The Cut-Out

by Jon King

  “Yes, and I have the meat to back it up.” He paused. “I also have some other information I think you’d be interested in,” he said. “But if you want to take this any further we’ll need to meet.”

  “Well, with respect, I’m a busy man. I would need to know…”

  “As I’ve already told you,” the voice calmly assured, “it’ll be worth your while. But we would need to meet. This kind of information doesn’t travel well over the telephone.”

  I paused for a brief moment. Was this guy crazy? Probably. What he was talking about was certainly crazy, there was no denying that. But then, in the eyes of Middle England I ran a crazy magazine. There was no denying that, either.

  But there was something else, too, something I couldn’t at this stage put my finger on. All I knew was it unnerved me somewhat, made me feel uncomfortable—something to do with the guy’s tone, his understated, almost serene authority, it’s twisted edge. This was not someone to be feared for his insanity, this voice in my head was trying to warn me, but his agenda. I made a mental note.

  “Do you have anywhere particular in mind you’d like to meet?” I said.

  “Avebury,” came the reply. “Avebury Stone Circles in Wiltshire. You know the place?”

  “I do, yes.” In fact I knew it very well. Avebury and the surrounding area was a hotspot for UFO sightings and crop circles. It had featured in our magazine many times. “When?”

  “This Saturday, midday, in the car park opposite the post office.”

  …The car park opposite the post office. I noted it down. “Okay,” I said. “How will I recognize you?”

  “You won’t. I’ll pick you out. Saturday. Midday. Avebury. Opposite the post office. Are we agreed?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Thames House, Millbank, MI5 Headquarters—November 1996

  “We all know why we’re here, gentlemen.”

  Addressing the dozen or so senior officials seated at the table there with him, Sir Philip Hemming opened the dossier he’d just pulled from his attaché case and officially convened the meeting. The dossier was designated Top Secret – Delicate Source – UK Eyes A. Its title read: The Prince and Princess of Wales.

  Among the officials present were Lacey, of course; Deputy Director General MI5 Operations, Malcolm Garner; Chief of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove; MI6 Head of Special Operations Europe, Richard Mason; Home Office Permanent Secretary Sir Martin Gray; a naval intelligence Commodore whom I would later be introduced to (he being, by some coincidence, a personal friend of Lacey’s), and several other Whitehall spooks whose identity I never learned. By account, the Crown was also represented by a senior royal courtier and member of the secretive Way Ahead Group, Sir Gerald Cameron.

  Sir Philip was in the chair. “We’re here to discuss the recent divorce of the Prince and Princess of Wales,” he informed those gathered. “In particular the constitutional implications engendered as a result of the prince’s desire to remarry.”

  “Which are?” Sir Gerald Cameron wanted clarified.

  “Very grave indeed,” Sir Philip said.

  “Surely he can’t be allowed to remarry,” one of the Whitehall officials put in.

  “Try and stop him,” said another. “You know what he’s like when he wants something.”

  “We could whip up public opposition to the marriage,” a third spook suggested. “Shouldn’t be too difficult, given their fondness for Diana.”

  “And their dislike of Camilla.”

  “I’m afraid it might be too late for that.” Sir Philip had just opened a second dossier on the table in front of him. This one was also designated Top Secret – Delicate Source – UK Eyes A, but was titled The Office of the Lord Chancellor.

  “Why do you say that?” Sir Gerald Cameron was curious to know.

  “Because the Lord Chancellor is already mooting disestablishment.”

  “What…?”

  “The proposed marriage between the Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker-Bowles, in the event that Princess Diana is alive to witness it, would engender such a constitutional crisis that the only resolution would be to effect disestablishment.” Sir Philip was reading from the dossier. “For reasons herein listed the marriage must be at all costs avoided for as long as the mother of the future king remains alive.” He repeated the phrase, “at all costs” with some emphasis.

  The room fell silent at this point, each to a man realizing the implications of such momentous reform. To disestablish the Church from the state would not only create a seismic chasm at the heart of the establishment: it would create a secular state in Britain for the first time in the nation’s history. The power mongers in Whitehall would never sanction it.

  “Do you understand what you’re saying?” the Crown’s representative, Sir Gerald Cameron, said.

  Sir Philip was impassive. “The Lord Chancellor’s words, not mine,” he said. “But clearly he feels he has little choice. Prince Charles is fated to become Supreme Governor of the Church on his accession, and if he’s permitted to remarry it would severely undermine the Church’s position from a constitutional perspective. Camilla is a divorcee, is she not—?”

  “Yes, but …”

  “—The prince’s wife must one day assume the role of Queen Consort, by station if not by name. And to put things bluntly, gentlemen, Camilla cannot assume this role while Diana is still alive.”

  Again a deathly silence fell, and this time persisted for several moments. It was Sir Gerald Cameron who finally broke that silence.

  “You do realize,” he said, “that the last person to disestablish the Church was Henry the Eighth.”

  “Quite,” Mason put in, making his first contribution to the meeting. In his eyes, demons. “And we all know what that means, gentlemen, don’t we.”

