Calypso By Brian Nicholson

PROLOGUE

‘Deux bateaux de pirates, mon Capitaine!’ Captain Charles d’Ocier noted the falsetto note in the voice of his first officer who had just lowered the telescope from his right eye. The Captain held out his hand for the telescope and raised it to his eye. Pirates! This was the latest in a long run of bad luck to add to the misery of the grim voyage from Port Bouet on the Côte d’Ivoire with his stinking cargo of slaves. Charles d’Ocier lowered the telescope. There were two pirate ships – small in comparison to Concorde, his 300 ton, three-masted clipper. Both were sloops-o-war; no more than 70 or 80 feet in length, d’Ocier estimated. Both were rigged as brigantines – squarerigged on the foremast and schooner-rigged on the main mast. ‘Merde!’ The Captain’s expletive did nothing to reassure his first officer – ‘and only a day’s sailing from Fort-de–France in Martinique,’ he muttered to himself. The Captain glanced up at the top of the mizzen mast from which hung a rather limp tri-colour. The light wind favoured the smaller, lighter pirate craft, which were rapidly gaining on Concorde. ‘Monsieur Gavray, please give the order to clear the decks for action and run out the guns, smartly now!’ ‘Aye, aye sir,’ but no encouragement was needed. The crew of Concorde was well aware of the brutality of the privateers plying the lucrative waters of the Caribbean and all of them were reluctant to forgo the handsome profit from the sale of the slaves, of whom only 28 had died of the original cargo of 150 loaded in Port Bouet. What the crew did not know was that Concorde was also loaded with a cargo of gold dust, silver plate and jewels, which would add considerably to the profit margin – for the Captain. Concorde was within sight of the island of St Vincent, which lay fine on her port bow some twelve miles away. On her starboard quarter lay the island of Barbados, but Martinique and its safe harbour of Fort-de-France was still some 120 miles away. Had there been a strong wind, Concorde might have been able to outrun the pirate vessels. Even sheltering in a British colonial port was preferable to an encounter with pirates. But the last week in March was still too early in the year to expect the strong - sometimes hurricane force winds - that prevailed in this part of the Caribbean between June and September. The light south-easterly wind favoured the lighter displacement pirate ships which were now only two miles astern of Concorde. Captain d’Ocier steadied the telescope once again on the two pirate ships; the leading vessel was flying the Jolly Roger from its masthead, but the following vessel’s masthead pennant had what appeared to be a skeleton brandishing a spear. The pirates’ attack plan was obvious; by approaching Concorde from astern, none of her 26 canons could engage the attackers until the very last minute by which time the grappling irons would already have been locked onto the pirates’ prey. Any crew attempting to fend them off from Concorde’s sterncas’le would be swept away by the grapeshot fired from the pirates’ bow chasers. The battle was brief and bloody. The two pirate vessels attacked from both sides of Concorde’s stern and in less than 20 minutes Captain d’Ocier 1

surrendered his ship. The Concorde was taken as a prize and the surviving members of the crew were put ashore on St Vincent. Benjamin Horngold led this attack; it was to be his last act of piracy. He had decided to retire from piracy and accept the Queen’s pardon. He gave the 300 ton Concorde to his protégé, Edward Teach – soon to be become one of the most feared pirates ever to plunder the seas – Blackbeard. Concorde was re-named Queen Anne’s Revenge and the number of her canons increased from 26 to 40. Blackbeard’s new flagship now flew his distinctive ensign: a dancing skeleton wielding a spear, as if taunting its victims. Shortly after setting sail from St Vincent in what was now the largest and best armed pirate vessel in the Caribbean, Blackbeard attacked another merchantman, the Great Allen, which he stripped of all valuables and then set on fire and scuttled. News of this engagement spread rapidly and the 30 gun manof-war, HMS Scarborough, was sent to deal with Blackbeard. Far from being intimidated by one of Her Majesty’s warships, Blackbeard decided to do battle with HMS Scarborough: he succeeded in damaging her so badly that her Captain withdrew from the engagement. Blackbeard’s reputation now knew no bounds: so terrifying was the sight of this black-bearded pirate that his intended prey usually surrendered without a fight. Crews that survived the ordeal swore that he was the ‘devil incarnate’ and Blackbeard did everything to encourage this reputation by twisting slow burning hemp cord into his black, matted hair under his hat. This he lit just before an engagement and the slow-burning hemp would envelope him in smoke as he went into battle festooned with pistols and cutlasses. The Queen Anne’s Revenge was now laden with booty and it was time to find a safe haven for this treasure before he returned to his lucrative hunting ground in the shoals and shallow waters off Charles Town – later to become Charleston and the South Carolina coast. Navigation was still a black art; for more than a thousand years mariners had been able to establish the Latitude of their position on the World’s seas by measuring the altitude of the Pole Star or the sun. The means of identifying Longitude – and by so doing establish a definitive plot - was not discovered until the invention of the chronometer in the 18th century. Navigation was not Blackbeard’s strong point and he was not adept at the use of the cross-staff to measure angles to the stars or sun. After selling the wretched cargo of slaves in St Vincent’s King’s Town, Blackbeard set a course nor-nor-west to return to South Carolina. In 1717, the year of the capture of the Queen Anne’s Revenge, the only means of navigation available to mariners when sailing north or south was the compass and dead reckoning. Blackbeard was aiming for the Anegada Passage between the Virgin Islands and the Leeward Islands having kept the Windward Islands on his starboard quarter as he sailed north. Once through the Anegada Passage, the Queen Anne’s Revenge would come onto a north-westerly course and sail along the chain of Bahamas Islands and Cays to Florida and South Carolina. By pure chance, on the third day out of St Vincent, the lookout in the crow’s nest shouted down to the Captain that there was an island dead ahead. Blackbeard went down to his cabin and poured over the chart. There was nothing marked on the chart anywhere near his plot of only ten minutes prior to the lookout’s warning. Dominica should be on his starboard quarter and the French Island of Guadeloupe on the starboard bow followed by the small but distinctive island of 2

Montserrat with its 3,000 foot active volcano, Soufrière – a name shared with the volcanoes on the islands of Guadeloupe and St Vincent - and its white plume of smoke hanging on the lip of the caldera. Blackbeard summoned Bartholomew Nesbit, his first officer, and after a careful study of the chart both went back up on deck and studied the island, clearly visible now to the naked eye. Either the Queen Anne’s Revenge was many miles off course to the east or Blackbeard had, by sheer chance, discovered an island that was, as yet, uncharted. Blackbeard had made no allowance for the then unknown strong westerly tidal set in his reckoning, which had carried the Queen Anne’s Revenge more than 30 miles further to the west than the plot. This would also explain why he had had no sight of any of the islands on his starboard quarter. Unintentionally, he had just discovered the ideal place to bury his treasure before returning to the Beaufort Inlet on the South Carolina coast. Having no idea of the waters or the dangers surrounding this island, Blackbeard ordered the leadsman into the chains on the bow of the ship where he strapped himself in with a canvas apron to allow the use of both hands to heave the lead. The Caribbean Islands tend to be one of two geological origins; either volcanic or coral. Montserrat, Granada, St Vincent, St Lucia and Guadeloupe clearly indicate their steep-sided, conical origin as the peak of a huge subsurface volcano, while the islands of Barbados, Antigua, the Turks and Caicos and Cayman Islands all owe their origin to coral formations and subterranean upheavals over many millions of years. The island discovered by Blackbeard was of the latter variety with its highest point no more than some 60 feet above sea level. The island’s lack of altitude probably explained why it had never been sighted before and its absence from Blackbeard’s charts, the very latest editions available, all stolen from plundered ships. Cautiously, the Queen Anne’s Revenge circumnavigated the island with the leadsman calling out the depth. There was no sign of either human or animal occupation of the island other than the many varieties of sea bird. Having completed a circuit of the island, Blackbeard decided to anchor his ship on the north side of the island where she would be on a lee shore from the prevailing south-easterly wind. Bartholomew Nesbit gave the order to hand the t’gallants, skys’ls, moonrakers and stuns’ls which involved both watches swarming up the ratlin’s to furl the sails. It was now early evening and the light was fading fast; they had no time to spare. As soon as the leadsman indicated that the water was shoaling from ‘the mark five’ to ‘the mark three’, the pin was knocked out from the starboard bower anchor and it plunged into the crystal clear water. At first light the next morning the jolly-boat was lowered and a well-armed shore party was sent to search the island, not only for any signs of human habitation, but also for water, fruit and any creature worth slaughtering. The island was circular in shape, about two miles in diameter and covered in dense and luxuriant vegetation, which indicated the presence of fresh water. The shore party returned by midday with welcome news that there was a natural spring providing plenty of fresh water, fruit in abundance, no indication of any form of human presence – ever - and no animals except turtles. But the best news Bartholomew kept until the end. They had discovered the entrance to a cave, which appeared to disappear into the bowels of the earth. Under the blackened locks a twisted smile cracked the pirates weathered face. Here was a natural 3

and weatherproof location for his treasure. The transfer of the treasure to the cave, the collection of fruit and fresh water and the provision of fresh meat from the turtles occupied the crew for three days. On the fourth day before setting sail once more, Blackbeard and Nesbit each took it in turns to ‘shoot’ the angle of the sun with the cross-staff and record what they believed to be the plot of their ‘treasure island’. The bower anchor was then brought in on the capstain, the heads’ls, royals and stays’ls were set and the Queen Anne’s Revenge slipped away from the deserted island leaving no trace that she or her crew had ever been there. Blackbeard continued his piracy along the coasts of North and South Carolina, but only a year after the capture of the Queen Anne’s Revenge he ran her aground and lost her in the shallow waters of the Beaufort Inlet. By now the Governor of Virginia, Alexander Spotswood, had decided that the ‘laissez-faire’ attitude to piracy had gone far enough and it was time to put a stop to it. He spent his own money chartering two shallow displacement sloops that could navigate the treacherous shoals in which Blackbeard was operating in his new ship Adventure. He gave the task to two British Naval officers, Captain Brand and First Lieutenant Robert Maynard, of ridding the seas of the notorious pirate. The two sloops set out to find Blackbeard in his hideout on Ocracoke Island, but had no guns to compete with the nine on Blackbeard’s Adventure. Ranger, the sloop commanded by Captain Brand, was knocked out by Adventure’s first broadside on 21st November 1718. The other sloop, Jane, commanded by Maynard, moved in on her own and managed to damage Adventure enough to prevent her escaping. There was no wind and so both ships had to resort to oars and here the lighter Jane had the advantage and managed to get alongside Adventure. Maynard had hidden the majority of his crew below decks to fool Blackbeard into thinking that the crew had been killed. The ruse was successful; a desperate battle ensued with cutlasses and pistols, which ended with the decapitation of Blackbeard. Maynard and Jane returned to Florida with Blackbeard’s head hanging by its matted hair from her bowsprit. Those of Blackbeard’s crew who had not already been killed were tried and hanged. Now there was no one left alive who knew of the tiny island to the west of the Windward Islands and beneath it a vast subterranean cavern in which was concealed a Queen’s ransom in gold, silver and jewels. For nearly three hundred years, the tiny island provided sanctuary for both resident and migrating birds and leather-back turtles. The island came under the jurisdiction of Venezuela and in 1975, at the request of, and funded by the International Association of Lighthouse Authorities (IALA), an unmanned, solar-powered light was installed as an aid to shipping. In 1991, Venezuela sold the island to a private buyer and two years later, with the approval of the World Wide Fund, the new owner declared the island a protected wild life reserve.

CHAPTER 1

‘I’m still not convinced that cruising in Cuban waters is going to replace the 4

Windward and Leeward Islands in popularity,’ Naomi Ackland told her husband, Ron, as United Airlines flight UA0242 landed at Owen Roberts International Airport to the east of George Town on Grand Cayman. ‘What did the Foreign Office say when you contacted them for advice about sailing in Cuban waters?’ Naomi added as the Boeing 737 turned off the runway onto the apron in front of the airport terminal. Up to that point, Naomi had been content to watch the film and doze on the Virgin Atlantic flight from Manchester to Miami where she had endured the misery of the US Homeland Security enhanced immigration process. This process was for everyone, whether transiting or staying in the USA, without voicing her reservations about the new venue for their annual sailing holiday. ‘I didn’t actually speak to anyone,’ Ron admitted, ‘but the Foreign Office website gave no indication of any problems which the tourist might encounter. I have been advised to stay away from the prohibited area of the Bay of Pigs, but that is well to the west of the Queen’s Garden Islands where the flotilla skipper will be taking us. The Cubans know these islands as Jardines de la Reina and they are meant to be every bit as good an idyllic cruising area as anything that the Windward and Leeward Islands can offer.’ ‘I do hope you’re right. It would be dreadful if it was all a big disappointment for the others. Speaking of the others, when do they join us?’ Naomi asked as they boarded the bus to take them the 200 yards to the terminal. ‘They’re on the later flight; should join us on the boat at the Cayman Islands Yacht Club on Seven Mile Beach in time for supper tonight. That gives me time to take over the yacht and get everything sorted for an early start tomorrow. The boat will be fully provisioned, but tonight our charter company has organised a reception and supper for all of us in the Yacht Club so that we have a chance to meet all the other crews,’ Ron explained as the two of them made their way through immigration to the baggage carousels. Having done his homework in preparation for the holiday and to cheer himself during the miserable British winter, he had imparted his newly-acquired knowledge to convince Naomi of the value of trying a different venue for this annual holiday. He had explained that Grand Cayman was shaped like an elongated table-tennis bat with the handle on the right – or east, and the bat on the left or west. The bat on the west side looked as though a bite had been taken out of it – from the top down - and this was known as the North Sound. George Town and the airport were located at the south-west side of the Sound and to the east of the Sound was very little except for a large area of mangrove wetland. The geology of the island was that of a coral-encrusted mountain ridge with three peaks, which formed Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac and Little Cayman, all had been heaved up out of the sea by earthquakes some 120,000 thousand years ago. There was nowhere on Grand Cayman – other than high rise hotels and man-made constructions – that exceeded twenty metres above sea level, which meant that at the height of the storm and tidal surge created by Hurricane Ivan in 2004, the entire island had disappeared under the sea. This immediately prompted Naomi to ask the obvious question of the likelihood of a hurricane during their holiday. ‘Not a chance, love,’ she was assured. ‘Hurricanes in the Caribbean only occur from June to October each year,’ but Naomi’s next question had caught him off-guard. ‘What about all this global warming, Ron. Wouldn’t that increase the possibility of hurricanes during other months of the year?’ Her query was 5

