The Devil's Feather Read online

  In the wake of Abu Ghraib, with the coalition lurching from one public relations disaster to another, a charm offensive was launched to mitigate the damage done by the “torture” photographs. This involved bussing the press corps to different types of detention and training facilities with promises of full and free access. Being cynical hacks, few of us expected to hear anything that wasn’t “on message,” but we went along for the ride just to escape the claustrophobia of our fortress hotels.

  There was no venturing out on the streets of Iraq alone at that time, not if we valued our lives and freedom. With an al-Qaeda bounty on every Western head-and women being targeted as potential “sex slaves” after Lynndie England’s part in the prisoner abuse-press accreditation was no protection. Baghdad had been dubbed the most dangerous city in the world and, rightly or wrongly, women journalists saw rapists round every corner.

  One of these PR tours ended at the police academy, where they were pushing out five hundred newly trained Iraqi policemen every two months. The coalition authorities had briefed their people well, and we received the same human rights spiel at the academy as we’d heard everywhere else. The buzz phrases of the moment were: “in accordance with the law,” “clarified chains of command,” “absolute commitment to humanitarian principles,” “proper checks and balances.”

  They were fine-sounding sentiments, and honestly meant by the smart young Iraqi who pronounced them, but they were no more likely to prevent future abuse than the Nazi Nuremberg trials or the inquiry into the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. If I’d learnt anything from my forays into the world’s conflicts, it was that sadists exist everywhere and war is their theatre.

  Thoroughly bored, I glanced through an open office window as the press crocodile wound around the main building. In the centre of the room, several uniformed dog-handlers, with Alsatians on leashes, faced a man in civvies with his back to me. I’d have known MacKenzie’s bullet head anywhere from the winged scimitar tattoo, but he turned as his listeners’ attention was drawn by the voice of our escort and there was no mistaking his face. More out of surprise than any desire to speak to him, I came to a halt, but if he recognized me he gave no sign of it. With an impatient scowl, he reached for the handle and jerked the window shut.

  I caught up with the guide and asked him about the civilian with the shaven head. Who was he and where did he fit into the chain of command? Was he training Iraqis to handle dogs? What were his qualifications? The guide didn’t know, but said he’d find out before I left.

  Half an hour later, I learnt that MacKenzie was now calling himself Kenneth O’Connell and was a consultant with the Baycombe Group-a private security firm that was providing specialist training at the academy. When I requested an interview, I was informed O’Connell was no longer on the premises. I was given a phone number to call the next day. As I made a note of it, I asked the Iraqi what O’Connell’s speciality was. Control and restraint techniques, he told me.

  The phone number turned out to be the Baycombe Group’s main office, which was inside a fortified compound near the bombed-out United Nations headquarters. I was given the immediate run-around when I asked for an interview with O’Connell, and it took a further week to set up a general interview with BG’s spokesman, Alastair Surtees. I assumed MacKenzie was making his point about “good turns” and, if so, I was supremely indifferent to it. In terms of what I planned to write-a hard-hitting piece on the calibre of personnel these firms were recruiting-I expected Surtees to be a lot more forthcoming than a Glaswegian bully who changed names whenever it suited him.

  I was wrong. Surtees was urbane and courteous, and as tight as a drum when it came to giving out information. He told me he was ex-British army, forty-one years old, and had reached the rank of major in the Parachute Regiment before deciding to join the private sector. He reminded me that the agreed interview was thirty minutes, then filled the first twenty with a slick presentation of his firm’s history and professionalism.

  I learnt very little about BG’s sphere of operations in Iraq-other than that they were wide-ranging and almost exclusively concentrated on the protection of civilians-and a great deal about the type of men that BG recruited. Ex-soldiers and policemen of the highest integrity. Tired of this spin, I asked if I could speak to an individual operative in order to hear his story firsthand.

  Surtees shook his head. “We couldn’t allow that. It would make him a target.”

  “I wouldn’t use his real name.”

  Another shake of the head. “I’m sorry.”