  He left a deliberate pause as he eyed each man present, one and then the next, before concluding:

  “One of the wives must go.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Avebury was even colder than the call box had been. But at least it was good, clean country air, and aesthetically more pleasing than the high street in which the call box had stood. I consoled myself with these thoughts as I threw on my jacket and wrapped up against the bleak November day.

  I’d arrived at the Avebury car park about fifteen minutes earlier than our arranged meeting time. As usual it was more or less full, even at this time of year, but from what I could make out the American hadn’t yet arrived. Having parked my car and gathered my attaché case I wandered over to the entrance and sat myself on a vacant wall, watching for the arrival of a single, middle-aged male, the mental picture I’d formulated on speaking to the mystery caller on the telephone. I didn’t have to wait long for his arrival. Moreover, as he drove into the car park I noted that the mental picture I’d formulated was about right. In fact he looked how you might imagine a mildly successful, late middle-aged businessman to look, if a little weathered—around six feet, weighty, thinning to grey on top with a pallid, craggy jowl that added years. He drove a silver Vauxhall Carlton. His handshake was firm.

  Following a brief introduction we wandered out through the car park’s field exit – a wooden latch-gate that opened into a grazing meadow famed for its sheep and standing stones – and talked as we walked. Despite the time of year and the unfriendly weather there were a good many other people strolling around the field, though none seemed too interested in anybody else, preoccupied instead with being tourists. Hopefully we appeared the same.

  At this first meeting – we would meet four times in all – the American told me he was a US special forces veteran who’d run numerous operations for the CIA, and that he’d chosen to pass information my way because he’d become disillusioned with the agency for whom he worked. Of course, if I’d had my wits honed – if I’d been more seasoned, more alert to the man’s intentions, and more suspicious of his objectives – I might have realized there and then that he was pushing candy. That he was saying what I
wanted to hear. That, for some as yet unveiled purpose, I was being groomed and reeled in. But I didn’t. He’d read my articles on the American government’s deep-underground programmes, he said, and this had prompted him to pass information my way regarding similar programmes being carried out by the British government, in particular – so far as I was concerned at the time, being editor of a conspiracy-based UFO rag – the privately funded advanced-technology programmes being carried out by the British-based aerospace industry, also underground; plus, of course, the alien-human hybridization programmes he’d mentioned to me on the telephone. He said he had information about these programmes that our readership would want to hear.

  And once again, rightly or wrongly, I took him at his word.

  Naïve? Yes, perhaps. But why should I have suspected any different? Why would a low-key conspiracy journalist ever suspect he was being set up in a high-profile intelligence operation? Especially when the initial information the American gave me was more to do with the UK government’s dubious activities underground, at some of the country’s most highly secret defence and research facilities, than anything remotely to do with deniable ops. Or indeed, political assassination. So far as I was concerned I was being gifted the ingredients for a seriously juicy story, one that our readers would relish. And that was it.

  Truth be told, I thought I’d hit the jackpot.

  The next time we met, again at Avebury, I was able to learn a little more about the American and in particular his covert military background. On this occasion conversation flowed freely between us, and for the first time I saw a side to the man I hadn’t yet seen—a somewhat more disturbing side, it has to be said. Even so he seemed happy to talk about his past, including some of the more illicit ‘black ops’ he’d been involved in, and I for one wasn’t about to discourage that.

  But first he made reference to my magazine. “I noticed the Project Noah’s Ark story you wrote was part of a regular feature in your magazine,” the American said as we strolled anonymously among the standing stones and the few tourists intrepid enough to have braved this bleak winter’s day. It was January, in every sense of the word. “Jon King’s X-File Document. I guess that makes you a sort of real-life Fox Mulder.”

  “It keeps a roof over my head,” I said, more than a little embarrassed by the association with the lead character in the X-Files. “Actually I’m more interested in what the CIA are up to in Angola than what happened at Roswell.”

  “You don’t want to know if the US government has done a secret deal with aliens?”

  “I’d like to know why they would have us believe that. I’m more interested in the agenda behind the story than the story itself.”

  “Well that’s where I can help.”

  A short while later we rounded Avebury’s reputedly haunted Red Lion pub, the mildewed odour of ale and cigarette smoke escaping its walls and thickening the otherwise fresh, if bitter, Wiltshire air. Either the ghosts were enjoying a lunchtime beverage, I mused, or the lack of tourists wandering among the stones suddenly made sense. They were all in the pub. It was coming up to 1 pm, after all, and the Great British ‘liquid lunch’ was under way, Avebury’s customary complement of daytime visitors taking full advantage of the warmth and hospitality offered by the famous old watering hole. At least someone has some sense around here, I thought to myself as reluctantly I turned my back to the pub and partnered the American across the road as we headed for the cold and uninviting field where Avebury’s second inner stone circle stood, the promise of warm hands and cold beer receding in our wake.

  “You mentioned Angola,” the American said as we started to slow-pace the field’s raised perimeter—an earthwork bank and ditch enclosing the world’s largest prehistoric stone circle. “That intrigues me. I have to ask myself why the editor of an X-Files magazine would wish to concern himself with what’s going on in a troubled African republic?”