astutely pertinent as both the Cayman Islands and Cuba straddled the gap between the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico and both were highly prone to hurricane damage, but Ron assured her that he had done his homework and had sought advice about hurricanes. He then quickly changed the subject by explaining that the North Sound was about four miles wide from west to east and the same in length from north to south forming an ideal water sports arena. He had finished his reassurance by confirming that he and his co-charterers had reserved spacious 40 foot catamarans, each with four double-bed cabins, a palatial saloon – by yachting standards - and a fully equipped galley with fourburner cooker, oven and grill, dishwasher and microwave. He knew Naomi preferred a catamaran to a mono-hull yacht because they did not heel over and could be sailed right up to the beach. Ron Ackland had selected Caribbean Cruising Charters off the internet for a flotilla sailing holiday in the first two weeks of May. The charter company was selected because it specialised in cruising the unspoilt islands off the south coast of Cuba. Ron Ackland had told his wife that there would be eight yachts in the flotilla – five chartered from the UK and three from the USA. * Mike Spears was born in St Austell’s Hospital in Plymouth on 25th December 1970 to Dorothy Spears, wife of Chief Petty Officer Arthur Spears. He was to be their only child as the birth had been a particularly difficult one with a number of complications, resulting in a hysterectomy a month later. Arthur Spears was devoted to the Royal Navy and was determined that his son would follow him into that worthy profession. He and Dorothy saved every penny they could with her adding to the family income by cleaning houses and taking in laundry to give their only son a private education. This they achieved with the help of the financial assistance provided for Service personnel to educate their children at boarding schools while their parents were moved around the world. Mike was sent to the Grange preparatory school in Milton Abbot in 1978, where the end-ofterm reports for his work were excellent. However, his headmaster, a Mr Paul Wootton, had expressed his concern at the boy’s apparent inability to either mix well with the other boys or to have any noticeable influence on his peers. He passed his Common Entrance exam with considerable ease and his grades placed him at the top of the entry list of those pupils accepted for Sherborne School in Dorset in 1983, the year his father retired from the Royal Navy. Arthur Spears applied for, and was accepted for the job of harbour master at Salcombe. The family moved from their small terraced house in Plymouth to Salcombe, soon after a proud Mum and Dad delivered their son to his public school. Straight ‘As’ in ten subjects at GCSE were followed by two ‘As’ and a ‘B’ in Physics, Maths and Economics at his ‘A’ Levels in August 1988. Their son’s academic success masked his parents’ disappointment that he had failed to achieve any position of authority while at Sherborne, nor had he represented either his house or the school in any sport. As soon as he arrived home, either on exeats or for the school holidays, he would disappear to his room and spend countless hours playing with and developing his impressive Hornby Double ‘O’ train set. His parents had encouraged this hobby when it all started, but now tried to persuade their son to get involved in some of the outdoor sports and 6

activities – and misdemeanours – of his peers in the Devon seaside town of Salcombe. Mike was accepted by Southampton University to study for a degree in politics, philosophy and economics where he achieved a 2:1 with very little effort and then announced to his delighted father that he wished to go into the Royal Navy. A year at the Britannia Royal Naval College ended in 1992 with Mike Spears graduating as a Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and his appointment in April to HMS London, a Type 22 Frigate and the Flagship of the Royal Navy’s Task Force in the Gulf. In this first appointment he would learn his seamanship, navigating and warfare skills. But the Gulf War had ended in March of the previous year and so Mike’s sea-time was spent endlessly patrolling the Gulf on the operational task of ‘Southern Watch’ while the International Atomic Energy Agency inspection teams searched in vain for Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. Mike’s chosen career progression in the Royal Navy was in the discipline of ‘Warfare Officer’ with the goal of being appointed ‘Principal Warfare Officer’ on a Frigate or Destroyer in an active service theatre. He believed that his outstanding ability would lead from PWO to command of a ship and after that, to senior appointments in the MOD and from there to Flag rank. Whilst Mike Spears’s self-assessment of his ability and potential predicted a successful career and rapid promotion at the earliest date in each ‘window’ of opportunity, it was not shared by those who wrote his confidential reports. Apart from finding it difficult to mix with senior officers, his peers and the ratings with any level of confidence and shared good humour, Mike was ashamed of his parents’ humble background. He hated it when meeting senior officers, to be asked if he was related to CPO Spears whose outstanding gallantry when HMS Coventry had been bombed in San Carlos Water during the Falklands War had made him a role model for all young Royal Navy ratings. It was with great reluctance that he joined the ‘runs ashore’ that all his fellow officers enjoyed and his apparent disinterest in the opposite sex encouraged the belief that he was gay. That misconception was rapidly dispelled on one of the few occasions when Mike showed any form of aggression. He was propositioned by a gay Lieutenant on a ‘run ashore’ in Portsmouth which resulted in that Lieutenant being taken to HMS Haslar – the Naval Hospital – having been beaten senseless by Mike. After the appointment in HMS London he was sent on various courses to upgrade his knowledge on the Royal Navy’s Action Data Automation Weapons Systems (ADAWS) which was replacing the previous equipment in ships’ Command and Control Centres. Mike had expected an appointment after this course to a ship on the Armilla Patrol in the Gulf or one of the two aircraft carriers. His promotion in 1996 to Lieutenant was followed by the appointment as Navigating Officer on HMS Swordfish, one of the three remaining offshore patrol craft of the Squadron in Hong Kong. This was a bitter disappointment, which he made abundantly obvious both to his Captain, Lt Commander Nick Swift, and to the rest of the officers and crew. Once again his lack of rapport with his peers and those whom he commanded resulted in just such a comment on his annual report. After Hong Kong was handed over to the Chinese at midnight on 30th June 1997, Mike Spears was appointed as a junior staff officer at 3 Royal Marine Commando Brigade in Plymouth. His appointers had hoped that a tour of duty with the Royal Marines might ‘round off’ some of the many sharp edges to his character. 7

Mike Spears was now in the first year of the ‘window’ when the brightest officers might be promoted to Lt Commander and be selected to attend the Joint Service Staff College at Shrivenham in Wiltshire. That ‘window’ closed for Mike in 2001 and he only just made promotion in the final year. He was not selected for the Staff College, but appointed to HMS Edinburgh which was undergoing a refit, as Warfare Officer. HMS Edinburgh was part of the task force sent to the Gulf in 2002, but just before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Mike Spears was sent back to the UK on a course. The Captain of HMS Edinburgh was so concerned at Mike’s lack of empathy with all ranks that he considered him to be a liability on active service. Mike Spears was replaced by a younger officer who had been promoted before him. The seeds of bitter resentment had now been well and truly sown and the harvest of that was yet to be reaped. After the invasion of Iraq and the reduction of the Naval Task Force, HMS Edinburgh was relocated to the Caribbean as Guard Ship and on completion of his course in the UK, Mike Spears rejoined the ship as Warfare Officer. * The reception and supper in the yacht club had been a success: that was the opinion of all eight crews before the flotilla of eight yachts set sail from the Grand Cayman Yacht Club for Cuba. All the catamarans had names preceded by the word ‘cayo’ or islet. This was a word peculiar to the Caribbean and is believed to have originated from the French word for platform - ‘quai’. Off the coast of Florida these tiny coral ‘mounds’, barely rising above sea level in some cases and in others, substantial islands, were keys, in the Bahamas they were cays and in Cuba they were cayos. There was a Cayo Blanco, Cayo Grande, Cayo Maria, Cayo Largo, Cayo Breton and so on. All the names corresponded with one of the 250 coral islands in Cuba’s Los Jardines de la Reina archipelago that stretched for 150 miles from south-east to north-west, 40 miles off the south coast between Cabo Cruz in the south and Cienfuegos in the north. Not one of these islands was inhabited nor was there a single building on any of them. The whole area had been declared a nature reserve and the Acklands and their six friends aboard their 40 foot catamaran Cayo Blanco had decided that this had to be the best-kept secret of both the yachting and tourist industry. The flotilla, led by professional skipper, Alan Friedberg with his American charterers in the catamaran, Cayo Grande, had reached the coral islands off the coast of Cuba after two days of sailing in ideal conditions. The prevailing trade wind blew steadily from the south-east sending the minimal draft catamarans skimming across the very deep seas between Grand Cayman and Cuba. By day the hot sun forced the crews into the shade of the bimini shelters at the stern of the yachts, but at night, as it cooled rapidly, they were all treated to the magic display of velvety black sky and brilliant stars, undimmed by light pollution from the land. As the flotilla reached the outlying islands of the archipelago, the depth decreased from nearly 4,000 metres to less than 30 in the space of five miles. The whole area of the archipelago was no deeper than 30 metres and in many places considerably less, so the catamarans were ideal for these cruising grounds as they could be taken right onto the white coral beaches. The fishing, scuba diving, board sailing, barbecues and al fresco eating and parties were so marvellous that some yacht crews were reluctant to leave one idyllic anchorage 8

for another. The skipper of Cayo Grande was used to this reaction and so it was arranged that all the yachts could go and do their ‘own thing’ either singly or severally amongst the islands and then meet up in five days’ time at an agreed rendezvous. All skippers made a note of the Longitude and Latitude of the RV after which the flotilla Skipper made sure that they entered the position as a ‘way point’ in each yacht’s GPS navigator. At this stage of the sailing holiday, Ron and Naomi and their friends had made friends with the British crew of Cayo Maria and the American crew of Cayo Largo. After a pleasant itinerary planning conference, well lubricated by chilled beer, the three skippers – Ron Ackland, Frank Chalmers and Wayne Myers – proposed an itinerary that first headed south and then wound back north-west to the RV. The other five boats in the flotilla elected to stay with the flotilla skipper and when the two groups parted the five yachts headed out to the seaward extremity of the archipelago where it was possible to catch some really big fish. That evening they planned to spend the night anchored by Cayo Cachiboca, one of only two cayos that boasted a lighthouse. Ron, Frank and Wayne and their respective crews had a wonderful five days, but were becoming a little anxious that their provisions, especially cold drinks, might not last. On the fifth day, the three boats headed for the RV, which they reached with three hours to spare. The RV was at Cayo Cachiboca with its clearly identifiable lighthouse so that there could be no confusion with another cayo. * ‘Right everyone, that completes today’s ‘Ts and As’ on the equipment’ – the tests and adjustments on all the new ADAWS equipment were carried out in full by each watch immediately it came on duty. ‘Duty watch to re-run the ‘Ts and As’ at 2200 hours with the air search radars on dummy load as there still seems to be a bit of a problem there. OK, that’s it. We should be in Bridgetown in…….’ and Mike Spears looked at his watch, ‘about 45 minutes.’ ‘Rumour is, sir, that we have an alongside berth for two nights,’ came from CPO Dave Burns. ‘So I believe Chief,’ Spears replied as he paused at the door of the Command and Control Centre. ‘We wondered….that is the off-duty watch wondered if you would join us for a run ashore tonight. It’s Tuesday and all drinks are free at the ‘Boatyard’ once you’ve paid the 35 dollar entrance fee.’ ‘Thanks very much, but I……’ ‘Oh go on, sir. The lads would really like it.’ It was a request which Mike Spears knew he could not refuse. To do so would be seen as a rejection of his ratings’ company and he knew that that would make an already strained atmosphere in the ship’s Command and Control Centre even worse. Since his return to the ship after his course in the UK, it had been made painfully obvious to Mike that the officer who had replaced him just before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 had not only been extremely popular, but had also done a first rate job. After his course in the UK he had done a temporary staff appointment at Northwood in London and then had rejoined HMS Edinburgh almost exactly two years previously in June. 9

Mike felt that the world was against him and none of his earlier dreams of fast-track promotion to ship command and the potential of achieving Flag rank had materialised. He had only just scraped promotion to Lt Commander and knew that the window for promotion to Commander was beyond his grasp. Thick skinned as he was, even he knew that he was unpopular in the wardroom and on the mess decks. Twice, his Captain had called him into his cabin for a formal discussion about his performance, lack of rapport with his ratings and fellow officers and a third summons could well be the end of that career. Perhaps it was time to give all those asses in the wardroom something to really gossip about. ‘OK then, what time do we meet,’ Mike asked. ‘20.30 hours at the dock gates, sir. We’ll fix a couple of taxis.’ ‘Very well, see you all at 8.30,’ and Mike Spears left the Command and Control Centre. What he did not hear was the comment from one of his leading seamen. ‘Bleeding hell, you’d think we’d asked him to have his fucking bollocks chopped off…..’ but CPO Dave Burns interrupted. ‘That’s enough Taylor; all of you listen. Now we’ve finally managed to persuade Lt Commander Spears to join us on a run ashore, let’s make sure that it is a really good one for him. It’s in all our interests to make sure it’s a success and we may just be doing him a favour as well. Got that all of you?’ ‘Yes Chief,’ came in unison from the on-watch team in the Command and Control Centre. It was only a short distance from where HMS Edinburgh was berthed to the Boatyard nightclub in the Careenage and it wouldn’t have taken more than six or seven minutes to walk, but the taxis were plentiful and cheap so the six of them drove there in comfort. The name of that part of the harbour area had lasted since the days when the square-riggers were hauled over, or ‘careened’ to clean and re-caulk the hulls and carry out repairs. During the day the club boasted every form of water sport, rum punch barbecues and canned music, but in the evening there was a live calypso band and singer, a cabaret with fire-eating and limbo dancing; it was a good hunting venue for both tourist and local female talent. The evening started well with lots of laughter and joking, but the Mount Gay rum, of which the Bajans were so proud, was powerful stuff and by 10.30 Mike Spears knew that he had already exceeded his quota. The whole aim of the exercise – at least the aim of some of the younger ratings - was to get Mike Spears drunk and as all drinks were included in the entrance fee, his glass rarely reached the half way mark before it was refilled. By 11.30 the party was in full swing with deafening music from the live band and lots of scantily clad tourist and local girls on the dance floor. All the ratings of his watch in the Command and Control Centre, except for CPO Burns, were on the dance floor. ‘Scuse me Chief, must have a leak,’ and Mike Spears got up from their table and made his way unsteadily towards the toilets. As soon as he was out of sight of the table, he skirted round the toilet area and went out into the street where he flagged down a taxi and asked the driver to take him to the Club Extreme. He had been to the club once before with a group of officers from Edinburgh’s wardroom. When Mike failed to return to the table, Dave Burns went to the Gents’ toilet to make sure that he hadn’t collapsed. There was no sign of Mike and a quick 10