  “How about Kenneth O’Connell at the police academy? He and I know each other, so I’m sure he’ll agree to talk to me. The last time we met was in Sierra Leone…the time before in Kinshasa. Will you ask him?”

  The request clearly came as no surprise to Surtees. “I believe your information’s out of date, Ms. Burns, but I’m happy to check.” He eased a laptop across the desk and punched up information on the screen. “We did have an O’Connell at the academy, but he was transferred a month ago. I’m afraid you were wrongly advised.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. He was there a week ago because I saw him.”

  “Are you sure it was Kenneth O’Connell?”

  It was such an obvious question that it made me laugh. “No…but that’s the name I was given for the man I saw. In Freetown he was calling himself John Harwood, in Kinshasa, Keith MacKenzie.” I lifted an amused eyebrow. “Which makes me wonder how you can vouch for his integrity. What name did you vet him by? He’s had at least three to my knowledge.”

  “Then it wasn’t O’Connell you saw, Ms. Burns. He was wrongly identified to you.” He tapped at his keyboard. “We have no Harwoods or MacKenzies on our books, so I suspect the man you saw is with another firm.”

  I shrugged. “I asked the academy twice if I could do an interview with him-once that afternoon and again a couple of days later when I got through to their press office. On neither occasion was I told that Kenneth O’Connell wasn’t employed there any more…which I should have been if he was transferred a month ago.”

  Surtees shook his head. “Then they haven’t kept their records up to date. As I’m sure you’re aware, everything’s fairly chaotic in Baghdad at the moment.” He closed the lid of his laptop. “We’re meticulous about our records, so you can rely on the information I’ve just given you.”

  I drew a Pinocchio doodle on my notepad so that he could see it. “Where’s O’Connell now? What’s he doing?”

  “I can’t answer that. Company policy re our employees is no different from Reuters’. Complete confidentiality. Would you expect anything less?”

  “Then talk generally,” I encouraged him. “What qualifies a man to teach restraint techniques to raw recruits in the most dangerous capital in the world? Knowledge of the law? A long and honourable career with Scotland Yard? A period in the military police, even? He appeared to be instructing dog-handlers, so I assume he has experience in that field? What sort of qualities does it need? Patience? A good control of his temper?”

  He folded his hands on the table. “No comment.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because your questions relate to a specific individual and I’ve already described the sort of people we recruit.”

  I extended Pinocchio’s nose. “You must think very highly of O’Connell, Mr. Surtees. He’s one of your few employees who’s not working in the private sector…or wasn’t until a week ago. I’m assuming the coalition only takes consultants with scrupulously clean records?”

  “Of course.”

  “So you checked O’Connell thoroughly?” Surtees nodded. “What’s his background? Where was he born? Where did he grow up? With a name like that he ought to be Irish.”

  “No comment.”

  I watched him for a moment. “When I knew him in Sierra Leone, he said he’d been with the SAS unit that stormed the Iranian embassy in London. Is that what he told you?”

  Surtees shook his head.

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��I knew it was a load of baloney,” I said amiably. “That embassy siege was twenty-four years ago and the unit was chosen for its experience. O’Connell would be a good fifty now if he’d been one of them…unless the SAS was recruiting teenagers in the late seventies.”

  “I’m not denying or confirming anything, Ms. Burns”-he tapped his watch-“and you’re running out of time.”

  I turned over a page of my notebook and did a quick sketch of MacKenzie’s feathered scimitar, showing it to Surtees. “He told one of my colleagues that the tattoo on the back of his head is a symbolic interpretation of the SAS winged dagger…it’s his personal tribute to a crushing victory over Islamic fundamentalists. Do you think it’s appropriate for a man who holds views like that to train Iraqi policemen?”

  Surtees shook his head again.

  “Meaning what? That he never trained them…or it’s not appropriate?”

  “Meaning, no comment.” He unbuckled his watch and laid it on the desk. “Time’s up,” he said.

