Whoever was doing what passed for editing the story was quick with a new headline and suddenly I was ‘love rat John, romancing yachtie Kate while still bedding stylish Parisian lawyer Marie-Helene.’ I was glad Kate wasn’t watching, and didn’t have to explain that on top of everything else, but I should have known better.
When Kate came back a few minutes later, the first thing she said was ‘if I ever find out who thought up the term Yachtie Kate, I’ll have his balls for a wind-speed indicator.’
‘You were following?’
‘Yes, while I was making my calls.’
‘It’s over with Marie-Helene,’ I said.
‘I know. I checked with Moira before I said yes to dinner.’
‘Well at least office gossips are some use.’
Kate nodded. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway. All that stuff can wait. I’ve solved our immediate problems. I’ve got money, a car and a place to stay.’
She held up her hand. ‘Before you start giving me the security spiel, let me tell you the deal.’
‘I called my father in the States. He has a business associate in London. Very wealthy. No connection with sailing and I’ve never met him. He’s a navy buddy of my Dad and he understands how much is at stake. He has an apartment in Little Venice and a narrow boat moored on the Regent’s canal that his wife uses as a studio to paint. He’ll leave the money and the car keys on the boat and we can sleep on board. We won’t meet him. All we have to do is find a place to dump the Honda and get on board without being seen.’
‘Have you got any clothes on board here?’
‘I’ve got a dress here. I hardly ever wear it, but I keep it in case any of the potential sponsors is that kind of person.’
‘Is it smart?’
‘Why smart?’
‘Because tomorrow morning we’re going to church. It’s a very fashionable church and I don’t want us to stand out. Don’t worry,’ I added, ‘I’m not relying on prayer to get us out of this. I have to meet someone tomorrow and this church is the best place to do it.’
‘I don’t really do smart,’ she said, ‘but I reckon I’ll pass.’
‘Go get it,’ I said, ‘and pack up your computer kit and anything else we might need. When we get to Little Venice I’ll tell you the rest of the story.’
Chapter 7
‘So how did you become a spook?’
It was a much softer question than the ‘are you a murderer?’ which Kate had used in her last interrogation of me. The environment too was softer, more congenial. Kate had worked her magic and after leaving me alone for less than an hour, she had organised a move to the narrow boat Wanderer which was everything that Ocean Dream was not. It was small and cramped but the owner had taste and had made a haven of personal comfort out of what had once been a coal barge plying the upper reaches of the Thames. It was tied up in the heart of Little Venice in what had to be the most expensive moorings in London, along a fashionable quay half a mile away from the owner’s house.
When she came back to Ocean Dream, Kate had calmly handed over an envelope containing £5000 and the keys to an Audi A4 saloon which was almost new. She had not asked for any sureties and had given me only the skimpiest details of the calls she had made to get them. Now we were facing each other across the narrow table in the main saloon, and it was clear that nothing else – not even food - was going to happen until I told her the whole story.
‘Let me draw you a picture,’ I said. ‘Imagine a big rambling house on the outskirts of Cairo, a chaotic house, full of books, animals, and always full of visitors. At the centre of all this chaos, picture a tall Englishman, dressed in a white Arab dish-dasha, chattering in an unstoppable flow of fluent Arabic, gossiping, arguing, teaching. That was my father. His name was Sir Miles Farleigh and he was, by everyone’s consent, the most distinguished British Arabist and archaeologist of the period. With my mother, who was also an Arab scholar, he was responsible for some of the most important excavations of the time. That house was where I spent the first fourteen years of my life. I spoke, and still do speak Arabic, virtually as my native tongue, though my father, bless him, would occasionally see me playing with a gang of Arab friends and yell amiably across the room. ‘Now, John, don’t forget you’re British’. I think all he really meant by that was that he hoped I’d remain a Christian and not convert to Islam. Both my parents were Christian but they moved seamlessly between the two cultures and so I did too.’
‘So what happened when you were fourteen? Did the family move back to England?’
‘No, they would never have done that. My father and mother were both killed in a road accident. Their truck overturned on a desert road in Jordan.’
‘What happened to you?’
‘I was an only child and it was assumed I’d go to boarding school in England and live with one of my distant uncles during the school holidays. I hated the idea then, out of the blue, I was saved by a friend of my father’s. He was an extremely wealthy Gulf Sheikh, and he took me in as a son. The Sheikh was very much an anglophile but until I was eighteen, I lived in an entirely Arab environment.’
‘And then?’ Kate prompted.
‘The Sheikh decided it was time I had some real contact with my homeland. I’d only been to England a couple of times for short holidays but he himself had graduated from Sandhurst and been the first Arab to serve in the Household Cavalry so he decided I should follow in his footsteps.’
‘Sandhurst is the British military academy, right?’ Kate interrupted.
‘Yes, when he suggested it, the idea appealed, and I felt too that it was time to try my hand at being British.’
‘And how did that turn out?’
‘Fine. I’d had the kind of upbringing that made the military side of Sandhurst pretty straightforward. I wasn’t used to the discipline but I survived that well enough and I graduated just before my nineteenth birthday. I was expecting to be sent back to the Middle East. Instead I joined the same Household Cavalry regiment as the Sheikh.’