check of the club confirmed that he was nowhere on the premises. Dave Burns shook his head sadly and returned to the table. The Club Extreme was more European in style than the Bajan style of the Boatyard and this was reflected in its clientele. It had numerous bars and lounges and food to suit most tastes. Mike Spears knew that he needed to get some food into his system to soak up the alcohol. He was seated at the bar tackling a huge pizza and drinking an orange juice when he realised that the woman at the bar on his right was talking to him. ‘That’s just what I feel like too,’ and she turned to the barman, ‘I’ll have a pizza margarita and an orange juice please – same as this gentleman here.’ The accent was Bajan, but the skin colour was nothing darker than a healthy tan. She was very attractive, on the wrong side of forty and her perfume reminded Mike of the scent of his mother’s geraniums in the front garden of the house in Salcombe. Mike’s instinct was to be dismissive and probably rude in his reaction to distance himself from this unknown person who had intruded on his privacy and thoughts – however befuddled those thoughts might have been. For reasons that probably only a psychiatrist could explain, even in his mid-thirties, Mike Spears was inordinately shy of new acquaintances, whether male or female, and since joining the Royal Navy had relied on the rank structure and Navy discipline to cocoon him from surprise encounters such as the one which had just occurred. For some unknown reason, but possibly a few too many rum punches, he suddenly found himself talking to her as though he had known her for years. ‘I’m Mike,’ and he shook the hand held out to him. ‘Elizabeth, but everyone calls me Lizzie,’ and she held his hand for just a little longer than an informal handshake. ‘I’ve been out with the lads from my ship and have had rather too much to drink so I thought that a bit of blotting paper and a soft drink might be wise,’ Mike blurted out with a rush. ‘You and me both, Mike. I was with a party at the Bubba Sports Bar, but it got a bit rowdy and I was so hungry that I nipped out and took a taxi here. Would that be one of the cruise liners you’re off?’ Lizzie asked. ‘No, hardly,’ and Mike laughed at the thought of Captain John Ecclestone’s reaction – the Captain of HMS Edinburgh – to a ship of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy being called a ‘cruise liner’. ‘No my ship’s HMS Edinburgh, a Type 42 Destroyer number D97,’ and he then poured out all his hopes, disappointments, cares and worries to this very attentive and interested listener. Lizzie showed no sign of boredom at the monologue of technical details gushing forth from the worldly immature naval officer. Little by little, Lizzie coaxed out of Mike all his frustrations and his deep-rooted wish to get even with all the crew of Edinburgh – particularly his fellow officers. In mid flow of yet another detailed explanation of the ship’s sonar capabilities, Mike glanced at his watch – 3.15. ‘Jesus! Is that the time? I must be going,’ and he lowered himself unsteadily from his barstool. ‘C’mon Mike we’ll both see each other safely home,’ and Lizzie wrapped her arm around Mike and they both left the club and fell into a taxi. Lizzie gave directions to the driver and some seven minutes later the taxi crossed what was once Trafalgar Square - and still known as such by all the locals - but had been renamed National Heroes Square - and stopped outside a small townhouse in Hinks Street, just north of the Careenage. Mike was too inebriated and enraptured with his new friend to even notice that he had not returned to his ship and so allowed himself to be led into the house and up to the bedroom 11

where he passed out on the bed. Saira Mohar Khan – aka Elizabeth Graham, or just Lizzie – had spent a short lifetime in her trade of getting information out of people – particularly men. Hassan Hussein paid her handsomely for both the information, which she supplied and the clients she found for his world-wide distribution of both arms and drugs. Now that the CIA had closed down International Machine Tools Inc, the huge Texas-based arms distributor, and Hassan’s main competitor in the Caribbean, he alone retained a highly lucrative monopoly of all countries in and on the fringe of the Caribbean. Having undressed the inert naval officer, Lizzie removed her skimpy dress, bra and thong and set to work to raise some reaction from the alcoholanaesthetised genitals. In this particular art, Lizzie was an expert and after persevering for some 20 minutes, her efforts were rewarded with the first signs of a healthy erection. This she encouraged with her hand and mouth until the groans of an impending ejaculation prompted her to lower herself down onto the erect penis, which resulted in an immediate ejaculation. It was very obvious to Lizzie that this was the first time that Mike had ever had sex with a woman so she knew that if she hoped to indulge her own libido, guidance for her inexperienced bed-mate would be required. Her increasing arousement had swollen her nipples and her groin was damp with vaginal fluid, so under her careful guidance and tuition she showed Mike how to masturbate her clitoris to an orgasm which she achieved with slightly exaggerated cries of ecstasy. The two lay in each other’s arms until the steady breathing of the comatose officer made Lizzie turn over and with a smile on her lips, she went to sleep. The gossip about Lt Commander Mike Spears staying out all night spread rapidly through the wardroom and mess decks on board HMS Edinburgh. At the age of 37, Mike Spears had discovered sex and its effect on him caused a transformation. CPO Burns and the team in the Command Centre believed that it was they who had finally turned Spears into a human being. His fellow officers found a completely changed person in their midst – one who was relaxed, jovial, even witty, one of his peers had remarked. Mike Spears was in love. He thought that Lizzie Graham was wonderful and every opportunity he had to go ashore was spent with her – dining, dancing and being shown the sights of Barbados. Throughout this magic time for Mike, he talked, with hardly a pause for breath, about his life, his family – for the first time ever - his ship, his hopes and his fears. It completely passed him by that she rarely, if ever, spoke of her background and after this magic – for Mike Spears – fortnight in May of that year when HMS Edinburgh was regularly either alongside or at anchor off Bridgetown, Lizzie decided it was time to capitalise on her relationship and earn the generous retainer which Alhaji Hassan Hussein paid into her bank account every month. And so the ‘phone call to Karim Qasim, Hassan’s chief executive, had been made.

CHAPTER 2

‘Yes Qasim, what is it you want?’ the voice was electronically synthasised 12

because Hassan Hussein’s vocal chords had been destroyed. ‘A few minutes of your time, sir, with some news and an idea which I believe might appeal to you,’ was the response from Mohammed Karim Qasim from the next door room. Hassan allowed no one to see him and all communication was conducted electronically from his private quarters to the office of his chief executive, Qasim. That office was at the far end of the central of three huge hangars built side by side on the extreme perimeter of Cabinda Airport. The hangars stored every conceivable weapon and munition to feed the insatiable need of Africa to self-destruct. Abutting that central hangar were Hassan’s luxurious private quarters – but no indication of this luxury was visible from the outside in a building which looked no different from the hangar to which it was attached. An excess show of luxury would only invite unwanted attention from the Angolan soldiers who had systematically beaten, raped, burnt and destroyed the population of the tiny 5,000 square mile, former Portugese territory, in an orgy of genocide, while American oil companies gorged themselves on the huge offshore oil reserves. The developed nations of the northern hemisphere were suffering from aid fatigue and no one wanted to listen any more to pleas from Cabinda’s President N’Zita Henriques Tiago to leave his country alone to enjoy the fruits of its own resources. It was for exactly that reason that Hassan had chosen a forgotten ex-colonial territory from which to export his merchandise of death. His business was tolerated by the Angolan Government because he supplied it with all of its military requisites. ‘Now is convenient, Qasim. What is this information and idea of yours?’ and Hassan flicked a switch on the console by his desk and one of four large plasma screens came to life which showed his chief executive seated at his desk. ‘It has always been my understanding, sir,’ came the response from Qasim, ‘that given the opportunity, you would be interested in an operation, which might provide you with the opportunity for revenge on that monster who butchered so many of our people in Dawaz and Halabja in 1988 and which might have the added attraction of causing extreme embarrassment to the British Government. I have some information from our agent in the Caribbean, which, I believe, offers just such an opportunity.’ ‘Tell me more,’ and the masked figure bent forward in anticipation. ‘I think that there is an opportunity to cause the British Government even more embarrassment than either of the two incidents in 2004 and 2007 when the Iranians held those very silly and inexperienced naval personnel hostage,’ Qasim suggested. ‘You have my interest, Qasim,’ Hassan encouraged. What is it you’ve heard from Saira in Barbados?’ ‘Saira has……..er…made good friends with a Royal Navy officer from the crew of HMS Edinburgh….’ ‘You mean she’s sleeping with him,’ Hassan interrupted. ‘Indeed, sir; apparently he is remarkably naïve and immature on the one hand, but technically highly proficient and holds the key appointment of warfare officer aboard the ship. Saira has told me that he is a very embittered officer who has been passed over for promotion and is looking for some way to get his revenge by disgracing the Service which he considers has ignored the talents he has to offer.’ Qasim tentatively started to explain Saira’s and his proposal because Hassan’s volatile mood swings and uncontrollable rage were highly 13

unpredictable and caused abject terror for those who worked for him. The fate of Hassan’s security officer, Idrissu, at his base in the Lakshadweep Islands off the west coast of India had been a public beheading for allowing a BID hostage to escape in 2002. Hassan had personally wielded the ceremonial scimitar used for the execution. * It had been six years previously, on 3 rd August 2002, that the twin-engine Widgeon had landed at Colombo’s Katunayake Airport in Sri Lanka where its pilot and a Moslem woman in a full length burkha with two men alighted without any luggage. They made their way to the international departures building where they purchased four, first class tickets for the Air France flight to Brussels. It would be three days before any action was taken to identify the owner of the 1943-era G-44 McKinnon Super Widgeon Amphibian parked at the airport perimeter. From Brussels the two men caught the Lufthansa flight to Miami from where they connected to an American Airlines flight to Barbados. From Barbados, they caught a CaribAir flight to St Vincent and from there a small amphibian flew them to Bird Island, 150 miles to the west of the Windward Islands. The pilot and burkha-clad woman caught the Air France flight to Antonio Pointe-Noire’s Agostino Neto Airport in the Congo where they walked from the arrivals hall across to a hangar and boarded a German/Japanese MBB-Kawasaki helicopter. An hour-and-a-half later the helicopter landed at Cabinda Airport in Angola’s minute enclave territory on the southern border of the Congo where they were met by a chauffeur driven, opaque-windowed Hummer. The pilot joined the driver in the front and the burkha-clad passenger climbed into the back. Once the door had been closed by the chauffeur, the burkha came off revealing a figure with only a mask for a face. Alhaji Hassan Hussein, the richest arms dealer in the World, had reached his operating base for arms provision in Africa having escaped from his base in the Arabian Sea seconds before it was destroyed by cruise missiles from the nuclear attack submarine USS Los Angeles. From Cabinda, he provided every type of weapon and munition to fuel the neverending racial and tribal slaughter blighting the continent from the Horn of Africa to Senegal and Morocco to the Cape, and every type of drug to perpetuate the misery and degradation that addiction caused. The mask covered what was left of Hassan’s face after the 1988 poison gas attack on his village of Dawaz in the district of Halabja, the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq. The village had been celebrating his gift of tractors and farming equipment when the Iraqi fighter-ground-attack aircraft had sprayed the entire region with a cocktail of Lewisite, Sarin, VX, Tabun, hydrogen-cyanide and mustard gas. Hassan had been the only survivor of that attack and had been rescued, more dead than alive and burnt beyond recognition, by a patrol from NORCON, the Norwegian Contingent assigned to the UN peacekeeping force monitoring the ceasefire between Iran and Iraq. A succession of operations and skin grafts had been a catastrophic failure leaving Hassan little more than an electronic synthesised zombie. The extermination of nearly 200,000 Kurds in this region – the period of Anfal - the spoils of war - was the climax of Saddam Hussein’s campaign to remove all 14

Kurdish residents from Iraqi soil. The instrument of this campaign was General Ali Hassan al-Majid al-Tikriti, a first cousin of Saddam Hussein, better known as the ‘Butcher of Kurdistan’ by the Iraqi Kurds and by the soubriquet of ‘Chemical Ali’ by the UN inspection teams searching for the weapons of mass destruction in 2002. Ali Hassan was sentenced to death in July 2007, much to the jubilation of the surviving Kurds, but the real ‘butcher’ was his nephew, Colonel Abdul Hassan al-Majid al-Tikriti who had escaped the US snatch squads after the 2003 Gulf War because he had been rounded up in the CIA’s mass arrests of suspects after the destruction of the World Trade Centre’s twin towers on 11 September 2001. He had been arrested under the false identity of Hassan Abdullah al-Jawari and incarcerated in Camp X-Ray in Guatanamo Bay controlled by the US Southern Command’s Joint Task Force 160. From his arrest in September 2001 until April 2002, Hassan Abdullah had resisted all forms of interrogation; in fact he had not uttered a word since his arrest. On 29 April 2002, Camp X-Ray was closed and all the prisoners were transferred to the newly constructed Camp Delta. The man who was the focus of Hassan Hussein’s sworn revenge for his disfigurement and the death of the villagers in his birthplace and on whom he intended to inflict the most appalling prolonged agony before death, was still beyond his reach. * ‘So what has Saira suggested, Qasim?’ ‘In Cuba, sir, we have a retired Admiral Pedro Perez Betancourt – ex-Chief of Naval Troops – on your payroll, acting as your link to the Cuban military and still a close confidant of Fidel Castro…….’ ‘He’s a sick old man now,’ Hassan commented. ‘True, sir, but it seems likely that his brother will inherit the Presidency,‘ Qasim countered. ‘The Cuban Navy consists of a handful of very ageing Soviet Koni Class Frigates, Foxtrot Class submarines, a Corvette and some 20 or so fast patrol boats. Just imagine what a coup it would be if HMS Edinburgh happened to stray into Cuba’s international waters and the ship and all its crew were held hostage. Release of the hostages might be dependent on the close down of Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay and a proper trial held for prisoners in America; this would mean either a trial or release of Abdul Hassan, currently incarcerated in that Camp under the alias of Hassan Abdullah al Jawari. Either way this would provide us with the opportunity to capture him and make him pay for the butchery of our people.’ ‘Of course, there would be no necessity to return the ship because taking a warship into another country’s waters without permission is an act of war, whatever the error might have been for it straying there. Although HMS Edinburgh is over 20 years old, the ship has some of the latest command and control electronics, according to this naval officer in Barbados, which would be a handsome trophy for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba,’ Qasim finished and held his breath – explosion of rage and ridicule or approval? Hassan’s voice synthesiser produced a ghastly gurgling noise, which was its attempt at mimicking a human laugh. ‘It’s brilliant, Qasim, absolutely brilliant. It will pitch the Americans and the British against each other and could well give us the window of opportunity to 15

