Bodyguard (24 page)

Imprisoned, John was by the pool writing with just Oggy for company. Straightaway they were desperate to see the
footage
. Nigel had had one shot at it and his rushes were brilliant, especially the images of Zanu-PF headquarters. He was just a natural with the camera – you either had it or you didn’t. You could tell on instinct if the images were any good or not, and both John and Nige knew. They’d worked together many times in war zones over the years. Even though TT and Dirk had been used to working with an Australian cameraman, Nige proved you could show your worth when you only got one bite at the cherry. John and Oggy abandoned what they were doing – they wanted to make a package immediately.

John was chomping at the bit now. ‘Shall we do a piece to camera?’

He was desperate to get out there. but this time I talked him out of it. ‘We’d rather wait – let’s see what occurs,’ I urged.

We were that close to the elections – a package would do without John needing to lay down anything more than his voice. Of course, if they were on to us, it didn’t now matter that he had signed off ‘somewhere in Zimbabwe’ last night. There was no mistaking the headquarters of Zanu-PF. Clearly, someone was in Harare, and if they had half a brain, that was John and a small team.

Still nothing from Mugabe’s people – we were able to book in for another night.

You could see John wanted to get out there. He would grumble about it every now and then, and there was only so long he could carry on holding court, entertaining our hosts and Dirk, Steve and TT with stories from the life of John Simpson! As evening wore on through dinner, I had seen this many times. As exciting as those tales still were, I never got tired of hearing them. Everyone always wanted a piece of him and he knew how to serve it up, but he was never exclusive. It wasn’t just the John show. He would always say, ‘Ah Craig, do you remember the Friendly Fire?’ – they were our stories together. We had seen a lot in each other’s company. We had killed a lot of time as we were now, as well as chasing down the story against all the odds. Nick loved it – in his eyes John Simpson could stay forever, and the cycle would repeat itself. By the time we had cleared off, Nick would be sitting round a table telling stories of how he and John had sat round this very table telling stories. Over the years, the stories would get better, and Nick, inevitably, wouldn’t stop telling them.

The next day, John was back on my case, asking to see the Meikles family. He wanted to get out. One thing I knew for sure – we couldn’t turn up all heavy-handed. We couldn’t go in convoy, and that would mean I couldn’t go at all. That meant I wasn’t really doing my job but I trusted TT and Dirk and their excellent local knowledge and contacts.

The Meikles epitomised the story of South African wealth. Their house had a driveway longer than my street. On the walls,
paintings
were worth more than my own home. They owned one of the most famous hotels in Harare. We couldn’t go in there – businessmen
allowed into Harare would stay there but it was the kind of place where lots of dodgy people frequented the reception, watching you. That was a definite no-go.

They were gone for an hour. John would get his high tea after all. As contemporary as his act remained, this was just a little John throwback to a time when reporting was a different ball game and the Commonwealth still vaguely stood for something. He had
thousands
of contacts in hundreds of places. A lifetime’s work was never complete. He probably knew somebody important in every country in the world. And they knew him. It was a risk getting him out there but it kept him sane.

It didn’t stop there. We sorted the trip to Faraday’s too. He shopped like he might never be back – and that was a real
possibility
, of course. It was an old hunting store that had been around for years and he splashed
£
500 on boots, bags and wallets. God knows how he thought we would get the stuff back. John knew the owner there, too. At 1 p.m., he closed the premises as he would always do for lunch. There was hardly anyone on the streets. John had a shop all to himself. We literally pulled up outside, Dirk and I on either side. John had saved his biggest hat for disguise! As much as this wasn’t part of any risk assessment, I felt I couldn’t say no.

‘That would be splendid if you can arrange it,’ he would say in a way that was politely persuasive. I took the decision to give it a green light on the basis that if my duty was to look after John, I didn’t want him to go nuts either. Plus, I was attracted to the danger. I would have filmed it, too, just for the two fingers it would stick up to Mugabe to show John Simpson shopping freely in Zimbabwe, but I didn’t want to put anyone at Faraday’s under any retrospective retaliatory risk. I had done well to keep him under wraps up to now. This would
probably
settle him for the next couple of days until the election.