  I shrugged. “Just my natural curiosity, I guess. I like to keep abreast of the seedier activities carried out by my government, especially when those activities are about exploiting another country’s resources to the detriment of its indigenous population. It irks me. I think the way democracy has been hijacked by big business needs to be exposed wherever possible, so I try and write about it when I can—between UFO stories.”

  “Very conscientious of you.”

  “Not really. I’m just naïve enough to believe a better world’s possible. And to speak up for it.”

  “There’s no shame in that.”

  Strolling atop the earthwork bank bordering the southernmost edge of the field I suddenly spied another prehistoric wonder looming some way in the distance. Silbury Hill was Europe’s largest human-made earth mound. It looked for all the world like a landed spacecraft.

  “But why Angola particularly?” the American was keen to know, exhaling the smoke from a cigarette he’d just lit with a silver Zippo lighter. Its lid clicked as he flipped it shut. “The world’s a big place.”

  “Good question.” I thought about it briefly. “I guess my interest in Angola stems from the fact that I knew some of the British mercenaries who fought there in the seventies. I grew up in the town where they were based.”

  “In Sandhurst?”

  “Yes, you know it?”

  “I’ve never been. But I knew some of the British boys who fought in Angola.”

  He knew some of the Sandhurst boys? I logged the fact. “Small world.”

  “Smaller than you think.”

  Something about the way the American said that found its way home. It was as if he wanted me to think he knew more about me than I would have liked. No more than a nuance, but it made me feel itchy, uncomfortable.

  “I was in Angola myself in the sixties,” the American went on, unbidden. “And again in the seventies, between tours of Vietnam. Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha—the Green Berets, effectively the CIA’s own private army.”

  “I didn’t think the CIA were in Angola in the sixties.”

  “The CIA are everywhere at all times.” He gave a dry smile, and drew in a lungful of carcinogenic smoke. Then blew it out again. “Fact is we weren’t supposed to be in Laos or Cambodia in the sixties, either. But we were there, making cross-border runs from western Nam on a regular basis. The Viet-Cong had bases set up in eastern Cambodia and Laos and we were the jerkies sent in by Nixon and his White House generals to ferret them out. The situation was not too dissimilar in Angola, except over there we were running back and forth across the border from Zaire. Same tactics, different outcome. Angola was a whole different ball game.”

  “So you were running arms to the Angolan rebels?”

  “The FNLA, UNITA and the MPLA. In those days they were all on the same side, three conflicting rebel armies bound together by their struggle to drive out the Portuguese.”

  “A struggle to gain their independence.”

  “Correct. In which case you may ask what we were doing there at all. And the answer is it had nothing to do with supporting a bunch of overzealous warlords disguised as freedom fighters. Fact is we were there for the same reasons the British were there—oil and diamonds. Simple. On the face of it we were doing what the CIA always does, which is funding, training and equipping the opposition forces, as well as giving them tactical and logistical support. In other words we were fighting their god damn war for them. But at the same time we were pursuing an ulterior agenda, and that was more to do with power-brokering and money-laundering than freedom-fighting, I can tell you that much.” He paused and stared coldly ahead at the near distance, as though reliving events in his mind. “You know,” he said. “I still couldn’t tell you which hell was the meanest—Nam or Angola. In their own way both were insufferable. But undoubtedly Angola was the most immoral.”

  The American slowed his pace to an eventual standstill, and I stopped beside him. He locked his gaze on mine.

  “It’s the same war,” he wanted me to understand. “In the sixties they called it a
war of independence. In the seventies and eighties they called it a civil war. But in truth it doesn’t matter what you call it. It’s the same war with the same players fighting for the same spoils—control of Angola’s oil fields and diamond mines, even today.”

  “Today?”

  “Oh, undoubtedly. Your country and mine are still waging an oil-and-diamond war in Angola. Don’t ever doubt it. Others are involved, too—Russia, Cuba, South Africa, the French. Who do you think is keeping the new government in power? Coz they sure as hell ain’t doing it all by themselves.” He drew on his cigarette. “Angola’s a dangerous place to be,” he said, “something the Princess of Wales should be heedful of, incidentally. Have you seen her in the news recently, wrapping her arms around landmine victims and parading around in unexploded mine fields? She needs to tread carefully, no pun intended.”

  The American’s claim that Angola’s inner ‘war’ was still raging behind the scenes, even though it had officially ended three years previously, made me think. But his reference to Princess Diana slipped by me virtually unrecorded. I’d seen the recent images on TV, of course – Diana in visor and protective body-armour vest wandering dangerously in an unexploded mine field – all part of her campaign to bring the issue of landmines to the world’s attention. And it was working; her landmines campaign was headline news. But right now I was more interested in my government’s covert involvement in yet another illicit war than in what the world’s most famous diva was up to. Even the American’s insinuation that she should tread carefully washed over me.

  “There’s a lot going on behind the scenes in Angola and not much of it ever makes the front pages,” he added, fixing me with that knife-edge stare of his. “But I guess that’s the point, isn’t it? Never believe the official line. Whatever they tell you is happening is never what’s really happening. It’s something else.” He paused, it seemed for effect. “But I guess you know that anyway, right?”