‘You wouldn’t even make a private in the Pioneer Corps,’ sneered Jim. I have to say I was quite peeved but I am good at masking my feelings. I called the 0800 number displayed on the TA advert and left my name and address.
After the weekend the phone went and there was a very nice man from the army on the phone responding to my call. I felt very embarrassed and had, by this time, decided that I really didn’t want to join the army. However, as I say, he was a very pleasant man, and so I agreed to pop into the Army careers office in Durham City.
I was wearing a turquoise suit, which I loved until someone pointed out that I looked like a Barclays Bank employee. I reasoned with myself that if Jim thought I was pretty useless then so would the army, and they wouldn’t offer me anything. I got such a surprise when I got there because they decided I would be very useful indeed – as a journalist.
‘Have you heard of the Territorial Army’s Public Information Office? You could become a TAPIO and it carries with it automatic officer rank,’ said my man in khaki.
Hmm, I thought, so I wouldn’t even make a private in the Pioneer Corps, would I? Right, McIntosh, lesson number one: never challenge a Ridley. I went off for a selection board meeting at the United Kingdom Land Forces HQ in Wiltshire, which was quite intimidating. I had to identify fifty pieces of NATO equipment, give a speech on women soldiers and do a simple report for a newspaper based on facts given to me on a sheet of paper. I achieved the first after spending two days’ solid studying all the Jane’s defence books in Newcastle Public Library. The second was nerve-racking and the third was a doddle.
When the brown ‘On Her Majesty’s Service’ letter arrived I was gobsmacked to find out I had been accepted. I was to be attached to the Royal Signals in Middlesbrough and begin training immediately. Off I went to collect my kit and when I came back Jim was sitting there with an expression that told me he was not happy. ‘The only reason people join the TA is to have affairs.’
I laughed out loud. I could not believe this man. Anyway, undeterred, I sorted through all my kit and prepared to go through my basic training rather than fast-track through Sandhurst Military Academy on a nine-week course.
One of the things you learn is how to handle weapons, dismantle the damned things, clean them, reassemble them and fire them. First, however, we were shown a training video of how things can go wrong and I was appalled at some of the injuries caused by just holding a gun wrongly.
By the time I was given a pistol I was absolutely terrified and shaking. I was taken to a firing range and told to raise my arm if anything went wrong and an instructor would come to my aid. I fired two shots at the target and then the pistol jammed, so I raised my arm and turned round to face everyone.
Suddenly, all these grown men and women soldiers dived to the ground and one instructor shouted at me in a very offensive manner, using not a little Anglo-Saxon, to put down the gun. I did and immediately received the bollocking of my life from the instructor.
‘Never ever point a gun at anyone again unless it’s the enemy. That fucking gun could have gone off and you could have killed someone,’ he bellowed at me as his nose nearly touched mine.
I wanted to be swallowed up by a hole in the ground and vowed never to do that again.
History repeats itself in odd ways, and here I was at the Khyber Pass, once again having men in khaki diving for cover. I was quite embarrassed and decided to walk away from the dramatic viewpoint and towards the road. I bimbled around trying to look as though butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth waiting for the moment when Ghaffar, Pasha and I would head for the Torkham border.
Days earlier, there had been tens of thousands of Afghan refugees crowding the border, but Pakistan had put up the shutters and refused them entry. Ghaffar chatted to one driver who had managed to get through and was told that all the refugees had gone and it was deadly quiet as though everyone were waiting for Armageddon.
Our little convoy had pulled itself back together on the opposite side of the road ready for the journey home. Pasha and I stood firm while Ghaffar remonstrated with one of the soldiers and returned to say the deal had fallen through. Once again my plan to head towards Afghanistan had been thwarted. Still, I was jubilant I had seen the famous Pass and we headed back.
I popped back into the Pearl Continental and saw Ian Gallagher and the photographer in the fifth-floor bar. It was way past our deadlines so it was safe to talk and I asked them what they had been up to. They said they had dressed in traditional Pakistani clothes and had gone to do a story about the guns that were being made at Dera-Adam Kheil.