Unbeknown to John, TT, Dirk and Steve were working with me through their contacts to get us into the Dutch Embassy. This was where the opposition to Robert Mugabe was supposedly living under
the protection of the Netherlands. Dramatically, Morgan Tsvangirai had just pulled out of the election. The race was on to get to him.

‘Do you think John would be interested in interviewing him?’ Dirk had said casually over a cup of tea. I nearly spat my drink out. Neither Dirk nor TT was particularly media savvy. They were both ex-military guys whose job was to look after the client. I had told them we needed to look for stories, contacts, meetings, whatever they could come up with – it wasn’t enough just to be here. But he just dropped it into conversation like asking me how many sugars I wanted.

Steve Fielder was actually very well known to and within Tsvangirai’s party – the problem was that we had to keep the network of
knowledge
small to protect both Tsvangirai and, of course, John. The fewer people who knew about this, the better, and when you are dealing with the leader of the opposition, the chances were that a few people were going to get to know. Many of Tsvangirai’s party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), were ex-farmers. Some, like Steve, had had their land taken off them. That is how he had the access.

Andrew Chadwick, a former correspondent himself for the British press, had now taken on the unforgiving task of becoming Tsvangirai’s spokesman. That looked like a job where you might get a knock-on the door in the middle of the night – if they were even being that polite. Initially, when we discussed getting into the Dutch Embassy, his response was ‘pretty difficult’. From my point of view, I didn’t even know where the embassy was nor how much surveillance it was under. Clearly, the secret police and Zanu-PF were watching it and him like a hawk. How would I get John there in the cold light of day? We had to tread very carefully. If we were on, I knew too that I wouldn’t be going, much to my disgust. It would be Nigel and John only – we couldn’t risk any more in the head count. To make things worse, the Dutch didn’t want the BBC on the premises.

That night, just before John was about to do a live, Andrew Chadwick called. ‘Could he talk about the meeting?’ he asked Steve.

It was on.

Chadwick knew the game and knew it was worth it. If he could get a message out to the world on the eve of the election, the trusted John Simpson was the man to deliver it. It was a win–win situation. Simpson would look good and Chadwick’s background enabled him to understand that; as the media aide, he knew the world would be reminded of the violent and dodgy democracy that Mugabe was orchestrating. At home, there were bigger stories – many had questioned why we were so obsessed with Iraq and not Mugabe. Oil was always the obvious conclusion. Now was a real chance to turn the spotlight back on this awful dictator. These moments came along rarely.

It was time to tell John. Then, in his giddiness, to remind him not to blow it now.

There would no more shopping trips etc. He was to remain
nonspecific
in his location. We were that close, both to election day and to interviewing one of the few people brave enough to stand in front line politics against Mugabe, that we couldn’t risk compromise now. We were way past the point of day one, where just to be here was the story. Now, the story was coming to us and meeting us half way. In my head, it was time to start making plans to leave. My brief to the guys cranked it up a notch. No messing now, and we are gone as soon as we had everything we needed on election day.

TT and I got up to leave. We met Andrew Chadwick in the car park of a Chinese restaurant a few blocks away. I had to assume that he was being tailed and we were now under a very serious threat of acquiring one ourselves, even though there were only two other cars there. Chadwick would have used this place before, I’m sure. I trusted him and TT that we were as safe as we could be.

I pulled up next to him and wound the window down. Like so much of my BBC life, it was like something out of the movies. We didn’t have time to muck about. He got straight in the car, and cut straight to it. ‘It’s on,’ he said. ‘Morgan wants to talk.’ I drove to keep moving and spot a tail. We left his car there. John Simpson was going
to love this. Well, until he heard the next bit. ‘Morgan wants to know what questions you are going to ask him.’

He was playing a game and we both knew it. As a former press man, he sussed that John wouldn’t agree to that, however much he wanted the interview. It was all part of the game. That, to John, was like being embedded with the Yanks in Iraq. ‘Look, we can’t really discuss that,’ I said on John’s behalf.

