and the surly officials allowed us to proceed to the Iraqi side.

  After the frustrations of our progress up to then, I had little hope the Iraqi officials at Ibrahim Khalil would be an improvement. Ali had shrugged it off and practically bounced with excitement as he got closer to setting foot on his home soil again.

  We filed into the visa office behind the taxi driver and handed over our passports with the Iraqi visas we had spent so much effort acquiring in London.

  The officer behind the desk took one look at them, smiled, and said in perfectly understandable English, ‘You don’t need this. Everyone is welcome to Kurdistan.’ He then spoke to Ali in increasingly faster and boisterous Kurdish until eventually he called for glasses of chai all round.

  Whilst I was keen to get going, Ali became the life and soul of the visa office as he engaged in animated exchanges with all the officers and guards. I heard the mention of ‘Israeli’ and queried Ali about it.

  ‘He asked if you were an Israeli.’

  ‘Why an Israeli? My British passport is over there.’

  ‘In Iraq, they think every foreigner is working for the Israelis. Up here they don’t care though. The Israelis are like the Kurds, surrounded by enemies and hated by Arabs.’

  That finally explained what the guys in the car had been on about in Basra. Even here, with my British passport being processed in front of me, I was still asked about links with Israel.

  After a glass of chai and ten minutes of Ali and the border officials joking together like old friends, we were back in the taxi and driving to the passenger pick-up and drop-off point, marked by a low white building in amongst the fences.

  A few minutes later, the taxi was already on its way back across the border with new passengers as Ali bear-hugged a laughing, bald man in his late twenties. They kissed opposite cheeks at least four times, speaking over each other in Kurdish as they did so. Then they broke apart and slapped each other on the back. The shaven-headed guy’s smiling eyes turned to me and he spoke Kurdish in my direction.

  ‘This is Dara, my brother. He says welcome to Kurdistan.’

  ‘Tell him it’s great to be here. So, another brother?’

  Ali looked back at Dara and put his arm round his waist. ‘Not my actual brother, but my brother, you get me?’ – and without waiting for my reply – ‘He’s my cousin and we grew up together in Suli. Now he is Peshmerga.’

  Dara wore casual trousers and a shirt rather than a military uniform although he did have a sidearm in a holster on his belt. The two other men with him were more clearly soldiers; both wearing khaki military-style clothing, topped with chest webbing and carrying AK-47s. The younger man with dark hair greeted me in English with a ‘Hello’ as I looked over at them. The older of the two men had sandy-coloured hair and blue eyes. He smiled at me and spoke something in Kurdish I didn’t understand. I nodded and said hello in response.

  ‘Hamza is from a village where they all have hair and eyes like you.’ Ali laughed and repeated his comment in Kurdish for the benefit of the others. ‘His daughters have blondie hair and blue eyes. From Alexander time. You know, Alexander the Great.’

  I launched into a round of handshakes.

  ‘I’m John, it’s really good to meet you all. Thank you for coming to pick me
up.’

  Neither Dara nor Hamza spoke any English and the other guy only a few words, so Ali switched effortlessly between English and Kurdish to keep the conversation flowing. We climbed into a top of the range Toyota Land Cruiser. The dark-haired guy driving, Dara in the front passenger seat, and Ali next to me in the back. Hamza jumped into the rear of the SUV and positioned himself on one of the bench seats.

  Dara looked at me, circled his finger, and said, ‘Monica.’

  ‘Monica?’ I turned to Ali. ‘What does that mean?’

  He and Dara spoke briefly in Kurdish before Ali reverted to English.

  ‘Monica is the name for the car. All these types of Land Cruisers are called Monica here. After Monica Lewinsky. You know, with Bill Clinton. They like her and they think the car is beautiful like she is.’

  I nodded. ‘Okay, Monica. That’s going to be easy to remember.’

  ‘Monica,’ repeated Dara smiling, and he turned back to face the front, spoke to the driver, said ‘Mr John’ quietly to himself and we set off south.

  The topography in northern Iraq was a continuation of the terrain we’d passed through as we’d driven south from Diyarbakir; snow-capped mountain peaks, craggy gorges, and large hills in the border area, which eventually rolled into smaller hills and undulating terrain as we travelled further south. The mountains always stretched away on our left as we drove; an epic landscape which merged into Turkey to the north and then Iran to the east as we progressed in an arc through the northern reaches of Kurdistan Region territory near Zakho and Duhok, down to the east of the regional capital Erbil, and onwards towards our destination, the city of Sulaimaniyah.

  In the late afternoon we descended along a winding road from yet another craggy peak and arrived at a small collection of restaurants and shops. A kilometre away, behind a large dam, sunlight glistened off the surface of a large expanse of blue water.

  ‘That’s Dukan Lake,’ said Ali. ‘The dam provides electricity for Suli, so everyone is happy when the lake is full. We’ll have something to eat here and then drive the last forty-five minutes. Do you want to wash your hands?’