The Devil`s Feather Read Free

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