* * *
8.00am, Thursday 1 May. 'Oan is beginning to experience a growing feeling of irritability. He has shown good faith by releasing a sick woman, Frieda Mazaffarian. The police have not reciprocated to his request for a doctor to come to the Embassy and examine one of the male hostages. He is becoming increasingly frustrated at the negative response to his demands. He has managed to put an international telephone call through to the Foreign Ministry in Tehran, only to be told by Iran's Foreign Minister, Sadegh Ghotzbadeh, that his group are the agents of President Carter and the CIA and that the hostages would consider it an honour and a privilege to die as martyrs for the Iranian Revolution.'
The holding area at Regent's Park Barracks was like any other holding area: large, derelict and draughty. The toilets were blocked and there was only cold running water. Grey powdery dust clung to the floors, window ledges and washbasins, turning the whole building into a health hazard. I was lying on an Army camp bed, going over in my mind the details of the early-morning green-slime brief we had just received. I was wearing my black overalls, belt kit and Northern Ireland lightweight boots. The rest of my assault kit was close at hand. My MP5, body armour and assault waistcoat loaded with stun grenades were on a chair next to me. My respirator was in its olive-green container. The waiting had begun.
* * *
11.00am. Inside No. 16 Oan was wrestling with his first problem – the sick British hostage. Chris Cramer, the BBC sound organizer, was lying on the floor, doubled up with severe stomach pains. The sweat ran down his face in rivulets as he rocked back and forth, imploring Oan, 'Get me a doctor. For God's sake, get me a doctor.'
'But your British police have refused permission,' replied Oan.
'How do we know this?' interrupted Sim Harris, the BBC sound recordist.
'Come, I show you,' said Oan.
Harris was led downstairs to a green radiophone that the police had passed through a ground-floor window in a shoebox secured to a long pole. Harris talked to the police negotiator, pleading for a doctor for Cramer. The negotiator replied that his request was being considered. As the negotiations became more heated, with the negotiator telling Harris to persuade Oan to release Cramer, and Harris once again pleading with the police for a doctor, the now seriously ill Cramer was helped downstairs and laid on the floor of the Embassy foyer.
At the sight of the sick BBC man writhing about on the carpet, Oan thought that his most productive course of action would be to release him. So finally, at 11.15am, the Embassy front door opened, and Cramer, still doubled up in pain, stumbled to a waiting ambulance. It was Oan's first mistake. The thorough debriefing to which Cramer was subjected after his release was to prove crucial to the planning of the coming operation.
* * *
7.30pm. I readjusted my position on the floor of the Avis hire van to ease the cramp in my left leg. The rear stowage compartment of the van was packed to the roof with personal kit, assault equipment and team members. In the restricted space it was impossible to get comfortable. We were travelling through central London on our way to the new holding area, a location in the heart of South Kensington. Owing to the events of the day, the Head Shed had decided that it would make sound tactical sense for us to be in the vicinity of No. 16, in case of the imminent slaughter of the hostages. It would cut our reaction time down to almost zero.
The situation was deteriorating. Oan was becoming increasingly tense and unpredictable. He had allowed the deadline – and a new one of 2.00pm – to pass without incident. But his demands were changed. He now wanted three Arab ambassadors to act as mediators and negotiate a plane to take him and his group out of Britain.
The Avis van rumbled to a halt. It would be a relief to leave the claustrophobic atmosphere of the rear stowage compartment. We grabbed our holdalls and bergens and jumped out. Our three vans were parked in a side-street east of Princes Gate. This really was the concrete jungle, a million miles away from the tall greenstuff.
* * *
9.30am, Friday 2 May. 'I know what's going on. Your British police have cut off the telex and the international telephone. Your secret police want total control over what the outside world knows about our demands. I am now forced to apply pressure. I must kill a hostage.' Standing in the doorway of Room 9, Oan surveyed the male hostages. They looked devastated. 'You, bring Dr Ezzatti to me,' ordered Oan, pointing his submachine gun at journalist Mustapha Karkouti. Karkouti helped the unfortunate Cultural Attaché to his feet.
