Thunder in the Blood Page 6

  By now, I knew a great deal about Registry files. I knew the way they were organized, what the experts call ‘the architecture’ of the system. I knew the strength of the internal walls they’d thrown up, insulating one file from another, the ditches they’d dug, impossible to cross without the right access codes. I knew, as well, about the other precautions they’d taken, the tricksy little electronic tags they’d attached to this section or that, the priority classifications they’d given to particular entries, the lengths they went to protecting special sources. It was a maze, impenetrable to outsiders, and even to people like me, only accessible on a need-to-know basis.

  But it didn’t end there, because the Curzon House system formed part of a larger network, serving every department in Whitehall, a wholly logical arrangement which put a great deal of information at our fingertips and saved a fortune in time and money. But access to these ‘daughter-systems’, likewise, needed codes, and they were issued only on a case-by-case basis. To acquire a particular code you needed proper authority, and once you’d laid hands on the code your problems weren’t over because they changed them every week. In this sense, the codes were a bit like railway tickets. What I really needed was a rover ticket, taking me everywhere. But the best I could hope for, given the proper authority, was a series of day returns.

  I thought about it a great deal: where I’d look, what I was trying to find.

  If Alloway was selling to the Iraqis, he’d need DTI export certificates. Without these, the stuff wouldn’t get past the docks. But DTI certificates were only issued in compliance with certain guidelines. In the case of Iraq (and Iran), the government had banned the sale of something they termed ‘lethal equipment’. According to Stollmann, this was precisely Alloway’s line of country. How, then, had he got round the government’s embargo?

  Part of the answer would lie in the DTI files. They’d have copies of the export certificates. Alloway might also have been using the Export Credit Guarantee Scheme, a form of government insurance in case businessmen had trouble getting paid. They, too, might have documentation.

  I began the search by tapping into Central Registry, poking around our own files, checking whether we might have anything on the shelf. Even this exercise could be risky, and when my supervisor paused behind me and enquired what I was doing, I told him I was ‘housecleaning’. ‘Housecleaning’ was what you did when you got in a muddle on your computer. It happened a great deal in MI5.

  Alloway, as it turned out, did have a file of his own. Some of the intelligence was a straight donation from MI6, crumbs from their table, and there were additional source reports from one of our own guys who’d since resigned after a row about his pension rights. Scrolling quickly through the entries, I got a picture of a small, overworked entrepreneur, building what bridges he could between the Iraqis and a group of firms in the West Midlands. The stuff he was selling included machine tools and various peripherals like software programs for the computer-controlled jigs, and there was a brief analysis of the dozen or so contracts he’d so far secured. Detailed information about what the Iraqis were doing with all this equipment was listed in a separate annexe. Beth Alloway’s visit to Priddy was carefully noted (the same Wolverhampton hotel!) and there was an accompanying recommendation that she be handled with extreme care.

  At this point my supervisor returned, and I greeted him with a triumphant smile, backing out of the Registry files, wiping the screen clean and switching the machine off with a flourish.

  ‘Done it,’ I said cheerfully. ‘Nice and tidy again.’

  The supervisor looked at me for a moment, amused. ‘Until the next time,’ he said at last, ‘eh?’

  By now it was obvious I’d have to look elsewhere and I began to think about the problems of tunnelling into some of the precious daughter-files. At Curzon House this is known as ‘B & E’ (breaking and entering), and one way of doing it is simple, old-fashioned corruption: finding someone with a key and bending their arm until they lend it to you. The question was therefore simple: who might have the codes I’d need? And how would I persuade them to share?

  I gave this problem a great deal of thought, but I soon realized that the only real option was Lawrence Priddy. I still hadn’t made much sense of Stollmann’s line about ‘chemistry’, but the MP had phoned twice and both times he’d left messages asking me to get in touch. It wasn’t a call I looked forward to making, but the man plainly had good connections at the DTI and it was possible that these might extend to the kind of access I was after. I found him, at the first time of calling, in the office he shared at the House of Commons. He sounded surprised to hear me and slightly wary. I suggested we might meet.

