Chris Ryan (15 page)

Guest Of The Government 199 sort of a recce. When I heard their names, I realised they were from the Regiment, and that they'd been making a security assessment. When I said I knew both of them, things began to make more sense to him. He warned me that the building was probably bugged, so that the Syrians were listening to every word we said. I just hoped they'd packed up for the night.. Otherwise they'd immediately know that I'd been lying an hour or two earlier. The DA wrote down some details of what I'd told him and brought in one of the communications clerks, a girl, who encoded a message and sent it off to the UK command centre at High Wycombe. Things were getting a bit ridiculous. The DA kept calling me 'Sergeant Ryan'. I was calling the Second Secretary `John', and he was calling me 'Chris'. Anyway, with the mes�sage sent off, I reassembled my weapon and secured it, together with my ammunition, grenades, TACBE and kite - sight, in the strong room, and saw everything locked up safely. Then they told me that I could spend the rest of the night in the Meridien Hotel, just down the road, and said they'd put me on the British Airways flight to London the next day. They evidently felt that the hotel would be secure enough, but they told me to stay in my room, and to order meals through room-service. London! That wasn't what I wanted at all. My only con�cern was to get back to Saudi and find out what had become of the rest of the patrol. But before I could protest they were asking if there was anyone I'd like to phone. I thought, 'If I'm going back to UK, I'll let Jan know.' So I said I'd call my wife. I realised that if I did fly in to London, I'd only have a very short time there � the Regiment would want me straight back in Saudi, for debriefing; if I got to Hereford at all, it would be for just one night. But Jan didn't even know that we'd been deployed over the border, and I didn't want anyone else to know it either. So I thought things through a bit, working out what I could say and what I couldn't, and put in the call, with the Second Secretary sitting beside me. 200 The One That Got Away Jan sounded quite surprised to hear my voice. `Hi, Jan,' I said, forcing myself to sound casual. 'I might be coming home tomorrow.' `Great! How's it going?' `Fine. No problem.' `Why are you coming back, then?' `Just to pick up a bit of kit, you know, and escort it back across. I might only be there half the night. A couple of hours, even.' `Oh, great!' she said. 'Great! So � that's it.' `Everything fine there?' I asked. `Yeah � everything's boring. You doing anything?' `No,' I said. 'Everything here's cool. The only thing is �don't tell anyone I've rung. Just don't tell anybody I've been in contact.' The Embassy guys offered to get a taxi down to the hotel, but as it was only a couple of hundred metres away, I said I could walk. Yet when the DA set off at a normal pace, I couldn't keep up with him. I padded slowly along the pave�ment, and anyone I passed looked down at my stockinged feet in some surprise. As we arrived at the hotel, the porters standing around in the lobby also glared at my feet in dis�dain. The Second Secretary said, 'We may have a bit of trouble here, as you haven't got a passport; they don't normally let anybody book in without identification. But I'll see if I can square it away.' The guy on the desk wasn't amused. 'No, no,' he kept saying. 'No passport, no room! He cannot book in.' The Second Secretary began muttering about going back to the Embassy and spending the night there. He said that to get a passport made out he'd have to contact the charge d'af-faires. A photo would have to be taken, and it couldn't be done until next morning. Then I said, 'Listen � I've got a telephone number from the police. The boss guy said if I had any trouble, I was to ring them.' `No, no,' said the Defence Attach�urriedly. 'You can't do that. Don't ring them. Don't involve them any more. Guest Of The Government 201 In fact we've got a cellar bedroom in the Embassy, and you can sleep down there.' `No,' said the Second Secretary. 'The place is filthy. He can't go in there.' `Nonsense!' barked the DA. 'He's just roughed it for eight days. He'll be all right.' Then he added, 'At a pinch, he can have my bed.' What I didn't realise until later was that the man had two double beds in his hotel room � but of course, because he was an officer and I was an other rank, he didn't fancy having me sleeping in there. We didn't seem to be getting far, so the Second Secretary said, 'Where's that telephone number?' He got on the phone to my friend in the secret police, and within five minutes two Mercedes screeched to a halt outside. A swarm of men ran in. It looked like a raid by the SS; some of them were wear�ing long black leather trench-coats. With them was the interpreter. He came running up to me, grabbed me by the arm and moved me to one side. 