Bouncers and Bodyguards (15 page)

The site has changed direction over time and is now dedicated to helping chart Steve Wraith’s progress as an actor and writer. Steve is represented by Janet Plater Management, and any offers of work in the entertainment industry must be directed to Janet Plater on 0191 221 2490.

As well as being a published author, Steve has been the editor of two football-related magazines.
The Number Nine
fanzine ran from 1991 to 1998 and was a huge favourite on the terraces at St James’s Park in the 1990s. Steve is now the editor of North East football magazine
Players Inc
.

Steve has also teamed up with former Newcastle and Hartlepool striker Joe Allon to launch a successful agency hiring out former football players as after-dinner speakers. For a comprehensive list of players and prices, please email Steve or Joe at [email protected]

Steve is also a keen fundraiser and has dedicated a lot of his time to helping the Bubble Foundation. The annual celebrity cricket tournament The Felling Ashes has gone from strength to strength since its inaugural game in 2002, and various sportsmen’s dinners and music gigs have helped raise thousands for worthy causes. For further information on charities that Steve is involved with, please visit
www.bubblefoundation.org.uk
,
www.cancerresearch.org
and
www.gracehouse.co.uk

Steve has written for numerous books, including:
Survival of the Fattest
volumes one to four (football related);
Born to Fight
by Richy Horsley;
The Guv’nor: Through the Eyes of Others
by Anthony Thomas; and
Wor Al: A Fans’ Tribute to Alan Shearer
by Paul Brown and Stuart Wheatman.

W
ithout doubt, iraq and Afghanistan have permanently altered the attention private security and bodyguarding has had in the media, changing forever the perception the general public has of the industry. Before the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the public generally knew very little about bodyguarding and private security; to most people it was a twilight world, populated by thugs, gangsters and mercenaries, which they knew nothing about. However, since the US declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq in May 2003 and restructuring of the country commenced, and fuelled by recent kidnappings and assassinations – of both bodyguards and their clients – the bodyguarding industry now receives almost daily media attention and is the subject of frequent articles and editorial, as well as a fair number of top-quality television programmes. Also, with the introduction of SIA licensing in the UK, compulsory standardised training and strict vetting, bodyguarding as a career is now open to almost anyone with the aptitude and ability, the drive and the determination, and the right background. As an industry, bodyguarding has gone from strength to strength; it is no longer the sole domain of a select number of ex-Special Forces earning £500 plus per day, bonded by secrecy, mystery and silence. Bodyguarding is now big business, with corporate takeovers and multimillion-pound contracts.

But this has only been the case in some Western countries over the past few years. Prior to 2003, there were only a handful of other nations, at peace, that had such a high-profile private security industry. One such country was the Russian Federation – although many would argue that with the ongoing conflict in Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia, and the occasional terrorist activity in Russia’s capital, the country has never really been at peace.

Since the fall of communism, private security in Russia has grown significantly and is now a multibillion-pound industry. During the years of communism, there were no private security companies, only special military units set up and funded by the government for specific and specialised purposes. Because there was little or no crime and everything was owned by the state, there was no real need to protect anything, as there was no obvious threat. And those very few petty criminals who did exist were generally quickly caught and sent off to the Gulags of Siberia, where they usually ended their days building roads on a diet of dried bread.

During communist rule, it was the government who were the criminals, and they controlled everything anyway. But once communism fell, it was a free-for-all, and by fuck did you have to protect what you had. Without protection, a business – any business – would have had no chance whatsoever of surviving. Even a small corner shop had to have armed guards standing at the entrance, nervously eyeing up all and sundry.

I fondly remember the very first Russian nightclub I visited on one of my very first trips to Moscow. I was in the country meeting the directors of a company called Centurion VI, at that time a major player in the private security industry. I was planning a forthcoming security operation with a banker who I had been tasked to protect. After a hearty meal at a restaurant that they said they owned on the outskirts of the city, I was invited on to a nightclub with a couple of the bodyguards whom I was going to be working with. Having already sampled the delights of Russian women, I eagerly agreed, hoping that I could at least see some wondrous female forms – even if I was in Russia on business and therefore couldn’t touch . . . well, shag.

The nightclub was behind the now demolished Intourist hotel at the bottom of Tverskaya Street, a few minutes’ walk from Red Square. As we approached the club, two menacing-looking doormen stood guard outside, each brandishing AK-47s. I am not easily intimidated, but even I drew a deep breath at nightclub doormen with AK-47s and asked myself why were we not allowed to work the doors with these kind of tools back in the UK – now can you imagine what that would be like!

The doormen obviously knew the people I was with, and we were quickly recognised and received a warm, enthusiastic welcome. I just smiled and nodded eagerly, not understanding a word and hoping to God that they were really being kind and welcoming and not planning to decapitate me and sell my remains for a few roubles to feed the poor beggars found on every street corner. This was one sad thing that I immediately noticed in the newly capitalist regime – there were beggars everywhere.

I spent the rest of that evening huddled in a smoky corner with four slightly insane-looking, chain-smoking, vodka-swilling, pissed Russian bodyguards, who thought it was terribly funny to unholster their weapons, swirl them around their fingers, gunslinger style, while shouting ‘cowboy’ at the top of their voices and pointing them at the other extremely scared customers. Needless to say, by the end of the evening we were the only ones left in the club, apart from a bevy of the most gorgeous girls, who were either dancing in front of us or cuddled up around with their tits hanging out and tight shorts up their arses. They were all so beautiful and were obviously paid to stay late and entertain us – but I never saw one rouble pass hands that evening, so I have no idea who paid for what, or if in fact anything was paid for. That was Moscow in the early 1990s.

