The Dark Chronicles (34 page)

‘Did I mention that they offered me Deputy Chief?’ I said. ‘Same as Pritchard would have got – isn’t that funny?’

Sasha swallowed his peanuts. Very slowly, he let out a wide, car salesman’s beam. Then there was the faintest quiver in his lower lip.

‘You accepted, naturally.’

‘I told you,’ I said. ‘I’m retiring.’

His face froze for a moment, but almost at once he decided I was joking. ‘You can’t
retire
! You are finally coming to fruition!’

I didn’t like it – being talked about as though I were a wine.

‘I’m going to teach English at a prep school in Berkshire,’ I said. ‘Read Bulldog Drummond to the boys before lights out and learn to smoke a pipe.’

He gazed at me with puzzlement. ‘I’ve lived here nearly twenty years and I still don’t understand your sense of humour,’ he said. And then he reached inside his coat and took out a slim leather
wallet, from which he removed a group of postage stamps. He placed them on the table, taking care to hold the corners down with the tips of his fingers. ‘But just in case you have misunderstood the situation…’ he said, inviting me to lean across for a closer look. As I did, I realized that they weren’t stamps, but negatives. He held one up to the bulb for me, but I could already see what it was.

I had been wrong. He could still scare me.

*

Outside, I lit a cigarette and thought about the arrangement we had made. Arrangement is perhaps the wrong word: I hadn’t had any say in the matter. The photographs of Anna and me covered every conceivable angle. I wondered who had taken them – Father? Pritchard? Well, it hardly mattered now.

I wandered down the street, looking for a cab but not seeing any. It was getting late, and I was on the wrong side of the river. A free agent, I thought bitterly, as I buttoned my coat.

Far from it.

The background to this novel is real. The Nigerian civil war took the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, and was a superpower conflict by proxy. It was waged for over two and a half years, until Biafra finally fell in January 1970. The British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, was vilified as a result of his government’s support for the Federal side, and did visit Nigeria in March 1969. I am grateful to the National Archives of the United Kingdom for providing me with copies of several Cabinet Office records related to his visit, including the programme (reference CAB 164/409 105669), an excerpt of which is quoted on page 156.

There is no record of an assassination attempt against Harold Wilson in Nigeria, but there were extensive and bizarre conspiracies against him, and by members of the British establishment and intelligence community. I am indebted to the work of Stephen Dorril and Robin Ramsay, whose
Smear! Wilson and the Secret State
is an impeccably sourced primer on that subject. Cecil King did meet with Louis Mountbatten and others in May 1968 to discuss a coup against the Wilson government.

Stephen Dorril is also the author of an excellent history of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, which led me to many other works, and I am particularly grateful to him for his advice on Nigeria at an early stage. The atmosphere and details of life within SIS during
the late Sixties were drawn from many sources, but chief among them was Tom Bower’s biography of Dick White,
The Perfect English Spy
. Regarding Soviet intelligence, my starting point was
My Silent War
, the autobiography of Kim Philby, which was first published in 1968. It gave me few easy answers regarding the motivations of double agents, and even fewer details of tradecraft – although he does describe taking almost an entire day to meet his handler at one point! It is a frustrating but compelling book – I returned to it often. Robert Cecil’s biography of Donald Maclean was similarly stimulating, as were several other books on the known double agents of this era. Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin’s works on the history of the KGB were also crucial stepping-stones for my research into Soviet espionage.

The SAS and others did search for Nazi war criminals in Germany in 1945; they did not engage in the nefarious work I have ascribed to my fictional trio, but I used their real working methods as a basis. Anthony Kemp’s
The Secret Hunters
was my main source on that subject, but I was also lucky enough to interview veterans of 5 SAS who were involved in war crimes investigations – for which, sincere thanks. Some of the details regarding the Thompson-Bolas were inspired by the lives of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and his mother but, again, I hasten to add that none of that family was ever engaged in the activities described in this novel. Thanks to Michael Veal for his advice on the intricacies of Nigeria’s music scene during this time. I have relocated the Afrospot to a different suburb of Lagos, but kept its name – it is not meant to be an accurate representation of the real club at that time.

I read many accounts of the war in Nigeria, by soldiers, spies, doctors, priests, journalists and others, but I was probably most inspired by
The Nigerian Civil War
by John de St Jorre, which I remembered seeing on my parents’ bookshelves as a child. I am honoured and grateful
that John agreed to read various drafts of this book, and for his encouragement and advice on it.

Many details in the book may seem incorrect at first sight, but prove not to be on closer examination. For example, Lagos is usually one hour ahead of London, but between 1968 and 1971 Britain experimented with something called British Standard Time, whereby the country remained one hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time all year round. But any factual errors in the book are mine alone.

I would also like to thank William Boyd, John Boyle, Ajay Chowdhury, Jeannette Cook, Vincent Eaton, Lucy Elliott, Kathrin Hagmaier, John Hellon, Kim Hutchings, Alice Jolly, Renata Mikolajczyk, Iwan and Margareta Morelius, K. V. Ramesh, Andrea Rees, Marika Sandell, Loretta Stanley, Tim Stevens and Martin Westlake for their advice on various drafts; Dr Evelyn Depoortere for her guidance on Lassa fever; David Powell for information on snipers; Alex Haw for his twenty years of friendship and keen questioning; my parents and parents-in-law for their advice, stories and contemporary material; my agent, Antony Topping, for his wonderfully astute reading of the manuscript and able guidance through this process; my editor, Mike Jones, copyeditor Arianne Burnette and everyone at Simon and Schuster for their encouragement and advice; and finally, my wife, Johanna, for her honest opinions, steadfast support and belief in this project, and my children for going to bed on time, occasionally.

‘Sir Colin Templeton was the most courageous, patriotic and decent public servant I have had the privilege of knowing. During his long career, culminating in seven years as head of the organization many of us gathered here today are honoured to serve, he faced this country’s enemies unflinchingly.’

I paused, and as my words echoed around the magnificent building, I glanced up from the lectern and was overcome for a moment by the memory of the last time I’d seen the man I’d come to think of simply as ‘Chief’. The way he had nodded at me when he had seen that my glass needed refilling: no smile, no words, just a tiny nod of the head. I relived, in a flash, the shuffling walk he had taken across the room, the sharp clinking as he had lifted the bottle from the cabinet, the shuffle back to pour me out a measure. Then the widening of his eyes as I had raised the gun and squeezed the trigger…