THE FIX_SAS hero turns Manchester hitman

by Robert White

  Hercules Pillar Gibraltar, that little file from ten years ago. I’d read and re-read it, even printed some sections. I sat and watched Des rigging Joel’s hard drive into a tower and then up to my laptop.

  There was a crackling sound as the drive prepared itself, the screen loaded and demanded a password.

  Lauren sat with me as we gazed at the empty box.

  “I know the first eight digits, but not the last eight,” I said, matter-of-factly.

  “What are they?” Lauren asked.

  “11091962.”

  She wrote the numbers down and mumbled something.

  “What?” I said.

  “It’s a date of birth. Eleventh of September 1962.”

  “What?”

  “The number sequence is a date of bloody birth.”

  “Might be.”

  “There’s no ‘might’ about it.”

  At that, Lauren urgently rooted in her bag and produced a folded up piece of paper. She spread it over her knee and then tapped at the keyboard.

  “I knew this was important,” she said as the screen came to life. “It’s the marriage certificate of Joel and Susan. It was on his wall for more than sentimental reasons.” It bore two dates of birth 11/09/1962 and 08/08/1974 and it opened Joel’s drive. I took the document from Lauren and stared at it. Then I looked at my printed notes and found another major clue to the identity of David Stern.

  After several hours of searching Joel’s data, I somehow managed to control my trembling hands and made some tea. Lauren, who seemed upset from the visit to the so-called estate agents, played nervously with her hair and had watched the proceedings in solemn silence.

  I handed out the cups of very poor Typhoo and motioned Des to sit down. This was my show. Des and Lauren were waiting to hear all about the Stern Empire.

  They were about to be disappointed.

  I stood with my back to the computer screen, like some sales guy about to deliver a seminar, except this was deadly serious.

  Des and Lauren sat on the two single beds my room offered and looked tired. They needed to see the end of this and so did I. Without closure, we wouldn’t be able to live any kind of normal life; I mean, just being able to function without looking over your shoulder had become of major importance to all three of us. I knew my recent life hadn’t been ideal but neither had Des' or Lauren’s. We had gone up against a powerful organisation the authorities didn’t know existed. As a result we hadn’t any money and couldn’t return to our homes.

  The word reprisal had taken on a whole new meaning to us all. As a result, the only thing that mattered to us all was closure, our spirit and friendship.

  I heard myself start to speak.

  “Until you guys told me about the picture on the wall in Crowder and Madden and explained the history and the myth of Gibraltar, I was never really quite certain who my real enemy had been all these years. Now I know who was responsible for Cathy’s murder, for Tanya’s death and for all those poor kids in Moston Cemetery. God only knows how many more they have killed.”

  I sat heavily on the lone hotel room chair and rubbed my face with my palms. I forgot all about being professional and briefing my team, now it felt like a confessional and Lauren and Des were my priests.

  I started slowly. Lauren drew her knees to herself and cupped her chin with her hands, as if sensing that something huge was about to happen.

  “Ten years ago,” I began, “We stole several kilos of pure cocaine from the IRA. This was done under the direct orders of my Regiment Commander and therefore 10 Downing Street. I delivered those drugs to a secret location. A dead letter box.”

  Des looked up from his cup, caught my gaze, and I knew he remembered the job. I knew he remembered lying in that stinking field for hours on end whilst we stole our booty. And now he would know the whole truth.

  Lauren looked shell-shocked.

  I cleared my throat.

  “Two Regiment colleagues, Butch and Jimmy Two-Times, knew I went back to the drop-off point; they knew I went back because something wasn’t right. What they didn’t know was I identified the collector.”

  Des looked at me in disbelief. He had no idea.

  I felt suddenly drained. I locked my fingers together, rested my palms on my head and closed my eyes. I took a deep breath, exhaled through my nose and told the tale I had kept secret for ten years.

  “Colonel Charles Williamson collected that package. At the time he was the most powerful soldier in Northern Ireland. I didn’t divulge that information to anyone. There was a man with him that night, a tall thin blond American called Goldsmith. Did they see me? Was I compromised? I will never know for sure but I have to presume I was."

