The Jake Fonko Series: Books 1 - 3

  The driver smoothly negotiated the traffic into the heart of London, to a district notable for imposing, official-looking architecture. They drove by a black building with white door and window trim standing inside a tall iron fence, pulled into an alleyway, and checked with a guard in a gatehouse who let us in through a formidable iron gate. We parked and climbed out, and they ushered me inside. “This way, please,” one said, and he led us down a corridor to a lift. It was a well-appointed building, reassuring, as nobody does extreme interrogation over oriental carpets. We ascended two flights, got out and went a short distance to a conference room, which we entered. “If you’d be so kind to take a seat. Coffee? Tea?”

  I chose the coffee alternative and planted my butt on an elegantly upholstered chair at a lustrous mahogany conference table. My drink arrived shortly, served in fine china, accompanied by some small sweet biscuits. I’d just returned the empty cup to its saucer it when the door opened and a handsome middle-aged woman wearing a well-tailored business ensemble stepped in. “Mr. Jake Fonko? I’ve been so looking forward to meeting you.” With a welcoming smile she extended her hand in greeting and I rose to shake it. “I’m Margaret Thatcher, and I am delighted to make your acquaintance. We’d been keeping an eye out for you, hoping you’d leave the Kingdom in some conventional way so we could intercept you. It was such a relief when my office picked your name out of the flight bookings.”

  “Thank you, your…excellency? But I’m a little confused. What’s going on?”

  “Jake…if I may call you Jake?…please call me Maggie. I’m just a grocer’s daughter who won a couple of elections, after all. It’s very simple. When you save one’s life, one owes a ‘thank you,’ I should think. So I had some men meet you and bring you here so I could thank you personally. Have you had a good journey since you left Belfast?”

  “It’s been all right. Glasgow is not what I’d call a tourist destination, but I spent a couple pleasant enough days there.”

  “Oh, I know,” she said. “Scotland can be dreary. Though the highlands are a delight when the sun is out. When did you leave Belfast?” I told her. “Really? There was some sort of terrible shootout early that morning in the countryside outside of town. Some Protestant paramilitary group got into it with a couple cars of Republican rebels, and then assault teams from the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the army showed up, all firing at one another in the fog, turned up regular dog’s breakfast. I suppose you missed that?”

  “I’m afraid so. Exciting things rarely happen to me.” That’s the way I try to keep it, anyhow, not that I always succeed. I’d seen nothing about this incident in the news.

  “Those Irish Republican groups have been simply impossible, so insistent on having their way in every matter or else. I tried to work something out with Bobby Sands behind the scenes. He was having none of it. Rather die for his principles than hammer out a mutually acceptable agreement. What can you do with obstinate people like that? And they say I murdered him, can you believe it! We made every effort to assure the health and safety of him and his compatriots, not that it did any good. You were in the employ of Mr. DeLorean, is that not so?”

  “One way or another,” I said. “My duties were never clear. And now he’s been arrested for drug smuggling, so it appears I’m out of a job.”

  “What a dreadful person he is, “ Mrs. Thatcher said. “I had Mr. DeLorean pegged as a con man from the very beginning, You can’t last long running a grocery store if you don’t quickly learn to recognize them. There’s the shoplifters, of course, but as annoying as the boosters are the chiselers and cheaters. They switch price tags. They damage a package, then ask a lower price. They put the expensive item into the cheap item’s wrapper. They try to return for cash items they stole or bought on the cheap somewhere else. If they catch you inattentive they demand change for a tenner instead of the fiver they gave you. Mr. DeLorean’s of the same breed, just operates on a larger scale. When they collared him for drug smuggling I was not surprised in the least.