'Chris,' he said quietly, 'in two minutes you're going to sign the book. Sign with a name that you can remember, and give any address you can re�member. Everything will be all right. If you get any more trouble, ring me again.' He then had a word with the Second Secretary. I turned round, and there were three blokes giving the piss to the hotel manager behind the desk. His eyes were going round in circles, and he was nodding like a robot. Then the secret police party walked out. 'I'll see you later,' said the interpreter, and he was gone. I went back up to the desk. `Yes, yes. Sign here, please. Anything I can do for you, sir?' I gave my surname as Black, and made up some address near Newcastle. The man snapped his fingers for a porter, and two guys grabbed my bags. The diplomats said, 'We'll see you in the morning,' and up I went. By then it was after 2a.m. and the past twenty-four hours had been the longest of my life. I'd really been looking for�ward to getting into that room. Once I closed the door, I 202 The One That Got Away thought, I'd be free of worry and danger for the first time in ten days. I'd be able to lie down, chill out, and go to sleep. But it didn't work out like that. As soon as I was alone, I started worrying about the rest of the patrol. I'd hoped that some of the guys would have escaped into Syria ahead of me. Either that, or they would have been lifted out by chop-per, back into Saudi; but now this possibility seemed unlikely. If the five had been rescued, and three guys were still missing, the Regiment would surely have alerted the Syrians to look out for us, and warned the Damascus Embassy. I'd come up like a bad penny, but nobody else. What had happened to the others? Were they dead, or hid�ing up somewhere? Were they still on the move? If they were, they must be in a bad way by now. I was so wound up that I felt I was still on the run. I got out my notebook and began scribbling reminders about what I'd done. I'd brought the book with me in case I had to take down a radio message or compose one, but in fact, until then, I hadn't made a single entry, for fear that I might be captured. But now I went back one day at a time, logging details to refresh my memory, and working out where I'd been at various times. The DA had warned me not to go downstairs for break�fast, in case press reporters had come into the hotel overnight. Instead, he said, I should get anything I wanted on room-service. So I lay on the bed, my feet propped up on pillows to help bring the swelling down � and all I wanted to do was drink. I had a craving for sweet drinks, particularly. When I looked at the room-service menu and found that they did ten dif�ferent kinds of fruit-juice cocktail, I phoned down to a waiter and asked for one of each. 'Can you send them up?' I asked. `Yes,' said the guy, 'but how many for?' Tor one person.' `So which one do you want?' 'I want every single one. I want numbers one, two, three � Guest Of The Government 203 Tor how many people?' Tor one person.' `Yes, but which one do you want?' `SEND THEM ALL!' I yelled. What do you think? The waiter came up with one drink! So I said, 'Fucking hell!', swilled this thing down, phoned up again and said, 'I want every single cocktail.' Tor how many people?' Tor ten people.' This time the guy came up with ten glasses, and I went whack, whack, whack � straight down with the lot. Then, lying in bed, I thought, 'Jesus, I need a piss.' But when I put my legs over the side of the bed, the pain in my feet was outrageous. I felt that they were going to split open � I really thought that the skin would rip, and flesh would burst out. I even considered slitting them to relieve the agony. I was nearly crying with it. As I crawled across the floor on hands and knees, I thought, 'This is bloody degrad�ing! How much lower can you get? You're on your hands and knees in the shithouse!' But there was no other way. I reached the bog and dragged myself up on to the seat. But immediately it happened again: the pain in my feet was so intense that I lost all feeling in my bladder, and couldn't pee. On the floor again, I crawled back to my bed and lay down. As soon as my feet stopped hurting, after about a minute, I wanted to pee again. Then I saw a metal waste-paper bin on the floor beside the bed, so I pulled it over and leaned over and pissed in that, and at last I could get my head down. But still I was tossing and turning, tossing and turning, my mind full of disturbing images � of my comrades wandering in the desert, or, worse still, being killed. In the end, though, I fell asleep � only to be dragged back by the phone ringing. By then it was after three, and here was the Defence Attach�n the line, sounding ridiculously conspiratorial. `What happened to the Charlie Oscar Delta Echo Sierra?' he breathed. I said 'What?' 204 The One That Got Away He repeated himself. `What the fuck are you on about?' `What happened to the codes?' Suddenly I realised that he was trying to be covert, spell�ing out 'codes' like that. Also I realised that it must be High Wycombe who were asking for the information; whenever we encrypt a message, we put it into code, then burn the cipher and smash the encryption device. In fact, Legs had carried our cipher equipment. He had burnt the codes and smashed the Emu. `One of the other lads had them,' I said. 