Stand By, Stand By

ELEVEN

It’s an old joke in the RAF that Lockheed, manufacturers of the Hercules C 130 transport, solved the aircraft’s noise problem by putting it all inside. When you hear a Herc fly over it doesn’t sound too bad, and even at close quarters the scream of the four turbo-props is tolerable. Inside the back, though, it’s a different matter. The high, penetrating whine bores into your head, and after seven or eight hours even earplugs and defenders can’t keep it out of your brain.

That was what we had to contend with — three consecutive marathon flights of eight, eight and five hours respectively. The pull-down seats along the sides of the fuselage are impossible to sit on for more than a few minutes, so the guys slung their parachute-silk hammocks and crashed out in them, swinging along to the rhythm of the aircraft. Most RAF crews would have gone ballistic at people taking such liberties with their aircraft, but our particular crew was dedicated to special forces missions, and we knew several of them personally, so more or less anything went. It was also possible to make the odd comfortable nest among our Lacon boxes. Looking at the steel trunks, all padlocked and labelled and held down by heavy-duty netting, I reflected on the weight of the kit we were taking. The boxes of ammunition were four-man carries, and many of the others weren’t much lighter.

From Brize Norton the plane lumbered across the Atlantic to Gander, in Newfoundland, where it went tits-up on the runway, so that we had to kill time while its load was transferred to another. The next hop took us to Belize, north of Panama, where it was stinking hot. Finally we flew down to a military airfield somewhere in the west of Colombia, the flight being timed so that we came in at the dead of night, when nobody would see us.

After so many hours cooped up, the lads were pissed off to find that they weren’t allowed to leave the aircraft. Instead, some immigration official came on board to stamp our passports. When we heard that we had to fly on for another couple of hours to a little-used military airfield way out in the country, the pilots were even more pissed off, as they’d never seen the place before, and it had no proper runway lights. But in the end there was no problem, and we finally staggered out into the warm tropical darkness at about 0400, just in time for a shower and a nap before breakfast.

Daylight revealed that the camp was built on level ground, and that the perimeter fence enclosed a large area of maybe fifty acres. Beyond the wire, scrub had been cleared back for another hundred yards or so, and then dense secondary jungle took over. In the far distance, above the trees, we could see bare rocky mountains. The buildings were all new, made of concrete, and reasonably well finished, with mosquito screens over the windows, doors that fitted, and showers that worked. The only trouble was, the place was alive with flies, big spiders and geckos; instead of rats, as in Belfast, it was lizards, going like smoke up and down the walls, racing across the walkways and disappearing into holes among the rocks.

We spent most of day one sorting ourselves out. We went for a run round the perimeter and did a bit of phys to get the flight out of our systems. The dry season, known as the verrano, was coming to an end, but the weather seemed to be holding up. Early morning was relatively cool, but by eleven or so the heat had built into the high eighties, even though we were 3,000 feet above sea-level, and for us, not yet acclimatized, the temperature was quite oppressive. That didn’t stop the guys lying out after lunch and sunbathing in their shreddies. They’d immediately spotted the possibility of acquiring a serious tan; I also saw the possibility of getting seriously burnt, and I let it be known that if anyone was careless enough to roast himself, he’d be seriously fined. Because we didn’t want to make ourselves conspicuous by wearing any kind of uniform, we’d decided to go for shorts and T-shirts, and that in itself presented a problem, as our necks and knees were glaringly white.

Another plus was the big swimming pool, which we could use whenever we wanted. The canteen, which we shared with the Colombians, was an attractive, airy place, but at first most of the guys couldn’t take the food at all. It seemed to be beans and chillis with everything, and by the end of the day most of us were racing for the bog. As everyone was expressly ordered to put used paper into a bin, rather than down the pan, the shit-house was not a place in which to sit thinking fine thoughts.

Peter Black spent that day with us to see us in, and came with me and Tony to meet his opposite number, Captain Jaime Ortiga — a smooth guy, dark and Indian-looking, with a pencil-thin moustache. He was all smiles as he ushered us into his office. The room was bare, with whitewashed walls and a single big fan turning slowly overhead. The only decoration was a colour photograph, mounted and framed, on the wall behind the boss’s desk. It showed a middle-aged guy in a peaked cap with a red band, and about three hundredweight of medals on his chest.

Have a go, I thought. Break the ice. So, summoning my best accent, I asked, ‘¿Hay el Presidente?’

Captain Jaime looked hellishly startled. He spun round as if someone had driven a pin into his arse, saw the photo, and suddenly realized what I had said. The moustache spread out in a wide smile.

‘¡Si, si! El Presidente Gaviria! ¿Habla castellano?’

‘Un poco.’

‘¡Muy bien!’

That little exchange put him in high good humour, and, with Tony interpreting, he gave us a very civil welcome to the base. I was pleased to find that I could understand almost everything he said, even if I got a bit tongue-tied when trying to answer questions. I heard him ask Tony how he came to have such fluent Spanish, and Tony kept out of trouble by saying that he’d learnt it as a child.

The captain told us that the group he wanted us to train consisted of forty-two DAS officers. Some were new to bodyguard work, but others had already been partially trained by the Americans. Suddenly he broke into English to say: ‘We no like Americans. British better! British tactic better!’ No doubt he meant it as a compliment. I was watching Tony’s face, and saw one eyebrow go up by about two millimetres.

