The Greatest Traitor (40 page)

Despite pressures at work and home, Randle and Pottle barely hesitated before offering their support to Bourke. They were well aware of the Irishman’s excitability and bravado, but as they listened to what he was proposing, they became convinced that he had formulated a bold, flexible and viable escape plan.

‘I was determined that if I was to get involved with the break it should not fail because of silly and obvious mistakes. If this meant being over-cautious, so be it,’ Pottle reflected. ‘Clearly he and George had done a lot of preliminary work, including setting up a network of helpers on the inside. What impressed me most was Sean’s touch of genius in smuggling in the two-way radios.’

A few weeks earlier Bourke had walked into McDonald’s radio and electrical shop in Piccadilly, where he saw a pair of Japanese two-way radios in black leather cases, small enough to fit snugly into a man’s inside pocket. They had a range of five miles, but he only needed them to transmit over half a mile at most. By the time he met Randle and Pottle, Bourke had successfully delivered a radio to Blake via the insider who led the team of co-conspirators within the prison. Blake had, in turn, managed to hide it in the prison canteen – basically a cell converted into a shop – to which he had the keys, as he was in charge of stocktaking, bookkeeping and the ordering of new supplies.

After a day’s promising experimentation, the two plotters went
‘live’ with the new sets at 11 p.m. on Sunday, 29 May, with Bourke in his top-floor room in the hostel, while Blake lay in his bed in cell No. 8, the equipment concealed under his blankets. In a lowered voice, Bourke produced the call sequence: ‘This is Fox Michael calling Baker Charlie, Come in, please. Over.’ Four times he delivered these words before Blake’s uncertain voice finally answered: ‘Baker Charlie calling Fox Michael. Baker Charlie calling Fox Michael. Can you hear me? Come in, please. Over.’ The identifying code that followed made reference to Richard Lovelace, the seventeenth-century metaphysical poet Blake and Bourke had studied together on their literature course. The words were, in the circumstances, singularly appropriate.

The reception appeared perfect, although Bourke’s voice came through too loud and Blake had to turn his set down to its lowest volume. Nonetheless, he was ecstatic: ‘That first night we talked well into the night. Apart from its immense usefulness, it was a wonderful experience to communicate once again completely freely with someone in the outside world to which Sean, though only fifty yards away in the hostel, to all intents and purposes now belonged.’

The leader of the group in D wing helping with the escape was 29-year-old Philip Anthony Morris. He was serving a six-year term for robbery and aggravation. Despite persistent, generally low-level criminality over the preceding ten years, he was likeable, courageous and fiercely loyal to those he admired and with whom he struck up good friendships. Morris was also a talented banjo player and could often be heard strumming his instrument with a fellow guitarist in a cell on the second floor. His value to Blake and Bourke was immense. As a ‘red
band’, he had freedom of movement outside the wing, and access to the hostel where Bourke was staying, so he could pass messages and parcels between the two. He was also able to store tools that might be needed in the escape in various places in the hostel. He was six foot two with an athletic build, and his experience as a robber gave him various technical skills that would prove invaluable to the escape effort.

At this stage, Randle and Pottle’s role was primarily to help find money for the operation, and to advise on logistics. In early July, Randle received £200 from a friend, but after that raising funds became more difficult. ‘For those who had never met George he must have appeared as an unknown and sinister figure, convicted of spying for a totalitarian state, and serving a very long prison sentence. Some were also concerned at the possible effect of Pat’s and my involvement on the Peace Movement if our role was ever discovered,’ Randle recalled. He worried too, that every time he made an approach to a friend, there was a chance that news of it would leak out.

They then had an extraordinary stroke of luck. A young woman named ‘Bridget’, a family friend of the Randles, had come into a substantial inheritance and wanted to donate it to a worthy case. A staunch socialist, she opposed the idea of inherited wealth and was keen to dispose of her own.

