Bodyguard (25 page)

This was it. Dirk, Oggy and myself travelled in the Volvo. TT was at the wheel. Nick, John and Nigel took the 4x4. Sometimes
something
had to give, and it was here that I lost control. With TT driving because he knew the way, the back way, and the only damn way out if the shit the fan, my sole job was to have eyes in the back of my head. Before and after the switch.

Yes, the switch.

We had agreed the only way in was to be so bloody obvious about it that nobody would even think to look. Our plan was simple. Go in Andrew Chadwick’s car. It was genius. They knew his car like the back of their hand and while they always watched it, I know from years of surveillance you can take targets for granted that you see
every single day. Like us introducing the money man from Kent Constabulary at the last minute, it was any break from the ordinary that aroused suspicion. There was simply nothing unusual about Andrew Chadwick driving into Morgan Tsvangirai’s house several times a day. It’s just that this time, John Simpson from the BBC was lying down in the back under the covers. We had switched John about ten minutes away from the house.

This was the key to getting him in. But it made great drama too. The practicality of the two cars needed to happen but nothing escaped the attention of our cameraman, Nigel. All the scurrying around from one car to the next with the camera at all angles captured the tension of the moment. A straight, perfect shot from a long lens would have been bollocks. The perfection in the filming had to be that it could come out in any shape or size, just so long as it captured John on the move and breathless, exiting our vehicle and diving into the back of the car of the spokesperson for the opposition.

And that is exactly how it happened.

We all drove off seconds later. Suddenly my levels of awareness shot to maximum. They had to. Up to this point, we had just been two vehicles. Now we were one vehicle hugging the rear of one of the cars of one of the key players in Zimbabwean politics. By definition, we had drawn attention to ourselves. I realised, too, that at this moment, if we got pulled over, our cover story was over. There is no way in the world any sensible British sports and leisure company would be scouting for lodges and game parks in the capital on the eve of another of those hugely sensitive political moments in Zimbabwean history. Not unless they were stupid.

Then I saw it in the rear mirror. We were in trouble. A Central Intelligence Organisation car was tailing us. I knew all the tricks myself and we were definitely being followed. I couldn’t know if they had seen the switch. That was the point with a tail – you could never be sure where it started because you can’t specify that you have company until a car has been there right behind you a few minutes
or so. I hadn’t spotted it before John got out, so I had to hope we were safe. Most likely, they had routine eyes on Chadwick but we had attracted attention by being in his slipstream. I didn’t like dealing in hope.

There was nothing to do except make Dirk aware and hold our nerve. Keep driving, don’t do anything rash, pray the moment passes. Avoid pulling up at the lights. We pulled up at the lights. I stared right ahead. So did Dirk. It was one of those moments that hung in the air – a slow movie scene about to crash into fast forward at any point. Your heart races not out of fear, but out of mental psyching of what might be about to follow. It was just another day and just another job for the CIO, but every one of their subjects would have felt like this the first time it happened to them. I was pleased though, in an inverted way. If they had eyes on us, they didn’t have them on John. He would be safer than safe if we were the focal point of risk. Our plan had worked. Everyone had done their job. I was happy that we were the Trojan Horse.

We pulled away. This just showed how good Dirk was and why local knowledge is king. There was no way in the world anyone other than a local should be driving. They went right. Dirk reckoned they might have seen us stop and were on routine patrol. Pleased to see that we were white, they left us alone. We carried straight on, now on a mission. However quickly you get your bearings in a place like this, you didn’t know the alternative back streets and side roads that Dirk discreetly found his way on to, manoeuvring us back into the town centre, and losing our tail with no obvious signs of panic. I loved his coolness under pressure. Top-drawer pros who had the same anal attention to detail as me and didn’t get a sweat on when a red light spelt danger were my kind of people. That didn’t stop any of us breathing a sigh of relief when we got back to the compound.

Relief soon disappeared. I still had to be on high alert. Whatever John brought back was going to air almost immediately but obviously his return meant that our satisfaction of getting away from our tail 
was soon replaced by the joy of what Nigel had in his camera. He had been gone forty-five minutes. The return pick-up couldn’t have gone smoother.

