Trusted Mole: A Soldier’s Journey into Bosnia’s Heart of Darkness. Martin Bell

Er … do you have a light, please?’ I’m trying to be polite here.

      ‘… Yeah …’

      As if by magic a cheap red lighter appears between fat fingers. For a second there I think it’s Pot Belly’s hand, but he’s busy ransacking my house. A dirty thumb strikes a flame. Gratefully I bend and suck in my first lungful of smoke.

      ‘Thanks very mu—’ The grate slams shut. Silence again. I exhale noisily and sit back down. My mind is now going bananas. What? Why? Who? When? How?

      The tip of the cigarette glows angrily. I’m smoking hard. I light another one from it. What to do with the stub? I hold it in my hand and search for an ashtray. There isn’t one. Above the other bench there’s a barred, thick, frosted glass window. On its ledge there are five or six Styrofoam cups lined up like soldiers. I grab one. It’s brimming with cigarette butts. So’s the next, only these are smeared with garish red lipstick – I wonder who you were?

      I sit and chainsmoke five cigarettes. Blue smoke hangs in the cell. The nervous, sinking feeling in my stomach gets worse. My bowels are churning furiously. My head is bursting. Pain straight up my neck, around my brain and down into my teeth. How did this happen?

      One minute you’re a student half way through a two-year Staff Course, one of the so-called ‘elite’ top five per cent; doing well, head above water, bright future. And the next, here you are, career blown to smithereens by an arrest warrant for espionage – for spying!? … espionage? … a traitor? How the fuck did this happen? How? How? How?

      Despite the pain, ache and worry I’m thinking furiously. How? Connections, seemingly unrelated snippets from the past year and a half.

       I’m trying to connect. Random telephone calls. A mysterious major from MoD security. Taped conversations. Jamie’s telling me that people don’t trust me. I voice my concerns. Nothing happens. No one gets back to me.

       And then there are the watchers, followers. Horrible, uncomfortable feeling that I’m being watched, followed … for a long time. Eighteen months perhaps. I’ve seen them occasionally – just faces, out of place, people doing nothing, with no reason to be there. Who were they? Croats? Bosnians? Serbs? Someone is watching me. Paranoia? I know I’m being watched. Who’s doing it? Why?

      The cell door crashes open, severing my train of thought. I leap to my feet not quite knowing what to expect. It’s the young PC. He’s looking at me, uncertainly, almost sympathetically.

      ‘We’re not happy about this. I’ve been upstairs to see the Inspector. He agrees with me. We think your civil rights have been abused. You’re entitled to make a phone call. It was obvious to me that you had no one in mind when I asked you who you’d like to call, so, who do you want to call?’

      I’m stunned. I can’t believe it. Good on him for doing his job properly.

      ‘Dunno. Don’t know anyone,’ I stammer.

      He’s adamant. ‘Look, it’s only advice, but you do need a lawyer. Really you do.’

      ‘But I don’t know any lawy—’

      He cuts me short. ‘We’ll call you a duty lawyer if you like.’ I nod. He disappears and the door clangs shut. I glance at my watch. Over two hours since I was booked in. Bloody heavy-handed MoD Plod – GUILTY, now let’s prove the case!

      Ten minutes later the PC is back. ‘We’ve got you a lawyer. She’s on the phone right now … come on!’ I’m led from the cell and shown to a phone hanging off a wall. The handset’s almost touching the floor. I pick it up and put it to my ear.

      ‘Hello, I’m Issy White from Tanner and Taylor in Farnborough. I understand you need help …’ Help. What can you do for me?

      ‘Yes, I suppose I do.’

      ‘What can you tell me?’ What can I tell you? What should I tell her? How much? All of it? Some of it? Which bits to leave out?

      ‘Er … well … it’s all very sensitive … I can’t … well, not on the phone …’

      ‘I’ll be round shortly.’ She’s curt.

      I’m pathetically grateful that someone, anyone, has shown interest. Face to face she’s as brusque as she was on the phone. In three hours she has my story, all but the really sensitive stuff. She doesn’t need to know about that at the moment. I tell her about my time out there, about the List, the gong, the phone calls, about everything that matters. She scribbles furiously throughout.

      ‘Does all this sound unbelievable to you, Issy?’

      She looks up and quite matter of factly says, ‘No. It all sounds true. I can spot a liar a mile off.’ She’s very serious.

      ‘No. I don’t really mean “unbelievable”, I suppose I mean “weird”.’

      ‘Weird? …’ She pauses, ‘… I’ve never heard anything like it.’

      ‘Yeah, well, it’s all true, every word of it …’ I feel tired ‘… It’s all true. It happened.’

      Issy promises to get me some more cigarettes. She thinks they’ll be finished with my house by two o’clock. She leaves and tells me she’ll be back for ‘question time’.

      Back in the cell I’ve got nothing to do except mull over the same old thoughts. Two o’clock comes and goes. Nothing. Three o’clock. Still nothing. I’m dog tired but still thinking, sick and churning but still thinking. What should I tell them? All of it? That would implicate Rose and Smith. Keep it from them. Tell them the minimum. I know what this is about. It’s about phone calls. It’s about a lot more than that. But for now, it’s about phone calls. I’m not about to bubble away Rose, Smith and the others. Not yet anyway. Keep the List out of it.

      I’m sitting there staring at my shoes again, my elbows on my knees, head in my hands. I’ve smoked my last cigarette. There’s nothing else to think about. There’s nothing left anymore. Staff College and all that’s happened in the last two and a half years – a dream, a lifetime ago. And now they’re utterly irrelevant to me. Reality is where the illusion is strongest. This is where it’s strongest. Reality is this cell. Nothing else exists and I’m so tired, so, so tired. I have to sleep. Get some strength. Must sleep.

      I take off my blazer and lie down on the bench. I can’t be bothered with the mattress. I cover my head with the blazer. It’s all so cold and dark, just like it was then, a thousand years ago – cold, dark, unknown and terrifying. I close my eyes. The tape starts playing and I’m back there. Reality. I can hear the shouts and screams, feel the cold, the panic and the terror. I’m there again.

TWO Operation Grapple – Bosnia

       8 January 1993 – British National Support Element Base, Tomislavgrad

      The Americans were about to bomb the Iraqis again. On the hour, every hour, the television fixed high in a corner of the dusty warehouse spewed out the impassioned, near hysterical commentaries of the drama unfolding in the Middle East. Iraqi non-compliance with some UN Security Council Resolution seemed to be the issue; cruise missiles were poised to fly, midnight the deadline. In another place at another time we’d all have been glued to the box as we had been in 1991, eagerly anticipating the voyeuristic thrill of technowar. But not this time, not here and not tonight. The crisis in the Persian Gulf seemed so remote, so distant, so unreal. Shattered and numbed by the day’s events, nearly all the soldiers had shuffled off to their makeshift bunk beds, stacked four high around the warehouse.

      Being less tired and having nothing more appealing than a sleeping bag on