Sounds from another room

213 Pages·1997·2.45 MB·English

by  Horsley

SOUNDS FROM ANOTHER ROOM
SOUNDS FROM
ANOTHER ROOM
by
PETER HORSLEY
First published in Great Britain in 1997 by
LEO COOPER
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire
S70 2AS
© Peter Horsley
ISBN 0 85052 581 0
A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library
Printed in England by Redwood Books, Trowbridge, Wiltshire
To
ANNIE
My Long-Suffering Wife
Contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword
1. The Clinic
2. A Miserable Start
3. Escape to Sea
4. The Royal Air Force
5. Before The Storm
6. The Storm
7. Voices
8. The Road Ahead
9. A Stately Room
10. Visitors
11. The Corridors of Power
12. Caught in a Web
13. The Beginning of the End
Index
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to acknowledge the help of his wife, Annie, with the editing;
his secretary, Mary Churcher, for all the many hours of typing; Leo Cooper of
Pen & Sword Books Limited for all his kindness and patience; Sir Ranulph
Fiennes and Bloomsbury Publishing Limited for their generous agreement for
the use of the extract from The Feather Men; This England Magazine for their
permission to reproduce the poem by John Magee; David Higham Associates for
permission to publish John Pudney’s poem ‘Breakfast’, and finally his lucky
stars for having lived through it all.
Foreword
Long introductions are tedious to reader and writer alike so this Foreword is
short. My story is not the traditional saga of some minor military figure; it
recounts a number of separate events, each true and of such intensity at the time
that they altered the pattern of my life thereafter, like coral polyps shaping a reef.
I like to compare it to a house whose main rooms are the events I shall
describe and the corridors between but the passage of time. The rooms
themselves are of such variety they might have been designed by different
architects and with each furnished in the style of its immediate tenants.
There is a mystery about the house, for on occasions there would appear to be
a house within a house, one living in the present, the other in a parallel time and
dimension. The whispers and sounds of the other occupants sometimes break
through from the recesses of a distant and unknown room, though message and
messengers remain tantalizingly elusive.
Both style and time may at times seem confusing but there is a reason for this.
Orphaned early, I was a lonely child, often thrown back on my own resources
and imagination. With no one close enough to whom I could reveal my
innermost secrets, I became a compulsive scribbler, and remain one. So the book
is a mixture of what I actually wrote at the time and what I have written since,
from diaries and notes. For example, my school diaries are written exactly as
they were at the time and ‘The Storm’ was written shortly after the event.
Just ten years ago I was involved in a very serious accident which, at the time,
seemed to have been caused by some quite inexplicable malfunction of my car.
As I lay at the roadside, not far from death, the whole story of my life passed in
front of me, like a film that was madly out of control.
A most remarkable explanation of the cause of that accident was later
provided by Sir Ranulph Fiennes in his book The Feather Men. It appears that I
was the innocent tool of a terrorist gang who had decided to use my car as a
murder weapon. A former officer in the Special Air Service, Sir Ranulph is very
familiar with the shadowy world of terrorism and I have no reason to challenge
the facts as he gives them, even though several questions remain unanswered. As
it was this extraordinary and devastating experience which triggered the idea
behind this book of mine, he has very kindly allowed me to reproduce that story
as my opening chapter.
1
The Clinic*
It happened a long time ago in a far off desert country. The four sons of Sheik
Amar Bin Issa were killed in an ambush in the South Yemen by British forces.
The Sheik swore an oath of revenge on his sons’ killers.
‘The Clinic’ were a European gang of ruthless hired assassins who banded
together to kill for money. The Sheik finally met the leader of the gang in Dubai
and took out a contract on his sons’ killers – a million dollars down payment,
and a further million dollars for each of four films proving the assassinations;
one stipulation of the contract was that the deaths were to appear accidental,
arousing no suspicions of murder in the minds of relations or friends.
‘The Feather Men’ were a British group – feather because their touch was
light. They took into their grasp crimes which were beyond the powers of the
ordinary police. The Feather Men relentlessly pursued the IRA in Northern
Ireland, moving silently against those members who had escaped the hands of
the law through lack of evidence. They also took under their wing the families of
the SAS [Special Air Service] and established a body of watchdogs to look after
their interests. The Feather Men were controlled by a committee† of senior
establishment figures under the chairmanship of Colonel Tommy Macintosh.
So far the Clinic had fulfilled half their contract by ‘arranging’ the deaths of
Superintendent John Milling, a former Marine, and a police officer in the Omani
Police Air Wing in a helicopter ‘air accident’ by tampering with the pilot’s
collective control lever. After an unequal aerodynamic battle, the helicopter
plunged into the sea, killing John Milling. They had then settled the fate of
Major Mike Kealy, Special Air Service, who died of ‘exposure’ in a climbing
accident in the Brecon Beacons. He was leading a batch of SAS trainees on a
forced march in atrocious weather conditions when he became separated from
his charges. Kealy was then ambushed by the gang who drugged him and left
him to die on the mountain in the cold and swirling fog. Later on they would
deal with Corporal ‘Mac’, the last of the four, and even attacked Ranulph
Fiennes himself close to his Exmoor Farm. He was only rescued by the
intervention of the Feather Men who had been watching the gang as they circled
his farm.
The Clinic now turned their attention to Major Michael Marman. They had
broken into Marman’s Clapham home while he was out shopping and had
photographed his diary. During their escape, however, they were recognized by a
member of the Feather Men who had been watching their unlawful activities for
some time. Mike Marman was immediately warned that he was on the Clinic’s
hit list as a former member of the Sultan of Oman’s Armed Forces. The Feather
Men meanwhile arranged for John Smythe, an active watchdog, and a team of
local volunteers to mount a round-the-clock surveillance of Marman.
The Clinic had then to decide how to dispose of Major Marman. After
considerable argument between members of the gang, it was decided to dispatch
him in a road accident. Meier, the technical member, had already perfected the
‘Boston brakes’ method in America. This involved fitting a sophisticated device
to the brakes of a lead car, controlled by radio from a following car and steering
it into the victim’s vehicle travelling in the opposite direction. It had worked
before in the States and Meier saw no reason why it should not work again.
While Meier’s technical skill was undeniable, the gang recruited another
member, Jake, a genius with cars and unethical devices. The gang leased an old
disused airstrip in Kent and began to assemble the necessary tools and
equipment to modify the brakes of the lead car. The plan began to take shape.
First, Marman had to be caught alone on an open road. ‘It is lucky,’ said Meier,
‘that Marman’s car is a very small Citroen 2CV which will crack open like an
egg when it is hit.’ A day well ahead was chosen, after a study of Marman’s
diary and maps, Tuesday, 11 November, when Marman was due to visit an old
friend, General Robin Brockbank, at Steeple Langford in Wiltshire. ‘He should
be driving back after lunch along the A303 at about 3.15 pm in time to reach his
house in Clapham just before dark. If we allow him an average speed of fifty-
five miles per hour, he will be,’ said Meier pointing to the map, ‘somewhere
along this dual carriageway between Winterbourne Stoke and Popham. If this
plan does not work the first time, we will continue to look for a suitable time and
place until it does.’
‘All we need now,’ Meier continued, ‘is to find a driver who is scheduled to
head west on that same stretch at about 3.30 p.m. – that should not be too
difficult, since the A303 is the main arterial road between London and Plymouth.
What sort of person uses that route?’ Meier asked and then answered the
question himself, ‘A representative of a company with offices in both places.’
‘Do you remember,’ Meier went on ‘that Hovercraft we bought from M L
Slingsby last year for that smuggling job? I have discovered that the Holding