  “Oh, he was going to be the salvation of Northern Ireland, bringing droves of high-wage factory jobs to the poorest part of the UK, he promised. The Labour government leaped at the chance to be seen as doing something beneficent. They started him off with a £54,000,000 guaranteed loan and a fortune in tax breaks. All with the understanding that he’d ask for no more. And that despite a consultant’s analysis that the venture had only a one in ten chance of success. Mr. DeLorean, our auditors are finding, subsists on tax breaks…while soaking the British taxpayer, of course. The loan became a grant, and then the Conservative government, who’d inherited this mess, had to cough up £14,000,000 ‘for the last time’ to keep the business going, and then DeLorean got another £10,000,000 ‘for the last time’, and in all he’s soaked the British taxpayer about £85,000,000, not counting the tax breaks. And then he had the cheek to demand £10,000,000 for damage from the Bobby Sands riots, which insurance had already covered in full for £675,000.

  “When the first shipment of cars left Belfast he sent NIDA a cheque for royalties, from a business that was losing money hand over fist. Feeding us back £205,000 of our own money! Can you imagine? When the situation went over the cliff he offered to make a sacrifice by sinking his own money into resuscitating the firm. It turned out what he planned to do was strip the factory of its assets for pennies on the dollar. That weasel got wind of our visit to check the books and beat us to the files, but there was enough left there, and we had witnesses. His former staff is being very cooperative; he was not a man to inspire loyalty. We’ll make our case, though he’s upped the challenge.

  “Now our auditors are discovering that he didn’t even spend all of that money on the Belfast operation, but on his own interests and expenses everywhere else. He siphoned a good portion of it off to a Swiss shelf company called GPD, from which it apparently found its way to his own personal pockets. And lord only knows how much he’s filched away from other investors. Forgive a shopkeeper’s daughter for fretting over the pounds and pence, but your Mr. DeLorean is the third most expensive disaster to visit the British Isles in living memory.”

  “What would the first two be?”

  “Number two was Mr. Hitler’s blitz during the war.”

  “And number one?”

  “The Labour Party. But we’ll be setting that right, just you watch,” she said with a twinkle.

  “I wonder if you can shed some light on an odd thing that happened after I blew up the van full of explosives and the RUC crew grabbed me. They turned me over to a man from MI6 who interrogated me, George somebody—he said something about a Russian KGB officer named Karla defecting…”

  “Oh yes, that’s old George Chutney,” Maggie said with a chuckle. “He wrote the report of your interrogation. That’s how I learned of your role in this. And your service record—most impressive! George has been with the Secret Intelligence Service a long time, a former field operative, performed daring deeds behind enemy lines in the War, they say. He’s putting in time to up his pension, and he’s bored silly. He read some spy novels by John LeCarre, and they took his fancy, so he likes to have a little fun with his, um, guests. He was just having you on.”

  Ah yes, a spook making the world a better place through schtick. Had I read the LeCarre books I’d have gotten it and shared the joke, but I can’t keep up with everything.

  “So,” she continued. “Is there anything we can do for you, by way of showing our gratitude? Would you like to be our guest here in London for a few days, get the royal tour, see some of the best we have to offer?”

  “I appreciate the thought, Maggie, but I’m anxious to get back to the States. Urgent matters call out and all that.” For example a satchel of black money I needed to stash ASAP. Not to mention parties who’d love to get their hands on it, and me, still in too close proximity.

  “We can certainly help you out there. We’ll put you on the Concorde tonight,
so my little whim will cost you only an hour or two. Anything else I can do for you?”

  “I don’t suppose you could book me through to Los Angeles? That’s my final destination.”

  “No problem at all, Jake. Do you want a layover in New York?”

  “The sooner I get back to California, the better.”

  “Understandable. I don’t care much for New York City myself. You’d probably like a direct flight. First class would be best; you’ll be having an arduous day of travel. Anything else?”

  “Mmmm, one other. Could you see if all mention of me can be removed from the records of RUC, MI5 and MI6? And from the files at the DeLorean factory? There a number of parties I’d just as soon be invisible to.”

  “I’ll set George Chutney on expunging you from Northern Ireland; he’ll enjoy the intrigue. Those Irish militants can be downright fanatical if they feel retribution is in order, as I know all too well. Is that it?”