I gave a start and mentioned that I had been there, too, but two days earlier. We compared notes and it was all very jolly, but I slipped out of the bar and telephoned Jim.
‘Look, this is probably a coincidence but the Mail on Sunday have done our story on the gun factory. My greatest fear is someone in the Express is tipping Dave Dillon [from the MoS newsdesk] off about what I’m doing over here. I certainly haven’t spoken to anyone, so I know if there is a leak it’s not coming from here,’ I said. For all I know Ian could have had the same conversation with his newsdesk.
That evening we headed back to Islamabad and I told Pasha that David Smith, one of the Daily Express reporters, was arriving in town during the early hours of the morning. I had spoken to David the night before and said I would arrange somewhere for him to sleep and I would see that a taxi was waiting for him when he arrived.
He asked me if I wanted anything. ‘Toothpaste, please bring me some decent toothpaste. Mine was nicked from my bag and I’ve bought some Pakistani toothpaste and it’s vile – it’s so salty.’
Thank God he was arriving, and not just for the toothpaste: it meant I could have a day off and all I intended to do was laze around and do nothing. I arrived back at the hotel looking as though I’d been dragged through a hedge backwards. The reception staff smiled. They were used to seeing me coming and going at very odd hours looking knackered.
In the morning I went down for breakfast and meandered through the buffet. Although I don’t like spicy food I had developed a taste for a mild meat curry dish and two fried eggs, the latter to counteract the effects of the former. I was really pleased with myself because I had been in Pakistan for more than a week and I was still functioning normally.
When in Damascus in August 1992, I had ended up with amoebic dysentery and had been seriously ill. I was seven months pregnant with Daisy at the time and had spent three days having round-the-clock care after being flown to Cyprus. I had been advised not to go to Syria because of my condition but I had been trying for more than a year to get an interview with Ahmed Jibril and, when his contacts finally indicated ‘yes’, I was damned if I was going to say ‘no’. It was a ‘seize-the-moment’ time.
Ahmed Jibril was on America’s most-wanted list and so for me it was a very important interview, though subsequently someone else was convicted for the Lockerbie bombing. I had been to Lockerbie on the night of the disaster and I remembered it very clearly – and still do. It had a significant impact on me and affected me badly for many years to come. The flight had been en route from Frankfurt to New York via London when the explosion happened. The final death toll among passengers, crew and people on the ground was 270.
I was working at the Newcastle Journal’s head office at the time and had been on the day shift, which ended at 6 p.m. I was about to leave and Wayne Halton, who had just arrived for the graveyard shift, was making some calls to the police, ambulance and fire brigade. He shouted over to the news editor, Tom Patterson, that there had been some sort of plane crash in the borders and we all speculated it would be low-flying RAF jets.
Anyway, I decided to hang round and it rapidly emerged this was something much more horrific. I immediately volunteered to go and Wayne and I jumped in my car and headed off to Lockerbie. It was about 7.20 p.m. on 21 December 1988 and my foot was on the floorboard until we left the A69, headed for Gretna Green. Lockerbie was only fifteen miles n
orthwest, but, as we turned on to the motorway, it was entirely jammed about seven miles down. Deadlines were looming, so, undeterred, I drove down the hard shoulder and managed to blag my way through every police checkpoint until we arrived, slap bang in the middle of the town.
It was weird. There was a heavy smell of burning aviation fuel in the air and my vision was impaired by a sort of dirty haze. The streets looked as though someone had emptied tons of nuts, bolts and jagged metal from some sort of giant industrial hoover. Townsfolk wandered around glazed and speechless, as if in slow motion.
Wayne went in one direction and I went in another. Apart from a few local Scottish reporters, we were the first newspaper hacks there and we tried to piece together what had happened.