'This could be a counter-productive move,' said Lock, staring directly at Oan. 'Why don't we have another talk with the police negotiator?'
Oan hesitated. 'OK. But no tricks or I will kill the hostages,' and he brought his gun up to Ezzatti's head to emphasize the point.
'There is a hostage about to be killed unless you allow Oan full use of telephone and telex.' Lock's voice boomed out over the forecourt from the open window on the first floor.
'Impossible,' came the negotiator's reply.
'But a man is about to be killed,' pleaded Lock.
'What do they mean, impossible?' cut in Oan, sensing a challenge to his authority. He forced the gun harder into the side of Ezzatti's head. He stared fixedly at the terror-stricken man and then appeared to relent, pushing the Cultural Attaché to the rear of the room. 'I want to talk to a man from your BBC, a man who knows Harris.' Oan spoke slowly but could not veil the threats. 'I set a new deadline in a few hours.' And with that, all went quiet at the first-floor window.
* * *
3.00pm. The police had finally produced Tony Crabb, the managing editor of BBC TV News and a personal friend of Sim Harris. Crabb scribbled the hurried statement shouted by Harris from the first-floor window into an old notebook. Oan demanded a coach to take gunmen, hostages and an Arab ambassador to Heathrow. The non-Iranian hostages would be released at the airport. An aircraft would then take the remaining hostages, gunmen and ambassadors to an unspecified Middle Eastern country, where the last hostages would be released. Oan also wanted his aims and grievances broadcast by the BBC that night.
* * *
8.30pm. 'The whole of the ground-floor and the first-floor windows are armour-plated. I know because I cleaned up after the contractors had finished. Behind the wooden door at the front there is an ornate steel security door.' The caretaker's voice cut through the silence of the briefing room like a chainsaw.
We were all sitting around a scale model of the Embassy which had been hastily constructed in quarter-inch plywood the day before. It had taken us twenty-four hours to locate the caretaker, who had been enjoying a day off when the siege began. And here he was giving us our best target brief to date. He knew every nook and cranny in the Embassy, every storeroom and broom cupboard. I could only speculate as to what he was feeling, suddenly catapulted into the limelight from the anonymity of his humble occupation. All eyes were on him. His was the last job anyone would have chosen if they had wanted to make an impact on the world scene. But from the security forces' point of view, it was the ideal job to enable someone to give an intimate portrait of the structure of the building. Hell! What a stroke of luck locating this guy, I thought. Without his information, our initial response to the threatened slaughter of hostages could have turned into a real can of worms. The original plan had been to run out of No. 14 and batter in the ground-floor window and main door of No. 16 with sledgehammers. Christ! With the armour plating, the sledges would have bounced off. It would have been like trying to knock down a concrete wall with a toffee hammer.
There now followed a hectic period of replanning. Orders were rewritten, we were rebriefed, demolition equipment was issued. I began to get a feeling that this nut was going to be even tougher to crack than we'd anticipated.
* * *
11.30pm. The final outrage for Oan. He had sat right through the evening listening to the regular news bulletins, growing more and more frustrated as each successive broadcast drew a blank. He had become obsessed with hearing his aims and grievances broadc
ast. The BBC had indeed now transmitted a brief broadcast stating the new demands – but to Oan's disbelief and anger they'd got it wrong. The BBC had stated that the British Government wanted the Arab ambassadors to negotiate with Iran. In fact, Oan had demanded that all negotiations be conducted through the British Government. He rose slowly to his feet, his eyes ablaze with fanaticism and hatred. A chill of fear swept through the hostages.