snatch Abdul Hassan, but how do you intend to get the ship to stray into Cuban waters?’ Hassan asked. ‘Well, sir, this plan which Saira and I have discussed is very much in its embryo state……’ ‘Yes, yes, Qasim, of course it is. Now stop wasting time and tell me what it is you’ve planned so far.’ ‘You have that property at 21, Sandy Lane in Barbados and that island which you bought off the Venezuelans for your arms and drug distribution base in the Caribbean. Saira….and I believe that we can use the submersible ship, which is docked at that base, to lure HMS Edinburgh away from its patrols with the DEA and US Coastguard by staging a number of yacht disappearances…..British or US owned or chartered yachts of course, in the area of the Cayman Islands. Grand Cayman, Little Cayman and Cayman Brac are only about 150 miles from the southern coastline of Cuba and with the help of a key person on board HMS Edinburgh, we believe that it would be possible to cause the ship to stray into Cuban territorial waters. Once that has occurred, then Admiral Betancourt can mastermind the reception of HMS Edinburgh and its crew.’ Qasim paused and took a drink of water. ‘It’s only…..’ ‘As I said before, it’s brilliant Qasim. Well done. I will speak to Saira and then you and I will join her in Barbados and from there we’ll go to Jazera t’Tair. This project gives me the ideal opportunity to fulfil my oath to avenge our people and to repay the British intelligence services for the losses I incurred at their hands. Qasim, it’s time to awaken our sleepers in the UK. I want them to find those two SIS agents…….the man was called Gunn and the woman………’ ‘de Carteret,’ Qasim offered. ‘Carteret, that’s right. Knowing the security of the SIS – or lack of it - I expect their names will be in the telephone directories. Do we have anyone at Vauxhall Cross or Thames House?’ ‘We do, sir……..at both.’ ‘I thought so. It’s time they both earned those generous retainers they receive in their offshore accounts. Start on that right away, Qasim, and let me know the travel arrangements to Barbados when you brief me on our monthly sales figures and stock state,’ and Hassan switched off the CCTV link. ‘Yes sir,’ but Qasim was talking to a blank screen. * After the yacht flotilla separated, Alan Friedberg led his reduced flotilla of five boats to Cayo Grande, the island bearing the same name as the boat he was skippering. This island was right on the seaward limit of Los Jardines de la Reina, but had a superb lagoon which provided the perfect shelter for an anchorage from the open sea and the south-easterly wind. This they used as their base for four days as the yachts explored the other cayos, but in order to make sure that they met up with the other boats on time the last night was spent at Cayo Caballones which was closer to the RV. When the five yachts arrived at the cayo, there were two other motorboats already anchored there and Alan was in half a mind to change their plans and find another cayo when he was called on the radio on Channel 15 and requested to switch to Channel 54. The call came from one of the motorboats and was an 16

invitation to all five yachts to join them for a beach barbecue – all food and drink provided. It would have been churlish to refuse this generous offer so all five boats anchored on the north-west side of the cayo. The crews then either swam ashore or launched the small RIBs stowed in davits at the stern of the catamaran and paddled ashore. The spread that had been prepared on the beach was generous indeed and Alan commented on this to their hosts who explained that two other motorboats had been expected, but had cancelled at the last minute and gone elsewhere. They said that had been a great pity because all the women were on the other two boats. That information had pre-empted Alan from commenting that there appeared to be no women on their boats. He had advised all his crews to get an early night as they needed to be up early for the sail to the RV. After an hour at the barbecue, Alan felt really tired and slightly light-headed, so he gathered Todd and Maureen Burton of his crew who had also decided to return to the yacht. They took Lance Maiberg with them who then returned with the RIB to the beach, saying that he would be joining them shortly. All of them had chosen to sleep on deck and it seemed only seconds before Alan was drifting off, still wondering whether he was sickening for something or had had a little too much rum punch at the barbecue. He awoke to find that he was drenched in sweat in spite of the cool breeze. He still felt light-headed and disoriented and could not for the life of him remember what had gone on at the party and why he had woken……..or was this all a dream? And then he heard the unearthly noise again that had woken him. It sounded as though an enormous kettle drum was being beaten and the sound seemed to come from under the water. Rising slowly out of the sea was an enormous monster. But it wasn’t a monster…. it was a ship and instead of sinking it was coming to the surface of the sea….. getting larger and larger…….but at that point the full effect of the flunitrazepam drug which had laced all the drinks that evening took hold and he passed out. * There wasn’t a sign of a boat anywhere. The RV had been set for 1700 hours so that all eight boats could join up, have a final supper together and then head south early the next morning to Grand Cayman. When the appointed time came and passed without any sign of the other five boats, anxiety amongst the crews of the three boats caused irrational and petty arguments to develop. The first argument developed over the RV location and yet it was abundantly obvious both from the reading on the GPS and the lighthouse which had ‘Cachiboca’ printed on it – albeit in slightly faded paint that they were at the correct RV. Darkness fell rapidly at that Latitude and by 1845 hours it was full night. The enjoyment and conviviality of the last eleven days evaporated to be replaced by anxiety and gloom. Every effort to communicate with the other yachts had met with a deafening silence. This was particularly worrying as there had been no communication problems prior to the two groups splitting up. By 2200 hours there was still no sign of the other yachts. ‘This is ridiculous!’ Ron stated to anyone who was listening. ‘They’re now five hours overdue. They have an experienced skipper who would know how anxious we would be, and vice versa, if any yachts were missing from the RV. 17

Something has gone badly wrong and we have just wasted five hours before doing something about it. I’m switching to Channel 15 and will send a Pan Pan call to ask for help. Objections or any better ideas?’ There were none, so Ron sent the Pan Pan call to seek assistance. The emergency call was answered by several ships, none of which was keen to come into Cuban territorial waters, unless there was immediate risk to life. Eventually, just before midnight, Ron’s Pan call was picked up by the ‘CRAF Santa Domingo’ – an ex-Russian Turya class fast attack patrol craft of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces which reached the group of three yachts at 1.15 in the morning. Fortunately two of the crew on the American yacht spoke fluent Spanish and so the problem was explained and understood. But there was no news, no sign of and no communication from the five boats by mid-day so the three of them set sail for Grand Cayman, which they reached two days later. During the sad return trip to the yacht club on Seven Mile Beach in Grand Cayman, Ron passed a full report to the yacht charter company. From there the report went to the Cayman Government Offices and from there to the British Embassy in Havana and the British High Commissions in Jamaica and Barbados. * ‘Lizzie, it’s Mike. I’m returning your call. We’re remaining alongside for a further week while repairs are completed to our navigation electronics. I’ll be free shortly after seven this evening so I’ll come round to the house between 7.30 and 8, ‘bye,’ and Mike Spears closed the call having left his message on the answer-phone in Lizzie Graham’s house. By now it was wardroom gossip that Mike had found himself a regular girlfriend which had caused not a little envy amongst those who had been so ready to label him gay or, at least, odd. It was closer to eight when Mike let himself into 18 Hinks Street to be greeted by Lizzie’s voice from the back terrace, which overlooked the old harbour and careenage. ‘Come through, Mike. There’s some cold Pimms and I thought we’d have supper out here,’ Lizzie called to him. Mike went out to the terrace and the two embraced. They chatted about what each had done that day and then Mike told her that Edinburgh was being sent to patrol the waters to the south of Cuba where there had been reports of both British and American yachts disappearing. Mike explained to Lizzie that that was one of the reasons that Edinburgh’s Kelvin Hughes navigation system was having a thorough overhaul as the ship would be operating in very close proximity of the Cuban 12 mile territorial limit. Lizzie’s ears ‘pricked up’ to discover that the plan was working, but she made a point of feigning only polite interest and only later in the evening did she ask Mike if he had been serious about exacting revenge on a system that had clearly ignored his talents and ability. ‘Damn right Lizzie, but I can’t for the life of me think of something that would really embarrass their Lordships of the Admiralty,’ Mike admitted in frustration. ‘I think I can, but it was you who gave me the idea Mike,’ Lizzie offered quietly, suggesting that it was Mike’s ingenuity and original thought behind the idea. ‘What was that?’ Mike Spears’ mind was drifting towards thoughts of another night of lovemaking with Lizzie. She was well aware of this and had to try and 18

keep him focused on what she and Qasim had been planning before she rewarded him with her bed. ‘Would it not be a dreadfully embarrassing international crisis for both the Royal Navy and the United Kingdom if one of its warships was found to have strayed into another country’s territorial waters without permission – especially a country like Cuba,’ she suggested topping up Mike’s glass. ‘Jeeezus…..what a wonderful thought! I can just see the shit hit the fan in the Admiralty and boy would that shit stick to their high and mighty Lordships……... especially after that farcical performance by HMS Cornwall with Iran last year, but not a chance, Lizzie. That’s one of the reasons all the nav’ gear is being checked so thoroughly to make sure that there is no possibility of such an error.’ ‘Oh well, it was just a thought, but if you think it’s impossible no point in dwelling any further on it. Then again, I would have thought that a person with your technical ability could have conjured up a way to make the equipment fail or give incorrect readings or whatever.’ Lizzie was following the line of suggestive encouragement that she and Qasim had rehearsed during some long telephone conversations between Barbados and Cabinda. Mike finished his drink and poured himself another. A thought was germinating in his slightly alcohol and testosterone fogged brain…..’mmmmm,’ he murmured, ‘you would need access to some very sophisticated circuitry, and then a way of placing it in exactly the right spot where it would alter the digital readout….. and then some way of switching it on and off….and, of course, removing it after the event to prevent discovery.’ Slowly, thought by thought, Mike Spears was providing confirmation for Lizzie that the piece of minute circuitry – no larger than a box of matches, which had been flown by courier from Cabinda to Barbados, might just work. Anxious not to overplay her hand, Lizzie led Mike to her bed where any of his thoughts on sabotaging HMS Edinburgh’s navigation equipment were overwhelmed by her expert lovemaking * Before the departure of HMS Edinburgh, there had been a number of phone calls between Cabinda and Barbados to ensure that Mike Spears was properly briefed for his role in the planned hijacking of a British warship. ‘Listen carefully to these instructions, Saira and then pass them on to Carlos and Ernesto, our two motorboat captains. I will brief Admiral Betancourt separately so that he can arrange the reception party for the British warship.’ ‘Very well, Qasim. I’m ready,’ and Saira Khan – aka Lizzie Graham – had her pencil poised to ensure that she noted all details correctly. Failure or inaccuracy in anything to do with Hassan’s affairs was not an option. ‘When HMS Edinburgh reaches its closest point to the last known position of the missing yachts, Lt Comdr Spears is to transmit the message you gave him together with the hand-held yacht radio and the electronic deceptor. If the plan is a ‘go’, then he will send message ‘A’, but if a ‘no go’ then message ‘B’. It is vital that Carlos and Ernesto receive these messages in adequate time as they have to alert the men who are waiting on those four cayos to switch off the lights.’ There was considerably more detail in the instructions from Qasim, which Saira dutifully copied and then passed on to Carlos and Ernesto.

19

* While the working party from Kelvin Hughes - flown out from the UK - still had the panels off the GPS navigation equipment, it was simplicity itself for Mike Spears to insert the minute circuitry unnoticed by anyone. By the Friday everything was complete, all tests and adjustments had been carried out successfully and Saturday was the last opportunity for the ship’s compliment to have a run ashore. Mike Spears had to endure some harmless teasing that he was becoming a staid old married man as he returned to Lizzie’s house for a last evening and final rehearsal of his role in the hijack. He was well aware that he could suffer some discomfort as a hostage of the Cuban Government, but knew that any alternative that excluded him from being taken hostage was unthinkable. HMS Edinburgh sailed from Bridgetown for the Western Caribbean on the Sunday night with a sexually satiated Warfare Officer and an additional piece of electronic wizardry not identified on the loading manifest and cruising at 20 knots reached the waters south of Cuba four days later. It was just after 2200 hours on the Thursday night – the middle of the First Watch; Mike Spears was in the Command and Control Centre with his usual team. The atmosphere in the Centre and on the bridge was tense and the officer of the watch was well aware of the presence of his Captain sitting in the ‘high’ chair on the starboard side of the bridge. The Destroyer was making 15 knots and the fix was being plotted every two minutes. HMS Edinburgh was heading for Cayo Grande – or as close as permitted by the 12 mile limit – as the starting point of what the Captain, John Ecclestone, considered to be a pretty pointless exercise in locating the lost yachts or to restore confidence amongst the yachting community and charter companies. Although fully aware of the sensitivity of the waters in which his ship was conducting this ‘pointless search’, John Ecclestone’s mind was drifting back to Barbados and the High Commissioner’s reception at his Residence at ‘Benmar’ a week previously. At that reception he had met Rosemary Parsons, the First Secretary Management at the High Commission; she was a divorcee and he had ended the evening in her bed. This liaison had provided a very pleasant distraction while his ship was alongside. It was a perfectly clear night and some twenty miles ahead of Edinburgh was the 12 mile limit. Long before then, the Duty Watch and he would see the lights on Cayo Cachiboca and Breton which the chart showed were visible for 20 miles. The readout of the Kelvin Hughes GPS was at the back of the bridge and he was aware of Petty Officer Baxter repeating the readings as Lt Emerson plotted them on the chart. The Watch Officer was his Executive Officer, Commander Hamish McDonald, who had just joined Edinburgh on promotion and after a flying tour on HMS Invincible. The GPS plot was repeated in the Command and Control Centre. Mike Spears slipped out of the Centre on the excuse of a comfort call and made the transmission on his radio. The message was a ‘go’, he then returned to the Centre and pressed the switch on the remote in his pocket to activate the electronic GPS deceptor. On Cayo Cachiboca, Carlos received the message as did Ernesto on Cayo Breton. They in turn passed the message to their men waiting beside two other lights. All four lights were switched off. The message was also picked up by Cuba’s two Koni class Frigates, 340 and 343 anchored just 20

to the north and south of the cayos on either side of Cayo Grande from where all HMS Edinburgh’s electronic transmissions had been monitored. There was now just one hour to go of the First Watch which would finish at midnight when the Middle Watch would take over the bridge and the Command and Control Centre. On both Cuban frigates the order was given to weigh anchor. John Ecclestone turned to his Executive Officer and asked for the distance to the 12 mile limit. He was told that it was 11 miles. ‘That’s odd, Hamish. I would have expected to see some of the lights on those small islands by now,’ the Captain said with just the first feelings of unease. ‘Indeed sir, let me check the plot,’ was the immediate response from the officer in charge of the watch after he had done a sweep with his binoculars from port to starboard and back again. ‘Reduce speed to revolutions for ten knots,’ came from the Captain and the order was repeated. ‘Plot shows that we are five miles south-west of the 12 mile limit, sir,’ came from the Watch Officer, but his response was lost as a shouted warning came from the port lookout. ‘Ship on our port bow, sir!’ and followed instantly by the starboard lookout. ‘Ship on our starboard bow, sir!’ And then came the transmission from the loudspeaker on Channel 15, which over-rode all other transmissions, ‘British warship, British warship this is Captain Garcia of Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces Frigate 343. You are four miles inside the internationally recognised territorial limit of the Republic of Cuba. Stop your engines. I repeat stop your engines and prepare to accept a boarding party.’ ‘Stop engines!’ the Captain ordered and then, ‘signal to MOD, flash precedence. Stopped by Cuban frigate. Accused of being inside Cuban territorial limit. Full details follow.’ ‘Radio officer, sir,’ came from the loudspeaker. ‘All our transmissions are being jammed.’ The GPS plot was checked and chillingly showed that HMS Edinburgh was indeed inside Cuba’s 12 mile limit at Latitude 20° 50’ North, Longitude 79°05’ West. ‘Where are the lights?’.……..the Captain started to ask, but all of the watch could now see the lights on the cayos shining brightly exactly where they should be. In the confusion that followed over the next few minutes, the removal of the deceptor from the Kelvin Hughes navigation equipment went unnoticed.

