by Jon King
Throwing a glance out the cab window as they drove along Victoria Embankment he caught sight of a river cruiser ferrying Japanese tourists from Blackfriars Pier to the Tower of London. The image was strangely evocative, and for an instant there Old Father Thames became the Mekong River, flowing red with Cambodian blood. It was a memory he would never erase.
“Not far now, guv,” the cabbie turned and said across his shoulder. “Just up past the Tower and on through Limehouse. East India you wanted, wasn’t it?”
“A place called Trinity Buoy Wharf at East India Docks, yes.”
“I know it. Be there in no time.”
“Oh, there’s no rush,” the American said. “The person I’m meeting is of no consequence. He can wait.”
Not knowing quite how to respond to this remark the cabbie gave a slightly bemused look in his rear-view mirror, then sent his eyes back to the road ahead. He didn’t speak again.
In the back of the cab, the American flipped open his silver Zippo lighter and lit up another cigarette.
For over half his life, in one capacity or another, he’d been a CIA runner. Still was, of course, although these days he was more messenger than mercenary, more ambassador than assassin. With age comes temperance, someone once said, temperance and insight. And this had surely been the case with the American. The agency he’d been so proud to serve, he’d come to realize, had long since been hijacked by the gangsters who ran the oil companies, the banks, the pharmaceuticals: big business. His loyalty to the cause, to the government it served – to democracy – had seemed suddenly to make less sense, to the point that a measure of cynicism now shaped his opinions, disenchantment even, where before he’d known only duty. Oh, he still worked for The Company, of course, still skivvied for the CIA; well what else was he supposed to do, now, at his age, closing on sixty-five? But at least these days he was less a soldier in the CIA’s unseen wars than a mover in the games they played, and the fact that he was warmed him. Compared to the things he’d seen and done in Vietnam, and in other places since – in the Congo, Rwanda, Angola – his assignments now were, for the most part, measured. He could live with that.
They were easier, too, and his current mission was no exception. A British princess had been taken out and he’d been assigned to set-up a little-known conspiracy journalist in the ensuing cover-up, simple. Or at least it should have been. To judge by the call he’d received earlier that day from one of his cousins over at MI6, however, it seemed said journalist had become more of a nuisance than they’d anticipated he ever would. Still, it was nothing he couldn’t take care of. The biggest problem in the equation wasn’t the journalist, it was the MI6 faggot who’d sanctioned his plan to set the journalist up in the first place, one Richard Mason, a man with whom the American had crossed swords one too many times in the past.
He was about cross swords with him again, now—the very reason he was on his way to meet him.
CHAPTER 38
JB and I were on our way to meet Steve O’Brien, a graphic artist and computer program developer. Steve was a friend of ours who’d offered to design a 3-D animation of Diana’s crash based on Professor Murray McKay’s computer-generated model, the one he’d shown JB and I when we’d interviewed him at his office at Birmingham University some years before. We wanted to compare the sequence of events that had led to the crash to those of another, similar crash that we’d recently been made aware of. By chance, a friend of JB’s had just read a book written by world famous explorer, Sir Ranulph Fiennes. A former SAS officer himself, Fiennes had penned a novel called The Feather Men in which he’d recounted the assassinations of four SAS officers, including that of Major Michael Marman—who, Fiennes revealed, had been killed in a staged car crash. Like former SAS Sergeant Dave Cornish, whom I’d known since my teenage years and whom I’d interviewed over a game of snooker some years previously, Fiennes too had referred to the crash as the ‘Boston Brakes’. The correlation had sounded my in-built alarm.
“We believe the car crash that killed Princess Diana could have been a Boston Brakes operation,” I’d put to Sir Ranulph on the telephone, having obtained his number from Darren Adams at the Sunday Mirror. Though Darren was unable to serialize our book, he was nonetheless more than capable of coming up with the odd famous person’s contact number, for which I was eternally grateful. “Would you agree?”
“I can’t honestly say I’ve ever thought about it,” Sir Ranulph said.