  I tucked my pencil behind my ear and reached for my kitbag. “He’s working in a sensitive area. Control and restraint techniques are used to immobilize dangerous or violent suspects, and we’ve seen some graphic images of what happens when uneducated sadists end up in charge of detainees. I’m sure you recall that dogs were used to terrorize the prisoners at Abu Ghraib. It may not bother you if we have a repeat of it-you’ll wash your hands of it with some creative record-keeping-but it’ll bother me.”

  The man smiled slightly. “I’ll leave the creative side to you, Ms. Burns. I’m afraid I’m too slow-witted to follow your imaginative leaps from the misidentification of one of our employees to my being personally responsible for what went on in Abu Ghraib.”

  “Shame on you,” I said lightly. “I’d hoped you had more integrity.” I stuffed my notebook and pencil into my kitbag. “MacKenzie’s a violent man. When he was in Sierra Leone he couldn’t restrain himself…let alone teach others how to do it. He had a Rhodesian ridgeback patrolling his compound which was even more aggressive than he was. He trained the dog to kill by throwing stray mongrels at it.”

  Surtees stood up and held out his hand. “Good day,” he said pleasantly. “If there’s anything else I can help you with, feel free to phone.”

  I pushed myself to my feet and shook the proffered hand. “I can’t afford the time,” I said equally pleasantly, tossing my card onto the table in front of him. “That’s my mobile number in case you feel like talking to me.”

  “Why would I want to?”

  I rested my kitbag on my hip to fasten the straps. “MacKenzie broke a drunk’s forearm in Freetown. I saw him do it. He took it between his hands and snapped it against his knee like a piece of rotten wood.”

  There was a short silence before the man gave a sceptical smile. “I don’t think that’s possible, not unless the bone was so brittle that anyone could have done it.”

  “He wasn’t prosecuted,” I went on, “because the victim was too frightened to report him to the police…but a couple of paratroopers-your regiment-forced him to pay some hefty compensation. You don’t get broken bones set for free in Sierra Leone…and you sure as hell don’t get benefit if you can’t work.” I shook my head. “The man’s a sadist, and all the ex-pats knew it. He’s not a type I’d choose to instruct raw recruits in Baghdad on how to do their jobs properly…certainly not in the present climate.”

  He stared at me with dislike. “Is this a personal thing? You seem very intent on destroying a man’s reputation.”

  I walked to the door and flipped the handle with my elbow. “Just for the record, MacKenzie’s victim was a half-starved prostitute who weighed under six stone…and I bet she did have brittle bones, because every cow in the country had been slaughtered for food by the rebels and calcium-rich milk was a luxury. The poor kid-she was only sixteen years old-was trying to earn money to buy clothes for her baby. She was tipsy on two beers which another customer had bought her, and she jogged MacKenzie’s elbow by accident. As retribution, he dislocated hers and fractured her ulna by wrenching her arm open and snapping it backwards across his leg.” I lifted an eyebrow. “Do you have a comment on that?”

  He didn’t.

  “Have a nice day,” I told him.

  IN THE END I never wrote the piece. I managed to get an interview with a bodyguard from a different security firm, but he’d only recently left the army and Iraq was his first freelance operation. As my original idea had been to show how demand for mercenaries far outweighed supply, with compromises being made in the vetting of recruits if numbers were to be met, a single novice didn’t make a story. Also, the public appetite for “war” stories was wearing thin. All anyone wanted was a solution to the mess, not more reminders that the coalition’s grip was slipping.

  With the help of a translator, I toured Iraqi newspaper offices and went through three months of back copies, looking for stories about raped and murdered women. Salima, the translator, was sceptical from the outset. “This is Baghdad,” she told me. “The only thing anyone’s interested in is death by suicide bombing or, better still, acts of sadism on the part of the coalition. Women are raped all the time by husbands they never wanted to marry. Does that count?”

  I pointed out that it would take twice as long if she conducted a running commentary all the way through.