CHAPTER 3

‘Come in,’ muttered the High Commissioner in response to the light tap on his office door. He was busy collecting his diary and papers in preparation for his Wednesday, 8 am weekly conference. The door opened and Captain Stephen Watson, his Defence Adviser, came in. There are eighteen islands and territories in the Caribbean that are members of the Commonwealth, but only two of them possess a Defence Adviser – Jamaica and Barbados. In Jamaica the DA was 21

Colonel Charles Brown, but since Barbados was the provisioning port for the UK Caribbean Guard Ship, a Type 42 Destroyer, the DA’s appointment was always provided by the Royal Navy. For very ‘British’ reasons, in Commonwealth countries the senior military appointment in a High Commission was an ‘Adviser’ whereas in every other country where there was a UK Embassy and an Ambassador together with a perceived need for a military presence, the senior military appointment was an ‘Attaché’. ‘Hello Stephen, is it a quick one as I was just on my way to my conference,’ John Wright had paused in the process of gathering his papers and took a quick sip of his coffee. ‘Yes, a very quick one at this stage, High Commissioner; we appear to have lost all forms of communication with HMS Edinburgh, his DA replied. ‘I thought I should let you know before the conference starts in case……..’ ‘Yes, great, thanks Stephen,‘ the High Commissioner interjected. ‘Edinburgh was investigating those missing yachts in the waters north of the Cayman Islands, wasn’t she?’ ‘Yes, probably a technical problem and soon sorted no doubt, but I’ll leave it to you decide if anyone else needs to know about it at this stage.’ ‘Thank you, Stephen. I’ll think about it for the moment and we’ll speak again after my conference. Come on, I don’t want to keep everyone waiting,’ but as he reached the door of his office the High Commissioner paused and turned to the DA, ‘Edinburgh’s weapons……..?’ ‘No….. no nuclear weapons,’ the DA pre-empted the query. ‘Thank you, Stephen,’ and the High Commissioner and his DA hurried along the corridor to the ‘secure’ conference room on the consular floor of the High Commission on Lower Collymore Rock in Bridgetown. The principal task of the Caribbean Guard Ship was to work in close consort with the US Drug Enforcement Agency and the US Coastguard. In this task the ageing, but still relatively fast and highly manoeuvrable Type 42 Destroyers had been very successful in seizing hundreds of millions of pounds worth of drugs. The Type 42 was powered by a combination of Rolls Royce Olympus and Tyne turbines which produced fast acceleration, an impressive range and the ability to make very sharp turns at high speed. Apart from waving the White Ensign around the former colonial islands of the West Indies, the Guard Ship had also been a notable success in immediate relief aid to those islands, which had suffered so desperately from the onslaught of the seasonal hurricanes. The torrential rain of those seasonal hurricanes had also flooded the city of New Orleans when the levies holding back the rising waters of the Mississippi finally burst. HMS Edinburgh was one of the last of the Type 42s built in the third batch of that class. There had been a project to replace them with a completely new design of ship, but like many other equipment projects of all three Services, this had fallen a victim to one of the many Government defence cuts. The Royal Navy was now designing its own vessels, intending to replace the ageing Type 42s with a radical design Type 45. * The British High Commission in Bridgetown, Barbados was one of the very few Diplomatic Missions, which still retained an operative of the British 22

Intelligence Directorate – the replacement for MI5 and MI6 - within the building. In all other countries where BID required the permanent presence of an agent, the person had no connection with the High Commission or Embassy and his or her identity was only known to the Head of Mission and Defence Adviser or Attaché. The fiasco of the ‘Cambridge Five’ spy ring during the ‘Cold War’ and exposés by former agents Richard Tomlinson, David Shayler and Peter Wright had done little to convince either the Government or the British public of the effectiveness of the two intelligence services. Not even the Herculean and highly improbable exploits of Ian Fleming’s James Bond, John Le Carré’s unflappable ‘Smiley’ or Len Deighton’s chilling espionage characters could save the British Intelligence Services from the scrutiny of the Prime Minister. She had given the task of a complete reorganisation of the UK’s Intelligence Services to a relatively young and talented army officer who had retired as a Major General at the age of 48. After retirement he, in quick succession, had sorted out two companies and turned them from near bankruptcy to healthy, profit-making concerns. The reorganisation of the UK’s Intelligence Services had been the brainchild of Margaret Thatcher and in 1988 she authorised the construction of a purposedesigned building for the collocation of the two intelligence services. Within a year of being given the remit to set up an effective, efficient and totally secure intelligence service, the Directorate was in operation. Both the espionage and counter espionage branches were under the same roof and their efforts were complimentary as opposed to being contradictory. Hardly more than a handful of MI5 and MI6 personnel survived the security vetting initiated by the new Director. The two MIs had been left in their original buildings at Millbank and Vauxhall as an overt intelligence front, but to perform little more than a clerical function for fairly low grade classified material. Kingsroad House was purpose-built for BID in Cale Street to the north of the King’s Road and indicated that it was the head office of Express Delivery Services (EDS). Access to EDS was by the very obvious main entrance in Cale Street while access to BID was either via the main entrance or via the 10th floor of the adjacent multi-storey NCP car park. The ground floor and next five floors were occupied by the Express Delivery Service plc. It was one of many enterprises that had flourished as soon as the Post Office had lost its monopoly. EDS was part of the Directorate and with its transport fleet, which included twinjet aircraft, helicopters, motorbikes, vans and lorries all of which were in radio contact with each other, provided the ideal cover, communication and transport for the movement of men and materiel. There were two other headquarter buildings; one in Kingston-on-Thames and another in Southampton which belonged to the Directorate and which were built on the same lines as Kingsroad House, but possessed subtle variations in case any of the lines of defence were penetrated. Kingsroad House had 14 above ground floors with a helipad on the 15 th floor. There were 3 basement levels, which contained BID’s emergency medical centre – the main medical facility was at Maidenhead – an extensive transport department, stores, small armoury and a shooting range. The lowest basement level also provided access to four exit tunnels that could be used by BID staff to leave the building and avoid any chance of being followed. The 11th floor was occupied by the Assistant Directors (Espionage and 23

Overseas Operations) who were responsible for all the World’s main geographical areas – other than the United Kingdom, together with the Controllers and spare offices, if needed by agents allocated to them. Right at the top of the building was a helicopter LP and mini heliport, below that on the 14 th floor was the Communications and Ciphers Department and BID Operations Centre which was staffed 24/7, no 13th floor and the Director and Deputy Director on the 12 th floor together with conference and briefing rooms. The 10th floor, in addition to having an entrance from the multi-storey car park, was also devoted to administration, legal and finance departments. The Counter Espionage and Domestic Operations departments of BID, which had replaced MI5, occupied the 6th floor through to the 9th floor. The ground floor through to the 5th floor was all EDS which possessed its own lift shafts, but the building was unique in its design as it is not only divided horizontally between BID and EDS but also vertically. On the north side of the building, the EDS offices went right up to floor 14 in a corridor and one office width. * The High Commissioner’s weekly conference ensured that all departments in the Mission knew what everyone else was doing and gave the head of each department the opportunity to report on the key matters which were occupying him/her and his/her staff. It followed the same format each week with the High Commissioner introducing the meeting and then covering what he believed were the key matters. He was followed by the Deputy Head of Mission on Chancery matters, the DA on defence, Commercial Counsellor on commerce and so on round the table to Consular and Management Departments. The former invariably involved those British tourists or ex-patriates who had lost passports or were in difficulties. Jason Chance was BID’s ‘man in the High Commission’. Jason was a black West Indian whose family had emigrated from the West Indies to the UK after the Second World War. His appointment in the High Commission was Head of the Commercial Department as a Counsellor. He had achieved an honours degree from Durham University and a Master’s in Business Administration from the Harvard Business School. His commercial experience had covered everything from supermarket chains through the automotive industry to the defence procurement sector, from where he was head hunted by Sir Jeremy Hammond, the Director of BID. The conference lasted for just over forty minutes and at its conclusion, John Wright asked the DA and Jason Chance to come to his office. The High Commissioner waved the two men to the comfortable chairs around a low coffee table in his office and after leaving his papers on the desk joined them. ‘Stephen, please bring Jason up to speed on HMS Edinburgh,’ the High Commissioner began as he took his seat. On his way from the conference room to the High Commissioner’s office, the DA had stuck his head into the Defence Section offices, but his Chief Petty Officer Writer pre-empted his query with a shake of his head. ‘Jason,’ the DA began, ‘you will know that we have a regular communication schedule with the Guard Ship at 0730 hours and 1230 hours every day.’ Jason Chance nodded. ‘Edinburgh was tasked to the area to the north of Grand 24

Cayman where five yachts, for certain, have vanished without trace and possibly more than five which have not been reported to us.’ ‘Were those five British yachts?’ Jason asked. ‘No, a mixture of British and US crewed charter yachts, which had been sailing in a flotilla of eight boats. Somehow they became separated and it was the crews of the three boats which raised the alarm when the other five yachts failed to reach an arranged RV prior to all eight yachts sailing back to Grand Cayman.’ ‘Right, thanks….sorry, go on.’ ‘No that’s fine….so, Edinburgh had just finished a task with the DEA and the MOD agreed to her deployment into that area to see if there was anything untoward and, if nothing else, to show that we took the reports seriously and were doing something positive about it. That was five days ago. The communication schedules were spot on until the 1230 hours schedule yesterday. Nothing; we tried HF, VHF and even Morse….but nothing and the same again this morning. I informed the High Commissioner just before the conference and you now know as much as we do.’ ‘Would there be any mileage in asking for the help of the US Coastguard to overfly the area?’ Jason asked glancing between the DA and the High Commissioner. ‘I’m sure there would be,’ said John Wright, ‘but by doing so we inform the USA that the UK has lost a warship in the Caribbean where, as far as we know, there is no prevalent hostile situation. I have no problem with that… what about you Stephen?’ ‘The sooner the better,’ the DA replied. ‘Jason?’ John Wright turned to his Commercial Counsellor. ‘Likewise, High Commissioner,’ Jason agreed. ‘Right, Stephen, you inform the MOD and suggest a USC over-flight. Jason, you let Kingsroad House know what’s happened and I’ll send a telegram to the FCO.’ The meeting broke up and the DA returned to his office. Jason told his PA that he would be away for about an hour and left the High Commission. He drove to his house in Brighton, five miles to the northwest of Bridgetown, and went to his study where he opened his safe and removed a telephone, which was an exact replica of the phone already on his desk. He plugged in the phone and dialled the number of his namesake, Jason Wolstenolme, the Assistant Director for the Caribbean at BID’s Kingsroad House. * ‘Good morning Miles,’ I’ve got a call from Jason Wolstenholme. Shall I…….’ ‘Thanks Angela; yes please, put it through to my office,’ Miles Thompson preempted his PA’s question as he walked through to his office and picked up the phone. Miles Thompson was the Deputy Director of BID and Head of its Espionage and Overseas Operations Department. The other Deputy Director, Paul Manton, was Head of the Counter Espionage and Domestic Operations Department. ‘Yes Jason, Miles here, I got caught in that downpour on my way from the station. Who would have thought this was ‘flaming June’ – but of course, Wimbledon starts soon so rain is inevitable. Right, what can I do for you?’ 25