* * *
6.05am, Saturday 2 May. Beeeeeeeep. The single shrill tone of the field telephone penetrated the operations centre of Alpha Control, the police forward operation room situated in No. 25 Princes Gate – the Royal School of Needlework. A surreal setting if ever there was one! The duty negotiator, a tall, slim, refined man, rubbed his tired, gritty eyes and lifted the receiver. 'Good morning. This is David,' he said politely. 'How…'
'You are liars!' Oan's angry voice scythed into the attempt at exchanging pleasantries. 'You have cheated and deceived me over my demands.'
It was a perfectly clear line. The duty negotiator sensed the extreme agitation in Oan's voice. He tried again to calm him down, to divert his mind from the high tension. 'Oan, what would you all like for breakfast?'
'I'm not hungry. I want to talk to the Arab ambassador.'
'Oan, we are doing our best, but this all takes time.'
'I have no time left. You bring one of the ambassadors to the phone now.'
The negotiator gripped the telephone receiver tighter at the sound of the rising hysteria in Oan's voice. 'Oan. The Foreign Office are dealing with your demands right now, but it all takes time.'
'You are not dealing with my demands at all. You are sitting on your fat bottoms in your warm offices doing nothing. I tell you now. Because of Britain's deceit, your British people, your British police – they will be the last to be released. And if you do not send the BBC man back to talk to me, the one who was here yesterday, someone will have to die.' With that, the phone went dead and silence descended on Alpha Control.
3.30pm. Tony Crabb, the managing editor of BBC TV News, finally turned up. He was bollocked by Harris for putting lives at risk by delaying the broadcast of the gunman's statement and by not ensuring that the statement was correct in every detail. At this stage, the police negotiator, standing close to Crabb, decided to intervene. He agreed to take down Oan's statement and personally ensure that it was correct. He took out his notebook and pencil and began recording Oan's statement as it was shouted down from the first-floor window by Mustapha Karkouti. The final clause of the statement demanded a guarantee that the BBC put out the demands totally accurately and on the next news bulletin. This was another mistake. It gave the negotiator a bargaining point. He seized his opportunity. 'OK, Oan. I will give you your guarantee if you show us some good faith and release some hostages.'
There was a pause, a movement by the curtains. The air was charged with tension.
'We give you one,' came Oan's reply from within the room.
'We need more,' said the police negotiator impassively.
Another pause. Another tension-filled minute.
'I give you two.'
The bargain was struck.
Two hostages were chosen for release. First, Ali-Gholi Ghazan-Far, a Pakistani educationalist, the man who snored loudly at night and kept everyone awake. That was why he was chosen. They wanted to get rid of him. And second, Haideh Kanji, an Embassy worker who was pregnant. Oan demanded that his statement be broadcast accurately before the release of the two hostages. The police demanded the hostages be released first. Result: stalemate.
On receipt of the police demand, Oan threw the phone to the floor in anger and frustration, threatening to kill a hostage at 9.00pm if nothing was heard on the Nine O'Clock News. At this latest threat, Karkouti went completely to pieces and sank to his knees, pleading with Oan not to carry out the execution. Karkouti's pleading must have struck a humanitarian chord in Oan's fanatical brain, or perhaps it was just a psychopath's cunning that led to the terrorist leader's change of heart. No one will ever know. In the event, Oan decided to meet the police halfway and release the pregnant woman before the 9.00pm deadline.
'We swear to God and to the British people and government that no danger whatsoever…' The voice of Scotland Yard's Head of Information drifted over the airwaves of the BBC at exactly 9.00pm that evening, relaying Oan's statement of demands word-for-word to an anxious, waiting world. It was precise and word-perfect. The hostages and the gunmen were jubilant, kissing and hugging each other, tears of joy running freely down their flushed cheeks. Only one man was absent from the celebrations. Oan. He stood to one side, nursing his machine pistol in the crook of his arm, alone, poker-faced.
A short while later, Ali-Gholi Ghazan-Far was led downstairs to the ground floor. He stepped through the main door of the Embassy and walked across the road to freedom and a waiting ambulance.