It was agreed that we would start training next morning. With the preliminaries settled, Black set off for Bogotá in a Land Cruiser, together with his diplomatic bag, the radio codes and so on. The drive was said to take about four hours. He told us he was going to be based in the Hostal Bonavento, a small hotel near the British Embassy in the northern quarter of the city. He reckoned he’d be spending a good deal of time at the embassy, in the office of the defence attaché, which had a direct satellite link with the UK. Since we had a portable satcom set with us, keeping in touch with him would present no problem.

Training started on day two. Startled out of their wits by Murdo McFarlane’s reveille, the home team shambled out on to the barrack square at 0630, all shapes and sizes in white T-shirts with little DAS logos on them and dark-blue trousers.

We formed them up in three ranks, comprising three groups of fifteen, fifteen and twelve. At my request, Tony put over a little spiel about the requirement for physical fitness and strength in BG work, and the need to be able to heave bodies around in quick time. I could see one or two of the Colombians looking fairly sick, and when we set them running round the perimeter wire, the fatties soon fell away behind. By the time we’d given them a dose of circuit-training they looked about done-for; but after a shower and breakfast they came out spruce enough for training proper. We were hoping to pass them all out in the end, so we wanted to nurse them along.

At an early stage we explained to them that the team which eventually emerged would have two elements: the bodyguard itself, which would surround the president and give him close protection, and the counterattack squad, which would range out ahead of him whenever he was on the move, making a show of its weapons and letting everyone know that it had real teeth. I’d expected the majority of them to prefer the second option, and I was surprised to find that most of them thought it was the BG work that was really macho. They thought they were defending God, and all wanted to be the man who saved the president’s life — i.e. in the bodyguard itself. The idea of going CAT really pissed them off. At a later stage we planned to split the course into two main streams, but for the time being we tried to teach all of them a bit of everything.

They certainly needed some instruction, most of all in the use of weapons. Some were OK with their pistols, but when it came to rifles and machine-guns they were useless. I could see that they were actually scared of the weapons, and sometimes shut their eyes when they pulled the trigger. They were also excitable, and inclined to be bloody dangerous. There was one short-arsed guy considered even by his mates to be a bit cracked in the head. His name was Alejandro, but they referred to him openly as ‘El Loco’ — the loony — so we did the same. One day I had him firing his Galil on automatic when suddenly he gave a yell and dropped the weapon, which went on blasting off of its own accord, leaping about on the ground and sending rounds winging away into sundry parts of Colombia. Fortunately there were only half a dozen rounds left in the magazine and nobody got hurt. When I tore into him for letting go, El Loco protested that the gun wouldn’t stop firing when he released the trigger — and when we stripped it down, we found that the sear had indeed broken.

To sharpen up their powers of observation, we laid out a special lane through the jungle surrounding the camp, putting down things like compasses, small pieces of map, matchboxes and other objects that wouldn’t normally have been there. We then made them walk down the lane, one at a time, taking notes of what they’d spotted. To keep them on the ball we made a few booby traps out of trip-wires connected to thunderflashes.

I also gingered them up with a few little explosives. The aim of working with plastic explosive was to make them aware of the damage a car-bomb could do, and to teach them what to look for when they were clearing an area — to keep eyes open for suspicious packages or anything out of the ordinary. They were fascinated when I broke some eight-ounce sticks of explosive out of their wrapping paper and started to knead them in my hands. When I proposed to set fire to a lump of the stuff they were poised for the off; and when I did ignite it, they disappeared like shit off a shovel into the jungle, because PE 4 burns with a merry roar and an intense orange flame. They weren’t to know that it can’t explode if ignited, unless it’s in a bloody great lump of thirty pounds or more. Later we got the wreck of an old car out into an area surrounded by rocks, and, working on the principle of P for Plenty, I put a charge of nearly five pounds underneath the chassis. When the students saw the whole thing rise to the height of the tree-tops, they were chuffed to bollocks.

That helped bring them on side. But it was when we started on car drills that we really got a good spirit going. Until then the Colombians tended to feign indifference, especially the ones who’d already had some training from the Yanks. They thought they knew it all, and weren’t interested in learning anything new. But when they heard what we were actually saying, and saw that our methods were far superior, they came over to us in a big way. For instance, the Americans had taught them that if they got attacked from one side, all they had to do was turn in that direction and assault the enemy. When we showed them how to pepperpot outwards, and come in from different angles under covering fire, they were mightily impressed.

The other thing that chuffed them was unarmed combat. At first they were laughing at Murdo because of the dark-red colour of his hair and moustache, and the tattoos which covered him from the neck down. (When he showed them the pair of eyes on his arse, they fell down laughing.) Soon they were calling him ‘El Mono’ — the ape. But when he invited them to attack him, one after another, he decked the lot, or tied them in such knots that they were very soon crying for mercy. Then he started to divulge a few secrets of holds and so on, and their respect for him became enormous.

What they didn’t realize was that Murdo was one of the few Jocks never known to take a drink; to him, fitness was a creed, and his obsession with it gave him a strong practical interest in medicine. On this trip he acted as our medic, treating several of the Colombians for minor injuries — most of which he’d inflicted himself. All this made him very popular with the locals.

Another cause of amazement to the Colombians was Marky Springer, generally known as Sparky because he was our principal signaller. Over six foot tall, thin as a piece of wire, and covered in dense black hair, Sparky looked like a bloody great spider. He didn’t drink either, and, unlike Murdo, he was fanatically mean about money. Tight as a gnat’s arsehole, he hoarded every penny, and never went out to celebrate. Yet he, too, was a first-class operator, able to turn his hand to many skills.