  “You’ve already been more than generous. “

  “I’ve done little enough. I must come up with something more. But right now let me see to your travel arrangements. We’ll get you out of here in good time. Once again, Jake, my heartfelt thanks. They’ll probably have other tries at me, but you got me through this attempt. One thing,” she added. “Let’s keep this incident between ourselves. It’s gotten no publicity, best if it stays that way. I’ll say nothing about it, and…?”

  “It’s our secret, Maggie. Count on it me to keep it. Thank you so much for this little diversion. It is truly a pleasure to meet you.” She called in an aide to take care of my needs, then excused herself and bustled off to deal with some matters relating to the beastly Argentines down in the Falkland Islands.

  So that was my modest contribution to bringing down the Iron Curtain—saving Margaret Thatcher’s life. Well, here I am letting the secret out, but by now no harm done, I suppose.

  The Concorde itself was a little cramped, but otherwise the experience was luxurious. The departure lounge was elegant, and the inflight cuisine beat most restaurants I’d been in. Flight time was shorter than I had imagined, only three hours, about the same as LAX to ORD. DeLorean was right—for a busy executive it could be a real time-saver. We had a separate entry portal, so passport clearance and customs went quickly. Following some advice my lawyer/stepfather Evanston once gave me—”You can’t always be honest, but you must always be legal”—I declared my boodle. You can bring in any amount of currency as long as you declare it, and past that hurdle I breathed easier. I’d be arriving in Los Angeles that afternoon, so I called ahead to Dana Wehrli to see about a ride. She said she’d be there. And she was, waiting when I emerged from the tunnel into the gate lounge area, blonde, tanned and backdropped by vast windows looking out on sun-drenched California. It felt good to be home again.

  “So, how was Northern Ireland?” she asked as we trooped along with the deplaning crowd to baggage claim.

  “Not bad,” I said. “At least I didn’t have to kill anybody this time.”

  “See?” she said triumphantly. “I told you violence was not the answer. So, what else? Go any place interesting? Did you bring back any souvenirs, leprechauns or whatever?”

  I swung the satchel up into view, then let it swing back down. “The stuff that dreams are made of, sweetheart,” I said with my best Humphrey Bogart snarl.

  Well, what was I supposed to do with it, parcel post it to Boston “c/o General Delivery”? Turning it over to the Brits might have been the Boy Scout thing to do, but come on. My thinking was that $32,000 was chump change in the world of gunrunning, where a Stinger missile goes for upwards of $150,000. Hopefully it wouldn’t justify dispatching people to root me out. The origins of the satchel were unclear and its backtrail uncertain, but it definitely was earmarked to further terrorism, so I helped the cause by taking it out of circulation. The last people to see it were the PING bunch. As far as any survivors of the firefight knew, it had vanished into the fog with Jack McCool. When they learned Jack McCool was in custody they’d naturally assume the RUC confiscated it. The real Jack McCool was as clueless about it as anybody but wouldn’t want to be known as the man who’d mislaid it, so would deny all knowledge. The URG people knew of my PING connection, and they might eventually learn of my egress through the factory, but they had no stake in the money. I figured it was Finders/Keepers, and I’d found it. Not that I wouldn’t be taking precautions and looking over my shoulder for a while, in case there were complications I wasn’t aware of. Clouting black money was a gamble, but every decision we make is a gamble. The odds here were acceptable.

  Imagine my surprise when I got a call from a car dealer in Beverly Hills informing me that my DMC-12 was prepped and ready for delivery. They said they’d bring it by, so we set a time. It came with a handwritten note on very official paper in a very official envelope. “Jake, inasmuch as we own the company, this was little enough to arrange. Please enjoy it and always think of me. Maggie.”

  I penned a thank-you note saying that she shouldn’t have done it. Only I really meant it. It was a white elephant. Dad was right at the outset. Despite the estimated $175 million DeLorean raised for the venture (of which how much was actually spent on it?), those cars were crap. I kept mine for a while and would let people who were curious about it go for a spin through the hills, but I rarely drove it anywhere. It was good for making an ironic statement or a minor splash at Hollywood parties, but not much else. Writing the checks for the insurance on it didn’t give me a warm glow.

