The Gulf Conspiracy

THREE

‘It is almost six years since the Gulf War ended,’ declared the Prime Minister with an obvious sense of frustration. ‘And yet Gulf War Syndrome is still an issue. Why hasn’t this matter been resolved long ago?’

‘With respect, Prime Minister,’ replied one of those present from the Department of Health, ‘It’s a much more complicated than it seems. It has of course, been the government’s position all along that no such syndrome exists — a decision only taken after extensive consultation with the medical authorities, I have to say — and yet the number of people claiming that there is and seeking recompense keeps on growing.’

‘What numbers are we dealing with here?’ asked the PM.

‘Estimates put the figure at approximately fifteen percent of the returning allied forces having complained of health problems, which they ascribe to having taken part in the conflict,' said the DOH man.

‘And in real numbers?’

‘Something in the order of quarter of a million, Prime Minister.’

‘I take it we are talking in terms of all the allied forces?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘And deaths?’

‘Ten, perhaps as many as twelve thousand.’

There was a long silence before the PM said softly, ‘That many?’

‘With respect, Prime Minister,’ said the Defence Minister, ‘Hysteria has played no small part in inflating these figures. Any tommy sniffing a hint of compensation has been turning up at his GP looking for a ticket to easy street.’

‘And the dead? Are they malingering too?’

‘As you yourself pointed out, it has been six years since the war. A lot of things can happen in six years to all of us and people do tend to die for a whole variety of reasons. It has always been quite clear that the huge range of symptoms appearing on medical reports must preclude any one single cause as being responsible for illness among veterans.’

‘And yet the veterans seem more adamant than ever,’ said the PM. ‘I’ve been looking through submissions from their various associations and they have become an organised and articulate lobby.’

‘The facts remain the same,’ insisted the Defence Minister.

‘I need hardly remind you that we are only months away from an election,’ said the PM. ‘Put bluntly, on top of everything else, we cannot afford to be seen fighting the sick.’

‘Would the Treasury consider softening its attitude on compensation perhaps?’ suggested a man from the policy unit.

The Department of Health man shook his head and said, ‘Apart from the sheer numbers involved, we would need some method of appraising the condition, some guidelines as to how we decide whether or not symptoms could be ascribed to the war. You don’t need to be clairvoyant to see that this would be an enormous stumbling block which would in turn lead to a sense of injustice in those denied and the consequent setting up of appeals panels and so on and so forth. It has all the makings of a bureaucratic nightmare, if I may say so.’

‘Of course it has. It’s an absolute non-starter,’ said the Defence Minister. ‘Frankly, I don’t think the Press will be too hard on us over this issue simply because of the enormous range of illnesses. Even a fool can see that they can’t all be right.’

‘So you would suggest that we do nothing and ride out the storm, should it come to it?’ asked the PM.

‘I honestly don’t think that it will,’ said the Defence Minister. ‘The public have grown bored with it.’

‘One odd thing that struck me as I was reading through the submissions from the veterans,’ said the PM. ‘was an assertion by some that their condition was infectious. They claimed that their wives and children were being affected. It sounded quite extraordinary.’

‘Ridiculous,’ said the Defence Minister. ‘Only goes to prove what I’ve been saying all along. Every time an ex-squaddie wakes up with a hangover it’s down to service in the Gulf War.’

‘What sort of illness were they talking about, Prime Minister?’ asked the policy unit man.

‘It was all a bit vague,’ replied the PM. ‘Chronic fatigue, increased susceptibility to colds and flu, that sort of thing.’

‘God in heaven,’ snorted the Defence Minister, ‘That’s all we need, infectious yuppie flu!’

‘Does sound a bit implausible, I must say,’ said the PM.

‘Stuff and nonsense,’ said the Defence Minister. ‘There is one thing we might try however, if you think that these veterans’ associations might actually succeed in making this an election issue. We could leak it to the papers that Saddam did actually use chemical and biological weapons in the conflict.’

‘A number of them have already tried running with that story over the years,’ said the PM. ‘One paper in particular has taken particular delight in pointing out on several occasions just where Saddam actually got these weapons.’