‘I just missed that cloudburst, thankfully, as I had no umbrella. I’ve had a call from my namesake, Jason Chance, in Barbados. I’d like to come up and take five minutes of your time if I may.’ ‘Of course – now be suitable?’ Miles glanced at the piled in-tray on his desk, but he had never delayed a request by his Assistant Directors for his time, advice or a decision.’ ‘Be with you in two minutes,’ and Jason put down the phone, picked up a slim file and chose the stairs rather than the lift to go up to the 12 th floor of Kingsroad House which BID shared with its own company, Express Delivery Services. All the Assistant Directors (Espionage and Overseas Operations) were on the 11th floor of Kingsroad House. There were currently eleven Assistant Directors who covered BID’s operations world-wide. Associated with each AD were two additional offices, one for the AD’s deputy who was the controller of any agent allocated to the AD for a specific operation and the other was for the use of the agent. Jason was met by Angela and shown through to Miles Thompson’s office. Miles was sitting in one of four comfortable leather armchairs around a coffee table and indicated the chair next to him for Jason as he came into the office. ‘So what’s happening in Barbados?’ Miles asked as Jason sat down and accepted the coffee handed to him by Angela. ‘Different from the norm of hurricanes, drugs, politicians’ freebies and stranded British tourists; it would seem that the Royal Navy has lost its Guard Ship,’ Jason started. ‘What! You’re not serious, are you?’ Miles had spilt some of his coffee in surprise. ‘As of 1230 hours yesterday HMS Edinburgh has vanished, or perhaps to put it less dramatically, there has been no radio contact. Let me start from the beginning. You will know that the Guard Ship not only works very closely with the DEA, but has also distinguished herself and her Captain and crew with emergency relief work.’ Miles Thompson nodded. ‘The ship has a schedule to make contact with both the MOD and the High Commission at 0730 hours and 1230 hours every day, 365 days of the year. The ship and crew had just completed a very successful operation with the DEA by intercepting a delivery of some twenty million dollars worth of cocaine to Florida. At the request of the High Commissioner – that’s John Wright;’ again, Miles nodded. ’HMS Edinburgh was tasked to investigate the disappearance of a number of charter yachts – most of them crewed by Brits, but a couple of American crews as well. All these boats have gone missing in the waters to the north of the Cayman Islands.’ ‘May I interrupt for a moment, Jason.’ ‘Yes, of course, Miles.’ ‘I don’t pretend to have an intimate knowledge of the Caribbean, but I seem to remember that the most popular area for the yachting fraternity was in the Windward and Leeward Islands…… so what were these yachts doing in the waters north of the Cayman Islands?’ Miles ended his interruption with a question. ‘The answer to that is ‘big money attracts big boats’, I think, not being a yachtsman myself. There are huge sums of offshore and laundered money swilling around on Grand Cayman and quite a bit of that has been spent on building very well-appointed marinas and some lavishly equipped yachts. Now that Cuba has opened its doors to the tourist trade, I’m told that there are some 26

very attractive cruising grounds in the Golfo de Guacanayabo and Golfo Batabano. Unlike the Windward and Leeward Islands, cruising around the myriads of small islands in those two gulfs on the south side of Cuba is relatively cheap and becoming increasingly more popular.’ ‘What lies to the west of the Leeward Islands before you get to Jamaica and – if I remember correctly – the Cayman Islands or is there really nowhere worth cruising, if you head due west from Dominica, until you get to Nicaragua,’ Miles asked. ‘Not quite true; I confess I had to dig around for a chart of the area to make sure, before I came to see you.’ Jason opened his file and produced a neatly folded Admiralty chart, which covered the Caribbean from Barbados in the east to Nicaragua in the west and from the Bahamas in the north to Venezuela in the south. Angela appeared as if by magic and removed the coffee cups and the chart was spread out on the coffee table. The only landfall that I could find is a pinprick on the chart called Bird Island, which is minute and belongs to Venezuela – I think, although there was a rumour that it had been put up for auction as the Venezuelan Government needed to enhance its holdings of foreign exchange. I’ve spoken with Jason Chance who told me that it is exactly what its name implies – a wildlife sanctuary for birds….oh yes, and it has an unmanned lighthouse.’ ‘There really is very little in the way of a landfall,’ Miles mused as he studied the chart closely. ‘So, what’s the advice from John Wright and his DA……remind me…..’ ‘Stephen Watson.’ ‘Yes, of course; I met him at an intelligence briefing in the MOD before he took up his appointment.’ ‘They’ve asked the MOD to agree to an over-flight by the US Coastguard,’ ‘Makes sense, although I expect the Yanks will enjoy a quiet snigger at the Royal Navy’s expense. Do we know what Edinburgh’s last known position was?’ Miles asked as he continued to study the chart. ‘Yes,’ and Jason unstuck a small yellow post-it on which he’d written the position. ‘About 100 miles north of Cayman Brac…..here,’ and Jason touched the chart with the tip of his pencil. ‘That’s about 35 miles south of the 12 mile limit denoting Cuban territorial waters.’ ‘I have an uneasy feeling about this one, which I think I share with you otherwise you wouldn’t have come to me for advice. We’ve got Jason Chance out there, but he’s too well known in the islands as a diplomat. I’m thinking aloud, but my instinct tells me we should send an agent,’ Miles glanced up from the chart at Jason. ‘My view exactly, Miles,’ Jason agreed. ‘I think we should tackle this from the sailing angle……that’s what started this. We need an experienced yachtsman, preferably one who knows the Caribbean……I’m sure you’ve done your trawl of our agents on the computer, Jason. Who’ve you found?’ ‘There are three; Mike Soames, Conrad Isaacs and John Gunn. Mike knows the Caribbean well and we’ve worked together before. He has sailed, but would be the first to agree that his sailing experience would only qualify him as a ‘competent crew’ on the RYA rating system. He should be back shortly from Belize where he’s done a first class job of tracing the cocaine suppliers to the 27

visiting cruise ships.’ ‘That was one of the Captains of the Pan-Pacific Cruise Line wasn’t it?’ Miles Thompson interjected. ‘It was, and a slack handful of his crew were also involved,’ Jason added. ‘Sorry; I interrupted......you mentioned Conrad… I know he sails, but he’s also a fluent Arabist and I would doubt his availability,’ Miles commented. ‘So that brings me to John Gunn. He’s the most experienced yachtsman of the three and knows the Caribbean ‘yachting scene’ well. I haven’t worked with him before, but I know that you and the Director consider him to be one of our most effective agents. I’ve been through his file on the computer quickly and I see that since that business in Indonesia with North Korea’s nuclear warheads, he worked again with Mike Dimmock to break up that people-trafficking gang in Hong Kong. He’s completed his helicopter training at Northholt and, at his own request, has been studying Arabic at the Army’s language school at Beaconsfield. ‘Gunn’s the agent for this operation, Jason. I’ll speak to the Director and phone you within the hour. Are you happy with that?’ Miles asked. ‘Very; I gather that Gunn has quite a reputation so I look forward to working with him,’ and Jason picked up his chart and file. Miles Thompson looked up over the top of his reading glasses, which he had put on to study the chart. ‘Do you have a camp bed in your office, Jason?’ ‘No........ not as yet.’ ‘Then accept my advice and ask Admin for one to be sent up,’ and with that word of advice from the Deputy Director, Jason Wolstenholme left and returned to his office on the 11th floor.

CHAPTER 4

‘Damn! That’s my mobile. Sorry Achmed, I’ll take the call outside,’ and John Gunn left the room where he had been having a one-to-one conversation practice with his Arabic tutor at the Army School of Education in Beaconsfield. The call was from Miles Thompson who told Gunn that he was required to report to Jason Wolstenholme at Kingsroad House at 9 am the following day. ‘I’ve spoken with the Commandant of the School, John, who tells me that you’ve progressed well and have passed the ‘linguist’ level of competence in Arabic, so well done for that and I’ll no doubt see you tomorrow,’ and Miles Thompson rang off. Gunn returned to the small lecture room where he had been practising his Arabic and made his apologies to his tutor before picking up his rather battered old brief case and headed for the car park and his muchcosseted red Triumph TR6. The Commandant of the School was standing beside Gunn’s car. ‘Lovely cars, John; used to have one of these when I was your age. Sorry we’re losing you a couple of weeks early, but when the FCO rings to say you’re needed…..well, that’s that. Goodbye and good luck,’ and they shook hands. The early heavy rain had blown over and the sky was now clear so Gunn lowered 28

the hood, turned the key and was rewarded with the crisp exhaust note of the 2.5 litre, petrol-injected, race-tuned engine. Only that morning, as he had squeezed all of his 6’3” frame into the bucket seat of the TR6, he had decided that it was time, after nearly ten years, to say ‘goodbye’ to the diminutive classic British sports car. He might devote what little spare time he now enjoyed to restoring another model - one that at least allowed him to enter and depart with a little less yoga-like contortion. Gunn was pretty close to being the antithesis of what an intelligence agent should be. An ideal agent was ordinary; ordinary and unnoticeable in the environment in which he was required to operate. Gunn’s height was matched with an athletic frame, a thick head of dark brown hair, grey eyes and looks – so he had been told by Louise, the PA of his first AD on joining BID – like a mix between Dirty Harry and Indiana Jones. He wore no jewellery other than an ancient and scratched Omega Seamaster watch, which had been given to him by his parents on the day he was commissioned into the Army. Ten years previously, having successfully completed and passed the SAS selection course, Gunn had been told by the Commanding Officer of 22 SAS Regiment that there had been a most unfortunate mix-up of reports and, regrettably, he had failed the selection. This had achieved exactly what BID had planned; Gunn had resigned his commission. The Commanding Officer of 22 SAS Regiment had also threatened his resignation. That reaction had also been predicted and the announcement in the London Gazette of the Commanding Officer's accelerated promotion to Brigadier to command a brigade solved that problem. BID had needed a fluent Chinese speaker urgently which Gunn’s childhood in Hong Kong had provided. On return from his first assignment in Hong Kong, Gunn had met the Director of BID who had offered him permanent employment, which he had accepted. Other assignments had followed, but for the last six months, since his second assignment in Hong Kong, he had qualified as a helicopter pilot and, after two months at the Army’s Language School, could get by in both spoken and written Arabic. As he drove away from the car park, he saw in the rear-view mirror a whimsical expression on the Commandant’s face, presumably recalling his love affair with a classic British sports car. Gunn turned out of the Army School of Education onto the A435 heading south to junction six on the M4 motorway. In gentlemanly manner, his language training did not start until 10 am each day, which meant leaving his house at 1 Elm Park Lane in Chelsea at about nine. He had tried both the M40 and M4 motorways and had decided that he found the latter marginally less awful during rush hour. Fortunately, he was travelling against the rush hour flow of traffic into London. As he negotiated the roundabout over the M40 at Junction 2 he glanced in the rear-view mirror. There it was again; coincidence? ‘Remember Gunn,’ he muttered to himself, ‘in your line of business there’s no such thing as a coincidence.’ About four cars behind him and only noticeable because of the motorway/’A’ road interchange, was the battered, black, mud-spattered Toyota Landcruiser 4x4 with dark, opaque windows all round. The Landcruiser had been at the Heston Services petrol station when he had filled up the TR6 that morning on the way to Beaconsfield. He recalled wondering whether it had been at the Glastonbury pop festival, which, as always, had ended up with both spectators and cars engulfed in a sea of mud after torrential downpours of rain. 29

Gunn took his right foot off the accelerator and pulled it back so that he could reach the 9 mm Glock 26 automatic in its ankle holster. When he had been recruited to BID for the operation in Hong Kong in the last few days of its British ownership, he had chosen to stick with the Browning Hi-Power 9mm automatic which he had used in the Army. Unlike most of his peers, he liked it because of its reliability and stopping power. Tony Taylor, BID’s armourer, had persuaded him to use a Polish Radom Viz 33 on his next assignment and then the Italian Tanarmi, a modified version of the Czech original, because of its 16 round capacity with one round chambered. Now he favoured the Austrian Glock 17 because of its 19 round capacity, but it was too big for an ankle holster so Tony had equipped him with the Glock 26 which was a hundred grams lighter and had a 12 round magazine. Gunn realised that in the six months he had been studying Arabic and learning to fly a helicopter, once more leading the life of a student, he had lost some of the sharpness that was the very essence of survival in his job. When he reached the M4 motorway, he took the TR6 twice round the roundabout at the interchange. Sure enough, on the second circuit as he took the left turn for London, the Landcruiser was still two cars behind him. ‘Now to me, that says that your man in the Toyota is an amateur,’ Gunn muttered. ‘He must know I would be going back to London and a professional would have accepted that gamble and turned onto the motorway when I didn’t and could have front-tailed me which would, I admit, have made me think again about coincidences. Now if I were planning to do someone a mischief I would do it just before a motorway exit so that I could get off the motorway as fast as possible after the deed.’ Gunn was now approaching Junction 5 on the M4. Including the major interchange with the London orbital M25, there were four more exits before the M4 ended and became the A4 and later the Cromwell Road into west London. ‘If he tries anything before the elevated section leading to Junction 2, he must realise that it would be relatively simple for me to get away from any side-swipe. He knows that I can out-accelerate him so he will want me to be boxed in by traffic on the elevated section where the three lanes converge into two. Right, let’s see what happens,’ and Gunn tightened the seat belt which had been slightly slack until then and checked his mirrors. As he approached each exit he increased his speed and overtook a few cars. The Landcruiser stayed with him. It was now 12.45 and the traffic joining the motorway at Junction 4 from Heathrow Airport was heavy and slowed down every vehicle as all three lanes filled up. Then the outside lane was restricted to buses and taxis only creating further congestion in the other two lanes. Gunn was now approaching the start of the elevated section where the speed limit was restricted to 40 mph – still no move from the Landcruiser. Just as Gunn reached the end of the three lane carriageway he indicated right and moved into the outside lane, prompting an irritated blast on the horn from a BMW Z3 sports car. The driver, no doubt, considered that a forty-year-old TR6 had no right to be in front of him. It was where the elevated section bent round to the left past the high-rise office buildings that the Landcruiser made its move. Having followed the TR6 into the outside lane, it now swerved into the inside lane in front of an articulated lorry, prompting a fierce blast of air-horns, and then swept up beside the TR6. Gunn had to assume that the intention was to 30

force him over the crash barrier into the on-coming traffic. He had the TR6 in 3 rd gear overdrive with his finger on the flick-down stalk switch on the right of the steering column. The driver of the Landcruiser made his move and swung the wheel over. The Landcruiser was at least twice the weight of the TR6 and contact at 40 mph would certainly have forced the lighter car over the crash barrier. Gunn saw the move out of the corner of his eye; behind him the BMW was only ten metres from his rear bumper. Pressing hard on the tail of the Landcruiser was the 40 ton articulated lorry. In front of the TR6 was the ubiquitous Ford Transit white van and in front of the Landcruiser on the inside lane was a Mini. There was a gap between the van and the Mini. Impact from the Landcruiser was barely a split-second away when Gunn flicked down the overdrive switch, returning the TR6 to 3rd gear, and pressed his foot to the floor on the loud pedal. The TR6 leapt forward and shot through the gap between Mini and van, but just skimmed the side of the Mini as it overtook, cut in front and turned off the slip road down to the A4. The Landcruiser rebounded off the central crash barrier, was hit by the BMW Z3 which spun it round straight into the 40 ton articulated lorry which launched it over the side of the elevated section and 50 feet down to the forecourt of an office block. Understandably, the cacophony of horns was deafening and the traffic on the elevated section ground to a halt. Gunn turned left at the traffic lights at the foot of the slip road and parked the TR6 in a side road. He used his mobile to phone Kingsroad House and asked for Jason Wolstenholme. Jason was in his office and took the call. Gunn explained what had happened and said that he needed to go back to the scene of the accident. Jason told him that the police would be informed immediately and checked that he had not been injured. ‘No, I’m fine. The car’s a bit scraped, but I need to know who tried to run me off the road and to give BID’s insurance company details to the driver of the Mini, BMW Z3 and the lorry driver. ‘Are the traffic police on the scene yet,’ Jason asked. ‘From the sound of sirens – which you can probably hear – they are either there or very close.’ ‘The police have already got the message while we’ve been talking, John, so hopefully you won’t have too much hassle.’ Shout if back-up needed.’ ‘Will do, thank you Jason,’ and Gunn rang off. Put the hood up and locked the car. He checked the scrape on the left front wing of the TR6 and then headed back to the scene of the accident. Traffic on the east-bound lanes of the elevated M4 was stationary. To get to the accident scene, the traffic police had reversed up the slip road down which Gunn had driven minutes earlier. It seemed that blue flashing lights and yellow-coated police were everywhere as Gunn arrived at the top of the slip road where it joined the elevated section. No one appeared to notice him as he walked towards the melée until a voice shouted, ‘there he is!’ and with that all attention focused on Gunn. The voice had come from the driver of the BMW Z3. The nearest police constable turned towards Gunn. ‘Are you the driver, sir, of a red Triumph TR6 registration N372GOL?’ he was asked. ‘I am….’ and was then interrupted by the driver of the BMW. ‘And he left the scene of…….’ ‘Thank you, sir,’ the constable stopped the BMW driver in full flood. ‘It’s a 31