That still left the problem of how to hide Blake before he fled the country. Little detailed thought had been given to this stage of the escape, although the broad idea was for him to fly out of England to Dublin or Shannon in Ireland, on a forged passport obtained from one of Bourke’s underworld contacts. From there, he would continue his journey to the Middle East or an Eastern Bloc country. He would need a credible disguise, however, and Randle hit upon a novel idea after reading a review of a book called
Black Like Me
by an American writer, John Howard Griffin. A white reporter from Texas, Griffin took drugs to darken his skin so he could pass as a black man and blend unassumingly into the racially segregated communities of the Deep South. Could Blake be made to pass for an Arab? Randle and Pottle, not without
difficulty, managed to purchase the drug required, along with an ultra-violent lamp that was the other vital element in the course of treatment.

Another practical issue was the make-up of the rope ladder that would be thrown over the wall to Blake. There were different views among the team as to whether the rungs of the ladder should be made of rope or wood but, eventually, Anne Randle came up with the clever idea of using size thirteen knitting needles – light, but robust enough to take a man’s weight. Bourke went out and rashly bought thirty in a single visit to a haberdashery shop on Old Oak Common Lane, Acton, at the end of August. The woman behind the counter expressed surprise at this bulk buy, and asked if his wife was planning on doing a lot of knitting. ‘They’re for my pupils at school,’ replied Bourke, nonchalantly. ‘It’s amazing, the abstracts that these young art students can produce from simple things like knitting needles.’

Next, Bourke had to trade in his Humber car for a replacement that could serve as a getaway vehicle. He got to work on this and, before long, reported to Randle and Pottle that he had done the deal, using a false name and address. He assured them that the car was safe, and in a garage being serviced.

Finally, most crucially, there was the issue of the safe house. The idea was that Bourke would leave his job, give up his flat in Perryn Road, and tell everyone he knew, workmates and friends alike, that he was leaving England to return permanently to his native Ireland. In fact, he moved in with Pottle at his flat in Willow Buildings, Hampstead, while he searched for a safe house nearer Wormwood Scrubs. He would rent it under the assumed name of Michael Sigsworth, and give his occupation as a freelance journalist.

After a fortnight, Bourke had still not found a suitable flat. Whether his disguise – a large black beard, spectacles and an English accent – helped or hindered his quest is unclear. He handed in his notice on Friday, 9 October, and moved out of Perryn Road the same day. He then flew to Limerick to spend time with family and friends, but mainly to establish an alibi for the future.

On his return, he renewed his search for a flat and, after registering with a more downmarket agency in Paddington, found one almost immediately, at 28 Highlever Road, barely half a mile from Wormwood Scrubs. He paid the landlady two weeks rent in advance and moved in the following day. It was little more than a bedsit, 12 by 13 foot, with a single bed and gas cooker in the corner. It could only be a temporary refuge, but Randle and Pottle were told it was a self-contained flat, and so assumed it was for the long-term.

It was now Tuesday, 18 October 1966. The date of the escape had been fixed for Saturday, 22 October. Blake was desperate to move quickly, because a spectacular breakout by six prisoners back in June had led to the start of stringent new security measures at the Scrubs. The tall windows at each end of the four blocks were being reinforced with thick steel netting. Those in A and B hall had already been fitted, and workmen had now moved on to C hall. In another week, it would be the turn of D, and his route out would be blocked forever.

On Wednesday, 19 October, Bourke bought a set of clothes for Blake and, the next day, purchased a television for the Highlever Road flat. When his mother visited on Thursday afternoon, she brought Blake some fresh clothing for his scheduled appearance in the divorce court in a few weeks’ time. The prison officer sitting in on the meeting noted perceptively that ‘the prisoner appeared far happier than one would have expected for a man with his problems’.