‘Without attracting much attention, as I recall,’ said the Defence Minister.

‘Thankfully no,’ agreed the PM.

‘Yesterday’s news,’ said the policy unit man. ‘Today’s chip wrapper.’

‘Despite that,’ said the Defence Minister, ‘I still think it might well be the way to go simply because it’s the way these associations seem to be heading. Only last week in the Lords the Countess of Mar asked if the MOD had any documentary evidence of chemical warfare in the Gulf conflict.’

‘What did Howe say?’

‘He simply stated that research carried out by the MOD did not indicate any confirmed use of chemical warfare agents during the conflict. It was actually that which made me think that if we were to make an official leak — if that’s not an oxymoron — about Saddam having used such weapons, the nationals might run with it and conveniently divert attention from HMG at a critical time,’ said the Defence Minister.’

‘Considering that Saddam has been building up his arsenal of such weapons ever since the end of the Gulf War, that’s not at all a bad idea,’ said the PM. ‘The prospect of him becoming a problem again might even work in our favour come election time, considering our track record in the Falklands and the Gulf.’

‘Good point, Prime Minister,’ said the policy unit man. ‘There’s a good chance the voting public won’t want a bunch of left-wing appeasers at the helm should Saddam get restless again.

‘Offering asylum and counselling to all and sundry no doubt,’ snorted the Defence Minister.

‘Then we are agreed,’ said the PM. ‘We do not alter our stance on Gulf War Syndrome and we use PR to combat any attempt to make it an election issue.’

‘Perhaps we could plant a suggestion that Saddam be made to pay compensation to affected personnel because of his use of CB weapons?’ suggested the policy unit man.

‘Why not,’ agreed the PM.

‘We have to face it, Warner, our worst nightmare is about to come true,’ said Sir James Gardiner to his host, Colonel Peter Warner. The two men had just had dinner and were taking port by the fire.

‘You don’t think there’s any chance of a last minute swing among the electorate?’ asked Warner. ‘Better the devil you know?’

Gardiner shook his head with a wry smile. ‘Not unless either Blair or Brown are caught with their pants down — and preferably in the company of each other — between now and next month. It’s shaping up to be a bloody landslide.’

‘God, it makes me so angry,’ said Warner. ‘To think grubby little men with their brown paper bags filled with cash and their inability to keep their trousers up in the company of tarts who can’t keep their mouth shut have brought the party to this.’

‘It’s not just the party,’ said Gardiner. ‘It’s the country we have to think about. Evolution is about to go into reverse. Just mark my words. Survival of the fittest is about to become a thing of the past. The weak and the halt and the lame are about to inherit the earth. Everyone will be a winner because no one will be allowed to lose.’

‘And what about us?’ asked Warner. ‘What do we do now?’

‘What can we do? We bide our time, Warner. We keep our eyes and our ears open and we bide our time. Our priority at the moment is to make sure we’re secure from the prying eyes of an incoming hostile administration.’

‘We’re always been careful about who came on board,’ said Warner. ‘You don’t think we’re vulnerable, do you?’

‘There is one thing I have some concern about,’ replied Gardiner. ‘That business at Porton and the mistake that was made.’

‘Ah, the vaccine problem?’ said Warner. ‘I thought Crowe sorted that all out. I thought he handled it well.’

‘It’s not Crowe I’m worried about; he’s one of us. It’s more the people who were working on the project at the time, the team. They were under the impression that their work was government-sanctioned when, strictly speaking, it wasn’t. Funding of the team was a bit of a grey area because of politicians not wanting to inquire too deeply in what goes on at Porton. It was accounted for as ‘special projects’ money.’

‘Ah,’ said Warner. He reached over to refill Gardiner’s glass from the crystal decanter that sat on the small table at the side of his chair. ‘New blood at the MOD and new faces at Porton might start asking awkward questions.’

‘Mowbray will keep an eye on the situation; he’s kept surveillance on the team ever since that damned cock-up, nothing too obtrusive but if any of them suddenly gets the urge to write their memoirs we’d have to do something about it. There’s never been any sign of anything like that but it’s still a niggling little worry.’