police responsibility to question witnesses. You will have a chance to make a statement shortly. Now sir,’ and the constable turned to Gunn, but was stopped by a police sergeant who had just walked over from a patrol car and drew him to one side. The sergeant then came over to Gunn. ‘We’ve just had a call on the radio from Scotland Yard, sir, which has explained the probable cause of the accident. It is confirmed exactly by a very clear account from the driver of that lorry,’ and here the sergeant turned and pointed at Tesco’s articulated lorry with its slogan of ’every little helps’ – most appropriate Gunn thought - which had catapulted the Landcruiser over the outside crash barrier. ‘The driver of the Toyota was killed and pronounced dead at the scene of the accident. In your……er…line of business, sir, do you wish to see that car and driver?’ ‘Not one little bit, sergeant, but just like you I need to know who he was…..’ ‘ Not ‘he’, sir, ‘she’.’ ‘What! Have you….’ ‘Yes, sir; a Mrs Peters…….mean anything to you?’ ‘Yes it does. Sergeant, may I just speak to the three drivers to deal with the insurance procedure and then with your permission I had better go down to the Toyota.’ ‘That’s fine, sir. I’ll walk down with you,’ and the police sergeant then led Gunn over to where the police had already cleared one lane and the five mile traffic jam caused by the accident had started to dribble through into London. Gunn spoke first to the woman driver of the Mini to whom he apologised and handed a card explaining that if she told her insurance company to contact the telephone number on the card her claim would be met in full. The driver of the BMW was clearly both angry and disappointed that Gunn hadn’t been immediately handcuffed and placed in police custody. He accepted the card from Gunn with ill grace. In contrast, the large and very over-weight lorry driver - not a good advertisement for Tesco’s healthy diet products – clapped Gunn on the back. ‘Nice bit of flash driving there, mate. Fucking idiot; what was his game then?’ was the lorry driver’s succinct summary of the incident. ‘Not a clue,’ Gunn replied, ‘but I’m in your debt for your eye-witness account. ‘Any time,’ was the lorry driver’s offer as he accepted the card with the insurance procedure. Gunn shook hands and then returned to the police sergeant who walked with him down to the Toyota. The 4x4 had landed on its roof and despite the sturdy construction of the marque with a long pedigree of service and survival in very hostile off-road conditions world-wide, the roof had been flattened to seat-top level. The driver might have survived had she been able to tuck herself down across the front passenger seat. She had been killed instantly by what the police sergeant described as ‘massive blunt force trauma’ to the cranium. Gunn wondered if the police had a special course to train them in the use of pedantic, verbose and, in most case, meaningless prose and syntax. Policemen always ‘proceeded’ instead of ‘walked’ and ‘observed’ instead of ‘saw’. Gunn shook his head, which the sergeant mistook for his reaction to the sight of Audrey Peter’s shattered skull. ‘Not a pretty sight, sir. I gather then that you knew her?’ ‘Yes, I did, sergeant. This attempt on my life is entirely an internal matter for BID to resolve. I regret that it has spilled over into the public arena and very 32

nearly resulted in possible injury and death to two or three people. I will come and make a statement wherever you wish and I will be responsible for the body should you need a contact - here,’ and Gunn handed the police sergeant a card which just gave his name and a telephone number. ‘That’ll be fine, sir. What would be your nearest police station?’ ‘Chelsea.’ ‘Very good, sir, I’ll tell them that you will come round within seven days?’ and he paused with a questioning note in his voice and eyebrows raised and when Gunn nodded, continued, ‘to make a statement. Thank you for your help, sir. That’ll be all for now. I needn’t keep you any longer.’ Gunn thanked the police sergeant and walked back to the TR6. When he had been recruited into BID for the operation in Hong Kong, Simon Peters had been the AD for SE Asia. Audrey was his wife and they had two children, Alexander and Diana…….’they would both be in their mid-teens by now,’ Gunn mused as he walked back to his car. Audrey had not only been extremely ambitious for her husband, but had been foolishly indiscreet in conversations with her bridge playing friends where they lived in Esher, just to the west of London. Her indiscretions had led to two attempts on the lives of BID agents, which resulted in her husband’s dismissal from BID and his subsequent suicide on the day of that dismissal. Gunn was well aware that Audrey disliked him intensely and blamed him for her husband’s death. There was a sister, but he had no idea whether Audrey had stayed in the house in Esher or moved after Peter’s death. Gunn resolved that the welfare of the two children – now ‘young people’ - he chided himself for that error - would be a matter of some urgency, as he squeezed into the TR6 and drove back to his house in Chelsea. Gunn parked the TR6 in his garage at 1 Elm Park Lane, closed the garage doors and went into his mews house via what used to be the scullery, but now was home to a washing machine, broom cupboard and what Mrs Charlesworth referred to as her ‘bits and pieces’. She came in twice a week when Gunn was at home and once when he was away for any length of time. His first stop was at his desk where he dug out his indexed box of address cards and looked up the Peters’ address in Esher. He found the card with the Peters phone number and dialled it as he walked through into his sitting room. ‘Hello,’ the young woman’s almost immediate response after only two rings of the phone caught Gunn by surprise. ‘Would that be Diana Peters?’ Gunn asked. ‘Yes, speaking.’ ‘ Diana, it’s John Gunn, I don’t know if you…..’ ‘Yes of course I remember you. Did you want to speak to my Mother? She’s been out every day this week so Alec and I have been left on our own over this half term. Alec’s revising for the last of his GCSEs and I’ve been playing in a tennis tournament. Are you coming to see us?….that’d be cool…..it’s absolutely ages since we saw you….not since,’ and then came a pause, ‘Dad died.’ Gunn hadn’t been able to get a word in edgeways while the torrent of welcome bubbled out of the phone. He couldn’t fail to notice that Audrey was referred to as ’Mother’ whereas Peter, their father, who had committed suicide on the day he was sacked from BID four years previously was ‘Dad’. Such a small detail spoke volumes about the relationships in that family, Gunn mused, as he waited for his chance to speak. 33

‘Great to chat to you again, Diana. Did you say that Alec is there with you?’ ‘Yes, shall I get him to pick up the phone in his room?’ ‘I really wanted to check with you both,’ Gunn continued, ‘whether I could come round to the house in about ….oh, say 40 minutes. Would that be OK?’ ‘Have you still got that super car…….a TR6 wasn’t it?’ ‘Yes, I’ve still got the car.’ ‘Hi John, it’s Alec……..please do come round. Give me a good excuse to stop revising for my biology GCSE, which I’ve got on Wednesday next week. Di’s told you that Mother’s away.’ ‘That’s great; be with you in about 40 minutes, bye,’ and Gunn finished the call. He was sure there was a sister – whether she was Audrey’s sister or Simon’s, Gunn had no idea. He had told the police that he would contact the next of kin and inform his local police station as soon as that had been done. His mews house had three bedrooms, so if necessary the two children, who were both still minors, could stay with him. Gunn had no idea of the legal implications of this, but a great deal would depend on what he discovered on his visit. Decision made, Gunn went back to the garage, climbed into the TR and pressed the remote for the garage door. The traffic was only just starting to build up for the rush hour exodus from London so Gunn made it to Esher in 45 minutes and pulled up outside the house in the Claremont Estate where he received an enthusiastic greeting from both children. ‘What’ve you done to the TR?’ they both asked in chorus as the scraped left wing was instantly spotted. ‘Tell you all about that shortly, guys. Let’s go inside,’ Gunn suggested. Diana grabbed Gunn’s hand; four years ago, Alec would have grabbed his other hand, but Alec was now a young man and holding hands was what children did. Once they were in the sitting room with its floor to ceiling French windows overlooking the garden and the lake beyond, Gunn started by asking them about the events nearly four years ago. ‘I was really surprised when you answered the ‘phone, Diana; I thought that you had moved house after your Dad’s death.’ ‘That was supposed to happen and the removal men had already started to pack up the house, but Mother then cancelled everything and said we would stay here. Alec had just started at Dauntsey’s School and I was due to join him a couple of years later. Mother’s sister lives down in Wales – perhaps that’s why your office had said that they would send him there. That’s before he…….’ and here Diana’s explanation tailed off and Alec took over. ‘There really was no point in us moving. Di and I have lots of friends in this area and you’ll remember, John, how much time Mother spends playing bridge with all her friends around here. So what brings you over here?’ Alec asked as he waved Gunn to a comfy armchair and sat opposite him. Diana perched on the arm of her brother’s chair. Twice in his time in the Army, Gunn had had to go and visit the parents of one of his soldiers and the wife of another, both of whom had been killed in a road accident. Their Landrover had been squashed flat while they waited for recovery on the hard shoulder lane of the M3 Motorway by an articulated Romanian lorry. The subsequent police examination of the lorry discovered that its compressed air braking system had more holes than a colander and was incapable of stopping the vehicle at anything faster than 10 mph. ‘Alec and Di, your Mother’s been killed in a car accident…. I’m sorry, I can’t 34

think of any other way to soften the horror of that news. I…….’ but Alec interrupted Gunn. Diana had her face clasped in both hands. ‘It’s OK, John. I had already guessed that something had happened to Mother,’ and here he put his arm around his sister who was sobbing quietly. I’ll ask you in minute what happened, but first I had better bring you up to date with affairs in this family.’ The maturity of the 16 year-old amazed Gunn. He felt that he was talking to a person at least twice as old as Alec. ‘In her own funny way I’m sure that Mother loved Dad, Di and me, but she was eaten up with ambition to improve the family status – she was convinced Dad would be knighted and that she would then be able to laud it around here as ‘Lady Peters’. I won’t bore you with the hundreds of times Di and I would long for her to show just a little affection for us. It seemed that she couldn’t wait to get us back to school after an exeat and every holiday we are despatched to one youth camp or another.’ ‘When Dad died, this remoteness intensified to such a degree that it really frightened Di and me. Honestly, we thought that she was a little bit loopy,’ at which point Alec wiped away an errant tear. ‘It was awful. It seemed that Dad had no family, or if he did Mother kept us away from them. He was a single child and his father died many years ago. We did meet his mother, she wasn’t that old, but Mother made no effort to conceal her dislike of her, so although Dad would go and visit her, Mother made sure that we didn’t. This led to some really awful rows which we weren’t meant to know about. I’ve no idea where she is now, but I have a feeling that she lives in London. I also have some vague recollection that Grandpa was a pretty important guy – might even have had a title.’ ‘Ah,’ Gunn thought, ‘now that would explain a lot,’ as Alec continued. ‘Now Mother’s sister…..oh, what’s her name Di?’ ‘Hazel…….’ ‘Oh God yes…..the bloody nut! We only met once…she’s married to some rabid socialist Welshman who refuses to go anywhere away from the village where they live in South Wales and won’t speak in any other language than Welsh. We won’t have to go there, will we, John? What happened to Mother?’ ‘Let me deal with the accident first, Alec. How long have you had that black Toyota Landcruiser?’ Gunn asked. ‘We don’t have a Toyota Landcruiser…….or any other sort of Toyota. We have a rather aged Rover 75, which I know is in the garage,’ was the immediate response. ‘Right, that’s something else for me to resolve. I have got to tell you both the facts because you will no doubt read about it in the papers or see it on the news. It would seem that your Mother has been ‘stalking’ me for some time using a black Landcruiser…..’ ‘Whatever for?’ Alec interrupted. ‘Let me finish…..’ ‘Hush, Alec. Let John tell us what happened,’ Diana chided her brother. ‘Sorry, John.’ ‘That’s OK. I won’t bore you both with details, but the stalking reached its finale today around lunchtime when I was driving back to London from Beaconsfield where I’ve been learning Arabic. Your Mother attempted to drive me off the road….hence the scrape on the TR6……but instead of forcing me off the road, she lost control of the Landcruiser and went over the side of the raised 35

section of the M4 as you approach Chiswick. She was killed instantly and her body was taken to Hammersmith Hospital. That’s it. As to what happens to you two, I will do some checking and let you know very soon. Presumably you both want to go back to Dauntsey’s on Sunday?’ ‘Yes,’ said in unison. ‘Right, I will make arrangements to get you back to school if I can’t drive you there myself and let your headmaster know what’s happened. Would you both like to come and stay with me until you go back to…..’ but Gunn wasn’t even allowed to finish. ‘Oh, yes please and can we go in your car?’ came from a perky Diana. ‘You can; I’m not sure that’s legal as I only have seat belts for two but I can’t be bothered to worry about that now. Go off and pack your bags and books and then we’ll shut up the house and go back to my house in London. Incidentally, do you both have mobile phones?’ ‘Yes,’ came from both of them. ‘Right, let me have your numbers and you take mine and then we can keep in touch.’ Phone numbers were exchanged and as soon as the two of them had disappeared upstairs to pack, Gunn phoned Mrs Charlesworth on his mobile to explain what had happened. He was assured that coming in every day was no problem and she would stock up the house with what she referred to as ‘proper food’, whatever that might be.