Moscow is undoubtedly addictive; anyone who has been there will almost certainly agree. At first, you enter the country with trepidation and apprehension – after all, Moscow
is
Moscow: corrupt and criminal, crazy and callous – but you then have to be dragged screaming back to the airport a few days, or weeks, or months, or years, later. To this day, I still believe that there is nowhere like it in the world, but back then when everything was new and exciting, when you could do anything and there was little or no accountability, Moscow was simply fantastic.

Shortly after joining the Worldwide Federation of Bodyguards (WFB) as an international trainer, we decided to set up and run a training course in Moscow. After a few years of coming and going, I had developed quite an extensive network of unique contacts within the security industry. If you wanted armed bodyguards with machine guns, I could do it. If you wanted to blue-light it down the middle of major highways, I could do that for you too. If you wanted someone to disappear, no doubt that could also be arranged. Killed someone and got caught with the still-smoking gun in your hands? No worries. In fact, in societies like those, almost anything could be arranged and sorted for a fee – nothing was impossible.

Centurion VI employed mainly Russian ex-Special Forces personnel. As a Russian Special Forces soldier, when you left the army there weren’t that many options available – you normally went into bodyguarding or you joined the criminal fraternity as an assassin or extortionist, earning twice the money. Paradoxically, ex-Special Forces soldiers were often protecting clients against ex-Special Forces assassins.

During my visits on contract to Moscow, I had got to know some of the bodyguards quite well, and when I mentioned that the WFB wanted to run a close protection training course in Moscow, they jumped at the chance. The WFB was growing rapidly, and its reputation was developing. I asked the ex-KGB director of Centurion if he knew a facility or base where we could run the first course. He grinned knowingly – he knew of a very good base which we could use, no problem. On my next visit to Moscow, all would be arranged.

Returning to England after even the shortest of trips to Russia was never easy. I went from running a bodyguarding operation or involving myself in a corporate and usually very interesting investigation to working back on the doors – it was the only job I could do that allowed me the time off to go to Moscow. That was one of the good things about the doors: I would just need to telephone the security company and tell them that such and such weekend or week I would not be available to work, and they would always quickly find a replacement. This was before SIA licensing, so doormen were relatively easy to find. I didn’t mind working the doors, and it helped pay the bills, but I always yearned to get back to Moscow.

My next trip couldn’t come fast enough, and about two months later I was on the plane back to Russia with the sole intention of finding a training camp and setting up a WFB close protection training course. I only had four or five days – it was all the money the WFB had to finance the trip – and a lot to do. I had to look for a suitable training camp, arrange a date, negotiate fees, find instructors, fit the Russian style of training into the WFB’s Western style of security operations, find accommodation for the students, arrange transportation and slide myself gracefully into the knickers of at least a couple of gorgeous Russian girls – a requirement on every trip.

I made my own way from the airport to the Ukraine Hotel, a Russian hotel boasting four stars, but this meant
maybe
two stars by Western standards. I was on a tight budget, so instead of being robbed blind by the taxi drivers that hound passengers as they exit Sheremetyevo International Airport, I decided to join the hoards of Russians and take a minibus.

Unlike most other international airports worldwide, there are no trains or decent coaches from Sheremetyevo into Moscow. If you don’t have a car waiting for you, you either have to pay the equivalent of at least £50 for a taxi, or squeeze onto a minibus with 12 or so other passengers for about 50p! Travelling in a minibus is definitely not for the faint-hearted. There is no room for luggage, so you sit with your bags on your lap, there is no heating, the bus is crammed and to pay you pass your money down the line of passengers to the driver while he negotiates the traffic and your change and screams back at the one poor soul who hasn’t paid yet – how on earth he knows how many people are on the bus and who has or has not paid, I don’t know.

The airport is about 30 minutes’ drive to the outskirts of Moscow, where the minibuses stop – you then have to get a metro to your final destination. Faced with this daunting and occasionally scary journey, most Westerners on a corporate budget happily pay the taxi fare, but I was different – I wasn’t on a big budget, and anyway I despised the smelly, corrupt, soliciting taxi drivers and the Mafia gangs behind them that take most of the money the drivers ‘steal’ from the foreigners.

The Ukraine Hotel is a colossal Stalinist building that sits on the west bank of the Moskva River at the far end of the glitzy, neon-dotted Novy Arbat street and directly opposite the Russian government’s White House. It is ironic that during the cold war both the US and Russian governments had headquarters named the ‘White House’ – although it was the Americans who built theirs first, the Russian version not being completed until 1965. One of the ‘Seven Sisters’ that dot the Moscow landscape, the Ukraine Hotel was built in the 1950s to demonstrate the expertise and glory of the Soviet regime. With more than 1,000 rooms over 30 storeys, the hotel is not particularly comfortable but reasonably priced compared to Western hotels – although it is not particularly cheap, either. Although things are slowly changing, it is a big problem that there are no reasonably priced, decent Western-style hotels in Moscow. You can either stay in a Russian-style hotel for £30 to £40 a night, but with terrible service and the phone ringing consistently with strangely accented girls offering you a little extra comfort for a few extra dollars, or in a first-class Western hotel costing at least £150 to £200 a night! There is little choice in between.

Wrapped in a warm woolly scarf and thick coat, with my
shapka
(furry Russian hat) pulled tightly down over my ears, I stood on the steps of the hotel the following morning waiting for my lift. It was cold, about minus ten, and snowing heavily. Winter in Moscow is tough. It decimated the Germans during the Second World War, and before that Napoleon’s army, and today it still kills many people, especially beggars, who are frequently found frozen to death in derelict buildings or huddled in doorways in the grimy backstreets far away from the splendour that is central Moscow. Unlike the West, where people on the streets tend to be alcoholics, drug addicts or the mentally ill, beggars in Russia are the old, the poor, the disabled – ‘normal’ people simply unable to cope.