One morning my guards pushed me into a different interrogation room and attached my cuffs to chains on the table. I sat for a time, no doubt observed through the one-way mirror. An elderly, rumpled man with thinning grey hair entered. The overhead light briefly flashed a reflection off his steel-rimmed glasses as he took his seat across the table. “Good morning, Mr. McCool,” he said. “How are you today? My name is George, and I will be talking to you for a while, as you have not been forthcoming with my colleagues. We need to know the connections between the KGB and the Republican paramilitary groups. We need to know more about the money trail between Boston and Northern Irish rebels. I’m sitting in on this from MI6 because of the international threads, although your case is strictly speaking in the purview of MI5 and the RUC. Their efforts have been to no avail, they have not obtained satisfactory information, so they called me in to take a stab. All parties concerned are very impatient, because lives and property are at stake here. You claim that you thwarted an attempt to murder the Prime Minister, but it is imperative that we find out more about it. So, I’d appreciate anything you can tell me concerning your setting off a large quantity of Czech explosives in a stolen school van parked in an empty field, that you haven’t told us already.”
Here we go again. “As I explained to the MI5 people who grilled me yesterday and the day before, and the RUC people who grilled me before that, I’m not Jack McCool, but an American named Jake Fonko who is employed at the DeLorean factory. A Catholic group called Provisional Irish National Guerillas mistook me for Jack McCool, who I gather is notorious in these parts, and to whom I apparently bear some resemblance. I learned of the PING plot to bomb Mrs. Thatcher at the factory. I took advantage of their mistaking me for Jack McCool and assumed leadership of the bombing operation. I deliberately got the PING unit drunk and steered the van into the bog, then came back later to detonate the Semtex so they couldn’t use it later.”
“So you claimed to my colleagues. But you might have been destroying the evidence of a plot gone awry. They searched your room at the Conway Hotel and found an American passport for Jake Fonko, and also a Swiss passport for Zak Fahnke with a similar photo, as well as a silencer and a number of extra clips for the SIG pistol, recently fired, that you apparently had smuggled into the country and were in possession of when they apprehended you. Of course a desperate, wanted man like Jack McCool would hardly re-enter Northern Ireland under his own name, now would he? And insinuating yourself into the DeLorean factory would be perfect cover, though the fact that workers are being jettisoned, not hired, renders that cover story dubious. Look, there are complicating factors, and until we untangle them we can keep you here as long as we like, or at least until someone confirms your identity. You’ve no doubt heard Orwell’s famous observation, ‘People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.’ Should our patience wear thin, and that will happen very soon, I can assure you, we have a number of those same rough men on staff.”
“If someone verifies my identity that will resolve my situation here?”
“It would certainly be a good beginning, let us say.”
“But you won’t take the word of anyone at the factory?”
“You are an unknown quantity here in Northern Ireland. These are fraught times. In the circumstances, no one at the factory is willing to take the risk of vouching for you and winding up implicated in a terrorism plot. No one at the factory knows what to think since its founder and the man you claim to be working for was just arrested in Los Angeles for smuggling drugs. I regret to tell you that he is currently unavailable for comment, having more pressing things on his mind than giving you a character reference. Which, in the circumstances, might be of dubious value anyhow.”
Well, if it was any consolation, my hunch about the drug deal had been right. But now DeLorean was incommunicado, I was hung out to dry and nobody had my back. And when they finally brought this up to DeLorean, how much shit would he put on my shoes for not showing up and leaving him the fall guy? By now I’d been in the slammer five days, half the time being interrogated by an assortment of bullies, cajolers and persuaders, and the other half sitting in a solitary cell. I was grateful to the RUC for providing an excuse to miss that meeting in LA. On the other hand, my being arrested for suspicion of terrorism gave DeLorean ammunition for destroying me, should he decide to. I needed out of the Maze. It was an improvement over Tuol Sleng and the Khmer Rouge—they might bash me around a little here, but there was no danger of extreme torture and summary execution—but it was unpleasant enough with no end in sight unless I did something decisive. George seemed like my first and best chance, so I resorted to something I’d hoped I’d never have to do. It meant putting my fate in the hands of the man who had lied to me repeatedly, wrecked my Army career and nearly gotten me killed in more ways than I cared to remember. “Your organization has good contacts in the American Central Intelligence Agency, our CIA?”
“We might,” George said.
“Okay. Have them get you in touch with Todd Sonarr. I don’t know where he’s stationed right now, but they’ll find him. When you talk to Sonarr tell him that Jake Fonko sends his regards and wonders how the Cambodian dragonfly is doing these days. And then ask him anything you like.” I was pretty sure that would do the trick in the short term, but my heart sank over the long term implications. George said he would do that, thanked me and left the room. They took me back to my cell, where I remained for the rest of the day and that night.
The next morning after breakfast guards took me to the interrogation room, and George was waiting for me there. This time they didn’t put cuffs on me. “Good morning, Mr. Fonko,” he greeted me. “I had a very informative chat with your Mr. Sonarr. How can I help you?”