  I now believe Williamson or Goldsmith ordered the slaughter of my wife as a simple reminder that to deviate from orders meant severe punishment.”

  I did my best not to think of Cathy but how could I tell the tale without bringing back her memory?

  “I had only been home from that operation a day or so. Her God, not mine, only granted me one day before Cathy was murdered. No doubt, the gunmen were meant to take me out too. They missed me and now, ten years on, the people who ordered that hit, have found me again and are trying to finish the job. They want me dead, no question.”

  I looked toward Lauren and saw she had tears in her eyes.

  “We are all in extreme danger.”

  There was a silence as we considered our situation.

  I felt the muscles in my neck tighten. A burst of acid threatened to reach my throat and I swallowed hard. Images, memories, flashed across my eyes like newsreel. Cathy’s naked corpse, Tanya’s bucking body and Stephan’s sick smile.

  The same old pain and hate engulfed me, the pain that I have tried to explain to you before, the pain no one can understand.

  In the name of my agony, I have done terrible things. I have shown people what real pain felt like, what true hurt does to you, but they still didn’t understand, they just screamed.

  Des broke the spell and my ghosts were driven from the room.

  “Go on, big man, get on with it but.”

  I studied Des’s face. The last months had ensured it had grown even more ravaged by life, but in his eyes was a man I hadn’t seen in years; a man who felt suddenly alive again.

  We both needed this job for different reasons. I felt my edge return with each second I looked at him. For ten years I’d been alone; a leper at first, then later, a ghost of my former self. I knew what I was, what I had become, but Des didn’t judge me.

  I saw the glimmer of a smile before I spoke.

  “The file, codenamed Hercules Pillar, consisted of several lengthy confidential files the largest of which was a consultation document between the USA and Britain. There were details of some trial actions in Belfast in the late nineties together with results. Also some personal correspondence between Williamson, and the man who he became increasingly involved with, Gerry Goldsmith Jnr: The tall blond American I mentioned earlier.”

  I found pictures of the two men in a folder and dragged them onto the screen of the laptop.

  “Goldsmith was an ex-Navy Seal turned CIA officer who had a special investigations brief directly from the Pentagon. His orders were to drastically reduce the amount of drugs on the streets of the United States. He had control of a huge budget by British standards, millions of dollars. But Goldsmith had a plan to win the war and not spend the Government’s money. He was the all American hero. He was John Wayne and Will Smith all in one package. All sides of the US Congress were behind this face.

  Goldsmith realised that the biggest drug dealers were also terrorists and dictators, so he developed a plan so ancient in its formula and so simple in its execution that he couldn’t fail.

  “His idea?

  “Divide and conquer.

  “He codenamed the action ‘Hercules Pillars’.

  “He needed a theatre to trial his theory and he selected Belfast as his ideal testing ground. Lots of poverty, lots o
f guns, lots of drugs and most importantly to Goldsmith, not in his own backyard.

  “The first operation listed in the file was to destabilise two factions of a notorious Republican family. This was actually sanctioned by both the US and UK governments; in fact, the first operation was so successful that several others were executed after it, including the one Des and I were involved in.

  “In one operation documented in the file, just as in our action, drugs were stolen from a very well-known IRA sympathiser, Thomas McEwen, and dropped in a DLB. What wasn’t known was in both cases, a second Regiment team were handed that same stolen package.

  “They delivered it to a rival dealer, chosen by Goldsmith, at a fraction of the street value. In McEwen’s case it was his cousin, Patrick O’Hara. Then the Chinese whisper boys got the word on the street that it was one and the same gear. Finally to top things off McEwen’s eldest boy was found shot in the head at the back of the local bookies courtesy of the SAS.

  “The blue touch-paper was lit, all Goldsmith and Williamson did was sit back and watch the two families kill each other.

  “Less than a month later, when both were weak enough, the RUC moved in and finished the business end by busting the remaining runners and riders.”

  Lauren drained her tea and looked for a place to put her cup.

  “Sounds like a good plan to me.”

  I was feeling better.