I tried to use one of the local payphones, but it was dead. The budget of a regional newspaper didn’t allow for mobile phones, which were, anyway, those huge brick-shaped things in those days, not the slimline gizmos you see today, which weigh but a few grams. I looked around and saw a lorry driver with loads of aerials sticking out of his cab and I asked him if he had a phone. I quickly explained what I wanted and he told me to jump in. Excellent! The Journal now had a mobile district office with telephone, and I filed my copy.
As I was reading it out to the copytaker – a typist on the other end of the phone – I mentioned something about a mystery lorry driver who had heroically jackknifed his vehicle across the main road to stop traffic moving forward.
‘Hey, that’s me,’ said my man at the wheel. ‘I did that. Are people really calling me a hero? Anyone would have done it.’ I returned to the copytaker and said, ‘Strike out mystery driver. I’m about to give you a name and address and an account of what happened.’
OK, I was lucky but sometimes you need little breaks like that.
I grabbed Wayne and took him to the cab and he filed his stuff. We had stolen a march on everyone, Tom Patterson was delighted and we worked through the night until the 3 a.m. edition. The way I describe it now may seem callous, but as a journalist you have to try to concentrate on gathering as many facts as possible to give to the reader the next day. You can’t break down or get emotional – you have to deliver. Tears are for later and in private.
While there we saw the so-called Rat Pack of national reporters based in Newcastle, including the legendary Clive Crickmer from the Daily Mirror and Doug Watson from the Sun. Doug, who was in the Arndale Centre doing his Christmas shopping, had been bleeped and had driven up from Manchester. Roger Scott for the Daily Mail and Alan Baxter for the Daily Express, who had been covering a murder press conference in Sunderland, had also been bleeped. Chris Boffey arrived on a Heathrow-Glasgow flight full of cheer … he had been at the Daily Star Christmas party and, having a reputation of being able to hold his drink, had been the only one deemed in a fit state to make the journey. I have to say Wayne and I kept out of their way because their huge mobile phones were beginning to run out of juice and we were jealously guarding our secret ‘district office’.
It was only during the following days that the full horror and trauma of what happened began to sink in. I suppose now I would be offered counselling, but then it was a naff thing to do. I tried to discuss it with my husband Jim but he was very dismissive. He said he had seen worse in the police force – although I’m not sure quite how he could make that claim! I just stopped talking about it with him.
In truth, I have not been able to enjoy Christmas properly since then, so God knows how the people of Lockerbie cope with it each year. Sometime during the so-called festive season, regardless of where I am, my mind will drift up to that border town, which has been scarred for life. I remember interviewing two parents who had been watching This Is Your Life on television. Their two children were playing beneath the Christmas tree when this huge explosion shook their home. Before they could stir a row of aeroplane seats came crashing through their window. Three dead passengers, bodies bloated and burned, were still strapped to them.
That image will live with me for ever. How can you explain it? How did they explain it to their children? The whole experience haunted me and, looking back, I must have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder – but hard news hacks never talked about namby-pamby things like that. We just carried on.
That is why the Jibril interview was so important to me. I wanted to confront him. I wanted to sort of square off the circle from that night in Lockerbie, and so I had gone to Damascus. If I was expecting a full confession I was going to be disappointed.
He was a mild-mannered man and I think I described him as looking like someone’s elderly uncle. His face seemed kind and his deep-brown eyes looked as though they’d seen much pain. We talked through interpreters and he denied being responsible. I asked him three times in different ways but the answer was the same – and you can’t really turn round and launch into an aggressive line of questioning with a man who is surrounded by gun-wielding bodyguards.
I decided to try a new tactic and told him about Lockerbie and what I had personally seen: the dead bodies lying littered in the rubble, a child’s body stuck on a roof and the townsfolk who had nothing whatsoever to do with Middle Eastern politics who had been left traumatised. I told him it had also scarred me mentally.
Suddenly the brown eyes narrowed and his face became contorted as he growled, ‘We have to pick the bodies of our dead children from rubble daily because of Israeli bombs. Now you have had a taste of what it is like and now you have had a taste of how we suffer.’