'He burned them. I never had them at all.' `OK,' he said, and rang off. That was when I knew for sure that nobody else had come out. In the morning I ordered breakfast from room-service, and ate some fruit salad and a roll. I still didn't want anything substantial, but I drank pints of fruit juice and tea. Com�pared with the day before, I felt quite good. Then the Brits came to collect me, and I hobbled back to the Embassy, shuffling along the pavement in my stockinged feet, with my shoes under my arm. By the time we arrived, the place seemed to be full of people. The charge d'affaires had appeared, and there were two British girls on duty, one dealing with communications, the other a typist. I chatted to them for a while, then they put me up against a wall in my shirt and tie to take a black-and�white passport photograph with a Polaroid camera. 'Better be careful,' somebody said. 'We've only got two frames left.' But the first shot came out well, so they trimmed it, stuck it into a blank passport and stamped it. There I was, fixed up with a ten-year passport. The whole thing seemed so amateurish that I felt I was being given a Second World War escape kit. During the morning some questions came back from High Wycombe about the locations I'd mentioned, and the fact that I couldn't even work out the latitude and longitude Guest Of The Government 205 L showed what poor shape I was in. The DA had to do it for me. When I mentioned to him that I'd walked through some installation which looked like a signals complex, the Second Secretary said, `No, no: that's the yellow cake processing facility at Al Qaim.' He knew everything about the place �even the number of the Iraqi regiment guarding it. The latticework towers I'd seen on the high ground were for defence, not communication: apparently what I'd thought were cables slung between them were in fact chains, to pre-vent attacks from low-flying aircraft. `What's going on there?' I asked. `We don't know exactly. Some sort of nuclear process�ing.' `Bloody hell! I drank some water coming out of that place, and it tasted terrible.' `Effluent,' he said. `Nuclear effluent.' I felt my insides go cold. Had I swallowed some radio�active waste and contaminated myself, maybe with fatal consequences? During the morning a fax came in from High Wycombe saying: `Has Ryan spoken to anybody? Has he had contact with anyone?' The Second Secretary asked if I wanted him to record the call I'd made to Jan. I said, 'Well, yeah. I've got nothing to hide,' and I gave him Jan's name and telephone number. Within an hour of that fax going back to High Wycombe, the regimental Families' Officer was round at our house in Hereford, banging on the door. Of course Jan was upset, because if he comes round like that, it usually means your husband's dead. `What do you want?' she demanded, immediately decid�ing to cover up. `Have you just spoken to your husband?' `He's been on the phone to you.' `No he hasn't.' `I know he has. He's phoned you.' `Well, yes. He said he's coming back to get some kit.' `What else did he say?' 206 The One That Got Away `Nothing.' But the officer kept on with his questions, until Jan won�dered what the hell was going on, and began to feel sure that something bad had happened to me. In Damascus, I knew nothing of this, and we headed down to the airport to buy a ticket and get me on the flight to London. I'd bent in the heels of my shoes, so that they were like slippers, and occasionally I put them on; but my feet were still very painful, and mostly I was padding around in my socks. I got as far as the check-in desk, but there the guy stopped me because I didn't have a stamped visa showing when I'd entered the country. That was it; there was no arguing with him, and I ended up back at the Embassy. The charg�'affaires said, 'Right, it looks as though you'll be here for a couple of days. I'll give you some Syrian money, so that you can go and do a bit of shopping.' First, though, I went off with the Defence Attach�o see about a visa. We visited a building which was like a honeycomb of little offices, dozens of them, some with room for little more than a six-foot table, a chair and space for one person to stand up. Everyone was in military uniform. We went from one room to another, and one official after another said, `Oh, no � it's the other one,' and directed us to somebody else. The DA showed tremendous patience, and in all we saw about twenty people. The last official said, 'Well, if you haven't got an entry visa, you can't leave.' So we'd wasted the whole morning. I said to the DA, `Why not phone my friend in the
