Killer Elite (previously published as the Feather Men) (44 page)

“I will write your book,” I told them, “providing the
facts tally and, of course, assuming I can find an agent and publisher.”

We shook hands. For the next three weeks, whenever my normal work allowed, I met Spike in the same room, and together we prepared a framework by which I could relate the events accurately but in a readable manner. For a while there were two areas of disagreement. I needed the real name of a real person within the Feather Men in order to authenticate the book.

“You have at least twenty real names already,” Spike had protested.

“I do not have yours or the colonel’s.”

“You do,” he replied with a smile. “Simply check the names of your 1979 Export Committee.” He became serious. “We had already identified the need for an indisputable means of authentication. Much as the colonel dislikes the idea, there is no alternative. You will have his identity.”

“And yours?”

“That,” said Spike, “will not be necessary.”

My second problem was an inability to explain to prospective readers, at an early stage of the book, the nature of the work of the Feather Men. I needed a single example, but Spike refused with persistence. Involvement with the killers, yes; any other operation, definitely not. In the end I made my point and was given an account of a 1976 action in Bristol involving two of Spike’s men whose identities would anyway be revealed by the book.

On November 6 Spike informed me that the man he had sent to Dubai, his Arab specialist, had just called him. He had seen the sheikh the previous day and shown him a photograph of de Villiers in captivity as well as the video taken in the Exmoor barn. Under threat of exposure to the Royal Oman Police and the British authorities, the sheikh had handed over the original films
and video copies of the previous activities by the killers. He also promised, in the name of God, that he would cease all further involvement with his father’s
thaa’r
. The aim of his father had been to reinstate his sons in Dhofar. That, he could see, was no longer an option.

During the winter of 1990 and the following spring, I traced and visited twenty-six people who were still alive and, wittingly or unwittingly, had been involved with the events of Spike’s story. Some aspects of his account initially struck me as implausible in the extreme but again and again I found that the facts and the figures tallied.

Since none of those I approached knew of, or even suspected, the contract killers’ intentions, I had to present the series of events, especially the point where their own lives had been affected, as pure hypothesis. This was especially important in the case of the next of kin of the four men, whom I had no wish to alarm or distress.

After reading the field reports of Spike’s Locals, I met three of them and tried to ascertain their personal motivations and memories of the events. As they were instinctively reticent, I was not as successful as I would have wished, except in the case of David Mason, with whom I was at an advantage as I had known him in Oman, in Antarctica and in London. I had always thought of him as a rather cool and arrogant individual. But after three long interviews with him to discuss his reports in depth, I came away with a very different picture. He cared deeply for certain principles and people. His strength of character and the depth of his resolve were awesome. I would not have wanted him as an enemy.

I decided to include the SAS Headquarters in my list of people to visit, but Spike advised against it. “They will kick you out of the door, Ran. Forget it. Any noncurricular activity is anathema to them. They know nothing
about us nor have we ever involved any of their members, past or present.”

Spike was also reticent when pressed about the fate of the surviving contract killer and his cronies from the agency.

“Are they dead?” I asked.

“No,” he replied.

“Did you pass him to the police?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He would have walked free from any court. We had no proof. No evidence. His defense lawyer would have laughed our story right out of the Old Bailey and all the way back to Dhofar.”

“Do you believe what he told you?”

“Yes, strange as it may seem. But I do.”

“He need have told you nothing.”

“What he told me tallies with the events. Have you not found that in your recent research?”

I had to admit this was true. “Where, if you have released him, is he now?”

“NTK,” said Spike. “Neither you nor our book
needs to know
.”

I could see he would not budge. “What happened to his girlfriend, or rather wife, Anne? I can hardly write a book leaving such items in midair. A reader would want to know.”

“Too bad,” said Spike.

I gave up asking. In the spring and summer of 1991 I described these events with complete attention to accuracy. Some of the dialogue and the emotions, the inner thoughts and the assumptions, are, of course, mine. In fiction there is always a villain. But real life does not fit into neat themes. To my mind Sheikh Amr and his son Bakhait were honorable men. De Villiers was dealt the
cruelest of blows in childhood. Evil, like good fortune, can arrive on the wind and out of the clouds, attributable merely to the whim of Fate.

As to my own chance involvement in these events, I am truly thankful that the Feather Men exist, or existed. Without them I suspect there would have been a hit-and-run accident on an October night on the Porlock Road. I am, I suspect, only one of many people in Britain who, over the past twenty years, have good reason to be grateful for their protective presence. Otherwise, my life has changed not at all except that I no longer take the rubbish out after dark. I leave the bags out during the daylight hours and to hell with the foxes.

Neither Colonel Macpherson nor Spike Allen ever divulged to me the identity of the committee’s founder, but the week before I met them there was an Associated Press news release:

On the morning of Thursday, February 12, 1991, an IRA action unit mortared the Gulf War Cabinet meeting of Prime Minister John Major at 10 Downing Street while, a few hundred yards away at the Wellington Barracks, a great assembly of SAS men, past and present, converged to pay their last respects to the Phantom Major.

Sir Fitzroy Maclean, giving tribute to the man whose name would always be synonymous with the Special Air Service, mentioned that, “Even his closest friends seldom knew what he was up to.”

The keening notes of “Flowers of the Forest” played by a single Scots piper reached out from the Guards Chapel to the deserted streets of Whitehall and across the frozen lakes of St. James’s Park.

Colonel Tommy Macpherson and Spike Allen knelt in different pews to the words of the Celtic Blessing:

Outside the snowflakes settled, light as feathers, over Whitehall.

I would like to thank the thirty-two individuals who helped me to research the events described in this book and to check the accuracy of my account. For reasons that will be apparent, I cannot name them, but they will know who they are and be assured of my sincere gratitude.

I am especially grateful to the close relatives of John Milling, Mike Kealy, Michael Marman, and Mac.

To Bridgie, who, on May 7, 1977, gave birth to Patrick John Milling, who today bears a striking resemblance to his late father.

To Pauline and Lucia, at whose request I have withheld Mac’s full name for security reasons.

To Maggi and to Nancy, widow and mother, respectively, of Mike Kealy.

To Rose May and the parents of Michael Marman.

All have been more than helpful and patient with their advice.

My thanks also to Jan Milne for her patience and support, and to Frances Pajovic for her good humour and efficiency.

Ranulph Fiennes