Driving techniques and range-work were taught by Stew McQuarrie, one of the ugliest members of D Squadron, and a renowned piss-artist, given to drowning his sorrows in case he should catch sight of himself in the mirror. With his wiry bleached hair and permanently wrinkled forehead, he looked a picture of misery. The great thing about Stew, though, was that even if he got smashed out of his mind one evening, he’d be there on the dot in the morning, ready to give his all. In spite of the beer he put away, he had the steadiest of hands, and was one of our best marksmen.

As I walked round watching the lads at work, and listening to them teaching, I felt pleased with the way things were going. But the experience also made me realize that, competent as they all were, there is no such thing as a typical SAS guy: they are all individuals, all very different.

As for the Colombians, they liked it best when we started showing them close-protection formations, such as the closed box (in which they formed tightly round the main man) or the open V (with two guys watching for any threat from the front, ready to stop anyone coming inside, and another guy always on the main man’s shoulder).

By the end of the first week our guys had settled in well. Everyone was walking around saying ‘¡Carajo!’ instead of ‘Shit!’ and ‘Jodido’ in place of ‘It’s fucked‘. At the start of a lesson they’d crack off with ‘OK, para bolas!’ rather than ‘Pay attention‘, and they’d learnt that ‘mamar gallo’ meant to take the piss out of somebody.

After work, the trainees talked endlessly about drugs. The fact that Escobar was in the nick had them well wound up, and they kept telling stories about him: how in his prime he’d been earning a million dollars a day; how he’d established a full-scale zoo, with rhinos and elephants, at his estancia; and how he’d mounted one of his early cocaine-running aircraft on top of an arch over the road leading to his house, as a kind of trophy.

The drug war was on everybody’s mind, and one evening we had another brief, this time from an officer of the Colombian anti-narcotics unit. A lot of what he said was already familiar to us, but when he got down to the nitty-gritty he became much more interesting. Talking of Escobar, for instance, he described a telephone conversation in which the drug baron had been speaking to his wife. When she protested about screams she could hear in the background, Escobar shouted, ‘Just keep that fellow quiet until I’ve finished my conversation.’ It transpired that the man yelling was losing his fingers, one by one, to a pair of bolt-croppers, because he was suspected of having lifted a few thousand dollars from one of the bulk payments. If that fellow erred again, the narcotics officer told us, not only he, but his whole family, would be executed — children, wife, parents, the lot.

‘Yes,’ said the officer, in his fractured English, ‘I am sorry, but life is a little cheap in Colombia. You know, last year the narcos want to kill one sapo — an informer, literally a toad. They hear he is in the police station. Next to it is some apartments. So what do they do? They bring a truck full of explosive. Park it outside. Big bang. End of police station. End of apartments. One informer dead. Also two hundred other persons dead. ¡Maravilloso!’

He also said they’d recently caught a notorious torturer called Gonzales whose speciality was sawing off his victims’ heads in front of their families. It wasn’t that he wanted to conceal anybody’s identity, just that he enjoyed dismemberment.

We didn’t have much in the way of entertainment, but while everything was relatively new that hardly mattered. One advantage was that there seemed to be no threat from guerrillas or other nasties, so that security was totally relaxed. In the evenings we could stroll down the road to the nearest village, where there was a bar cum restaurant which served incredibly cheap meals. For the equivalent of about fifty pence we could eat to bursting point, and the local beer was about fifteen pence a bottle. We could tell from the label that the stuff was brewed just down the road, and it cleared your gut like paint-stripper; but you could get nicely wrecked on it just the same.

For our first few days we reckoned the national sport must be cycling. Every time we went out of camp we saw streams of fanaticos flying down the road like the clappers on racing bikes. Then one evening we went to the pub and found that a big soccer match was on. A huge television screen had gone up in one corner of the bar; the picture was diabolical, and so was the sound, which was turned up to about 2,000 decibels, but the place was packed with fans, roaring like lunatics. By the time the right team won, they were dancing on the tables. This led to our discovery that the nation was soccer-mad, and that Captain Jaime was a keen supporter of the team he called ‘Espurs’. Unfortunately none of our lads could match his knowledge or answer his questions about the club’s latest exploits, but soccer always made a good subject for casual conversation. At least we’d heard of Captain Jaime’s hero ‘Gary Leeneker’, Spurs’ skipper, and when the local radio station reported that his team had been defeated by Nottingham Forest in the semi-final of the Rumbelows’ League Cup, we were able to sympathize.

It was at the end of our second week that we went up to Bogotá. When work finished on Thursday night, we declared a long weekend and prepared to head for the bright lights. Many of our trainees came from the capital, and they couldn’t wait to get back there, so they set off ahead of us in their own cars, promising to meet us at our hotel and show us the best places to buy emeralds and leather goods.

Peter Black had been down to see us once, but he’d called off a second visit on the pretext that the international situation was difficult, and that he needed to be in the embassy. He’d booked us into the Hostal Bonavento for the nights of Friday and Saturday.

We set off in two Land Cruisers early on Friday morning, with Colombian drivers, in high spirits and full of expectation. After two weeks on the edge of the jungle, everyone was ready for a bit of the old vida regalada, or, as some call it, high life. Everyone, that is, except Sparky Springer, who preferred to stay in camp on his own, eating shit, and refused to spend a single centavo if he could avoid it. Since he was easily the most proficient guy on the 319 radio, it was no bad thing that he stayed on site.

By third-world standards the road was pretty good, with only the odd mega pothole to double up the Toyota’s springs, and the main obstacles to progress were pack-animals and buses. Donkeys and mules were plodding along under huge burdens, often with loads so wide that they took up as much space as a car. The peasants leading or riding them mostly wore dark-coloured hats like pork pies, with little turned-up rims, although some of the women had their heads swathed in black scarves.