police again?' `Oh no,' he said, 'We can't do that.' So I waited till I was away from him, and asked the Second Secretary the same question. He put through a call, and very soon a message was on its way from the police to the visa building. When we next went down, I collected my exit visa without difficulty. The next flight out was in two days' time � but now things had changed. Instead of returning to the UK, I was told I'd be flying to Cyprus, where I'd be put on to a Hercules that was coming across from Riyadh. From Cyprus I was to fly to the Saudi capital, spend one night there, and then return to Guest Of The Government 207 the squadron at Al Jouf. That suited me much better; there was nothing particular on at home, and I wasn't interested in going there. All I wanted was to get back to the squadron, so that I could find out about the rest of the patrol, and brief any other guys who might be going in. That evening, back in the hotel, I had a meal in my room and went to bed. But still I couldn't relax: the missing guys were too much on my mind. It felt really bad to be sitting in Damascus, unable to contribute any information which might help with their recovery. Back in the Embassy next day, I was shooting shit with the two girls. One of them, who was quite good looking, said, `I've got a Walkman in the flat. Why not come down and listen to some music?' I said, 'Oh � great!' and we went downstairs into her living room. I wasn't sure what her in�terest in me might be, so I started talking about Jan and Sarah, to show her how the land lay. As we sat there chat�ting, I said, 'D'you mind if I take off my shoes and socks, and have another look at my feet?' By then the cuts had dried up a good bit, but they still weren't a pretty sight, and when I stripped my feet off, she was horrified. Until then, I don't think either of the girls quite realised what I'd been through. They imagined I'd just been for a bit of a walk. Anyway, they were full of sympathy �and it was good just to sit there and let my feet breathe. My fingers were nearly as bad as my feet. I still had no feeling in the tips, and when I squeezed my nails, pus kept oozing out. So I asked if she'd got a scrubbing brush, and went to the basin and scrubbed my fingers really hard. It was total agony, but I got the dirt out from under the nails, and all the pus, until blood was running freely. Then I rinsed my hands off, and from that moment the ends of my fingers began to heal up well. Obviously I should have seen a doc�tor, but the Embassy had no medic in residence, and a message from High Wycombe had specifically forbidden me to make contact with anyone outside. The Embassy people did their best to entertain me. The DA's assistant, a sergeant, took me out for a drive round the 208 The One That Got Away heights of Damascus and showed me some of the military installations. Chatting about my escape, he said, 'God �you're going to get a medal for this.' `Why?' I said. 'It was nothing special.' Until that moment it hadn't occurred to me that I'd done anything exceptional. I'd just been for rather a long walk. The job we'd been tasked to do had proved rather more arduous than expected but I'd had to go through with it all the same. Back in the Embassy, one of the girls said, 'Would you like to go down the Street called Straight?' `What's that?' `You must have heard of it. It's mentioned in the Bible, and runs right through the city from east to west.' I said, 'Yeah, OK.' So we walked down there and wandered through the casbah. I wasn't particularly in�terested, but the girls were all excited by the place's history. They started telling how, when the king died, and a new one succeeded, everyone squeezed off their old guns into the air, through the roofs of the covered market, and how one day after a heavy blast-off seven or eight people were killed by rounds falling back to earth. Certainly there were plenty of holes in the curved glass panels of the roofs. I felt I was becoming a tourist, and to complete the picture I bought some clothes � a set of dark blue cords, a shirt, sweatshirt and track-suit bottoms. I also bought a bag to put my spare clothes in. We went for a couple of meals; at one I put away three helpings of chocolate ice cream in quick time. The girls kept looking at me as I got the stuff down my neck. Now that my appetite was returning, I had a craving for anything sweet and sloppy. When the time came to leave, my weapon and ammuni�tion obviously had to stay behind, but I wanted to take the TACBE and the kite-sight, because I knew that those things were in short supply back at the squadron. But the Second Secretary made me leave them, in case they aroused suspi�cion and got me pulled in for questioning at the airport. When I went to board the Syrian Airlines aircraft I kept Guest Of The Government 209 my bag with me, but as I reached the top of the steps, the steward said something aggressive to me in Arabic and threw it