  I was commiserating with Johnny Carson over drinks one night. An early believer in John DeLorean, Johnny had fallen for the snow job, invested half a million of his own money in the venture and led the charge for the publicity blitz. Like many others who were persuaded, duped or coerced into coughing up to further DeLorean’s dreams, he lost every penny of his investment. But before the roof fell in, as a reward for his efforts (and for the publicity value of it) DeLorean Motors presented him with one of the first cars to reach our shores, defects and all. Johnny told me that the initial DMC-12s had drastically understrength alternators—they put out 75 amps, when the car with all systems operating drew about 90, thus draining the battery and one night leaving him very visibly stranded in the middle of the Hollywood Freeway. I told him about DeLorean’s “shit on the shoes” gambit, and we agreed that just about everybody who ever dealt with him wound up with shit somewhere on his person. In the aftermath, jokes about it on the Tonight Show didn’t strike him as so funny any more. At least I came out better than that. Most of the time my DMC-12 sat squeezed over out of the way of the garage door on the apron. It had a certain caché as yard décor. The Malibu equivalent of garden gnomes?

  The Provos took another shot at Maggie Thatcher in 1984, blowing up the Grand Hotel in Brighton where a number of government figures had gathered for a Conservative Party conference. Five were killed, and 31 injured, but they never laid a glove on Maggie. Iron Lady indeed.

  The Troubles shambled along their bloody way, fought with guns and political maneuvering and passion and futility. Eventually exhaustion, exasperation and younger generations with higher aspirations than getting even for centuries-old grievances brought an end to them. In 1998 the “Belfast Agreement” reaffirmed the traditional British position that Northern Ireland would remain part of the UK until its voters decided otherwise. The British withdrew their troops, leaving the peoples of Ireland, both Southern and Northern, to solve their differences politically, without outside interference. Finally, in 2005 the Provisional Irish Republican Army, the PIRA, declared an end to its campaign and decommissioned its remaining arsenal. Growing prosperity eased many problems. The Emerald Isle’s meander down the path toward peace freed up long-frustrated energies, and that plus favorable tax incentives fostered an economic boom that lasted until the world-wide property bust of 2008. The PING and the URG? Amateurs all. I have no idea what happened to any of them, but I wish them
peace and happiness. The truly hard core militants over there, I never fell afoul of, and praise be.

  Mairead Farrell, who played a role in this saga though I never met her, was released from Armagh Gaol in 1986. While held prisoner she and two other IRA women engaged in a “dirty protest,” an IRA tactic I won’t describe because children might read this book (you can probably find it via Google if you’re interested). Two years following release she and two IRA male companions were shot dead in Spain while plotting to detonate 84 kgs of Semtex at the changing of the guard at the governor’s palace in Gibraltar. A special mission? Indeed. Fiery zeal? For sure. Good effect? Not so much.

  As for John Zachary DeLorean.

  After DeLorean Motors went into receivership the Bank of America repo’ed the inventory of unsold cars in lieu of unpaid debts. DeLorean and Nesseth used every legal dodge available to forestall their selling them, hoping to regain control of the extant fleet. Budget Rent-a-Car put in a bid to buy 1,000 of them, figuring it would be a good publicity gambit and they could make a profit by renting them to the curious, but that deal fell through because of legalities. Other than that, the cars were mostly of interest to collectors. The Belfast factory shuttered up for good a month after DeLorean’s arrest, never to produce another car.

  In 1984, despite videotaped evidence, DeLorean beat the drug rap on grounds of entrapment. The government’s original aim was to snare Morgan Hetrick and another drug dealer, Stephen Arrington. DeLorean unexpectedly fell into the picture. He claimed that drug dealers had threatened his children if he backed out and that the IRA in Belfast was controlling the money. It was true that government agents, not DeLorean, had brought the cocaine into hotel room 501 at the Sheraton Plaza Hotel, though the videotapes showed DeLorean declaring that a package of cocaine on the table was “as good as gold.”

  “Had it not been for the government’s enticements, there’d have been no crime,” his lawyer crowed after the trial.