The buses were going faster than the carts and donkeys, but not much. Just to look at, they were quite an eyeful, because every square inch of the bodywork was painted in brilliant colours, hot reds, yellows and blues. A lot of the decoration was in formal patterns, but often, in the middle of a panel, there’d be an elaborate picture — a view of mountains, a stretch of coastline, a church or a bridge. Every vehicle must have taken hundreds of hours to paint. They were grossly overloaded, stuffed to the gills with passengers, and most were leaning drunkenly to right or left, with half the suspension knackered. Black diesel smoke poured from their exhausts, and the slightest uphill incline dragged them down to about 20 m.p.h., if not to a halt.

Some of the hilly country we went through was farmed, but thousands of acres were still scrub. Beside the road peasants were selling fruit and bottled drinks from little shacks made of corrugated tin. Every village had a whitewashed church with a big cross above it, and all along the roadside were shrines to the Virgin Mary, with statues set in little arched recesses. As we progressed through a mountain pass, we saw that some of the shrines were hacked out of the living rock. Everything looked primitive and peaceful, and it was hard to imagine that the country was in the grip of narco-war.

As we trundled along I tried to think forward. The Colombians wanted the grand finale of our training to take place in Bogotá. The idea was that a team of our best recruits would show off their newly learnt skills by taking the president himself, or maybe his deputy, straight through the centre of the capital in a three-car motorcade, with a big, armoured limo in the centre, to the national stadium. Even though that great event was still a month or more ahead, I was keen to see some of the course over which it would take place.

For almost all our four-hour journey we were climbing, so the air became progressively cooler. Peter Black had warned us that we might feel faint at first, because the city’s nearly 9,000 feet above sea-level, and if you go up to that height quickly you can suffer from lack of oxygen. Maybe the drive had been slow enough to allow us to acclimatize; whatever, we simply felt relieved to escape from the heat.

The run-in to Bogotá was across a level plain, with a haze of smog ahead of us, and big mountains dominating the eastern skyline. Our first sight of the city was a severe let-down. Along the sides of the road there was a straggle of tumbledown shacks, which gradually thickened up into a vast and incredibly sordid jumble. Corrugated tin, parts of old cars, wooden boards, inverted bathtubs, doors, canvas, sheets of metal, plywood and cardboard — you name it, the Colombians had used it to run up their hovels. Mangy-looking dogs were nosing about the heaps of garbage. Tethered donkeys stood around, eyes shut, ears back. ‘Shitsville!’ cried someone — and so it was. These were the notorious barrios, or slums, that people had kept telling us about. Even passing through with the car windows closed, we got the impression that the place must stink to high heaven.

Soon, though, we were through the worst, and into an area that was still poor but at least had proper buildings. Our driver, Simon, who spoke a few words of English, had been proposing to head round the western outskirts to our destination in the northern quarter, but I told him to go right through the centre, so that we could get a look at it. Shiny high-rise blocks loomed ahead, and after a few more minutes we came to the centre itself. Another world. Suddenly we could have been in any prosperous European or American city — Frankfurt, Brussels, Chicago. Gleaming skyscrapers of glass and steel soared into the sky, and at street level the shops were as glossy as could be, full of expensive clothes, furniture, video cameras, hi-fi and other electronic equipment. Cafes, bars, restaurants and cinemas jostled in between. The contrast with the slums was incredible.

The city had been built on a grid system, with the main streets running north and south; but every one was jammed solid by cars and buses. With so many engines ticking over, the pollution was horrendous. The combination of smog and altitude made it difficult to breathe. Whenever lights changed and a mass of traffic surged forward, every driver clapped his hand on the horn and kept it there, so that the noise was outrageous as well.

‘We’ll need to watch ourselves here,’ I said as an old woman narrowly escaped death under the wheels of a cement truck. ‘They don’t give a flying monkey’s for pedestrians.’

‘Sure don’t,’ Tony replied. ‘And the other thing you need to watch out for is pickpockets. See all those kids — those street urchins? Gamines. They’re partly beggars, partly thieves. While one’s accosting you, another slides up and tries to snatch your wallet.’

Soon I realized that the system of street names, or rather numbers, could hardly have been simpler. All the big roads running north and south, parallel with the mountains, were called carreras, or avenues. The streets running across them at right-angles were calles. We were heading north on Carrera Septima, and the further we went, the higher the number of the calles became, rising from single figures in the centre. As we inched our way forward, Simon kept up a running commentary, pointing out sights of interest.

On one corner, where crowds of people were milling about among some stalls on the pavement, he pointed and said, ‘These men selling esmeralda.’

‘Emeralds in the street?’

‘Ciertamente,’ said Simon indignantly. ‘Every day.’

I had a sudden vision of an emerald necklace flashing on Tracy’s skin. Wouldn’t green stones look fabulous on her freckled neck, framed by that chestnut hair?

The Calle numbers kept rising, through the twenties, into the thirties and forties. Our hotel, the Bonavento, was way out on Calle 93, but conveniently placed within a few blocks of the British Embassy on 98. The further north we drove, the ritzier the surroundings became; from the number of big houses set back inside walled compounds, it was clear that we were entering the smart residential area of the city. There were also fancy-looking restaurants by the dozen.

The Hostal Bonavento turned out to be smaller than I’d expected, and they tried to pack us in three to a room; but I insisted that we got four rooms altogether. That meant one lot of three and three pairs, and I went into a room with Tony. We dumped our kit, had a wash and went for a quick lunch. I’d already arranged to go round to the embassy at 2.30, and I wanted Tony to come with me; but I told everyone else that they could fix their own programmes, provided they were back at the hotel and fit to travel in time for our return journey at lunchtime on Sunday.