CHAPTER 5

It spoke volumes that their mother’s sudden death had affected Alec and Diana so little, but on reflection, Gunn recalled Audrey’s suffocating control of the children, which must have stifled any love and affection. When they all arrived at Gunn’s house in Chelsea, Mrs Charlesworth was already there to greet them and showed Alec and Diana to the two spare bedrooms. Gunn explained to Alec and Diana that he would be away at his office the next day, but on the Saturday, with the proviso that all half term exeat homework had been completed, they would all do something exciting before returning to school on the Sunday. This promise was immediately translated into a plea to go to Chessington World of Adventure. Four years previously, Audrey had discovered that while she was away for a bridge weekend in Worthing, Simon, her husband, had allowed Gunn to take the children to the theme park. She had immediately informed the headmaster of the children’s school that Gunn was ‘persona non grata’ and never to be allowed to visit the children again. ‘Morning John, Jason’s expecting you,’ was Barbara’s greeting to Gunn as he walked into the PA’s office the following morning. She had taken particular care with her clothes and makeup that morning after her meeting with two of her fellow PAs the day before in the BID coffee shop where she had learnt about the agent who had been assigned to Jason’s Caribbean department. ‘Hi Barbara….don’t think we’ve met before,’ and after shaking hands, Gunn paused before going into Jason’s office. ‘Remind me please, Barbara, who heads 36

up our legal department?’ ‘That would be Josephine McNab.’ ‘Could you find out if she’s free a little later this morning please?’ ‘Yes of course; can I let her know what it’s about?’ Barbara asked with pencil poised above her shorthand notebook and determined to be highly efficient. ‘It’s Simon Peters’ children; now their mother’s been killed there seems to be no one to care for them. They’re both currently in my house being chaperoned by the faithful Mrs Charlesworth – she’s the lady who keeps me and the house in order. I have very little knowledge of the legal implications of this situation and I’m equally very certain that our Director would consider this to be a BID responsibility. There’s a paternal grandmother somewhere in London who needs to be traced pretty sharply. Is that enough to start with?’ Gunn asked. ‘Yes – I’ll let you know after your session with Jason.’ ‘Many thanks,’ and Gunn opened the connecting door, but paused and turned. ‘That’s a smashing outfit you’re wearing – I’m going to enjoy working here,’ and with a smile he went into Jason Wolstenholme’s office, leaving in his wake a puce-faced Barbara who immediately picked up the phone and spoke to her coffee shop colleagues. Until his mid forties, Jason had been with the overseas division of Barclays Bank and all but five years of his time with the bank had been spent in the Caribbean. His knowledge of matters political, financial and commercial in the Caribbean was the reason for him being head-hunted by Sir Jeremy Hammond, the Director of BID. ‘Morning John, you OK after that business yesterday on the M4?’ Jason asked as they shook hands. ‘Thanks, Jason. I’m fine, but I took the liberty of asking Barbara to find out if I can drop in for some advice from our legal guys to sort out the Peters children. I hope that’s OK?’ Gunn replied as he took the seat offered by Jason. ‘No problem, John. Please let me know if I can take that off your plate if it becomes a problem. Right, let me get on with the task of briefing you for this assignment. This is an odd one. It could all blow over and fizzle out, or, as Miles Thompson’s gut feeling so often accurately predicts, escalate into a very serious international incident. Having called up your personal file, I see that you have been to the Caribbean a number of times, most of those connected with sailing. What’s your knowledge of the Cayman Islands and Cuba?’ ‘Negligible, I regret, Jason. All my sailing has been done in the waters of the Windward and Leeward Islands, the Bahamas and the Florida Keys,’ Gunn replied. ‘That’s a pity but not a problem and not unexpected. We’ve plenty of time for you to brief yourself on the Cayman Islands and there are very few people around with a detailed knowledge of Cuba’s international waters. Castro’s Revolutionary Armed Forces have done their utmost – particularly after the ‘61 Bay of Pigs fiasco – to prevent anyone taking advantage of the very attractive cruising areas to both north and south of the island. That is until the last few years when the Soviet Union imploded and the emergent Russia dumped Cuba, since when it’s opened its doors to tourism to earn much needed foreign exchange. This is what we know so far,’ and here Jason pulled a shorthand notebook towards him at his desk. ‘Our High Commissions in both Barbados and Jamaica have received reports of missing yachts. These were yachts chartered 37

by Brits, but there were also reports of US chartered yachts going missing.’ ‘Just the yachts or the owners, crews and charterers as well,’ Gunn interrupted. ‘The lot – boats and everyone on board vanished,’ Jason added. ‘I expect you know that HMG keeps a warship permanently on station in the Caribbean to assist the US Coastguard and DEA with drug prevention?’ Jason raised his eyebrows looking up from his notes at Gunn who nodded. ‘Usually a Destroyer, I seem to remember.’ ‘Correct; HMS Edinburgh was coming to the end of its deployment and due to be replaced by HMS York at the end of this year. All of these reports of missing boats and crews concerned boats which had sailed from Grand Cayman to cruise amongst the islands off the south coast of Cuba. I expect you’ll know, John, that in many cases, particularly in UK and adjacent waters, yachtsmen and women go off on trips without letting anyone know where they are going and when to expect them back…..’ ‘Tell me about it……’ Gunn interrupted. ‘Sorry Jason, go on.’ ‘You’re right, this makes it very difficult for the RNLI, Coastguard and SAR crews, but in every case with these disappearances – all of which, I must add, came from the same charter company – the alarm was raised within hours. This makes it all the more inexplicable. There was confirmation of the boats leaving one port or anchorage and then – zilch!’ Jason paused. ‘So in traditional colonial outrage, the UK sent a gunboat to investigate. Sorry, Jason, I shouldn’t treat this lightly but I bet that’s what you’re about to tell me,’ Gunn volunteered with a sigh. ‘Again, you’re right John, but the twist in this tale is that the gunboat has now vanished too.’ ‘You’re joking! When did all this happen?’ ‘HMS Edinburgh joined in the search for these boats and until 48 hours ago had maintained its schedule of communications with both the DA’s office in Barbados and the MOD. It failed to communicate on the 1230 hours schedule 48 hours ago and nothing has been heard since. BID was informed of this yesterday and Miles approved your selection for this assignment within an hour of me being informed of the disappearance of HMS Edinburgh. The US Coastguard has readily agreed to help and is over-flying the area now, but you can understand how sensitive this is as it’s all so close to, if not in, Cuban territorial waters.’ ‘I suggest that you call in on Jason Chance in Barbados and the best way to find out what’s happening is to charter a boat in Grand Cayman and follow the itinerary taken by the yachts that have disappeared, but I leave all that up to you. In Grand Cayman you can call on Charles Adams who keeps an eye on our affairs in that region. He is a lifetime expatriate solicitor and there is little that happens in the Cayman Islands that misses his attention. This is his card. If you end up in Cuba, which I suspect that you will, then your contact there is Ramon Ortega and here’s his card. He’s a real ‘Mr Fixit’ and will provide you with anything from a woman to a battleship – or so I’m told. I know that Barbara has produced a very helpful brief for you on Cuba and the Cayman Islands. I’ve arranged for you to do the standard pre-op visits in this building and I know that Tony Taylor wants to know your views on the Glock automatic that he gave you before the op in Hong Kong last year. I expect that Barbara has included in your programme a visit to Josephine to sort out the parental care of the Peters 38

children. If you have time, I’ve arranged for you to have an hour with Malcolm Springfield in the Gazelle Helicopter – that is timed for 11.30. Right, that’s about it from me, John,’ Jason concluded, ‘any questions?’ ‘Yes……just one, at this stage, Jason, but I may think of a few more later,’ Gunn added. ‘Yes of course. Fire away,’ Jason offered. ‘I know it’s difficult to answer this. You lived in the Caribbean for many years and know the people and cultures better than anyone. What’s your gut feeling about who or what might be behind this? Always assuming that we don’t hear in the next few hours that HMS Edinburgh has found the on/off switch for the power to its communications and the ‘yachties’ are found recovering from a monstrous hangover. Do you think this is drug-related, terrorism, a kidnap and ransom routine or are we up against Russia’s SVR, Al-Qaeda or another nation’s intelligence service? Earlier this year there was that ludicrous fiasco of the Iranians impounding HMS Cornwall’s RIB and that bunch of clowns crewing it…….surely that hasn’t given ideas to Castro to do something along similar lines?’ ‘John, I don’t know. There’ve been no ransom demands, and relations between the UK and Cuba are good, in spite of the Bush/Blair entente. Russia withdrew all its support for Cuba back in ’91 and in spite of the cooling of relations between President Chavez of Venezuela and the USA there is no identifiable nation, faction or person in that region who has a motive to take on the UK. It is because there appears to be no motive that both Miles and I feel very uneasy about this one. Sorry, that’s not much help,’ Jason finished lamely. ‘No, that’s OK Jason. You’ve just put rather more clearly than I would my own thought process,’ and Gunn stood up. ‘I’ll check in again with you when I’ve finished my programme. Bye for now,’ and Gunn left Jason’s office and picked up his programme from Barbara. ‘Josephine said she would like to see you as soon as you finished with Jason, so I’ve pencilled that in on your programme and here’s your brief on Cuba and Grand Cayman,’ and Barbara handed Gunn a neat folder. ‘Many thanks, Barbara,’ and after glancing at the slip of paper with his programme of visits, Gunn told her he would stick his head round the door once he had finished and before he left the building. Both Barbara and BID’s legal department had evidently been busy while Gunn had been with Jason. As soon as Gunn walked into Josephine McNab’s office on the tenth floor of Kingsroad House he was greeted with the good news that Simon Peters’ mother had been traced with great ease as her name and address were still held on BID records. Her address was in Eaton Square and a phone call from Josephine had not only explained the situation to Lady Peters, but there had been an instant agreement to take on the guardianship of the two children and Gunn was invited to meet her that afternoon at 1pm for lunch. ‘Lady Peters,’ Gunn thought, as he heard the good news, ‘now that explains a great deal.’ He thanked Josephine and continued his rounds of Communications and Ciphers, Finance, Administration and ended up in the basement on level B3 with Tony Taylor, the armourer, just after 11.10. ‘Right, let’s have a look at your Glock,’ and Gunn removed the Glock 17 from its holster and handed it to the armourer. ‘Still happy with it?’ Tony asked Gunn. ‘It’s on the heavy side, but I prefer that and anyway what do you expect with 39

its 19 round magazine. Most of the time I use the smaller 26 in my ankle holster with its 12 round magazine. Only on the firing range I’ve found that the magazine of the larger 17 gets scorching hot, but that’s only after firing two magazines at rapid rate.’ While Gunn was talking his Glock automatic was stripped down and thoroughly checked by Tony Taylor who then re-assembled it without even looking at what he was doing and handed it back to Gunn. ‘Come on John. It’s time for our annual competition and this time I’ll beat you,’ was Tony’s challenge as the two donned ear defenders and glasses and went into the range. ‘Same rules John; ten rounds rapid,’ and they both fired on Tony’s order. The result was the same as all previous occasions. ‘I just don’t know how you do it,’ sighed the exasperated armourer as he studied the targets. ‘You never practise and yet you produce results like that,’ and he handed Gunn his target which had a neat hole the size of an orange in the middle of the face of the Figure 12 target. The next appointment was with BID’s senior pilot and flying instructor, Malcolm Springfield, whom he met on the helipad on the 15 th floor 2 minutes after the appointed time. Gunn pulled on flight overalls from his locker, grabbed his gloves, helmet and logbook and went out on to the pad. They took off immediately and headed for Northolt Airfield where Malcolm put him through his paces for forty minutes before declaring himself satisfied. They returned to Kingsroad House where Malcolm signed Gunn’s pilot logbook before wishing him well. Gunn glanced at his watch as he removed his overalls: 12.35. He went down to the 11th floor, said a quick goodbye to Barbara and Jason and then left the building by its front door with all the other inhabitants of Kingsroad House heading for their lunch hour break. He waved down a taxi, which dropped him outside 12 Eaton Square at five minutes past one. The house at 12 Eaton Square was no ’bijou’ property. It had a basement, ground and three further storeys, an imposing porch, balconied first floor reception rooms and a substantial walled garden at the rear of the property. As Gunn walked up the steps to the front door he reckoned that the property would set back a potential buyer some £10 million. He was expecting the door to be opened by a maid or butler, but it was Lady Peters who opened it. On reflection later, Gunn wasn’t quite sure what he had expected – certainly an older person than the lady who opened the door to him. Lady Peters had to be in her midsixties but the lady who greeted him looked closer to her mid-fifties at most. ‘You have to be John Gunn; Mary Peters,’ and Gunn shook the proffered hand. ‘Simon told me so much about you. Do please come in. Lunch is just you and me. I’m excited to think that I may be able to care for Alec and Diana.’ All of this came in a rush as she led Gunn through an imposing hall with marble staircase and first floor gallery to a designer kitchen which opened out onto a terrace filled with plants and creepers where a glass-topped table had place settings for two people. ‘Lady Peters, I……..’ Gunn began. ‘Mary, please,’ she requested. ‘Mary, I never heard Simon talk about his parents. I knew that Audrey had this sister in Wales, but both children begged me not to let them be sent there. They both knew of you, but never heard their father talk about you. For whatever reason it seemed that that subject was taboo when Audrey was around,’ Gunn explained. 40

‘Poor Audrey…. you must tell me later what happened. She suffered from the most dreadful inferiority complex. Why? I cannot imagine. She took a shunner to me from the very first day we met and absolutely nothing that I could do would alter this. Never mind, that’s all over now. Please tell me what has happened?’ And so Gunn explained what had happened and it was agreed that Gunn would bring Alec and Diana to her house in London the next day. Mary Peters told Gunn that her solicitors would work with those of BID to resolve all the legal aspects of the children’s guardianship and she asked if she might be allowed to take them back to school on the Sunday. Gunn was given a very tasty light lunch with some chilled white wine and as he left 12 Eaton Square after lunch he smiled at the thought of Alec and Diana being driven back to school in a chauffeur driven Bentley. If any children deserved to fall on their feet after the sadness of losing their father and the lack of maternal affection, those two did. And with that thought of a very satisfactory outcome to a problem that had seemed insoluble the previous day, he headed for the bus stop on his way back to Chelsea. * The pulsing light on Qasim’s telephone indicated a call coming through from his PA. He picked up the phone. ‘Call for you from London, sir,’ his PA told him. ‘Qasim’. ‘Alpha one, sir.’ ‘Go ahead Alpha One,’ Qasim replied. ‘Target one identified getting into a taxi outside Express Delivery Services building in Cale Street. That is the building that replaced Vauxhall Cross and Millbank. Target one went to an address in Eaton Square and is being followed by Alpha Two. I am watching Target one’s house in Elm Park Lane. There are three people in the house; a woman and two teenage children. Alpha Three is watching Target two’s house in Richmond, but there is no sign of the occupant. Instructions please, sir.’ ‘Ignore Target two. Remove the two children from Target one’s house and take them to the RV. Use Alpha Three to assist you. Tell Alpha Two to meet you at the RV. There will be a twin-engine Piper Cheyenne, registration K31XL waiting there. All three of you are to leave immediately with the children. Is that understood?’ ‘Understood,’ and Alpha One broke the connection. Qasim smiled and pressed the button to connect him to Hassan’s phone.

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