‘How did it go, John?’ everybody asked.

Ecstatic inside, John played it his usual cool self. ‘Oh you know …’ he replied.

It was one of those moments for a broadcaster when, as long as it has recorded properly, you were in a quiet place. You knew that you were about to unleash a rocket which the world would then play catch-up with for the next day or so, but right now, you had a couple of hours of peace to yourself before you detonated. The ricochet was coming. Journalistically, you were in a content no-man’s land. Except for the hard work at high speed that was needed to turn the piece around, of course. For John, at his age and with all his experience, this was still a massive deal. Make no bones about it, he wanted Mugabe one to one, staring down the lens. That was unlikely to happen until, if the day ever came, Mugabe needed John. But Morgan Tsvangirai was not far below. I knew John, and I knew he was happy.

That he was safe and undetected so far made this almost a perfect mission. We just had to get it out tonight on a live, get some
election
day shots in the morning and feed, and then it would be time to abandon our desperate search for safari retreats in between major sporting conquests! John said it was a good interview. Tsvangirai had answered some decent questions. Some of them were even the ones we had sent Andrew Chadwick!

I knew what was coming next, obviously. And this time, I couldn’t argue.

‘I think we need to do a piece for tonight, and I think we need to do a live. Let’s see what London want.’ John didn’t think it. He knew it. He was underselling himself. It had to air now.

One thing that shone through was that for Morgan Tsvangirai, it was not an option for Mugabe to die in office. He needed to stand aside in real time. It was the old death penalty argument all over again – do 
you hang a mass murderer, or is their greater suffering to let them rot the rest of their days away? Did Mugabe have it in him to walk away from his corrupt, violent dictatorship? That was the moral high ground that Tsvangirai was walking across, and he was right of course.

He said not standing was the ‘least of his concerns’ because he couldn’t swallow that level of violence. He had won in 2002 and 2005 and Mugabe refused to accept the result. A victory did not equal a change of plan. It was powerful stuff and both John and Morgan Tsvangirai knew it. John pointed out that this interview would be studied by Mugabe’s people but also by African leaders across the continent just before their big African leaders’ summit, which was imminent. I could tell by watching that the questions for Andrew Chadwick had become a nonsense – he pushed Tsvangirai more than once on his lack of courage, his inability to see it through for just a few more days, for not, as John put it, ‘staying the course’.

Tsvangirai’s message was clear: no armed intervention from an external democracy would help. You had to fight a dictatorship using democratic means. The bullet couldn’t replace the ballot. And that was the soundbite that would resonate around the world. Our work was done. I made an instant decision on moving. Not to. It was too obvious.

My new plan was to lay low the next day. Nobody was to go out. The worst thing we could do was put John’s piece out and then run. They would be watching the roads. I wanted to gather our thoughts, wait a day and discuss with TT, Dirk and Steve the best way to leave. Did we go the same way we came in, for speed? Should we head to Bulawayo or make for the Botswana/Mozambique border? (My air strip option was only to be used in an extreme medical emergency.) Bulawayo was nearly six hours away, Botswana close to nine. Mozambique would have taken even longer and there were a lot of war veterans and Zanu-PF that way. I knew that, as in all good military ops, the best thing to do was to retrace our steps, praying that the border crossing hadn’t upgraded from Amstrad to ZX Spectrum
overnight and also that the checkpoints hadn’t suddenly sprung into life to do their job properly.

The next morning, Nick rang all his contacts. How did the land lie back to the border? Had anybody seen John on BBC World? Was it safe to go? It was like the first day of summer holidays – the work was done, we were just waiting to leave. Except it would be ten to fourteen days before the official confirmation of the result would come in. I thought it was a safe time to text Sue at home to say that Mugabe had won!