back down to the ground. As I went in through the door, I could only hope that someone would put it on board. On the plane, my seat was right at the back. As soon as we were airborne, with the no-smoking lights still on, everyone lit up. I've never been on an aircraft so full of smoke; you couldn't see from one end of the cabin to the other. But the relief of leaving Syria made up for everything. Even in the hands of the Embassy people, I'd never felt entirely safe. Damascus had a volatile, feverish air about it, and memories of the mock-execution out in the desert kept me on edge. It seemed crazy to be flying to Cyprus, for the island lies more or less due west of Damascus, and it was east that I wanted to be heading. But the flight lasted less than a couple of hours, and soon we were coming in to land at Larnaca, with my mind racked by anxiety about what the score was in the squadron. ten BACK TO BASE One good move the Defence Attach�ad made was to jack up someone to meet me. He'd spoken to a friend in the RAF who was stationed in Cyprus, and arranged a pick-up. He hadn't said who I was, just that someone was on his way through. When my bag came off the conveyer belt it had crosses of tape stuck all over it, and I was pulled to one side in the Customs. 'Open your luggage, please,' said the officer, and then it was, 'Why have you got all this army equipment? Where've you come from? What have you been doing?' I said, 'I'm a British soldier, and I've been in Syria, work�ing for the British Embassy in Damascus. Now I'm coming back to the base at Akrotiri.' `Is anybody meeting you here?' `Yes. There's a guy outside from the Joint Intelligence Company.' The customs man looked into, my water bottles, little knowing they could well be radioactive. Then he searched my kit, handling everything. I began to think it was just as well I didn't have the kite-sight and TACBE after all. As I came out, I spotted a guy wearing a Barbour jacket, and I thought, 'You're obviously a Brit.' So I walked up to him and he immediately said, 'Chris?' `Yeah. Hello.' `Good. I'm Brian.' As he led me across to a car, he said he was taking me down to a family who'd agreed to put me up, and once we were rolling he asked if I needed to see anybody. `Yes,' I said. 'I need to see a doctor.' `What's wrong?' `Well, for starters, I think I drank some poisonous water. Also, my feet are in bits. Look at that.' Back To Base 211 I held out my hand to show him my fingers, which had not only lost all feeling in the tips, but now seemed to be turning blue. I saw him looking at me strangely, but I didn't en-lighten him about where I'd been. We drove into a nice-looking housing estate, with guards on the entrance, and I was met by an RAF officer, who in�troduced me to his Scottish wife and their two young kids. No questions were asked; obviously they'd been briefed. They just welcomed me and sat me down, and the wife said, `Can I make you something to eat for tea?' `Well, thanks.' `Right,' she said. 'It won't take a minute. EastEnders is on the telly.' So there I sat watching EastEnders, and eating eggs, beans and chips, and thinking, 'This is outrageous!' It was really weird. Then a doctor turned up, the wife sent the children out, and the doctor took a look at me, asking what was wrong. `It's my fingers,' I told him. 'I can't feel them much, and they keep going blue.' He did the squeeze test a few times and said, 'Well, the colour seems to be coming back. I think you've got a bit of frost nip, that's all.' Then he looked at my feet, cleaned them up as much as he could, put zinc oxide tape on them, left me some spare tape, and said, 'There's not a lot I can do for you. Is there anything else wrong?' `Well, I was round a chemical plant, and drank some of the effluent. Could that be having an effect on my hands?' `I don't see how it could. But you ought to have blood tests and other checks when you get back.' When he'd gone, the woman gave me a beer, which went down well, and we sat around chatting. Then, just before eight, the husband said, 'Right, I'm off to work. I'll be back at four in the morning to pick you up.' I thought, 'Jesus, you're trusting � disappearing like this, leaving a stranger in your house with your wife and kids!' Anyway, off he went, and because I knew I wasn't going back to the UK after all, I thought I'd better call Jan to say that 212 The One That Got Away plans had changed. I asked the wife if I could use their phone, and she said, 'Carry on � as long as you like.' So I dialled through and said, Jan, I'm not coming home after all.' `Oh, God!' she exclaimed. 