I think at the back of my mind I’d been hoping that the embassy would be a beautiful old colonial building, standing in the middle of a walled garden. Far from it. It was merely a suite of offices on the fourth floor of a modern tower block, with the amazing name the Torre Propaganda Sancho. Having sat on our arses for four hours we opted to walk round there rather than take a taxi.

The air was thin, all right. Even tabbing at a normal pace made us pant. Because we’d heard that the Colombians clocked visitors as they went into the embassy we’d decided not to turn up together; so a couple of blocks away we split and I went on ahead.

Inside the foyer of the propaganda tower a receptionist took my details, gave me a visitor’s badge, and directed me into the lift. ‘Embajada Británica’ said the elaborate gold writing outside the door on the fourth-floor landing. I rang the bell and waited, not quite knowing what to expect. There was quite a long pause before anything happened, and I was on the point of ringing again when the security system clicked into life and a woman’s voice said, ‘Can I help you?’

‘Sergeant Sharp to see Captain Black.’

A buzzer sounded and the door opened. Inside, waiting to receive me, stood an amazingly attractive woman, simply dressed in a white shirt and black skirt, with long, dark hair and a distinctly Spanish look about her oval face, olive skin and black eyes. She was older than me, I reckoned, but not much.

‘Hello,’ she said, smiling and holding out an elegant hand, ‘I’m Luisa Bolton. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but our receptionist’s off sick, and I’m having to double.’

Her English was perfect, but with a slight Spanish intonation. I introduced myself, and explained that Tony would be with us in a moment. Then I asked, ‘What do you do normally, then?’

‘Communications — that’s my job. Come in, anyway. Peter’s with the ambassador for the moment. Will you have some coffee?’

She led the way into an ultra-modern office, leaving a trail of some weird perfume behind her, and I perched awkwardly on a swivel chair among the fax-machines, teleprinters and word-processors while she went into a little annexe and set a coffee percolator on the go. A plate-glass window gave a dramatic view of the nearby mountains to the east, with expensive-looking properties clinging to their lower slopes. On the opposite wall the only decoration was a huge coloured print of a condor with its wings outstretched. The picture must have been ten feet wide, nearly life-size.

Soon, another delicious smell was mingling with the perfume: fresh, home-grown coffee. It was odd, but this woman was reminding me strongly of Tracy. Her colouring was quite different, and her legs weren’t so long, but there was something about her movements and mannerisms that was familiar and enticing. I realized I was watching her with more than just professional interest. I gave myself a sharp mental bollocking. Hands off! For one thing, Tracy had been fantastic in taking on both my house and my child. For another, I knew that any involvement with a member of the embassy staff might lead to serious complications — especially as I was still on a warning order from the Regiment, and needed to play everything straight.

In a couple of minutes Tony arrived, and I introduced him. As Luisa organized cups and saucers, she asked questions about our journey up, and we answered politely. But all the time I was thinking, ‘There’s something going on here. It was that one word which had tipped me off: the way she’d referred to the Rupert simply as ‘Peter’. In a flash of intuition I felt certain he was humping her. Why else would she refer to him in that familiar way, by his first name only? That was why he’d suddenly cancelled his second visit to the camp: he’d got straight into a legover engagement and was having too good a time in Bogotá.

I wondered if I ought to have a word with him straight away, tell him to screw the nut. This was his first team job. In the past, plenty of jobs had been ruined by one guy not being able to keep his pecker in his pants. I realized though that if I said anything, it might lead to a major confrontation to the detriment of the team. Already there was an atmosphere between us, and any criticism from me would be bound to make it worse.

As Luisa came back carrying the cups, I got a look at her left hand. No rings. I slipped a look at Tony. He was fancying her something torrid, but he hadn’t heard what I had.

‘Milk?’ she asked.

‘Thanks.’

‘Sugar?’

‘No, thank you.’

I stirred my cup and said innocently, ‘Have you been out here long?’

‘Most of my life.’ She gave that dazzling smile again. ‘My family settled here at the beginning of the century. They were Spanish. Then, in the fifties, my father came from England, married my mother, and settled down here. So I’m half Spanish, but have an English surname. And no “o” in my Luisa.’

‘How are comms with the UK?’ I asked.

‘They’re terrific now,’ she answered. ‘The telephone used to be terrible. The lines were always jammed, and if you did get through, the interference was impossible. But with satellites, it’s fantastic. We can talk to London as if it were next door. And of course your own satellite phone is incredible.’

We made small talk for a few minutes. Then we heard movement outside, and a solid, stocky man appeared in the doorway, holding a sheaf of papers. He was in his early forties, I guessed, overweight, with neck bulging over collar and gut over waistband.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I’m John Palmer, Defence Attaché.’

Black was with him, and all four of us went into Palmer’s office. There was nothing difficult to discuss. I reported that everything was going fine down at the camp; apart from the odd attack of gut-rot, all our guys were well and enjoying themselves. There was no friction with the natives. On the contrary, the locals were friendly. Our trainees were responding well to a bit of pressure and would make up into a reasonable BG team. I could see no particular problems coming up.

The news from the other end was less promising. The DA revealed that diplomatic relations between Britain and Colombia were under strain, after the arrest of a Colombian student at Essex University on charges of drug-smuggling. There had been verbal fisticuffs between the two governments, and threats to expel embassy staff at both ends. All this made our own position precarious; it was therefore essential that we did nothing to make the ill-feeling worse.