‘But they all signed the official secrets act. They knew that everything they did at Porton was top secret,’ said Warner.

Gardiner smiled wryly and said, ‘I’ve noticed that in recent times the Official Secrets Act doesn’t quite exert the same hold over people it once did.’

‘You mean, if the money’s right…’

‘Another sign of the times, damn it. But apart from that, if these people should ever find out that what they were doing had not quite been officially sanctioned and that HMG were never actually informed about the problem with the vaccine then all bets would be off. Sebring, the chap who Crowe went to great pains to tell us actually made the mistake, is not one of us, remember. He’s a worry.’

‘So what do you think we should do about it?’ asked Warner, looking over the top of his glass as he took a sip.

‘Maybe I’ll have a word with Mowbray. Tell him of our concern. Ask him to keep a special eye on Sebring, should there be any kind of a shake up at Porton or awkward questions coming out of MOD about special budgets.’

Warner nodded. ‘Do you see these Gulf War Syndrome people as any kind of threat?’ he asked before getting up out of his chair to put another log on the fire. ‘They were on television again this morning.’

‘Our eyes and ears at MOD have told me in confidence that HMG will not change its line on it and it seems solid enough to me. There’s no such thing as far as they’re concerned.’

‘What about the incoming lot with their bleeding hearts and regiments of social workers?’

‘The bleeding hearts won’t make it to the cabinet room,’ replied Gardiner. ‘Politicians will and they’re much more predictable. There won’t be any sudden hand-outs. It’s my bet they’ll stick to Tory spending limits so they can blame everything on the outgoing administration for a while. As regards the Gulf War lobby, they’ll point them at the BMA who’ve always maintained that there’s no such thing as Gulf War Syndrome.’

‘But still these people keep coming back, demanding investigation after investigation,’ said Warner.

‘Maybe, but I think we’re safe enough,’ said Gardiner. ‘We were lucky that there were just so many screw-ups in that damned war there was no real need to create red herrings; the bloody Gulf was awash with them.’

Warner put his head back on the leather cushion of his armchair and looked into the flames of the fire. ‘Five bloody years in the wilderness, not a happy prospect.’

‘It might well be more than five,’ said Gardiner.

‘D’you really think so?’

‘Pity Blair wasn’t a Tory. He seems to be everything that Major isn’t. Major will have to go before the next election of course, but for the life of me I can’t see his successor.’

‘A bit like looking for a virgin in a whorehouse,’ agreed Warner.

‘So what do we do in the meantime?’ asked Warner as the clock on the mantelpiece struck eleven.

‘We bide our time. We dig the dirt on the incomers, and throw it when we can. There will be plenty. Rest assured. They’re politicians.’

Ex-RAMC sergeant Angus Maclean rested his hands lightly on the top bar of the steel crowd barrier and watched impassively as the Guards slow-marched up Whitehall to the haunting strains of Albinoni. The colour of the soldiers’ great coats matched the sky. In fact, everything seemed grey except for the blood red of the poppies. The colours of sadness, thought Maclean as he surveyed the scene through dark, haunted eyes.

The great and the good were about to remember the fallen on behalf of the nation. They would don their chosen uniforms of the day and salute solemnly while lesser ranks stared unseeingly, at attention, into the middle distance. They would lay their wreaths and bow their heads.

Maclean prepared himself mentally for what he felt he had to do. He was glad it was raining because raincoats bestowed a convenient and welcome anonymity on their wearers. The loose fitting nature of waterproof gear also made it easier to conceal things. In Maclean’s case this was a 500 ml glass bottle full of anti-coagulated blood and a large, folded banner with the words, ‘Bloody Hypocrites! Justice for Gulf War Victims,’ written on it. He had already spent three hours standing at his chosen spot, adjacent to a convenient join in the barriers, for he didn’t want to have to manoeuvre his way through crowds of people when the moment came. He needn’t have worried; the crowd wasn’t as dense as in past years thanks to the inclement weather and a growing sense of cynicism among the young.