‘Seems a ridiculous waste.’
I shrugged.
‘Of course it was, but I was a young second lieutenant and I didn’t have any say in anything. So I decided to accept the situation and I also decided to marry Sarah. It was an impulse. I met her while I was a cadet. I’d only known her a few months. We married soon after Sandhurst and I was posted to ceremonial duties at Buckingham Palace. Sarah’s father was a General and I suspect he had a hand in guiding me into a conventional military career. Then everything changed again. It was 1990. It was already on the cards that Saddam Hussein might invade Kuwait and if he did there would be an allied response, so SIS stepped in.’
‘Stepped in how?’
‘With both feet. I wasn’t given any choice. I’d barely settled into the mess when I was called into the CO’s office and told I was being seconded to SIS and posted to Saudi. I left the next day, and never went back. I also never went anywhere near Saudi. When Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990, I was already undercover inside Iraq where I stayed throughout the war.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Bits and pieces. Usual intelligence stuff. Nothing to do with this trouble.’
I skipped on quickly, before Kate had a chance to pursue it.
‘After the war, my life changed completely yet again and this time in a more permanent way. I was transferred to SIS as a full-time intelligence operative. I resigned my commission and I became the Middle East Rep of a big security company with a reputation for being unscrupulous but well-connected both in the Arab world and the West. Sarah and I set up in a mansion in Amman in some considerable luxury. It was the perfect base for intelligence gathering. It gave me access to the dodgy dealers on both sides. And from time to time I would put on my Arab robes and disappear.’
‘And what did your wife think about all this.’
I gave Kate a rueful smile. ‘There aren’t any words to describe how much she hated it. She tried every which way to stop it.’
‘W
hat happened?’
‘No-one would budge. I was too valuable an asset to waste on regimental soldiering and it was made clear to me that if I refused, I had no other career open, either in SIS or the army and not even Sarah’s father could make them change their minds.’
‘You could have walked away.’
‘It’s possible.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘Truth is, I didn’t really want to. I’d got a taste for intelligence work and I was good at it. Ceremonial duties at Buckingham Palace just weren’t me. Also, I felt it was seriously worthwhile. From what I’d learned during the war, our intelligence capability in the region was appalling and I figured if Britain was going to be blundering around in the Middle East, we ought to have the best possible picture of what was going on around us.’
‘And you managed to get Sarah to agree?’
‘Not really. She came with me but she hated it from day one. Then the three men you saw in the newsroom came into my life and the real trouble began.’
I fired up the laptop, clicked again onto the UpstairsBackstairs website and navigated back to the starting page with the photos of the newsroom fight.
‘Do you remember this man, the one with slicked black hair and fleshy face?’
‘Yes, I remember,’ Kate said, ‘a creepy looking bastard.’
‘His name is Jeremy Simpson-Carr. Tries to come on as Eton and Guards but the family were poor Russian immigrants and he was never in the Services. Simpson-Carr is an entirely made-up name. Father was a tailor who made suits for exiled Russian aristocrats and he thought a double-barrelled name would add to the family social status. Jeremy’s main asset is fluent Russian and he’s the Vossler Group’s main link with the sleazy ‘New Russian’ mafia types.
‘He was up to his ears in war profiteering in Iraq, inflated contracts, drawing huge sums for imaginary payrolls, all that. I was told to investigate but I knew before I started what I’d find. He was really a bit player working for a far bigger fish, Ray Vossler.’
‘So what happened?’
‘There was an arms fair in Rome. All the big players were there. I was very close to getting evidence of the kind that couldn’t be ignored. They decided to shut me down.’
‘They knew you were a spook.’
‘Yes. Vossler’s CIA connections got a tip from London and gave Vossler the heads up.’
‘Why would they do that?’
‘Some of my masters in London weren’t at all happy at the way the investigation was heading. The Vosslers are serious players in Washington and painting one of them as a crook wasn’t considered friendly. They decided to play it safe and give Vossler a chance to cover his tracks.’
‘Dirty business,’ Kate said.
‘Intelligence is the ultimate dirty business. For a lot of people in London, staying friends with Washington was more important than exposing corruption in post-war Iraq.’
‘So how did they want to shut you down?’
‘That’s where the guy I was fighting in the newsroom came in. His name is Ali Omar. Naturalised American, born in Jordan. He’s a freelance intelligence operative, killer, torturer. He’s been used by the CIA but mostly, he works for the Vossler Group. He’s like a shadow to Ray Vossler - bodyguard, interpreter, and general gofer when they’re in the Middle East. Omar is a total pig with women, which is what started the whole thing off,’ I said. ‘There was a dinner in a private room in the super-plush Hostaria dell’ Orso. Wives and girlfriends invited. Sarah was sitting next to Omar and he started to grope her. Not just a pat on the knee, but vicious, nasty stuff. Sarah managed to extricate herself and I told Omar his fortune, warned him what would happen if he ever tried it again. I didn’t want a scene but he started a fight there and then in the restaurant. We more or less wrecked the place. I hurt Omar pretty badly but he got the blame because there was absolutely no doubt he had started it. It could have ended there but it gave Vossler an idea.’