‘Of course, your presence in the country is entirely unofficial,’ the DA told me. ‘Things might get very difficult if the media reported that you were here.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I told him. ‘Nobody’s planning to sell his story to the Espectador. Our lads are all fairly sensible.’ Privately I was thinking, What sort of a prick is this? What’s he trying to tell me?

After half an hour of rather uneasy chat, we pulled out. As we were leaving, Luisa gave me a card with all the embassy phone numbers on it, including an emergency number, a home number for herself, and one for Major J.R. Palmer, Defence Attaché. On our way out Tony said, as a parting shot, ‘No chance of your keeping us company at supper, I suppose? Show us the sights a bit?’

Again she nearly killed him with that smile, ‘That would be wonderful,’ she said. ‘But as it happens we’ve got a reception on here. I’m on duty. That puts me out, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh well — not to worry. Another time, perhaps.’

Black came down in the lift with us, and on the way I said, ‘I presume you’re invited to the party tonight.’

The light was rather dim, but I’m sure he blushed. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I am.’

We’d decided not to piss about leaving the tower separately. As we started walking, Tony didn’t make any comment for a moment, but then he said, ‘He’s screwing her.’

‘I wondered if I should say something to him. He could fuck up the whole operation.’

‘How did he get into the Regiment?’ Tony asked.

‘They must have been short of officers when he came along.’

It was the prospect of belly-dancing that made Tony and I choose the Four Seasons restaurant: authentic Colombian food, and a bit of entertainment thrown in. By seven-thirty we were definitely hungry, so we called up one of the black-and-yellow taxis and rode it into town. The other guys had long since disappeared like water into sand. I predicted that Mel, for one, would come back shit-faced and minus his wallet.

Our own idea was probably much the same as everyone else’s: to have a good meal, suss out the belly-dancing and then head on for some of the hotter nightspots. Unfortunately it didn’t work out.

The restaurant was fine. A couple of photos in the window had been unpromising — the dancer, Carmencita, looked more like a Michelin ad than a great seducer — but we had a beer in the bar, and then chose a table beside the small dance floor. We both had the same main course — tamales, maize pancakes with a terrific, spicy filling of chopped meat and vegetables. The filling was delicious, but so hot that we needed several more drinks to swill it down, and we hit the Carlsberg Specials.

We were just sitting back anticipating that action might soon start up, when the thunderbolt struck. Our table gave us a good view of everyone who came in and out, but I wasn’t paying much attention. A party of four men sat down at the table next to ours. Then, looking straight past Tony, over his left shoulder, I froze.

‘Hey!’ Tony was leaning forward. ‘What’s the matter? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.’

‘I have. Let’s get the hell out of here.’

Forcing myself to move my hand casually, I signalled a passing waiter and made motions for him to write out our bill. But when I picked up my glass to finish the beer, my hand was shaking — because there, barely ten feet away, sat Declan Farrell.

‘What is it?’ said Tony. ‘You look real sick. You’ve gone white as paint.’

‘Talk in Spanish,’ I muttered. ‘Talk about football. Anything.’

He looked at me as though I was crazy, but he started in. I hardly heard what he was saying, because I was desperately trying to collect my wits. It’s OK, I kept telling myself. You’re in no danger, because Farrell has never seen you. He’s never set eyes on you. He hasn’t a clue what you look like. If you don’t do anything crazy, he can’t possibly pick you out. Reason told me that Tony and I were not particularly conspicuous. Plenty of other people in the restaurant were dressed like us in casual shirts and jeans. Farrell, in contrast, was wearing a smart lightweight jacket and tie. One of his companions was the same; the other two had leather jackets and open-necked shirts. Without letting my eyes linger on them, I tried to assess who was who. All were dark haired, Farrell as dark as any. I guessed the second tie-wearer, who had pale skin, was Irish, and the other two Colombian.

With Tony still making the odd remark in Spanish, I got out my wallet and pushed it across the table. ‘You pay,’ I muttered. ‘I’m going to use the phone.’

The telephone was round a corner and in a kind of cupboard on the way to the gents — private enough, provided nobody walked past. The equipment was modern, with one slot for cards and another for coins. I brought out a handful of change and surveyed it. The rate of exchange was about 1,000 pesos to the pound. A 100-peso coin seemed about right for a local call, so I lifted the receiver, fed one in and dialled Luisa’s office number. I reckoned the reception would still be in progress, and I just hoped it was going on within earshot.

The number rang and rang, ten, twenty, thirty times, before at last someone answered, a man. ‘¿Digame?’

‘Captain Black, por favor.’

‘¿Quién?

‘Captain Black.’

‘No conocer.’

‘Major Palmer, then.’

‘Momento.’

He put down the receiver, and through it I could hear faint party noises. My mind was in overdrive. Farrell being watched in Ballyconvil because he was into drugs. Farrell staggering home to his outhouse with heavy suitcases. Farrell now in Bogotá. Morrison’s story was that the PIRA was into Colombia in a big way. I’d known they had been taking percentages from dealers on the street in Belfast, but this was another league: their involvement could be world-wide, and might increase their power to buy weapons to a fantastic degree.

At last someone came to the phone.

‘Palmer here. Who’s that?’

‘Geordie Sharp.’

‘Who?’

I repeated my name.

‘Sorry, old boy. I don’t think I know you.’

Jesus! I thought. The guy’s half-pissed. Taking care to keep my voice even, I said, ‘We met this afternoon. Can I speak to Peter Black, please?’

‘Good God yes, I know who you are. The SAS chappie. Up from the savannah. What did you want?’

‘To speak to Peter Black. Urgently.’

‘Black? Black? I’m not sure I can find him. Can’t I deal with it? What time is it? Where are you, anyway?’

