Remember Remember (44 page)

He then addressed them all and placed them on the table to post.

He stopped for a brief moment and looked at Jacky and although she was still snoring heavily he knew her true beauty. Emotion was something the SAS taught you to control; they trained and trained you, indoctrinating you away from those feelings that could affect a mission. He admired their professionalism and success at this but now knew they had failed with him. He really was in love with her. For the first time he realised he was breathing heavily and started to think consciously to change, but then thought it wouldn’t matter, those listening would assume he was asleep.

He took a sheet of writing paper from the pile he had placed on the table earlier and began to write:

“Dear Jacky, my darling Jacky,

The two rings you find enclosed are a gift from me; for you to do with as you wish. I had intended to ask you to marry me on this cruise but now realise how totally arrogant of me that would have been.

Firstly because you might actually have said no at the moment of asking but secondly and more importantly because you would definitely have regretted a “yes” decision, as the true nature of my intentions were explained to you by others.

If you do care for me you will go through so many different emotions in the coming weeks as you are interrogated by those who want to find, arrest and imprison me. There will be anger, fear, sadness, bewilderment and despair, all in the belief I have used you and my country.

My truth is I have grown to love you and I want to marry you, to settle down and be just plain and ordinary. But I am not ordinary and therefore I have misled you, not with my emotional intentions but with what is my true goal in life today.

I want to ask you to keep the rings and wait for me but I know how utterly ridiculous and selfish that is, because however you feel about me now, they who work on you after this day will distort your thinking and feelings about me.

I have existed, I still do exist and I hope one day we will meet again and that you will say “yes” to my request for your hand in marriage. Because at this moment in time I truly, deeply love you and I cannot see that ever changing.

Please believe there is goodness in me, not evil.

I love you,

Alan Johnson.”

October 28
th
, SBCT Press Briefing Room, England.

The briefing officer had finished her report and gave the questions to the floor.

A hand shot up; “John DeVries, Times newspaper, you say that we now have five separate outbreaks of Anthrax poisoning in the UK which have killed 15 people. Is this military grade Anthrax?”

“Yes it is.”

“Who has manufactured it?”

“We do not yet know; we do know it has a different signature to the WMD manufactured in the UK, USA, Russia, China, India, Pakistan or Israel.”

“Then where is it from?”

“I urge you to print only what we know which is that to date fifteen people have been killed by Anthrax poisoning, full stop.”

Another hand shot up and a man stated, “Ian Wise, Daily Telegraph; could this Anthrax be from Iran of Iraq?”

“We do not know.”

“How much of it is in the country?”

“We do not know.”

“Could there be a lot more?”

“We do not know,” she paused and continued trying to bring a sense of calm to the meeting, “we have only fifteen cases of confirmed Anthrax poisoning in the UK, it’s about the same death toll as that per day on the roads, so please do not make major headlines, we don’t want to spook the nation do we?”

“Now that is all we know at the moment Ladies and Gentlemen. There will be another briefing in 72 hours.”

Alisa Maine-Brown and Commander Bagshaw sat together drinking coffee, awaiting the return of their press officer, who having concluded the short briefing made her way to Maine-Brown’s office.

“How did they respond Alison?” asked Maine-Brown.

“OK I think, but you never can tell what they might print, I tried to put a calming influence on the brief but we’ll just have to wait and see what the headlines say tomorrow morning,” she responded.

“OK, thank you for that, when is your next briefing?”

“In 72 hours ma’am.”

“That gives us a little time to consider what we might tell them,” replied Maine-Brown as she escorted Alison to the door of her office then continued, ”we’ll keep you informed so that you can update them at the next brief.”

She closed her office door and retraced her steps to sit with Bagshaw who enquired, “How much do you think we should tell the press?”

“As little as possible under the circumstances.”

“How many people now know of the Iraqi affair?”

“Very few, there’s the PM, the Secretary of State, the Head of Armed Forces, you, me and of course Johnson, who we must now assume is dead as we have had no contacts in either the Evening Standard or the Manchester Evening News.”

“Do you think we could get someone into Syria to confirm whether Johnson is dead or alive,” he enquired.

“I suppose it’s possible but who would we send?”

“Major Rock ma’am, as you know he’s offered his resignation because of the debacle in Cairo and therefore I think he will do anything to regain our support.”

“Is he capable?”

“Oh yes, very much so, he’s nearly as good as Johnson.”

“You’ll have to debrief him with regard to the situation.”

“The full debrief?”

“You can’t send a man into there without a full understanding of the situation. Is he secure?”

“Fully ma’am.”

“Then debrief him as soon as possible, I’ll see what connections we have in Syria.”

October 29
th
, SBCT HQ, London

“Coffee Major?”

“Please,” responded Rock.

“Help yourself to milk and sugar.”

“Thank you Commander.”

Bagshaw sipped his coffee, replaced his cup in its saucer, smiled at Rock and said, “We have read your report of events in Cairo and understand your request to resign, however we have a situation regarding Johnson and I know you are the man for the job.”

Rock laughed out loud, “Johnson, a situation regarding Johnson, the guy who killed half my men, not to mention a few Egyptians.”

Bagshaw looked intently into Rock’s face and responded, “He’s one of us Major.”

“What?” gasped Rock.

“He’s on our side, he’s one of us.”

“So I’ve spent the last two years chasing a guy who’s on our bloody side” he growled as he banged his fist onto the desk.

“Afraid so,” nodded Bagshaw.

“Then why the hell didn’t anybody tell me”

“That doesn’t matter now does it?”

