CHERUB: The Recruit (24 page)

(2) The Battle

The Fort Harmony residents fled every day, allowing police to demolish the shelters. They returned and made new shelters every night. The hippies dug underground tunnels. They also dug traps for the police to fall into.

In one incident a series of nets were hidden under leaves. When police moved in to demolish huts, the trap was sprung. Three policemen were left swinging in nets twenty metres above ground. The hippies tied off the nets and ran away. A fire engine came to the rescue, but got bogged down in thick mud. It was seven hours before firemen found a way to cut down the nets without their cargo crashing to earth. Pictures of the policemen in the nets made most newspapers the following day.

Newspaper coverage of the battle attracted dozens of new residents to Fort Harmony.

On 26 August 1973, police launched an all-out effort to destroy Fort Harmony. Three hundred police were drafted from across Britain. Television and newspaper journalists watched. Roads were blocked to stop supporters reaching Fort Harmony. Police destroyed the camp and arrested anyone who resisted. By late morning only twenty hippies remained, all barricaded in underground tunnels. Police decided entering the tunnels was too dangerous and waited for the hippies to come out for food and water.

At 5 p.m. a section of tunnel collapsed under a passing police car. Police rushed to grab a pair of legs sticking out of the earth. Joshua Dunn, aged nine, son of the founder of Fort Harmony, was pulled out of the mud. While two officers held the wriggling boy by his ankles, a third officer hit him over the head with a truncheon. A photographer captured the brutality. Pictures of the boy being stretchered into an ambulance made the television news. This incident caused a surge of public support for the hippies.

The crowd tying to break through blockades and reach Fort Harmony grew to more than a thousand. By midnight the police were exhausted. There were no reinforcements. By 3 a.m. the following morning police lines were broken. At sunrise on 27 August, over 700 supporters were camping in the mud around Fort Harmony. A stream of cars and vans brought wood and supplies to build new shelters. The hippies left the tunnels and began rebuilding their homes.

Next morning the photograph of police beating nine-year-old Joshua Dunn made the front page of every newspaper in Britain. The police announced they would withdraw and destroy the camp at a later date. The police made a plan. A thousand officers would be needed to remove all trace of Fort Harmony while successfully blockading the surrounding countryside. The police and National Park Authority didn’t have enough money to pay for such a massive operation, so nothing further was done.

(3) Fort Harmony Today

Thirty years later Fort Harmony still exists. The residents live a harsh life, without running water or electricity in their homes. Camp founder, Gladys Dunn, is now seventy-six. She wrote a bestselling autobiography in 1979. Her three sons – including Joshua, who suffered brain damage from the police assault – still live on site, as do many of her ten grandchildren and twenty-eight great-grandchildren. The camp has about sixty permanent residents. In warmer months Fort Harmony swells to as many as two hundred, mostly students and backpackers who think Gladys Dunn is a hero.

(4) Green Brooke

By 1996 the nearby village of Craddogh was in crisis. The coal mine was closed. Over half the population was unemployed and the village population had fallen from 2,000 residents in 1970 to less than 300. Run-down houses and mountains of black coal waste meant tourists didn’t stop at Craddogh on their way to Fort Harmony or the National Parks.

Because of the high local unemployment, the National Park allowed Green Brooke Conference Centre to be built on part of Craddogh Common. Green Brooke opened in 2002. It is enclosed by a five-metre-high fence with video cameras and electrified razor-wire along the top. The Centre hosts conferences and training courses. Facilities include a 765 room hotel, 1200 seat auditorium, gym, spa, and two golf courses. There is parking for 1000 cars and thirty helicopters.

Many residents of Craddogh and Fort Harmony work in Green Brooke as receptionists, cooks and cleaners.

(5) Petrocon 2004

In late 2003 Green Brooke announced the most prestigious event in its brief history. Petrocon takes place in May 2004. It is a secretive three-day meeting of two hundred oil executives and politicians. The media is kept out. Among the guests will be oil ministers from Nigeria and Saudi Arabia and the chief executives of every major oil company. The two most important guests will be the United States Secretary of Energy and the Deputy Prime Minister of Great Britain.

Security will be handled by the Diplomatic Protection Branch of the police, with MI5 and a small unit from CHERUB.

(6) Help Earth

At the end of 2003 a series of bombs were posted to United States Congressmen and members of the British Parliament who support the oil industry. Four workers in the US Congress building suffered injuries. Help Earth claimed responsibility. A month later a French oil company executive working in Venezuela was killed by a car bomb. Help Earth again claimed responsibility.

Shortly before its first attacks, Help Earth sent letters to the editors of several international newspapers, stating its aim to ‘Bring an end to the environmental carnage wreaked on our planet by the international oil companies and the politicians who support them.’ It then added, ‘Help Earth! is the desperate cry of our dying planet. Time is running out. We are prepared to use violent means in the battle to save our environment.’

Peaceful environmental groups are at pains to distance themselves from Help Earth and have helped investigators compile a list of likely terrorist suspects. Despite this, nobody involved with Help Earth has been identified, although several environmental campaigners with a violent history are under suspicion. Four of these suspects are current residents of Fort Harmony.

The limited information on Help Earth suggests an attack on Petrocon 2004 is likely. The size and nature of the attack is unknown. It could range from a small bomb destroying a car or helicopter, to a device capable of killing hundreds.

Any Help Earth members planning terrorist action at Petrocon 2004 will probably attempt to make links with Fort Harmony residents for the following reasons:

a)
 
Many Fort Harmony residents are veteran environmental campaigners.

b)
 
All Fort Harmony residents have a good knowledge of the local area.

c)
 
Many Fort Harmony residents have worked inside Green Brooke and can provide terrorists with information on operations and security.