“Well, for starters you could give me back my clothes, my SIG and the keys to the Mini and let me go. But it may be that I can help you.” I told him about the PING group, an unnamed Russian and their plans. Todd Sonarr having clarified my identity, George listened.
“Not much to go on there,” he said after hearing my tale. “Local authorities have been aware of the PING group, of course, though except for Mairead Farrell nobody has caught them doing anything. They’ve been low-priority up until now, as there are far worse elements we have to deal with. We suspected Russians were involved in smuggling arms to the Republican groups, and that is why MI6 is participating in what is essentially an internal matter. If this Russian has anything to do with the assassination attempt, that is another thing we have to consider. If and when the money from America arrives, we might be able to catch them in the act of paying the Russian, or of accepting delivery of the arms. It is, of course, one of our highest priorities that these arms shipment be stopped, and thanks to you we may be on top of it for a change. Now, I’ll make you a proposition. That pistol we found on your person is a smuggled weapon and strictly illegal. I will return it to you on one condition, that you find out what you can from the PING people and keep me apprised.”
“Fair enough. I’ll do what I can,” I said. “Can you tell me anything about Mrs. Thatcher’s visit? It was hush-hush at the factory.”
“She, some of her finance people and some investigators from the Serious Fraud Office came to inspect the figures at the plant. She wanted to review the situation for herself, and the others were to gather up whatever evidence they could find. There is reason to feel your Mr. DeLorean has not been honest in his dealings here.”
“The trustworthiness of him and his henchman, Roy Nesseth, leaves a lot to be desired, that’s for sure,” I said. “They’ve been stiffing me on my fees and lying to me from Day One. I was supposed to have flown out and joined him for that meeting in Los Angeles, which, he’d assured me, was not a drug deal. So I’m not surprised the government here has him under suspicion. Well, I’ve got a few things to sort out. Such as, what do I do next? Thank you for springing me, George. No offense,
but you seem a little old for this job.”
“They put me out to pasture after we engineered Karla’s defection. He was at the top of the KGB, and my nemesis for decades—the circles he ran around us, it was terribly frustrating., not to mention embarrassing. Oh, we had to play a little fast and loose with the rules of the game to bring him over, didn’t we just! So in the aftermath my erstwhile colleagues saw fit to push me out of arm’s reach. But we got him in the end, whatever low road we took. Some gaps in service meant I had a little longer to go before I can draw a decent pension. Still, I’m better off than steadfast old Connie down on that squalid patch of farm with that dreadful butch woman that’s taken her over. Brainy fat girls don’t get a break when it comes to snagging men, God love them.
“Toby, Peter and I took the gloves off, got our hands dirty, so to speak, but to see that old scoundrel trudging across that footbridge, it was worth it, oh was it was worth it! He even returned my gold cigarette lighter he’d nicked off me in that pestilential Indian jail. But enough of past glories. Come with me. I want to show you something.”
He led me out of the interrogation room and down the hallway to a door that opened into a dark cubbyhole. “Step in here,” he said and shut the door after us. It held a table, a couple of wooden chairs and a one-way mirror into a room like the one we just left. A man who looked something like me was seated at a table with two of my previous RUC interrogators. “You had a near-run thing,” said George. “You were within a hairs-breadth of a murder indictment. Thanks to a report from a check point several weeks ago, the RUC was on the alert for Jack McCool. That was a false alarm, but the day after we took you into custody we got word he had been sighted again. He had just arrived in Belfast, and we detained him before he made contact with the Republican groups. He had a plausible alias, credentials and explanation, and in response to our queries, pillars of the Irish community in Boston vouched for him. So we had two possible Jack McCools on our hands, and distinguishing the genuine article was proving tricky.
“Luckily for you, your former CIA colleague, Todd Sonarr, was persuasive, because otherwise your provenance was no better than the other fellow’s. We’re now satisfied that the real Jack McCool is in custody, on the other side of this window. There were rumors that he’d carried a satchel of cash, but that’s not turned up yet. Maybe that’s the money you heard about, maybe just a rumor. In any event, he won’t be blundering in and interfering with you. So we’ve been lucky all around.”
“Has any of this been released to the public or reported in the press?” I asked.
“So far not. It’s strictly hush hush.”
“Can you keep it that way for a few more days? I may be able to get you the information you want, but not if it becomes known that Jack McCool has been captured.”
“We can hold him incommunicado, but only for a short while. There are leaks. The word gets out. We’ll do our best, but you’ll have to work quickly. Okay, let’s spring you out of here.”
George gave me a phone number and some recognition signals in case anything turned up. I got back into my own clothes, they turned over my gun and the keys to the Mini, and I exited the Maze with good cheer all around. Well, them more cheery than me. They weren’t the ones that had been intensively interrogated and kept in solitary for five days, after all.
The Serious Fraud Office investigating DeLorean? Their motto: “WE REALLY MEAN IT!”