“It bloody well matters to all those people who died not to mention their families,” snapped Rock.

Bagshaw nodded his head and sighed, “Sometimes we have to sacrifice a few for the greater cause.”

“What greater bloody cause.”

“That is something we have to discuss and why you are here,” responded Bagshaw whose stern face softened into a brief smile, “Now Major, are you on board or not?”

“On board what sir?” he growled.

“I want you to go and find Johnson.”

“And kill him?”

“No, no, Jesus Major, just sit quiet and listen for a moment,” placated Bagshaw who continued, “as you know after the first Gulf War, Iraq was banned from manufacturing WMD and all existing stockpiles were supposed to be destroyed, however we now know both orders were ignored.”

“How the hell do you know.”

“An Iraqi doctor gave himself up to us during the fighting, he was afraid for his life, not from us but from Saddam’s henchmen who had systematically killed all those who had worked on the WMD programmes. He was able to provide us with credible evidence that WMD was manufactured on quite a large scale, with much of it being distributed by sea. We also know the Iraqis came up with a simple method to keep some of their stockpiled WMD and continue to develop others, as well as methods to keep this away from spy satellites and the watchful gaze of Dr Hans Blix and his team of scientists. The way they did it was to keep it simple, to simply contain it in containers.”

“But how?” interrupted Rock.

“How it was done is simple but we first need to go back to 1991 because after the first Gulf War the West put virtually total sanctions on Iraq. However we know the West allowed food and medical aid to go in and we also know that Saddam earned millions through the illegal export of oil. On a daily basis hundreds of containers containing food and medicine were unloaded at major ports. We also know that hundreds of empty containers were left in Iraq and hundreds sent back for refill. Now you’re talking years and years of this process between 91 and 2002 so the numbers of containers are astronomical. Now let us take research, development and manufacture of WMD first. It was decided to forget about atomic weapons or rockets or space development and just concentrate on germ warfare; such as Anthrax, Smallpox and Ricin for example.

Now put that to one side and imagine any motorway service station in the UK where all the lorry drivers park for a rest, to eat and pee. Can you imagine hundreds of them side by side in the car parks,” asked Bagshaw.

Rock nodded and Bagshaw continued, “So this is what they did; containers arrived at say, Jaz-ye Abadan, they were unloaded, the majority returned, some didn’t because they were damaged or lost at sea.” He took a sip of coffee then continued, “do you know that thousands go missing at sea every year, however the containers that went missing in Iraq were driven off into a warehouse. Each container was then lined with a foil like substance, the silver facing out to reflect back intrusive observation. A second lining faced inward to stop anything getting out. Satellites do not see through 3 layers of metal like that, nor do they particularly want to if the outer container says UNICEF or Red Cross on its side and top. Now back to the English motorway park, can you see how close these trucks park to each other, side by side and back to back. He paused while using his hands to demonstrate how close the trucks could be together then said, I’m trying to make you see how very easily you can create enormous space by driving 6 or 8 container trucks side by side and back to back. Enough to make a mobile laboratory that is virtually undetectable.”

He took another drink of coffee, smiled at Rock and continued, “Evidently all they did was to cut a hole in the side or back of each container and fit a roller shutter door with an airtight seal. Some of the trucks were also fitted with a 5’0” flexible steel tube double lined with foil and welded to be airtight. This tube pushed from one container to the next through the roller shutter doors provided access to the other container and so on and so on. In just over one hour you can have 8 – 10 – 12 – 20 container wagons linked together to make an enormous lab.”

Rock sipped his coffee and interrupted, “But any spy satellite would pick up that size of structure in no time.”

Bagshaw smiled and nodded, “Of course they’d be picked up by satellite, but think back to the UK and your motorway car parks. If you took an aerial photograph of one of those car parks and saw 20 container trucks side by side and back to back, what’s the problem, because that’s exactly what should be there. So, Saddam Hussein didn’t do this in the middle of nowhere, he built his labs in car parks, in storage facilities, at airports, docks, freight terminals; anywhere where you’d expect to see container trucks.

Now you’ve fooled the spy in the sky all you need to do is to ensure Hans Blix and his teams don’t discover them. Therefore each container was self contained and some were even put aside for accommodation. You know where Hans Blix’s teams are staying, you have bugged their rooms and know a certain amount of their strategy, you’ve even bugged their trucks but most importantly of all you’ve placed your mobile laboratories at least two hours drive away from his HQ. He sets off in the morning and requests a route North or East or anywhere. You know immediately which labs can continue to operate and which labs may have to be dismantled. You put the latter on amber alert. If Blix requests to stop elsewhere on the route to the amber labs you wait. If he gets within 1 hour fifteen minutes of the site you go to red alert, close down the lab, contain each container and even drive them off if you so wish in different directions; to meet up again at a prearranged time and place the next day. Hans Blix probably had one or two pass him on the highway, saw the UNICEF or Red Cross logo and thought to himself, ‘we in the West are doing the best we can with this aid to the Iraqis, God Bless America, and all that crap.’ Meanwhile Saddam continued with his plans.”

“But if this has been going on for years why has nothing been found?”

“Because Saddam hid it under the sea or on ships at sea.”

“We know he had three ships especially converted for the task, the SS Afyon, Asyon and Verax, which operated out of Iraq for many years moving containers around the Mediterranean.”

“How do you know all this?” interrupted Rock.

“The full details you do not need to know, but we were able to interrogate the Iraqi doctor who had worked on the programme for 5 years and had immense knowledge of the operation.”