  ‘Sorpressa,’ he said, naming an Italian restaurant in Belgravia, ‘half past one.’

  I arrived at the restaurant at ten to two. The place was a swirl of pink tablecloths and loud conversation: sleek, well-heeled MPs bent over dainty forkfuls of designer pasta. Priddy was at a table near the back, reading a copy of the Spectator. He barely bothered to look up.

  ‘Is it fashionable to be late?’ he enquired. ‘Only I was about to go.’

  We sparred for nearly an hour. By now, I’d been a civil servant long enough to know that every conversation in Whitehall has a sub-text. What you say isn’t necessarily what you mean. It’s the gaps and the silences and the occasional ironic asides that often light the real path home. MI5, as it happens, are expert at this kind of dialogue and while I’m not especially comfortable playing games like these, it certainly helps to know the rules. Priddy, of course, had mastered them years ago, a fact I ought to have taken into account much, much earlier.

  We were in a cab, heading for Dolphin Square, before he hinted that he might – might – be able to accommodate me.

  ‘Tell me again,’ he said. ‘Make me believe it.’

  I nodded, the wide-eyed young ingenue from Curzon House. ‘Clive Alloway lives in your constituency,’ I said, ‘and he’s selling into Iraq. That’s two reasons why you should be interested.’

  Priddy was sitting back in the corner of the cab, gazing out of the window, his long, pale face quite blank.

  ‘Agreed,’ he said.

  ‘He’s working for Six, and for us as well. You probably know that already.’ I paused, half-expecting a response, but Priddy didn’t say a word. ‘He’s frightened.’ I said, ‘His business is collapsing and his marriage as well. In the office, they’d say that made him dangerous.’

  Priddy frowned. ‘Dangerous?’ he murmured.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You mean that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Dangerous to whom?’ He looked at me for the first time, the beginnings of a half-smile playing on his face. ‘Well?’ he said finally.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘That’s why I need a little help.’

  We went to his flat, a big, sunny apartment with tall, handsome rooms and some exquisite furniture. I stood at the window in the sitting room, looking out, while Priddy made coffee in the kitchen. When he returned, he was carrying a cafetière and two cups on a tray.

  I nodded at the big overmantel, the detail beautifully picked out, daring shades of green, wholly successful. ‘Who’s the interior decorator?’ I said. ‘Your wife?’

  Priddy nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘as it happens.’

  ‘Is she up here a lot?’

  ‘Often enough.’

  He sat down on the sofa and began to pour the coffee, and I wondered how long it would be before he got to the point. He’d spent most of the meal examining me through half-closed eyes, letting me prattle on while he explored the possibilities. I hadn’t the slightest intention of going to bed with him, but I was uncertain how I’d handle saying no. He glanced up, holding out my coffee. Thin, bone-china cups. Not cheap.

  ‘Customs and Excise,’ he said abruptly. ‘Tell me about Customs and Excise.’

  I gazed at him. It wasn’t at all what I’d expected. ‘I don’t know about Customs,’ I said. ‘Should I?�
�

  He looked at me a moment, speculative. ‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘I think you should.’ He paused. ‘Working for that busy Mr Stollmann.’

  I blinked. ‘You know Stollmann?’

  ‘Of him. Not personally.’

  ‘I see.’ I paused, looking up. ‘So what do you want to know? Specifically?’

  ‘About Alloway. What the Customs people make of him. Where he fits in that little world of theirs.’ He paused again. ‘Can do?’

  I nodded, automatic assent. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘of course.’

  ‘Good.’

  He finished his coffee and glanced at his watch, and for the first time I realized quite how cleverly he’d played the last hour and a half. I’d agreed to meet him in order to bend his arm. Instead, without any great effort, he’d bent mine. I swallowed the last of the coffee and put the cup on the tray.

  ‘A steer on the DTI codes would be a help,’ I said.