Chadwick knew I could fob him off, but that word would get back to John. What did it matter anyway? The image of John and the inevitably defeated opposition leader would beam around the world – that was almost enough to warrant the story. And in return, the politician would say what he wanted to say, regardless of the
questions
. We all knew how it worked, and that both sides were doing each other a favour. To talk to the British, too, when everything Morgan Tsvangirai did or said was monitored, must have been some comfort to him. If you can’t trust your own nation’s media, you could still, at least, believe most of what was on the BBC. I warmed to him – maybe it was the British connection or perhaps he was just a rare human being in politics.

‘You and John were blown up in 2003,’ he said. He was good at the small talk but it also struck a chord. It told me he had checked us out. People would remember John reporting with his trouser leg blown off – who wouldn’t? – but it took some effort to know I was there. That impressed me. I always tried to know the little details about people before I met them for the first time, too. It just marked him as a pro.

‘I really need to know the questions,’ he repeated.

‘Can we call you?’ I asked.

And we left it there to head back to the safe house. It was over in no time at all. I loved that. Arranging a secret RV with the
spokesman
for the opposition, picking him up at the local Chinese and then taking him for a spin with the secret police possibly in tow – did it get any better? And that’s before we tried to smuggle John into the Dutch Embassy.

Everything now would be done by phone. We would speak in the morning. I was desperate to get in there and meet Tsvangirai, too, but not even I could swing that one. What use was I inside an embassy when any trouble would be waiting for us on the outside? It was my job to think about moving.

John would want that broadcast immediately – and rightly so. As soon as it aired, we had to be getting out of there. If we didn’t leave the country immediately, we at least had to be ready. There was a lot to take in. Just over twenty-four hours to go to the election, and we were a phone call away from a man who could showcase to the world what a sham Zimbabwe was. By then, if we didn’t get caught in the process, we would have survived until election day. John, through our contacts, had sniffed out the big exclusive and I had chaperoned him to the sting. High excitement and tension. This is how we worked every time. There was a lot to sleep on.

In the morning, we made a tactical compromise. It wasn’t worth not sending over the questions to Chadwick. We all agreed it meant nothing except that we showed willing and gained their trust. It wasn’t what we wanted to do, but once we were in there, John could take Morgan places John wanted to go, and Morgan would probably not need much stopping anyway. Early the next afternoon we left the compound to shoot election day footage.

On the local TV, it was as though we were in a different country – it was a total and utter farce. Either they didn’t bother or it was all Mugabe. How did those journalists on that network work like that? Through fear, I presume. They weren’t really journos at all – they were publicists.

We knew we couldn’t realistically get near a polling station. They were heavily guarded by Mugabe’s lot. That would be a red rag to a bull. But we got as close as we could, knowing again we only had one chance to grab a shot and then get the hell out of there. John scribbled away hidden in the back. When we unleashed him briefly to do a tiny piece to camera to show he was really there, the old pro
was ready to go and delivered it in one take before hopping back in the car. We never knew if anyone saw. It was a depressing collapse of democracy which made the interview with Morgan Tsvangirai now essential. For both sides.

Back at the compound, we spoke to Andrew Chadwick. Tsvangirai was now living back at his house, not far from the Dutch Embassy. In many ways this was better because we didn’t need to involve the Dutch. In others it was worse – everything going in and out of there would be under even more scrutiny. Chadwick confirmed that we were definitely on.

Morgan Tsvangirai was born in 1952 in what was then Southern Rhodesia. He was one of nine children, his father a carpenter and a bricklayer. He himself spent ten years working in a mine, where he began his journey into politics, heavily involved with the trade unions. Ironically, it was believed in his early years that he was a big Mugabe supporter. In opposition, he had survived three assassination attempts and had been arrested and beaten several times – the most recent of these just a fortnight or so before we got here. The previous month, there had also been another credible assassination attempt on him, which delayed his return to Zimbabwe from Ireland. We would meet the lone voice against Robert Mugabe in the next day or so.