I didn’t believe him. “In your book, The Feather Men, you explain in some detail how a professional hit squad was hired to carry out high-profile assassinations.”
“Yes, it happens all the time.”
“You specifically cite the Boston Brakes as a known method of assassination, whereby the target vehicle is taken over by remote control and crashed at high speed.”
“Correct.”
“And you say that this method was used to assassinate one of the SAS officers featured in your book.”
“Major Michael Marman, yes. But you must remember the book is a novel, Mr King, not an historical document.”
“But you’re on record as stating that the story is true, that it’s based on actual events. And all the characters in the book are real people, like Major Marman—”
“Yes, he was a real person…”
“—And Sir Peter Horsley, whose BMW was also involved in the crash. All this is on police record; it’s historical fact.”
“All the police records show is that Sir Peter was involved in a very bad accident.”
“An accident that killed Major Marman.”
“Yes.”
I pressed the point. “Sir Peter didn’t think it was an accident,” I said. “He believed his car was taken over by remote control and made to crash into Major Marman’s car—exactly as you describe in your book.”
“I’m afraid I can’t speak for Sir Peter.”
“No. But thankfully he’s already spoken for himself.”
A decade or so before his death Sir Peter had published his autobiography, Sounds From Another Room, in which he described in chilling detail what had happened to him on Tuesday, November 11th, 1986, while driving from his home in Wiltshire to a business meeting in Plymouth, Devon. He was driving his BMW along the west-bound carriageway of the A303, he said, not far from the megalithic monument of Stonehenge, when suddenly he became aware of a grey Volvo in his rear-view mirror, closing on him “at high speed”. A few moments later the Volvo took up position “immediately behind” him.
“With alarming suddenness,” Sir Peter wrote, “my BMW spun sharply to the left, and then, with tyres now screeching, equally sharply to the right and then back again.”
I remembered pausing at this point, and reading the sentence over and again. It seemed to trigger a memory in me, something Professor Mackay had said when we’d watched his 3-D animation of Diana’s crash some three years previously. “There,” the professor had said, pointing at the computer screen as Diana’s Mercedes collided with the white Fiat Uno on entry to the Alma Tunnel. “The Mercedes swerves violently left, then right, then left again and into a concrete pillar on the central reservation.” And again: “What we do know is that the Fiat Uno influenced the crash. There—do you see? The Mercedes clips the back of the Fiat Uno and Henri Paul loses control, swerving first left, then right, then left again and into the concrete pillar.”
I read the line from Sir Peter’s autobiography one more time.
“With alarming suddenness, my BMW spun sharply to the left, and then, with tyres now screeching, equally sharply to the right and then back again.”
Had I stumbled on something here, I wondered? I thought I had. But little did I realize at this point that what I’d stumbled on was more than a simple coincidence of events. It was the signature of the Boston Brakes: the proverbial smoking gun.
Sir Peter continued: “I saw the grey Volvo accelerating past me at high speed. My car had now developed a mind of its own as it swung broadside and skidded d
own the road. With a lurch it hit the central reservation … and crossed over into the opposite carriageway. I just had time to see a small car approaching from the opposite direction. I hit it sideways on with tremendous force. In a split second the driver’s horror-stricken face was visible and I clearly heard his hoarse scream above the tearing metal of the two cars momentarily locked together; then came silence as the small car disappeared, catapulted off the road by the sheer force of the impact.”
For the record, Sir Peter suffered horrific injuries in the crash, but survived. Major Marman was killed outright.
“Like I said,” Sir Ranulph wanted me to accept, “it’s just a story.”
“With respect, it’s more than just a story. Major Marman was a real person. Sir Peter Horsley was a real person. Police records show that the crash actually happened and that Major Marman was killed. The only question is whether or not he was murdered, as you clearly state in your book.”