Kate was clearly intrigued now and I could see she was weighing every word.
The plan, I explained, was to create another confrontation with Omar. He would attack my wife. I would obviously go after him and this time, they would fix it so that they controlled the fight.
‘Omar was confident he could cripple me badly enough to put me out of action for months, if not permanently,’ I said.
‘Pretty risky, wasn’t it, since you won first time around.’
‘Yes, but Vossler was far too canny to trust entirely to Omar. They had a contingency plan. Vossler worked it out with the help of a General in Italian intelligence, another crook and associate of the Vossler Group. They arranged for one of the General’s aides, a young Italian army lieutenant to be on hand when Omar provoked me into a fight. If Omar won, that would be it. If I started winning, the lieutenant would intervene and I would be arrested for assault on an Italian national.’
‘Is that what happened?’
‘Yes, but it all worked out far more horribly than even they had planned. They rigged it so the fight would take place at a party given by the Italian General at his villa on the outskirts of Rome. I was called to the embassy to make me late and Sarah went on ahead. By the time I arrived, Omar was supposed to have had a go at Sarah and I would inevitably swing into action.
‘When I finally got there, I saw Sarah running across some gardens opposite the villa. Omar was following her in a jeep.’
‘Following how?’
‘Omar seemed to be stalking her through the flower beds. It made no sense at all at the time, but I knew I had to protect Sarah. I couldn’t see a way to get my car into the gardens, because of a fence. I was climbing the fence when Vossler and the Italian lieutenant came out of the villa and the lieutenant tried to stop me. I had no idea what was going on but I could see that Omar’s car was closing on my wife. Then the Italian actually attacked me. I punched him and he fell heavily and hit his head on the kerb. At about the same moment, Omar’s car hit my wife. She died later that night, without regaining consciousness. The Italian lieutenant died also, of a brain haemorrhage.’
‘God, what a situation,’ Kate said.
‘I found out much later that Omar had gone completely berserk and instead of harassing Sarah as he was supposed to, he had actually raped her. She fought him off and ran out of the villa into the gardens. Omar followed in a jeep and ran her down to stop her talking.’
‘But the police weren’t told that.’
‘Of course not. Vossler’s version was that Omar was having an affair with Sarah, but he had made a pass at her while drunk and she had been offended and run off. Omar had chased her to try to apologise. She had lost her sense of direction in the gardens and had run in front of his car.
‘They said the Italian was also having an affair with Sarah and had gone after Omar to protect her. They made Sarah out to be a total slut who would shag anything with a pulse and I was mad at the world because of it. Vossler claimed to have witnessed my struggle with the Italian. He said I’d turned an ordinary argument into a vicious fight because I knew about the affair. They also brought up a twisted version of my previous fight with Omar, claiming I had beaten him up because I was jealous.’
‘What did your lawyer make of it?’
‘There was no lawyer. It was classified as a security crime. They had no intention of letting me come to trial and anyway, I knew the so-called investigation could have dragged on for months, even years.’
‘You had no defence?’
‘None at all. Because of my fight with the Italian, I hadn’t seen the actual moment of impact when Omar’s car’s had hit Sarah. And I didn’t find out until later that Omar raped Sarah, then chased her and killed her to keep her quiet. There were two witnesses who saw the end of the struggle in the bedroom but they were got at and flown out of the country.’
‘So how did you get out of it?’
‘MI6 offered me a deal. They said they were sure I was innocent, but Vossler was insisting on his version of events. Th
ey said that to avoid a scandal, they had persuaded Vossler to let them offer me a way out. If I resigned from the Security Service, I would be given help with resettlement, a lump sum in compensation for Sarah’s death and a pension. If I spoke to the press or tried to re-open an investigation, my pension would cease and I would be re-arrested for extradition to Italy.’
‘And you agreed.’
‘Yes, mainly for the sake of my children. I have twin sons. Robin and Michael.’
‘Are they here in London?’
‘No, after the shambles, I took them to Canada. They’re with Sarah’s sister. She’s married to a man who farms in Northern Ontario.’
‘‘Why didn’t you stay there?’
‘Frankly, I was going mad. I hated the life there, but the boys were very happy. Meg, that’s Sarah’s sister, has two boys. She treats my two as her own. Farm life was driving me crazy so I decided to come back to England.’
‘And MI6 let you?’
‘They didn’t like it. But I convinced them I knew almost no-one in London.’
‘There must have been strings.’
‘Of course. That was when I became John Cartwright. They agreed a phoney CV and backed it as long as I followed strict conditions. I was allowed to visit Canada but it was made clear I couldn’t set foot in the States or the Middle East. There was a lot of so-called negotiating, but in the end, they decided they had a strong enough hold over me. They still have. They could have me extradited to Italy tomorrow if I step out of line.’
‘Surely not now. Not after all this time?’’
‘Kate, you have no idea what hell the security services can make peoples’ lives if they want to. I could fight in the courts. I could probably even win, but the cost of lawyers would be huge and if I tried to tell my story to the press, they would match me leak for leak and make life hell for the boys as well.’
The Saxon Network Page 6