  “But you’re being naïve, Connie. Even assuming a European could get close to an Iraqi woman without being spotted-which I don’t believe-who’s going to report it? Some parts of Baghdad are so dangerous that the Iraqi journalists won’t go into them-it’s not as if the bombing and shooting have stopped-so how’s the death of a single woman going to grab anyone’s attention?”

  I knew she was right, so I don’t know which of us was more surprised when we came across the first story. It was headlined “Rape on the Increase” and was a statistical account of how the rape and/or abduction of women had risen from one a month before the war to some twenty-five a month afterwards. Based on a Human Rights Watch report, it pointed to the dangers women face when the moral and ethical bases of society are shattered by war.

  “It says that rape was rare under Saddam because it was a capital offence,” Salima told me, “then suggests it was the disbanding of the police force at the start of the occupation that put women’s safety in jeopardy. This will interest you.” She followed the text with her finger. “ ‘With thugs and bandits running lawless districts, women are forced to cower in their homes for fear of their lives and honour. Disgracefully, this is no protection. Fateha Kassim, a devout young widow, was found raped and murdered in her home last week. Her father, who discovered her body, said it was the work of animals. They destroyed her beauty, he said.’ ” She looked up. “Is that the kind of thing we’re looking for?”

  I nodded. “It sounds like a carbon copy of the Sierra Leone killings.”

  “But how could he have got at her?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m sure it’s part of the excitement. If he was in the SAS, he’d have been trained to move around without attracting notice. Perhaps he goes in at night. Alan Collins said the crime scenes in Sierra Leone suggested the women had spent some time with their killer before he took the machete to them.”

  The second story, the only other one we found, was from a different newspaper, dated a month later. It was buried in the middle pages under the headline “Mother Dies in Sword Attack,” and was very short. Salima translated: “ ‘The body of Mrs. Gufran Zaki was discovered by her son on his return from school yesterday. She was brutally slain by blows and cuts to her head. The attack was described as frenzied. Police are looking for her husband, Mr. Bashar Zaki, who is said to suffer from depression. Neighbours say he had a sword, which is missing from the house.’ ”

  We looked for a follow-up to see if Bashar Zaki had been arrested, but the story had been overtaken by the events at Abu Ghraib jail and there were no further references to it. Nor did the murder of Fateha Kassim feature again. It was difficul
t to know what to do after that. There was no mileage in the women from an international point of view, so I didn’t mention them or my suspicions of MacKenzie to Dan Fry, the Reuters bureau chief in Baghdad. We were snowed under with more immediate disasters, and shortly afterwards Salima, the only other person interested, was sent south to Basra with another correspondent.

  More out of frustration than with any real expectation of a response, I unearthed my two pieces from Sierra Leone and had them delivered, along with Salima’s translations of the articles on the Baghdad murders and a covering letter, to Alastair Surtees at the Baycombe Group. I also emailed them to Alan Collins via the Greater Manchester Police website. Surtees’s only reply was a printed compliments slip, acknowledging receipt of the documents. Alan’s, a week later, was rather more encouraging.

  “My best suggestion,” he wrote in his email, “is to contact DI Bill Fraser or DS Dan Williams in Basra. They’re doing a similar training job to the one I was doing in Freetown. I’ve forwarded your email and attachments to Bill Fraser to bring him up to speed, and will add his e-address at the bottom. No guarantees, I’m afraid. If the coalition sectors are acting independently, it will be difficult for Bill to intervene in Baghdad, but he should be able to give you some useful names higher up the chain of command. Meanwhile, be a little wary who you talk to. MacKenzie’s inside the loop if he is/has been working with the police, so he’ll have no trouble finding out who’s accusing him. And even if your suspicions are wrong, you already know he reacts violently when he’s crossed.”

  His advice came too late. By the time I received it, I’d changed my hotel twice and my bedroom three times in as many days. It’s hard to explain how the constant invasion of your space can destroy your equilibrium…but it does and it did. The door was always locked when I returned, and nothing was stolen, but the deliberate rearrangement of my possessions frightened me. On one occasion I found my laptop open with my letter to Alastair Surtees on-screen.