  Priddy glanced up at me, and nodded. ‘I’m sure,’ he said. ‘Give me a ring.’

  He got up and straightened his tie. Half-way to the door, he paused in front of the mirror in the overmantel, checking his appearance and running a hand over the back of his head.

  ‘You like the place?’ he said. ‘Approve?’

  ‘Yes, it’s very nice.’

  ‘Good.’ His eyes met mine in the mirror. ‘Then you’ll know where to come next time.’

  5

  In one of the cardboard boxes on my bedroom floor is an audio cassette. In Wesley’s scrawl, it’s labelled ‘Bollocking, Derek, 17 September 1987’. On the cassette is a complete record of an exchange between Wesley and Derek Aldridge at the point when Wesley was out of hospital and on the mend, and well enough to realize what had happened to his precious dope-smuggling exposé. I’m including bits of it here, not because the story itself is especially significant (it isn’t), but because the conversation launched Wesley on the path that led to Geneva and to the revelations that begin this book. It’s also, more importantly, the authentic sound of the man in action. At full throttle, as I later realized, Wesley Keogh could be a terrifying spectacle.

  The tape begins with Wesley switching on the machine. He and Aldridge have obviously just met because Aldridge is telling him to park his coat on a hanger behind the door. My guess is that Wesley had one of those little hand-held recorders in his coat pocket and switched it on as he put it on the table. There’s certainly a clunk on the tape, the machine hitting something solid, and a silence during which I imagine Aldridge staring at the table and Wesley hanging up his coat.

  Either way, Wesley now sits down. The next bit of the conversation goes as follows. The first voice belongs to Aldridge.

  ‘Is that what I think it is? That Sony?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Is it on?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why?’

  There’s a pause here. By the sound of it, Wesley’s lighting a cigarette. Whatever’s happening, Aldridge still wants an answer. His tone of voice has changed a little. If anything, he’s sounding wounded.

  ‘Wes, I asked you why. Are we on the record or something? You want to sue me?’

  ‘No. Shit, no.’

  ‘What then? Why tape it all? Don’t you trust me?’

  ‘Not exactly, no.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Wesley draws breath. He’s clearly in no hurry. This absolutely fits the man I later met. Scenes like these, confrontational, potentially embarrassing, he enjoyed enormously.

  ‘Because I think I know what you did with the Irish piece.’

  ‘I spiked it. You know that. I told you. I sent you a letter.’

  ‘Yeah. But now I think I know why, why you spiked it. I think you got the phone calls. In fact I’m pretty certain you got the phone calls.’

  ‘What phone calls, for fuck’s sake?’

  ‘Our friends in Curzon House.’

  ‘MI5?’

  ‘Yeah. I think they nobbled you.’

  There’s another silence here. Four years later, Aldridge’s name came up in my background research on Wesley. I looked him up in Registry’s surname index, what we spooks call ‘the in-tray’, A for Aldridge, and it turned out that Wesley was right. Aldridge got a number of calls from us, four in all, which probably explains the abrupt change in his style on the tape. He is, at first, very bluff, very male, very aggressive.

  ‘Am I hearing this?’ he says. ‘You think MI5 were on? You think that’s why I didn’t run with it?’

  ‘Yes.’ There’s a pause here. Then Wesley comes back, his voice a little softer. ‘I’m not saying it’s as crude as that. It never is. I’m sure it was all very grown up, arms round the shoulder, see it our way, sensitive material, agents’ lives, national interest, all that shit. I expect—’

  Aldridge explodes. No more hurt. Just anger. ‘Give me fucking credit, Wes. In God’s name …’

  Another pause. Wesley unrepentant.

  ‘How did they put it? Straight threats? D-notice? Phone call to the chairman? What?’

  ‘Listen, mate—’

  ‘No, honestly, I’m interested. You know the story. You know what they were into. Don’t get me wrong. I can see their point of view. I just don’t think it should have been ours. Or yours, at least…’

  Aldridge mutters something here I never quite caught. Then there’s the scrape of a chair. I fancy he may have got up at this point. At any rate, when he speaks again, he’s much closer to the microphone.