* * *
11.00pm. It was a fine, starry night. The sun had vanished, abandoning London to the evening's dark embrace. The air was exquisitely clear as we carefully picked our way across the rooftops towards No. 16 Princes Gate. An eerie silence had descended on Knightsbridge and South Kensington. No noisy rush of traffic, no late-night revellers lost in search of Chelsea. The rustle of clothing, the leather creak of belt kit, the scuffing noise of a running shoe on a bit of loose guttering were the only sounds that stirred the hush of that tranquil May evening.
Suddenly – crack! The sound of a pistol going off. We froze for a few seconds. One of the lads was pointing to his foot; he'd broken a slate as he'd stepped on it. We gave the thumbs-up to the D11 sniper in his concealed position on No. 14 and moved on.
I looked out across the rooftops in front of us. It was a veritable aerial farm, with a jungle of telescopic poles, wires and satellite dishes. About five metres ahead of me was the dim, shadowy figure of Roy, the recceparty leader. He was pointing at something by his feet. As I drew level with him, I caught a glint of moonlight on glass. It was the Embassy skylight. 'This is it. The skylight of No. 16,' whispered Roy, looking down at the glass frame. 'Let's see if it will open.' He knelt down and gripped the wooden surround and attempted to lift it, but it seemed to be locked solid. He swore under his breath and stood up.
We were staring blankly at the wooden frame when Pete, the third team member, whispered quietly, 'Let's peel the lead back,' and with that he knelt down and began picking at the strip of lead waterproofing around the edge of the glass. After fifteen minutes' careful work he had removed most of the lead and was able to lift one of the glass panes clear of the frame. He reached through the hole and after a few seconds stood up with a lock in his hand. 'It wasn't even locked, just pushed through the clasp,' he whispered triumphantly, having once more gripped the skylight and slowly eased it open.
Moonlight immediately flooded the small room beneath us. We found ourselves looking down into a cramped bathroom. Directly below us was a large white enamel bath. In the left-hand corner was a grimy washbasin, and opposite it was the door that could lead us to the top landing of the Embassy and eventually to the terrorist stronghold. I felt a sudden rush of excitement, a surge of adrenaline, at the thought of the options this new development offered. I had to stifle an urge to become the first SAS man into the Embassy. It would have been quite easy to grip the wooden surround of the skylight base and lower myself down onto the edge of the bath. But thoughts of immortality were interrupted by a hand on my shoulder and by Roy's voice whispering, 'Come on. Let's get back to the holding area. We can tell the boss we've got a guaranteed entry point.' A small team carrying silenced MP5s and using night vision equipment could easily have entered in pitch darkness, ghosting along the upper corridors until encountering the terrorists. The idea was discounted, however, because there was muttering about the use of silenced weapons seeming too much like an assassination and so it was back to the drawing board for us.
* * *
8.00pm, Sunday 4 May. The next day, things seemed to go much better. Oan's hardened resol
ve appeared to be softening. The news bulletins were full of optimism. The Arab ambassadors had agreed to attend a meeting of the Cobra committee in their basement in Whitehall. Oan, in return, had agreed to reduce his demands. He now wanted only one Arab ambassador to negotiate the safe passage of the gunmen. He also agreed to release Mustapha Karkouti, who was suffering from some kind of fever. At about eight o'clock on Sunday evening, Karkouti stepped through the main door of the Embassy, took a deep gulp of fresh air and walked to freedom.
* * *
9.00pm. Malcolm was a nervous, white-faced RAOC clerk, the squadron scribe. He was not deep-chested or strong in the arm, and with his pale, thin face and sympathetic eyes he could have been any mother's favourite son. Being involved in the Embassy siege was a definite event in his life, a step forward, he felt, towards the most coveted badge of rank: the Chief Clerk's crown and laurel leaves. Like some of the damned in legend, he dwelt in a middle void, hung between the elite of the SAS on the one side and the crap-hats on the other. Now as he stood in full assault kit before the plywood scale model of the Iranian Embassy, waiting for room combat brief, he must have felt that he finally belonged.
Soldier I Page 23