‘Please… find… him!’ I ground the words out as if I was speaking to a child.

‘Oh, all right. Hang on then.’

The telephone began to beep. Feverishly I dredged up more coins and stuffed a couple into the slot. Somebody came along the passage and went past me: none of the Farrell party. I waited, shifting from one foot to the other, and hoping to hell that Black was more sober than the DA.

At last he came on the line. ‘Yes?’ he said. ‘What’s happening, Geordie? Have you got a problem?’

‘Yes. A big one. The PIRA are in town.’

‘Are you trying to take the piss out of me?’

‘No I’m not. It’s Farrell.’

‘Bloody hell!’

‘He’s with some Colombians.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Where I’m speaking from. It’s a restaurant called the Four Seasons. On Carrera 15, 84–22.’

‘I know it. Bloody hell!’

‘Exactly.’

‘Who are you with?’

‘Tony Lopez.’

‘You’d better get out of there.’

‘Don’t worry. We’re on our way back to the hotel.’

‘OK. Where are the rest of the lads?’

‘Christ knows. They’ve gone on the piss all over town.’

‘You can’t get them back?’

‘Not a chance.’

‘I want you all out of Bogotá as soon as possible.’

‘Well, we can’t go before tomorrow.’

‘That’ll have to do.’

‘Will you alert Hereford about this?’

‘Of course.’

‘Great. I’ll see you back at the hotel.’

I returned to our table slowly, loitering to see if I could overhear any conversation from our neighbours. Sure enough, one of Farrell’s companions was speaking with an Ulster accent. ‘That’ll be fine,’ was all I got, but the ‘fine’ came out as fayeen.

Tony had already settled the bill. ‘Everything all right?’ he asked.

‘No. Let’s get a taxi.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Back to the hotel.’

‘Don’t you want to walk?’

‘Not now.’

‘What about the belly-dancer?’

‘She can stuff herself.’

Knowing Farrell, I felt sure he would have dickers out on the street, watching his arse for him, and I didn’t want one of them to spot me. Even in the taxi I thought it safer not to talk, in case the driver was a plant and could understand English. Not until we were back in our hotel room could I enlighten Tony about what had happened.

‘Sure it was him?’ he asked.

‘Absolutely. One hundred per cent. I’d know him anywhere. He was the big guy right behind you.’

‘You should have stuck a knife in his back there and then.’

‘We would have been lynched.’

‘What in hell’s he doing here?’

‘He’s got to be trying to set up some big drugs deal. Or buying weapons. Or both. Both probably.’

‘You don’t think it’s something to do with the fact that our guys are out here?’

‘Can’t be. There’s no way he could know about us.’

‘Well, what do we do?’

‘Black said he’d come round here to make a plan.’

Black never came. Tony and I had arrived back in the hotel at 9.30, and by ten I was getting worried — the embassy was only five minutes’ drive away. By 10.30 I knew something had gone seriously wrong.

The hotel had no phones in the bedrooms; the only thing to do was to call from the one in the foyer. Luckily, by then, there was nobody about.

I put 100 pesos in the slot and dialled. Again there was a long wait, and at last a Spanish voice. I handed the receiver to Tony. He listened, then said, ‘Momento,’ and put his hand over the mouthpiece.

‘They all went down to the restaurant.’

‘Who?’

‘The DA, Black and the woman.’

‘All together?’

‘Apparently.’

‘What time?’

‘Immediately after you’d called.’

‘Jesus! What the hell were they doing?’

Tony shook his head. ‘Maybe they wanted to check Farrell out.’

‘They must have been crazy. You know what? I believe they’ve been lifted.’

Tony took his hand off the phone and said, ‘Momento, por favor.’

‘We need to call Hereford,’ I said. ‘Immediately. We can’t do it from here. We need the secure comms in the embassy. Ask if we can go in and use them.’

Tony began to parley, but the guy on the other end — the night caretaker — said he couldn’t admit us without permission from the duty officer. Eventually, after a lot of haggling, Tony got the name of the second secretary, and his home number.

I took back the receiver and dialled again. By then it was after eleven. Probably the guy had gone to bed. But no — the call was answered immediately.

‘Egerton,’ said a crisp, youngish voice.

I apologized for disturbing him, then launched into an explanation, keeping everything as short as possible. Instead of asking stupid questions or prevaricating, he said, ‘I’ll meet you in the foyer of the embassy tower in ten minutes.’

‘Thank God,’ I said to Tony. ‘Somebody’s on the ball.’

Egerton. The name seemed vaguely familiar. I’d heard it before, but for the moment I couldn’t place it.

Again I didn’t fancy walking. I felt as if the black spirit of Ulster had followed me five thousand miles across the ocean and now infested the streets of the Colombian capital. So I got the night porter to call up a taxi, and asked Tony to stay where he was, in case the missing party turned up after all.

‘Sure,’ he agreed. ‘But know what? First I’ll take a cab back to the restaurant, just to make sure they didn’t go in and have a meal.’

‘If Farrell’s still there, he’ll see you.’

‘I’ll pretend I lost something, OK? I lost a book. My guide book to Bogotá. May be I left it there?’

‘Take it easy, then, and call me at the embassy.’

Bill Egerton was tall, thin, bespectacled, and in his early thirties, a scholarly-looking fellow with a long, pale indoor face, but wonderfully quick to grasp the point.

‘Yes,’ he agreed immediately. ‘You’d better call Hereford. England’s five hours ahead of us, so it’s 4.15 a.m. over there. Is that all right?’

‘It’ll have to be.’