  ‘Is that why you came here, Wes? Is that what you’ve been up to? Getting the dirt on me?’

  There’s another pause. Then Wesley again, almost sympathetic. ‘They did phone you?’

  ‘You know they did.’

  ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘I told them to fuck off.’

  ‘No, you didn’t.’

  ‘No, you’re right, I didn’t, not in those words. But I told them it wasn’t any of their business.’

  Wesley laughs here. He had a very distinctive laugh, high-pitched, a percussive sound, slightly manic, almost a cackle. Aldridge responds. He’s sounding hurt again.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘What you just said. What you told them. None of their business. That’s the whole point, mate. That’s why they were on to you in the first place. It was their business. Most of the fucking piece was about their business. That’s why they were were shitting themselves. Jesus, there we were with this monster story, about to go public, MI5 caught with their knickers down, smuggling all those tons of dope. No wonder they gave you a bell, shit…’

  Wesley cackles again. There’s nothing from Aldridge for a bit. Then you get the scrape of a chair, and Aldridge’s voice, more distant. ‘Listen, mate, this job—’

  ‘Isn’t as easy as it looks? Yeah, I know.’

  ‘Don’t be so fucking smart.’

  ‘I’m not. I’m trying to do a fucking job. The one you pay me for. Remember?’

  ‘OK, OK, OK, you’re disappointed, I can understand that. OK, so yes, they did. They were on … and yes, there was pressure, lots of it, round the clock: them, the board, the bank, our city friends, you name it, so … You’re right. I bottled.’

  ‘You bottled.’

  ‘Yeah. Mea fucking culpa. And now you’re upset about it.’

  ‘Yeah. And you know why? Because next Sunday it’ll be in print anyway.’

  ‘Where? Who?’

  ‘The People.’

  ‘You know that?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘All of it?’

  There’s another pause here. It’s Wesley’s turn to be slightly hesitant. ‘No … not the whole thing.’

  ‘The MI5 bits?’

  ‘No, not them. But the rest, the Micks, the dope, all the stuff about the betting shop and the laundering scams… it’s all there. Believe me, I’ve talked to the bloke who’s doing it. He’s pissing himself. They all are. Can’t understand why we, you, never—’

  ‘But they’re not runni
ng the MI5 bits?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what’s the story?’

  At this point, Wesley goes barmy. The tirade lasts for several minutes. At the end of it, unusually, he apologizes. Aldridge accepts the apology and mutters something about not playing a blinder himself. Then the conversation changes course completely. Aldridge is taking Wesley into his confidence. Two old mates. The tape still running.

  ‘Listen, Wes, things have been happening. Stuff you don’t know about…’

  ‘You’re sacking me.’

  ‘No, on the contrary—’

  ‘You want me to do your job.’

  ‘God forbid. You’d never forgive me. Who’d fucking want it?’

  ‘What, then?’

  Here, there’s the sound of blinds rattling down. Then Aldridge again. ‘Just you and me? Off the record?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’ve had an offer.’

  ‘Surprise me.’

  ‘Seriously. An amazing offer.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Heading up a defence magazine. Specialist weekly. Leader in its field … C’mon, Wes, you know what I’m talking about…’

  ‘Defence Week?’

  ‘In one.’

  Another pause. Wesley sounding slightly shocked. ‘They want you to edit Defence Week?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you want to do it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  Aldridge takes his time answering. His voice has the tone of someone contemplating a good meal: excited, pleased with himself, anticipatory.

  ‘It’s authoritative. It’s the best in the field. It’s read in the right places. It’s … shit, a real opportunity.’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘To move out a little. Spread my wings. Get some profile.’ He pauses here. ‘You know the way it goes, Wes. The embassy drinks circuit. The odd Newsnight invite. The odd consultancy. Seat at the top table. The high and the fucking mighty.’

  ‘And you.’