That evening Blake and Bourke had a final conversation, using their walkie-talkies, about what was to take place on Saturday evening. Bourke recorded it for Randle and Pottle to hear later. Blake was in Phil Morris’s cell on the fourth floor for the briefing, with the light off; Bourke was sitting, as he would be on the night of the escape, in his car on Artillery Road opposite the side gate of Hammersmith Hospital. He had concealed his radio set in a bunch of flowers, so that anyone passing by would think he was visiting a sick friend.

First, Morris explained to Bourke that he had broken the cast-iron bar of the central window in D hall, where Blake was to begin his escape.
He had strapped it back into position as agreed, and also smashed out two panes of glass, using paper and tape to deaden the sound.

Bourke then took over the update, talking Blake through what he had to do, minute by minute, from the second he dropped down into the prison yard to the moment when he turned the lock in the door of the safe house. The Irishman had even planned for his own arrest: ‘If you hear an announcement [on TV] that a man is assisting the police with their inquiries, you can take it that man is me. I’ll not be assisting them with their inquiries. You’ll find on the table in this room an
A to Z
map of London plus an Underground plan to enable you to find where you have to go.’

On Friday evening, 21 October, the plotters gathered in Pat Pottle’s flat in Willow Buildings for a final meeting before the escape effort. They spread a map of the area around Wormwood Scrubs on the table and methodically went through the route of the escape, street by street. When they were confident they knew it off by heart, they burned the map and all the other notes they had made. Randle and Pottle demanded assurance from Bourke that he would not carry a weapon during the operation. Bourke agreed, but told them that if anyone tried to stop or arrest him, he had no intention of giving up himself or Blake without a struggle.

After saying their goodbyes, Bourke made his way back via the Underground to Highlever Road. He slept badly, the burden of success uncomfortable on his shoulders: ‘There was still time to turn back, but I knew that was now unthinkable. Failure and imprisonment would be infinitely more bearable than the look in the eyes of my friends if I said, “No, I cannot do it.”’

The scene was set. Charlie Wilson, the Great Train Robber who was serving thirty years, had scaled the 20-foot wall at Winson Green Prison two years earlier, using a rope ladder and assisted by three highly professional accomplices. Now Blake, serving forty-two years, was attempting an identical ascent, with just one amateur, if enthusiastic, partner in crime on the other side.

18

Breakout

B
lake and Bourke had set 6.15 p.m. as Zero Hour. It was the time of day when prisoners were the least policed, enjoying a period of ‘free association’, watching a film or television show, playing cards, or chatting in the hall. It would be forty-five minutes before they were summoned back to their cells. Outside, darkness would have fallen. The perfect time for a breakout.

Before then there was still much to prepare. Bourke found he had little appetite for his breakfast of sausages and eggs that Saturday morning; he was too nervous, concentrating all the while on the final tasks that needed to be wrapped up before the evening’s mission. First, he bought food at the local shops, stocking up for two. On his return to Highlever Road, he put on a clean shirt and his best suit. At 11.30 he strolled down to the florists on Old Oak Common Lane to buy a bunch of chrysanthemums. The flowers would help provide cover for his walkie-talkie, but also performed the secondary function of convincing observers that he was merely a visitor to Hammersmith Hospital, on his way to a sick relative.

Just before midday, he left Highlever Road in his Humber Hawk and drove the one mile to Artillery Road for his final conversation with Blake
before the operation took place. After they had talked through the code, Blake assured Bourke that everything was ready at his end. Bourke was relieved. He signed off with a characteristic flourish: ‘My friend, in just six hours I shall walk beside you in this world today. Oh, and by the way, it’s chops for tea, followed by strawberries and cream. Does that suit? Over.’ Blake laughed: ‘My mouth is already watering. Over.’

At around half-past four he laid Blake’s new clothes out on the bed, along with a London
A to Z
, Michael Randle’s telephone number (in code), and some coins and banknotes. He then picked up the rope ladder which he had carefully folded, grabbed coats and hats for himself and Blake, and left the flat. In the hall of the house there was a telephone. Here, Bourke put in a final call to his co-conspirator.