'What's happened?' `Nothing. It's just that they don't need the kit fetching.' `Listen,' she said, 'the Families' Officer's been round here asking questions. What the hell's going on?' `Nothing. Everything's all right.' `There's things not all right, I know.' `Everything's all right,' I repeated � but still she wasn't satisfied. `Are you injured?' `No, no. Not injured. Listen. There's been some trouble, but I'm all right. You remember the place we were talking about?' `You mean the river?' `Yes, but keep quiet.' `Well?' `I was along there.' `How many?' `Seven others.' `What are their names?' `I can't tell you. I'm the only one that's left. But I'm fine. Whatever you do, don't tell anybody I've been on the phone again. Everything's cool. It's just that I'm not coming home now. I'm going back across there.' That was when the old tears started. She kept saying, `Something's gone wrong, I know,' and I was repeating, `No, no. Everything's fine, I promise you. I'll phone again in a couple of weeks.' I rang off feeling pretty shattered, and took a minute to get myself together. Then my hostess said, 'You can sleep in that bedroom there. Would you like to get your head down?' `Great,' I said. But first I went to have a bath, because I'd got so sticky on the aircraft. When I stripped off, what should I find but that my legs had gone blue as well, worse than my hands! For a few seconds I was horrified � then I Back To Base 213 realised what the problem was. The dye had been coming out of my new Syrian cords, on to my hands as well. What a dick I felt, after that scene with the doctor. At least I knew why I kept turning blue. But no matter the colour, my hands weren't right; my fingers were still feeling woody. I got my head down, and the next thing I knew, my host was knocking on my door at 4 a.m. His wife was already up and had made a cup of tea; she was waiting for us down-stairs, and as we went out I thanked her for her hospitality. At Akrotiri airbase we were confronted by the inevitable stroppy little RAF corporal, who sat there saying, 'Where's your ID card?' `I haven't got one.' `Passport?' `Haven't got one.' (I had the passport which they'd made out for me in Damascus, but I wasn't going to show it to this prick.) `Name?' `There's no name.' `Well, who are you?' `I'm a person that's getting on this flight.' Behind me was the squadron leader who'd been looking after me. He was carrying my bags, and now he said, 'It's all right. He's going on this flight. I'll vouch for him.' `OK, Sir,' said the corporal, and we walked through. By then the flight crew had assembled, and the chief loa�die � the flight sergeant in charge of the back of the Hercules � had heard all this. He was quite a big half-caste lad, and he stood there watching. The squadron leader came in, put my bags down and said, 'You'll be going aboard with this flight crew. Soon as they go, you get on too.' He went across to them and said, `That's some extra luggage you've got.' Then he shook hands with me, and I thanked him, and he left. The flight crew were all laughing and joking together. I sat by myself across the room, and after a few minutes the flight sergeant came across and said, 'Who are you, then?' `I'm not telling you.' 214 The One That Got Away `What?' `Mind your own business,' I said, and looked down. `Who the fuck d'you think you are?' `What the fuck's it got to do with you?' `Uh,' went the flight sergeant, 'if you don't tell me who you are, you're not getting on my aircraft.' WI don't get on,' I told him, 'I guarantee your career will fucking end when this aircraft touches down in Riyadh. Now stop asking questions.' It was out of character for me to be so aggressive, but I'd had enough of all these dickheads, and someone like that wasn't going to stop me getting back. I felt I'd been through so much that I wasn't going to bow down to anybody. I could see he was annoyed, but he was a bit rattled too. He just said, 'OK,' and walked away. These exchanges weren't bantering, there was needle in them � but they were typical of what happens if someone tries to push an SAS guy. It's a privilege, a sort of power for people in the Regi�ment � they don't have to tell outsiders anything. With officers, obviously, you're polite, and if they ask for your identity, you just say, 'Sorry, sir, I can't tell you.' Most people have the sense to back off if you tell them in a civil way that they don't need to know, and suggest they leave it at that. But there are always one or two who push and push, until it comes to the point when you're saying, 'Hey, fucking sling your hook.' The back of the Herc was packed full of equipment, net�ted and strapped down on pallets. As I sat on one of the web seats, the first person I saw was Mel, a young signaller from 22 SAS. I thought, 'Great � the first friendly face, the first person I know,' and sat down next to him. It turned out that he was escorting some equipment across, so that he'd had to stay on board during the stop-over. The flight sergeant knew where Mel came from � so when he saw us together, he realised that I was SAS and that he'd put his foot in it. Anyway, Mel and I got talking. 'Have you heard anything about what's going on over here?' I asked, and he said, 'No, Back To Base 215 not a thing.' So I told him a bit about what had happened. It