When new Prime Minister, Tony Blair, stepped forward to lay his wreath, he would pull the barrier back a little and slip out through the gap to run across to the cenotaph itself. He would launch the bottle so that it smashed on the granite, splashing blood all over it while he unfurled his banner out along the base for the benefit of the cameras. It would be risky. There was a chance he might get shot, probably not by the soldiers but more likely by one of the plain-suited men guarding the House of Windsor and its new government. But he was counting on there still being a few moments of indecision, just enough time to complete his mission. After all, there still wasn’t a gun culture in the UK and armed police still thought twice before pulling triggers. And if he should get shot? Well, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered much any more except that these bastards be made aware of his anger and that of others like him.

The bagpipes of the massed pipes and drums made their traditional hesitant start and the strains of Over the Sea to Skye filled the damp air with yet more melancholy while drizzly rain settled on the Guards’ bearskins.

Maclean took his right hand off the barrier and slipped it inside his plastic raincoat to grip the neck of the bottle, which he’d hung on a string loop from his belt. The poster was folded across the front of his chest inside his jacket and then tucked into his belt. His fingers, wet and cold from gripping the steel barrier for so long, fumbled to release the bottle from the string and he suddenly became aware that he was attracting suspicious glances from the couple standing next to him, especially the woman, a short, dumpy figure with badly dyed blonde hair and a sullen expression, who was clearly wondering what he was doing with his hands inside his raincoat.

Perhaps it was agitation inspired by the woman’s disapproving glances or the slight numbness in his fingers from having stood in the cold for so long but just as he succeeded in releasing the bottle from the loop, it slipped from his grasp and fell to the ground to smash on the pavement, creating a large, growing red puddle round his feet.

‘Oh my God, it’s blood!’ screamed the woman, clutching at the arm of her companion and pointing downwards. The immediate crowd shrank back to leave a space around Maclean just as several more women started to scream and cries went up for the police to come. A man with a cockney accent exclaimed loudly, ‘What the fuck?’

Gus stared down at the puddle, mesmerised for a moment, his plans in ruins and his mind in turmoil. When he looked up again there were hostile faces all around him. He had lost the visual impact that his prop would undoubtedly have had but he hoped it might still be possible to display his banner. It wouldn’t be nearly so dramatic as splashing blood on the cenotaph but maybe the cameras of some of the press would at least catch the message. He tugged desperately at the barrier to widen the gap but it proved more difficult to budge than he’d anticipated. He gave up and tried to squeeze through the small gap he had managed to open but got stuck half way. He was struggling to free himself when two burly policemen arrived, intent on smothering the incident as quickly as possible.

The crowd melted back to allow the policemen to manhandle Maclean out through their numbers rather than parade him along the front of the barriers where he might detract from the ceremony and possibly be photographed. Maclean was forcibly bent over as his arms were twisted painfully up his back. He couldn’t see the crowd — only their feet — but he could hear them.

‘Fuckin’ loony.’

‘Christ! They’re everywhere these days.’

‘He was gonna kill the Queen, the bastard.’

Maclean felt someone take a kick at his leg and cried out in pain.

‘He had a fuckin’ gun,’ exclaimed someone else.

‘You don’t understand,’ gasped Maclean. ‘I’m one of you… I went to war… I served my country… Don’t let them fool you… These bastards over there don’t give a shit… They don’t give a shit about any of us… All that praying and saluting… It’s just a fancy-dress party for them… They’re pretending, the lot of them. They don’t care: they just don’t bloody care.’

This only made the policemen twist his arms further up his back, making him cry out again before being thrown bodily into the back of a police van and driven off.

Maclean found it a relief when the cell door was closed behind him and he was blissfully alone again. It was infinitely preferable to being pushed and pulled around by police who had treated him as an object from the outset and steadfastly refused to acknowledge anything he’d said or asked. He’d felt like the invisible man, only with the proviso that no one could hear him either.

Maclean lay down on the bare bunk and stared up at the ceiling. He had failed in his mission to make his point at the Cenotaph and he felt dreadful. It was such a pity because he felt sure that the blood would have made such a strong impact, but, looking on the bright side, he might still get his chance to get his message across in court. He started planning what he would say to the magistrates and hopefully, to the Press in the gallery. He got no inspiration at all from the graffiti of despair on the walls.