Indeed, according to Sir Ranulph, Major Marman had been the target of a professional hit squad known as The Clinic, whose speciality was carrying out assassinations that were made to look like accidents. The night prior to the crash, Fiennes explained, members of The Clinic had broken into Sir Peter’s garage and secretly fitted a radio-controlled ‘parasite’ to his BMW, which had allowed the assassins to take out his brakes, take over his steering remotely and steer his BMW into Marman’s oncoming Citroen 2CV. An intriguing plot, if it were fiction. But it wasn’t. As Sir Ranulph had previously asserted, and as police records clearly showed, it was a real story involving real characters, real people. Air Vice Marshall Sir Peter Horsley was certainly a real person. He was a Second World War hero, formerly Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Britain’s Atomic Strike Force and Equerry to both the Queen and Prince Philip. He was very real indeed. As was Major Michael Marman.
“I’m just asking you to confirm that Major Marman was, as you state in your book, the victim of a Boston Brakes operation in which Sir Peter Horsley was used as a proxy.”
“And if I do, you’ll take it that Princess Diana’s car crash was similarly a Boston Brakes operation. Is that it?”
“Well the two incidents do share striking correlations.”
I recalled to mind my conversation with former SAS Sergeant Dave Cornish, who’d explained to me that, in the case of Diana’s crash, the person holding the remote would have been in the white Fiat Uno.
“There’d be two boys in the Uno,” Dave had said. “The pilot and the engineer. When the engineer triggers the remote the Blockbuster kills the brakes and the parasite (transceiver) takes over the steering. The driver’s got no chance.”
The same must have been true with the Marman crash, I was beginning to figure, in that the Clinic member responsible for working the remote – the ‘engineer’ – would have been in the grey Volvo that had closed on Sir Peter’s BMW and overtaken it just as the BMW had spun out of control.
“That’s pure conjecture,” Sir Ranulph said. “As is the theory that Princess Diana was murdered.”
“So you’re not prepared to acknowledge the correlations between the two incidents?”
“Princess Diana died in an accident.”
“That’s what they said about Major Marman.”
“And I really don’t have the time to continue this conversation. Goodbye.”
And that was the end of it. He hung up. I never got the chance to speak to him again.
“Steve, hi, thanks for doing this.” JB and I followed Steve O’Brien along the short, rickety first-floor corridor and into his partially darkened office, where we seated ourselves in front of the giant-sized computer monitor commanding the centre of his desk. He closed the blinds so the office fell darker still. “We really appreciate it.”
“No worries, guys. Anything to help the cause. Here you go.”
A few codes and digits typed into the keyboard and a click of the mouse for effect and Steve’s 3-D animation opened up on screen. I was immediately impressed. I’d asked him to reconstruct not only Diana’s crash, but also the crash that had claimed the life of Major Marman as described in Sir Ranulph Fiennes’ book. It was this animation that appeared on screen first. He’d done an excellent job.
“That’s superb, Steve,” I said, instantly captivated by the detail he’d managed to incorporate, even down to the make of the cars involved.
On screen now was a black BMW saloon travelling west in the slow lane of a dual carriageway. Suddenly a grey Volvo closes on the BMW from behind and takes up position on its rear bumper. The Volvo then pulls out to overtake and the BMW starts to lose control.
Excitedly I turned to JB and nudged his arm. “Here we go, JB. Watch this.”
“I’m watching.”
Lurching first to the right, then to the left, then to the right again the BMW suddenly skidded broadside across the central reservation and slammed into an oncoming Citroen 2CV, travelling in the opposite direction.
JB looked a little perplexed. “I don’t see a tunnel,” he said. “And that doesn’t look like Paris.”
“That’s because it’s England, nineteen-eighty-six,” I told him. “The A303 in Wiltshire, in fact. Play it again please, Steve.”
“Coming up.”
Another click of the mouse and the animation started running a second time.
“The guy driving the 2CV, here,” I said, pointing at the screen. “That’s Major Marman, the target. And this is Sir Peter Horsley’s BMW. Watch how the BMW reacts just as it’s overtaken by this vehicle here, the grey Vovlo—there! It lurches one way, then the other way, then back again before slamming into the target vehicle. D’you see that?”