My next step was to figure out my next step. With the LA drug bust, my employment with John DeLorean was kaput. Between the £1000 Aoibheann had advanced me for expenses and my already-banked retainer of $10,000 I estimated I was cash enough to the good to settle my hotel bill and fly myself back to LAX without hitting my stash of AmEx Travelers Cheques; but I’d be ending this gig sadder, no richer, and not necessarily wiser. I’d told George I’d let him know if I heard anything more about PING plots, but were I to just leave the country…if they let me leave the country: they could stop me in the airport. Well, first things first. I drove straight to the Conway Hotel. The desk clerk looked at me quizzically when I asked for my key. What other reaction would you expect after warrant-carrying representatives of MI5 and an RUC SWAT team had shown up to ransack your room? But she handed me the key graciously: the RUC had phoned ahead and cleared my good name. My room was pretty much as I’d left it. When MI5 tosses a room they do it with care.
I cleaned up and calmed down, and feeling refreshed, I strolled over to the factory to get a fix on the situation. The place was all a-buzz. They’d learned more than George told me. DeLorean had been arrested in a drug sting operation, and the Feds catching it all on videotape. It was a set-up from the get-go. Jim Hoffman was a turned drug dealer, dodging for leniency by ratting former friends out. Manzetti was an FBI agent, as was Benedict, the “banker” who was going to launder the money. I hadn’t met Benedict, but DeLorean didn’t need him, or even that waiter as a witness to implicate me; I was already a person of interest, as far as Manzetti was concerned. No doubt my previous appearance was on an FBI tape. The people at the factory had no better idea of my role in all this than I did. As was typical of his management style, DeLorean had never told them much about me in the first place. I’d not shared much information previously, and I certainly told them nothing now.
I returned to the Conway. I asked the desk clerk what more I owed as of then on my bill. The amount was within the range of affordability. I sympathized with George, MI6 and the RUC, but their problems were not mine. “What next?” seemed pretty simple: make a plane reservation, stay the night and break for the States tomorrow.
Unfortunately, my life was about to become complicated.
As I looked up airline phone numbers in the directory, the room phone rang. “Jake Fonko?” a familiar voice said. “This is Eammon Gahagan. I need to talk to you. Can we meet in the coffee shop?”
It was Grotesqcu. “When?”
“Now.”
Why not? It was well past the breakfast hour, and so the place was practically empty. He had taken the most isolated table in the room. I pulled out a chair and joined him. A waitress came by and I ordered coffee and breakfast rolls. “What’s up?” I asked him.
“I don’t understand how you do it,” he said, shaking his head from side to side. “Supposedly it’s impossible for outsiders to infiltrate these Irish patriot groups, and now I find out you’ve been leading one.”
“Oh, just part time,” I said. “It’s not like it’s a career.”
“So what were you doing out there, blowing up that van?”
“It seemed like the proper thing to do. Otherwise they’d have used the Semtex to assassinate the Prime Minister and destroy the DeLorean factory.”
“True. Well, at least you disposed of the Semtex. Now they have to buy some more. That business is a source of hard currency for us, so that’s to the good.”
“I got the impression from what was said that a Russian had put them up to it—told them when Thatcher was going to be there, supplied the wherewithal.”
“Heaven forefend,” Grotesqcu said with mock indignation. “Get rid of a popular Prime Minister of an enemy country who’s an avowed foe and bent on dismantling a Socialist system we’ve spent decades encouraging? Why would we want that to happen?”
“The PING people also told me some Russian was going to unload a shipment of arms and explosives as soon as they brought him some money.”
“Oh, those Russians!” Grotesqcu chirped. “They are a caution. Listen, these people buy arms from anyone who’ll sell them. They like Armalite AR-15 rifles and Smith and Wesson sidearms, so Americans smuggle those in. On the other hand, they buy their RPGs and Semtex from us, as our products in those categories are the preferred choices and we offer cut rates. Plus we’ll sell them automatic AK-47s. My bosses are getting concerned about that money. Reports are that it’s left the US. They should have paid us by now. I’m under a lot of pressure to
deliver that shipment and move on to my next assignment. Believe it or not, this is nothing more than a business proposition for us.”
“They said you were replenishing other groups as well.”
“Yes, but you don’t land smuggled arms piecemeal. The ship’s lingering out north of the Orkneys waiting for the go-ahead. The others have paid up. We’re waiting on PING.”
“I don’t see how I can help. I got in with those people by accident. I’m not their leader, it’s a case of mistaken identity. I know almost nothing about it. And you don’t expect me to help you smuggle arms into Northern Ireland, do you?”
“No, I guess not. I was just hoping talking to you would give me a better idea of what’s going on. You spent a few days in the Maze prison. How’s that, I mean as prisons go?”
“Compared to Tuol Sleng and Gazr, Paradise on Earth. I never feared for my life, not even once. One interesting thing, I was interrogated by a George somebody who recounted something about a Russian named Karla from the KGB defecting. Do you know anything about that?”
“Never been any such person in the KGB.”
“But if he defected, you’d not want that known…so you wouldn’t tell me if there was.”
“No, I wouldn’t, but there wasn’t.”
“Um…okay. Well, I have matters to take care of. Kind of awkward to wish you well, what with you trying to subvert governments and foment revolutions and abet terrorism and so forth, but…take care of yourself, you hear?”
The Jake Fonko Series: Books 1 - 3 Page 57