An hour later, after having been examined by a police doctor and declared sane and lucid, Maclean was formally questioned.

‘Tell us about the blood,’ was the opening gambit from the interviewing officer.

‘It was horse blood,’ said Maclean.

‘Horse blood,’ repeated the policeman mechanically, as if humouring the village idiot.

‘We use it in the lab to make blood agar plates,’ said Maclean matter of factly… ‘to grow bacteria on,’ he added by way of explanation and in response to the look on the officer’s face.

‘Silly me,’ said the officer. ‘Maybe we can just go back a few steps here. Who exactly are you and what’s this all about?’

‘Gus Maclean, I’m a technician in the bacteriology department at Princess Louise Hospital in Glasgow.’

‘Now we’re getting somewhere. What exactly did you intend doing with the bottle of blood?’

‘Ideally I would have liked to have rammed it up Fatty Soames’s arse but I was going to make do with smashing it on the cenotaph to draw attention to the victims of Gulf War Syndrome.’

‘Fatty Soames?’ asked the policeman.

‘Ex Defence Minister,’ said a colleague.

‘So your beef is with the MOD?’

‘Among others.’

‘What did they ever do to you?’

‘Not just me,’ replied Maclean. ‘Thousands of us came back from the Gulf War sick and these bastards have been pretending that there’s fuck-all wrong with us.’

‘You fought in the Gulf War?’

‘Sergeant, 1^st Field Laboratory Unit, replied Maclean. ‘The secret team,’ he added, as if he thought it a bad joke.

The policeman raised his eyes. ‘Secret team? What’s that all about?’

‘We weren’t supposed to exist,’ said Maclean. ‘We’re on nobody’s list. Forty of us in eight five-man teams. We operated out of Porton Down.’

‘The defence establishment?’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Maclean sarcastically. ‘We were deployed in the Gulf to detect the presence of chemical and biological weapons and then to identify them.’

‘If this is true, should you be telling us this?’ said the policeman. ‘Official Secrets Act, I mean.’

‘Fuck the Official Secrets Act,’ said Maclean.

The policeman thought for a moment before saying to the uniformed constable standing by the door, ‘Take him back to his cell.’

Maclean was brought back to the interview room two hours later. The police deferred to two men in plain clothes and left him alone with them. One asked Maclean. ‘Do you know who we are?’

‘Spooks,’ replied Maclean. ‘I’ve been expecting you.’

‘You do realise that you contravened the Official Secrets Act in this police station two hours ago?’

‘Yup,’ replied Maclean. ‘So charge me.’

‘So you can put on your one-man show in court? I don’t think so.’

‘So I’ll go on contravening the Official Secrets Act,’ said Maclean.

‘It’s one thing saying something, Maclean, quite another getting anyone to listen to you. Look at you for God’s sake. London’s full of unemployed Jocks with stories to tell. No one gives a shit.’

‘I’m not unemployed,’ said Maclean, stung by the comment. ‘I’m off sick.’

‘In the head.’

Maclean looked down at the floor. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my head,’ he said through gritted teeth.

‘Your kid died of leukaemia three years ago. Last year you lost your wife to a brain tumour and…’

‘I killed them,’ said Maclean.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I killed them. The thing I brought back from the Gulf, the thing that’s making me ill, that’s what killed them.’

‘That’s just plain daft,’ said the Special Branch man, although his tone softened somewhat and his voice took on an edge of pity. ‘They died of very different things. It was just bad luck, man. You weren’t to blame.’

Maclean looked at him, his eyes now burning. ‘Like I say, it was that that killed them and some of these bastards at Porton know all about it. I won’t rest until they come clean.’

The officer could see that he was getting nowhere with advice. ‘Go back to Scotland, Gus,’ he said, ‘rebuild your life. Stop tilting at windmills. You can’t win. Believe me; the odds are stacked against you.’

‘You’re not going to charge me?’

‘You’re free to go.’