I was carrying the camp emergency number in my wallet, and I knew the orderly officer would be on duty in the guardroom. The call had hardly gone through before it was answered. Reception was perfect, and by a stroke of luck I recognized the voice.

‘Chalky? It’s Geordie Sharp.’

‘Fucking hell! I wasn’t expecting you just now.’

‘Well, listen. We’re in the shit. Who’s the duty officer?’

‘It’s Bob Keeling.’

‘OK. I need to speak to him.’

‘Now? It’s half past four in the morning.’

‘I know. This is urgent.’

‘OK. I’ll wake him up.’

I waited a minute. In the pause I saw the guardroom, with all the lists pinned on the notice board and the bunches of keys on their hooks. Then, close at hand, I heard another phone ring. Egerton picked it up, said a few words and put it down. ‘Your American colleague’s checked the restaurant. They aren’t there. The other party’s gone as well.’

‘Thanks.’

The secure circuit came alive again.

‘Yes?’ Bob Keeling sounded sleepy and slow.

‘Geordie Sharp in Bogotá. There’s been a lift. Two British diplomats and our own Rupert, Peter Black.’

‘Say that again.’

I repeated it.

‘Christ!’ exclaimed Keeling, coming fully alert. ‘When did this happen?’

‘About half an hour ago.’

‘I’ll get the ops officer in right away.’

‘Fine. You’ve got my number.’

‘He’ll call you back.’

I rang off and saw Egerton staring at me. ‘Were you at the party?’ I asked.

‘Yes — but because I was on duty, I was only drinking orange juice.’

‘I don’t want to be offensive, but the DA sounded pissed.’

Egerton twitched. ‘Yes. He overdoes it a bit.’

I sat thinking for a minute. Then I said, ‘If this is drug-related, what will they do with them?’

‘If they were only narcos, they’d demand a ransom. That happens all the time. But if the IRA’s involved — I don’t know. I’ve no experience of that organization.’

‘Where are they likely to take them?’

‘Out of town somewhere. Probably into the jungle.’

‘How do we track them down, then?’

‘Ah!’ Egerton gave a very slight smile. ‘Our sources of information are quite good. Unofficially, we’re in touch with people known as sapos.’

‘Toads,’ I said.

‘You’ve heard of them. For quite a small consideration from the slush fund — say 25,000 pesos — they produce very useful intelligence.’ Then he added, ‘Of course, it’s nothing to what can be got from high-tech equipment.’

‘Such as?’

‘You know how they found the laboratories at Tranquilandia?’

He saw that I wasn’t with him, and explained: ‘The biggest cocaine factory there’s ever been. It had a dozen laboratories turning out over three tons of the stuff every month. The narcos practically built a town there for their workers — houses, roads, a landing strip, everything, in the middle of the jungle. That was back a bit, in the eighties, when the Medellin cartel was at its height.

‘The United States Drug Enforcement Agency found the place by putting tracking devices into a couple of drums of ether, which is one of the agents used in the manufacture of cocaine. Satellites tracked the drums right down into the Amazon basin.’

‘You know a lot about this.’

‘Well, I got interested.’

‘Is it true that DAS really run the country?’

‘You could say that. They’re extremely powerful. Most people live in fear of them.’

‘And you have contact with them?’

‘Very much so. The Commander-in-Chief’s a personal friend. Why?’

‘I was thinking we may need their help.’

‘You could get help from the DEA, I’m sure. They’ve got people here all the time. Also there’s the Colombian Police’s own anti-narcotics unit.’

‘We need to keep this in the family. If some big organization goes in with guns blazing, the first thing the narcos will do is top their hostages. Our own speciality is covert approach and surprise.’

Minutes ticked away. Then the secure line rang and I grabbed the receiver.

‘Geordie? You have a problem?’ Far from sounding annoyed at having been dragged out of bed, Alan Andrews, the ops officer, was all lit up.

‘Sorry to get you in,’ I said.

‘Not to worry. What is it?’

‘I’m in Bogotá and we’ve got a fastball. Peter Black’s been lifted by the PIRA, or by Colombians, or both.’ I told him what had happened, cutting everything short.

‘I’ll inform the Director immediately,’ he said. ‘He’ll be round to the Foreign Office as soon as they’re in business. We’ll get a squadron on standby.’

‘Great. The question is, what do I do now? The earliest I can collect the guys together is tomorrow morning. I’d like to get everyone back to our training camp, but it’s four hours out of town.’

‘What time is it now?’

‘Quarter to midnight. We’re five hours behind you.’

‘Wait one. I’ll speak to the CO and call you back.’

Five minutes later he came on again. ‘I’ve talked to the CO,’ he said. ‘Recovery of the personnel is the number one priority. Everything else has to give place to it. You’ll have to suspend the training course, or cancel it if need be.’

‘Roger. We’ll keep this phone manned from now on. It’s the best comms base by far.’

‘Good. The other thing is, this whole saga needs to stay under wraps. Officially, you aren’t there. The diplomatic shit’s already stirring over the guy at Essex University, so it’s essential you keep your head down, if you can.’

‘That’s fine by me.’

I rang off. ‘As I thought, they don’t want the Colombians involved,’ I told Egerton. ‘Is that going to make things awkward for you?’

‘We’ll have to see what happens. If the DA doesn’t reappear fairly soon, we’ll have to report his absence. But we can give it a few hours anyway. The Ambassador’s gone off for the weekend; if we can avoid having to drag him back, all the better.’

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘This is really very good of you. Don’t let me land you in it too.’

‘That’s all right. I had a brother in your Regiment, so it’s a pleasure to help.’