(7) The Role of CHERUB

MI5 already has informers and undercover agents within the environmental movement. However M15 wants extra agents at Fort Harmony in the build-up to Petrocon 2004.

Any new adult residents arriving at Fort Harmony before Petrocon will be suspected of being undercover police or MI5 operatives. The chances of them getting useful information are small. Therefore it has been decided that two CHERUB operatives posing as relatives of Cathy Dunn, a long-standing member of the Fort Harmony community, will have the best chance of a successful undercover mission. Children will not be suspected of being intelligence agents, and they should mix easily with other members of the community.

James reckoned he now knew more about Fort Harmony than anyone, including the people who lived there. He’d read Gladys Dunn’s autobiography and three other books, as well as seeing tons of press cuttings, videos and police files. He’d memorised the names and faces of every current Fort Harmony resident and loads of regular visitors. James also read the criminal records and MI5 files on anyone likely to be involved in the terrorist group Help Earth.

James’ undercover name was Ross Leigh. His job was to hang out with kids at Fort Harmony, picking up gossip, sticking his nose where it didn’t belong and reporting anything suspicious to CHERUB.

James had a mobile to call Ewart Asker. Ewart was staying at Green Brooke for the duration of the mission. James’ other equipment included a digital camera, his lock gun and a can of pepper spray that was only for an emergency.

Amy was his sister, Courtney Leigh. Her job was to befriend Scargill Dunn, the seventeen-year-old grandson of Fort Harmony founder Gladys Dunn. Scargill was a loner who had dropped out of school and washed dishes in the kitchen at Green Brooke.

Scargill’s twenty-two-year-old twin brothers, Fire and World, had both served short prison sentences for attacking the chairman of a fast food chain. MI5 believed Fire, World and a couple called Bungle and Eleanor Evans were the residents of Fort Harmony most likely to be part of Help Earth.

*

Cathy Dunn had briefly been married to Fire, World and Scargill’s dad, some years before they were born. Since then, Cathy had lived alone at Fort Harmony. Like most residents she grew food and kept a few chickens, but it wasn’t enough to survive. She did odd jobs when they cropped up: cleaning, fruit picking. Sometimes Cathy sold information to the police.

There were always a few dodgy people at Fort Harmony. If a drug dealer or a runaway kid turned up, Cathy would walk to Craddogh and call from the village phone box. Half the time the police weren’t interested in what Cathy had to tell them. If they were, they only paid ten or twenty quid. Maybe fifty if it was a drug dealer and they caught him with a lot of stuff.

Cathy wasn’t comfortable being a snitch, but sometimes it made the difference between having enough to buy a bottle of gas for the heater and freezing in her hut.

After Petrocon was announced the police got more interested in what Cathy had to say. The value of information went up. Cathy got at least thirty pounds every time, and they wanted to know everything that was going on at Fort Harmony. Who came, who went, if anyone did anything suspicious, if there was an argument. Cathy got a taste for the money. She soon had a roll of notes stashed in a baked bean tin.

MI5 made Cathy an offer: £2,000 to let a couple of undercover agents stay with her at Fort Harmony in the weeks before Petrocon. Cathy didn’t like the idea much; she’d lived alone for thirty years. MI5 offered more money until Cathy gave in.

*

James, Amy and Ewart walked into the Bristol Travelhouse. It was a basic hotel attached to a motorway service station. Cathy Dunn was waiting in her room in a cloud of cigarette smoke.

‘My name is Ewart, these two are Ross and Courtney.’

Cathy sat up on her bed. She looked half drunk and tons older than in all the pictures James had seen of her.

‘Who the hell are you?’ Cathy asked.

‘We spoke on the phone,’ Ewart said. ‘You’re going to be looking after Ross and Courtney until the conference.’

‘You’ve had me stuck in this hole for three days,’ Cathy said. ‘Now you turn up with two kids. If this is your idea of a joke, I’m not laughing.’

‘You made a deal with us,’ Ewart said. ‘This is the deal.’

‘I agreed to let two undercover agents stay with me. Not look after two kids.’

‘Ross and Courtney are agents. Make their breakfast and send them to school for a few weeks, it’s not brain surgery.’

‘The government uses
children
to do its dirty work?’ Cathy asked.

‘Yes,’ Ewart said.

Cathy laughed. ‘That’s absolutely appalling. I won’t do it.’

‘You already took our money,’ Ewart said. ‘Can you afford to pay us back?’

‘I went to Greece, and I spent some money tidying up my hut.’

‘Looks like you’re stuck with us then.’

‘What if I refuse to take them?’ Cathy asked ‘What if I went to the press and told everyone you’re using kids to spy on people?’

‘If you go to the press, they’ll just think you’re some flaky old hippy,’ Ewart said. ‘Nobody will believe a word out of your hole. Even if you get someone to believe you, you signed the Official Secrets Act before you took the money. You’d be looking at ten years in prison for releasing classified information.’

Cathy looked upset. ‘I’ve always helped the police, now you treat me like dirt.’

Ewart grabbed Cathy’s jumper. He lifted her up and knocked her against the wall.

‘You don’t break deals with us,’ Ewart shouted. ‘There’s six months’ work gone into this operation. You’re getting eight grand to look after these kids for a few weeks. If that’s being treated like dirt, you can treat me like dirt whenever you like.’

James was shocked seeing Ewart flip out. Until now the mission had felt like part of a competition to do better than Kyle, Bruce and Kerry. Now it felt real. People could get blown apart by bombs or end up in prison for the rest of their lives. James suddenly didn’t feel up to the job. He was a twelve-year-old kid who should be going to school and messing around with his mates.