  “It was, and it worked well until Number 10 got cold feet around the old ‘topping Paddies on purpose is not cricket’ thing. Williamson and his chum tried a few more jobs that winter but when questions were raised in Parliament about the shootings in Belfast of eight teenage men inside a week, the hatches were well and truly battened.

  The Yanks were far less squeamish about blood on the streets, especially when it was not their sidewalk it was spilled on. Not only that, Goldsmith and Williamson were getting more and more gung-ho in their approach, and were starting to become something of a pair of very loose cannons to our intelligence service. There were also murmurings about what was happening to all the cash that had been ‘recovered’ as a result of the listed ops. Our ‘touchy feely’ New Labour government needed scandal about as much as a dose of the clap. Two months after our op, and Cathy’s murder, the Goldsmith plan was shelved completely and he and his family returned to the States.”

  I needed a drink but there was nothing to hand. I licked my lips and went on.

  “Williamson was not a man to be put off easily. His relationship with Goldsmith was beyond the stage of mere comrades. Both had seen great results and enormous profits. Fortunes could be made. The operation more than paid for itself. Any monies and property recovered would far outstrip the cost of the manpower and equipment. I suspected, as did Whitehall, that it did far more than that.

  “Goldsmith and Williamson knew it did far more than that.

  “It created an empire.”

  I finally found a bottle of water and took a deep drink.

  “Our pair were royalty in the making. Both men ‘retired’ within months of Cathy’s death and virtually disappeared off the map. Rumours that they were running deep cover ops for one of the major agencies were rife for a while. Goldsmith was reportedly seen at a Basque Separatist Movement meeting in ’97 where two major players were shot to death. There were no official sightings of Williamson after August 6th 1996 when he buried his mother. He had no other living relatives. Goldsmith, however, had a son and a daughter. Both were born to a Dutch wife, Helena van der Zoort.”

  Lauren nearly jumped out of her skin but I motioned for her to sit.

  “I know! The name on the marriage certificate and Goldsmith’s Dutch wife! I fuckin’ know now, don’t I? And it’s no coincidence.”

  Lauren gave me a stern look, stuck out her bottom lip and nodded furiously.

  I drained the cold Buxton Spring water. It loosened my throat and I felt it drain all the way to my stomach. Then I let go my bombshell.

  “I believe Williamson and Goldsmith created the myth. David Edgar Stern, the un-photographed spectre we seek is just that. A spectre, a figment of two very powerful men’s imaginations.”

  Des raised both eyebrows but stayed silent. Lauren looked unimpressed by my theory.

  “Hell of an assumption there, Rick.”

  I ignored her scepticism and pressed on.

  “I became untouchable to all my ex-army colleagues within a month of me leaving the service. They helped with my intel at first but I was too drunk to do much of anything after week three.

  “It was the personal stuff on the Hercules file that I’d ignored. I was so convinced the answers lay in the business end of the deal. Death drugs, money etc, that family pictures, that sort of thing, didn’t register.”

  I turned to the laptop. “That is until now. The old ’96 file had some shots of two kids. The pictures were mailed from Goldsmith to Williamson at Christmas that year.” I pointed to the screen and the miniature images of two ten-year-old kids made no impact on my diminutive audience.

  “Then we got access to Joel’s computer and with it Susan’s email and documents. Susan’s mother, Helena Van Der Zoort, was a socialite and femme fatale. Her son, Stephan bore an uncanny resemblance to his father with white blond hair whilst the daughter took her almost gothic appearance from her mother. Helena died ‘tragically’ and alone in an LA apartment; the children had long since disappeared with their father.”

  I hit the right arrow on the laptop and a snapshot of a teenage girl and boy filled the screen. “This shot was taken in 1999, a full three years after my last intel. This picture was important to the Goldsmith family as Susan had kept it for over ten years.”

  The image framed two coltish kids standing poker-straight in full army fatigues. It looked like some kind of Cadet Corp gathering. Neither child was smiling. The boy had white blond hair that fell over his face. He needed no introduction to me.

  Lauren jumped to her feet. “That’s bloody Stephan! The guy from Joel Davies’s house!”