Strong words. The hatred was deep and ingrained. There was so much pain and hurt and I left feeling despondent. He did, however, make an offer to meet the Lockerbie investigation team on neutral ground to answer questions about Flight 103, but his offer made through the pages of the Sunday Sun in Newcastle and our then sister paper, Scotland on Sunday, was never taken up.
I spent several hours in his company and towards the end of the interview I had a searing pain in my gut and was relieved when he bade me farewell. I really don’t know how I managed to control myself but by the time I reached my hotel bathroom I was ready to explode.
I couldn’t understand why I was so ill because I had been so careful. I had avoided eating salad foods. I had brushed my teeth with bottled water and had avoided ice in my drinks. I writhed in agony for more than a day before I summoned the strength to get to the airport and get out of Damascus and fly to Cyprus. I met with Daoud Zaaroura, the father of my baby, and he took me to a clinic in Nicosia.
The doctor there went through everything I’d eaten and then it dawned on me. I had had a local ice cream, which had tasted absolutely delicious. Yvonne, you stupid bint, I thought. Ice cream is nearly all water. You might as well have drunk from a tap in the local souk.
Ever since my experience in Damascus, I have always been extremely cautious with what I eat, hence, every morning in Islamabad, two fried eggs for breakfast, just in case I needed that binding effect. Although my hotel was very modern, toilet facilities in outlying areas were nonexistent or very basic. I just couldn’t imagine dealing with a squatty potty in dire straits and still managing to maintain that vital balance.
As I finished breakfast, David Smith walked in, exhausted after a hellish journey and clasping two tubes of toothpaste. ‘Thanks for getting Pasha to pick me up at the airport,’ he said. ‘I didn’t arrive until about 4 a.m.’ I was genuinely happy to see him and we hugged. It was good to see someone from friendly territory.
But he couldn’t stay long and said he thought he might be heading for Peshawar.
I gave him one of my books on the Khyber Pass and urged him to try to see it because it was such an experience. Fairly young, David’s a nice bloke and is a very good writer with a relaxed manner that I would imagine would put many people at ease during an interview. He’s also a workaholic – either that or he has no life, because he’s always in the office. I know that because I’m often there too!
I told Pasha I would see him the next morning and he could have the day off,
but he volunteered to ferry David around instead, which was fine as long as Smithy realised he had to find his own man. Thankfully, I could trust him. He hadn’t been tainted by the Fleet Street cynics yet.
I had a lazy day and spent most of it in bed in my room. I was running out of clothes and most of my suitable gear was in the hotel laundry, so I went back to bed wearing an Osama bin Laden T-shirt that Ghaffar had given me earlier in the week.
Throughout the day a hotel employee kept knocking on my door asking whether I needed anything special and whether I was happy with the room service. Honestly, I’d have far more respect for men if they’d just be up front and say, ‘Would you like something to drink and can I have a shag?’ The answer in this particular case would still have been no but he was becoming particularly tiresome.
I finally fixed him several hours later when I heard the familiar rap on the door. I opened the door and the question was the same, so I replied, ‘Yes, there is something special I need. Can you get me a box of tampons? I’ve just started my period.’ Funny, that. Never did hear from him again.
I had met someone some weeks earlier before I’d left for Islamabad and I was quite keen. We kept in touch with text messaging during my time over there and this particular Sunday he sent a message asking how I was. I replied and asked him what he thought of my stories in the Sunday Express that day. Obviously fishing for compliments, I waited for the response. It was staggering and read, ‘DIDN’T BOTHER BUYING THE PAPER TODAY.’ Fortunately for him I was in Islamabad and frankly didn’t want to pick up the phone to have a row – it would have been too exhausting. I simply returned the following text: ‘BIG MISTAKE’.
He has called me a few times since I returned home but I haven’t responded that enthusiastically. He just doesn’t understand and most men don’t. Newspapers are my life and throughout my life it has been the one, solid, reliable rock that has always been there for me until Daisy was born. Boyfriends and husbands have come and gone and they can’t compete with the job.
In the Hands of the Taliban Page 6