John also filed an excellent piece for BBC Online, laced with irony and straight to the point. He implied that the Dutch Embassy had been turned and that the streets outside were now virtually empty – Tsvangirai may have been better off seeking African refuge. The MDC supporters were resentful and gloomy; the streets of Harare were deserted because Zanu-PF had nobody left to beat up. He added that the official media rarely mentioned Morgan unless in a derogatory capacity – their main hour-long news show at 2000 was an hour-long advert for Mugabe. They never mentioned that the Zimbabwean Dollar had fallen to thirty billion against the US equivalent. The cost of margarine came in at around Z$420 million. That was one hell of a note.

Their economy, John said, was in free fall. No Western
government
had expressed their anger about the eclipse of Morgan; many African governments remained discreet in frustration. China continued to help with a whiff of diplomatic immunity. John signed off that Robert Mugabe’s ferocious determination to stay in power should not be questioned. Equally, nobody should underestimate the ability of his own political opponents to destroy their own case. It was a brilliant piece – John at his considered best. It was also one of those moments in time where Morgan Tsvangirai hadn’t stepped up to the plate.

We were by no means out of the woods but still, at least it would be better to get caught on the way out than the way in. We had
delivered
. The job was done. Bring on the next one. After all that, we were pretty blasé about getting out. We decided to go back the way
we came. Our cover story would hold unless they were specifically looking for John. The further out of Harare we got, the better. It was exactly the same as on the way in – ill-disciplined checkpoints barely going through the motions, self-interest (food) mostly uppermost in their thoughts.

Until we got to the border. It was always the little detail that would come back to haunt you. Oggy had bought a zebra skin. To take it out of the country, the paperwork was a mile long. I just said ‘Fuck it’ and we would smuggle it through. Oggy was nervous that he could be accused of poaching when we flew back from Zambia into South Africa. The checkpoint was busy.

‘Same routine again,’ TT said.

‘We need all the paperwork for the vehicles.’

We were driving Zimbabwean vehicles in to Zambia. I handed the guard the passports. One by one he stamped them. Just as he was opening John’s, I thought now was the moment to pipe up.

‘Oh, by the way, we have got a zebra skin,’ I declared.

‘Where did you buy it?’

‘Harare,’ I replied.

‘I’ll need to have a look at it.’

It was in the car. I paused for a moment. ‘Not a problem,’ I said. ‘Can you just do the other passport?’

Thankfully, it meant he didn’t have time to study the life and times of Simpson or any other name he was going under. He handed all the documents back to TT.

There was still the business of the cars – now was when John could get recognised. TT gave me the usual wink. A group of them came outside to the car.

‘Is there a problem?’ I asked.

‘You can’t be taking this out of the country. The paperwork is incorrect,’ the guard moaned.

‘Look,’ I replied, ‘we’re in a bit of a hurry; we’ve got a plane to catch. Can I have a look at the paperwork again?’

TT called me over. I took the documents and applied the law of the land. ‘I’ll think you’ll find that this is all correct really.’ I handed them back to him.

His eyes lit up at the 100 US dollars inside. ‘Let me just go and get this signed off and stamped and then you can be on your way, Sirs.’

I accompanied him back in to the office, while TT repacked everything. We didn’t want to be lingering any longer. Moments later we were gone. Oggy’s was another schoolboy error, but it had offered a good distraction from John’s passport. It also was true to the cover story – all those sports fans coming on our tours would
probably
return with the same souvenirs. At the Zambian side, nobody cared. They stamped us in and we made for the airport to fly back to Johannesburg.

We had left at 05.30. At 19.30 we touched down in South Africa. John’s interview was reverberating around the globe. Back in London, Malcolm Downing said that how we’d handled getting him in, around and out had been brilliant. It had been a big team effort – Dirk and TT were truly superb. It hadn’t been a cheap story for the BBC but this was what we were all in it for: to get the World Affairs editor live in Harare was unprecedented; to interview Morgan Tsvangirai in such circumstances was way beyond the icing on the cake. In all the hours sitting around that big house, chewing the fat and waiting to go live, we had also given birth to another idea, which meant that John and I would be on the road again soon, literally into the unknown.