  Des was not so quick but walked deliberately to the screen and examined the picture closely. He tapped the monitor with his fingernail. His voice was quiet but venomous. “And that little bairn there is Susan fuckin’ Davies.”

  I stood and my head swam.

  “We need to find Gerry Goldsmith Jnr and Charles Williamson."

  Des Cogan's Story:

  The revelations hit me like a hammer. Deep inside, despite the relationship between Rick and myself, I had never really wanted to believe that Williamson, a respected army officer, a man’s man, had been involved in anything so deeply disturbing. It was one thing to do some dodgy jobs once you retired, Jesus, glass houses and all that, but to apply your power and influence whilst a serving senior officer; to actually use Her Majesty’s Forces to murder and steal for your own advantage, well that was another matter entirely.

  I had always been convinced Rick’s theory had been the ranting of a disturbed and bereaved soul.

  As far as I was concerned, my best mate in the world had just fallen on the hardest of times. He had lost his wife in the most unspeakable of circumstances and, in turn, had lost his way. I had always told myself that it was so. It had kept me sane the last ten years.

  At that moment, that picture, the two bairns, those unsmiling, youthful ‘All American’ children, bathed in sunshine and middle-class Massachusetts values, opened wounds and turned all our lives upside down once again.

  The man who stood in front of me was not my blood, nor did he believe in my God, but he was something else to me. Rick’s shoulders were extraordinarily slumped. I grabbed his T-shirt and pulled him upward.

  Our eyes met.

  My voice was calm but my heart raced in my chest.

  “We’ll find them, mate, and nail the fuckers to the wall.”

  Lauren North's Story:

  Rick had printed out copies of the Gibraltar file for each of us. He’d also Googled all he could find on the Rock and any properties in the area that ha
d been sold, or were currently for sale by Crowder and Madden.

  I returned to my room with his instructions ringing in my ears, dropped the substantial file on my bed, switched on my pink Motorola and began to read.

  After two hours I needed to clear my head, so I pulled on my jogging kit and a very unflattering woolly hat and hit the street.

  I swung left onto Sackville and immediate right toward St Anne’s Square. It was eight-forty p.m. Diners, theatregoers and street people all bustled around the tram-stops bathed in fluorescent light from advertisement boards. I pounded past them, any hope of a show and dinner as far from my mind as it could get.

  Next, the Midland Hotel’s lights bathed the pavement in front of me. The Stones had stayed there the night before after another final date in a final tour at the MEN Arena. A tacky white stretch was double-parked and the doorman was remonstrating with the driver. My breathing was beginning to find pace with my feet and I felt the first flush of endorphins spur me forward. I ran past the famous Coronation Street Soap set and I was flying.

  My mind turned to Gibraltar.

  Gibraltar or ‘The Rock’ was named Mount Calpe by the Greeks, with Abila Mount sitting on the opposite side of the strait in Morocco. Hercules pushed the two apart and made the strait the entrance to his home, that being the Atlantic Ocean. Him being a Sun God of course.

  It’s been brawled over ever since; the Moors, English, Spanish, Dutch, French and Arabs have all spilled blood over the six-square-kilometre rock.

  It was of key importance in the First and Second World Wars and its economy still relied heavily on the fact it is a working naval base and free port.

  I did a left and headed toward Salford, I felt a slight chill as the city fell away. A burned-out old cinema cast an eerie shadow on my pavement but there were still plenty of cars and people around. Besides I still had my Glock tucked into my trackies.

  We were going to Gibraltar to find Goldsmith and Williamson. Never mind it’s ancient history, Gibraltar is a massive secret intelligence base. The Rock contains over fifty kilometers of man-made tunnels that had been cut into that cliff face since 1782 and there were more satellite dishes on the top than Roman Abramovich’s yacht. What goes on inside those tunnels is one of the reasons the Spanish are never getting it back. Rick’s theory was that the ‘David Stern’ drug base was in those tunnels and on that rock. After reading the file, I pretty much agreed with him. The problem was, we were three, and the people we were up against were heavily armed and many.