“First one way, then the other way, then back again,” JB said. “Yeah, I see that.”
“Now watch this.”
At the controls, Steve typed in a different set of codes and digits and clicked the mouse again. The result? A different animation on screen.
“This one’s a reconstruction of Diana’s crash,” I said to JB. “It’s based on Professor Mackay’s original.”
“I remember it, yeah.”
“Watch as the motorbike overtakes—there! Diana’s Mercedes lurches one way, then the other way, then back again before slamming into the concrete pillar.”
“Jesus.”
“D’you see that?”
“One way, the other way and back again. The manoeuvres are identical.”
“That’s because both crashes were caused by the same method, JB. I’m convinced of it.” I stood up and started to pull on my jacket. “Dave Cornish called it the ‘Brakes’, basically a microchip transceiver that controls the steering and a Blockbuster that…”
“…Blows out the brakes,” JB said, completing my sentence.
“Right.”
“But didn’t Tomlinson say a flash gun was used?”
“An anti-personnel strobe gun, yeah. But Dave Cornish seemed sure it would have been used in conjunction with the Brakes.”
“The Boston Brakes.”
“Correct.”
“But where does the Fiat Uno fit into all this? If whoever was riding the motorbike that overtook the Mercedes as it entered the tunnel was responsible for triggering the … what did you call it, the parasite?”
“The parasite, yeah. The microchip transceiver.”
“So if the motorbike’s pillion rider triggered the parasite, what part did the Uno play?”
“Well according to Dave Cornish there would have been two operatives in the Uno, the driver and the engineer. It would have been the engineer who worked the remote control once the parasite had been triggered.”
I caught the look on JB’s face. It said he was having trouble.
“A bit too James Bond?” I said.
“Well it does seem a bit far-fetched. I mean, who would ever believe it?”
“Exactly, JB. That’s why it’s known as a deniable op.” I checked my wristwatch. “Come on,” I said. “We’re late.”
CHAPTER 39
; Trinity Buoy Wharf looked very different to how the American remembered it. He’d last been here in the 1980s, when it had still been in transition from industrial ghost town to artistic playground, a status it had most certainly now achieved, he mused, as he waited by the gault brick lighthouse and took in the scene about him—the new pier with its recycled pontoon and floating office space; the trendy cafe and diner; the colourful patchwork of rehearsal rooms, studios and workshops recently built from recycled shipping containers. The ironies of life, he thought to himself, knowing as he did that those very same containers, back in the 80s, had been used to fulfil a different purpose altogether. But then, back in the 80s, so had Trinity Buoy Wharf.
A derelict wasteland in appearance back then, the wharf had been part of a multi-location live drop utilized by MI6 and mujahideen runners trafficking opium to the UK from Afghanistan. Millions in hard sterling had been funnelled, via Swiss bank accounts controlled by MI6, back to Afghanistan to help fund and arm the country’s network of Islamist warlords against the Soviet occupation. MI6 was not alone in this endeavour, of course; the CIA was hard at it, too. Indeed, between them, MI6 and the CIA helped smuggle untold quantities of opium out of Afghanistan in those days, not only trafficking the stuff to Europe and the West to help raise money for the Afghan resistance, but also into Russia in a deliberate attempt to weaken Soviet morale by feeding the country’s already acute heroin problem. Psychological warfare at the dirty end. For his part in this backstairs arms-for-drugs operation, the American had worked alongside his cousins at MI6, both in Helmand and in London, in his capacity as CIA special forces liaison. At the time, of course, the world remained oblivious to the West’s involvement in drug-smuggling and the funding of Islamist armies. Not even the American himself knew the full extent of what he’d been involved in. But then, he’d never asked. He’d been paid well enough for his contribution and his interest had ended there. The only problem he’d encountered was the asshole under whose command he’d been forced to operate—a newly promoted MI6 Special Operations Commander called Richard Mason.