Later that day, as we sat eating a curry in the small Indian restaurant on Lower Sloane street, Brummie and I concocted what we would use as our reason for the visit to Rio. We decided that the two of us would pretend to be fairly rich individuals who thought it might be a good idea to sample the delights of South America. Not a particularly well thought out cover story. But it was simple and, I suspect that our powers of reasoning and rational thinking had been affected by the fact that we were on our second pint of Indian lager, having earlier spent three or four hours in the Rose and Crown pub across the road.
The next morning, we sat in the Business Class section of a British Airways 747 bound for Galeão International Airport, quaffing champagne and eating a selection of canapés. A mug of tea and a NAAFI ‘growler’ – what we normally called a steak pie – was much more in keeping with our style. But we were making every effort to play our parts, as international playboys, to the full. It felt to me like a very strange way to be going to war.
Once we had settled into the small hotel in the city’s Botafogo region, we rang the number we had been given and asked for Mr Brooksbank, as instructed. After a couple of minutes, a man’s voice, with a slight Scottish accent, came on the line.
“Hi. My name is Tim,” he said, and then without waiting for a reply went on.
“I will leave something for you with your hotel reception within the next few days. No need to call again unless you have serious problems.” The line went dead.
“Not very friendly,” I chuntered. “Do you fancy a walk to the beach and a couple of beers?” I asked. I didn’t need a reply. Brummie already had his rucksack, stuffed with money and his swimming kit, over his shoulder and he was heading for the door.
Not until the third day did we receive an envelope, which had been left with reception, addressed only to our room number. Inside was a handwritten note with the details of a hotel, two telephone numbers, the name Mr Summerson and two airline tickets to Santiago de Chile for the following day.
The short notice of the next leg of our journey left us with something of a dilemma. We had the biggest part of ten thousand Brazilian pesos left between us. We thought it best not to change it into US dollars since that might draw, unwanted, attention to us. The best solution we could come up with was to spend it, but we only had that evening in which to do it.
I asked the receptionist if he could order a taxi for us and recommend a nightclub.
“You want with boys or girls?” he asked.
He looked a little surprised, even shocked, when we both exclaimed.
“Girls. Of course!”
He mentioned a couple of nightclubs and then added one which he said was good but “very expensive”.
“That sounds perfect,” I said as I stuffed a wad of pesos into his top pocket.
The name of the nightclub eludes me, but I do remember the flashing lights, thumping music and the scantily clad girls, happily helping us to reach our goal of spending what was left of our local currency.
The journey from Rio to Santiago was much further than I expected, almost two thousand miles. The flight taking more than five hours, which gave us plenty of time to sleep off our hangovers from the night before. I must admit I was beginning to get used to travelling business class with civilian airlines. It was a far cry from our normal form of air transport which was in the back of a military C130 cargo plane, affectionately known as Fat Albert. We were usually strapped for hours into a less than comfortable canvas seat with the deafening roar of the four turboprop engines reverberating around the cavernous fuselage and only a bucket in the corner to use as a toilet.
We checked into a small hotel in the Les Condes area of the city, not far from the incongruously named Prince of Wales Country Club. As we unpacked our meagre possessions in our shared room, a note appeared from under the door.
‘Hilton Bar, Avenado Vitacura. Tonight, seven thirty to meet a friend,’ it read.
We left in good time to take a stroll towards the San Cristóbal Hill Monument, having a ten-quid bet between each other as to who the huge statue overlooking the capital was supposed to be. Brummie chose Saint Christopher and I plumbed for Christ the Redeemer. It wasn’t until I was at Brummie’s funeral recently that I remembered that I had never coughed up what I owed him.
As we sat drinking our second glass of the local Chicca beer, the Commanding Officer Designate of 22 SAS Lieutenant Colonel Neville Howarth, came into the bar and joined us at our table.
“We don’t know each other. I just heard you speaking English and joined you for a drink,” he said without any of the normal friendly formalities. “I will get a message to you, at your hotel for the next meeting.”
I had not, then, been given any kind of training in clandestine operations or instructions on how to conduct meetings with agents. I later learned that the prescribed protocol for any meetings is to always start with the two principles. One, immediately verify how anyone at the meeting knows each other and two, confirm details of the next rendezvous.
Neville briefly brought us up to date with the situation in the South Atlantic. The Task Force had recently come under very severe attack, mainly from the Argentine Airforce. More than a dozen ships had already been damaged. The most serious being HMS Sheffield, which was lost on the fourth of May, HMS Ardent on the twenty-second of May, and he had heard, just that morning, that HMS Antelope had also been sunk. In the opinion of the Defence Chiefs, the main threat was, considered to be, from the Exocet missiles delivered by the Super Étendard jets flying out of the Rio Grande airbase on Tierra del Fuego. He made it abundantly clear that, unless something was done to curtail the success of the Argentinian Airforce, then the war was likely to be lost, in a very short time, and at a cost, possibly, of thousands of British lives.
“We will meet again tomorrow at about the same time. I will let you know where,” Neville said sternly. “In the meantime Red, I want you to look at the possibility of getting an aircraft to get us to Punta Arenas, lease it, borrow it, steal it. Just do whatever it takes.”
Before leaving he slid an envelope across the table containing a few hundred thousand Chilean pesos.
Early the next morning I turned up at the flying club at Tobalada Airfield with my mind firmly set on getting my hands on an aeroplane capable of getting us down to the area of the, precariously balanced, war.
I met a pilot, calling himself Jose, who operated a Beechcraft King Air, a twin-engine light aircraft, usually configured to seat about eight passengers and with, just about, sufficient range to get us the twelve hundred nautical miles or so I was looking for. I showed the operator my British Airline Transport Pilots Licence and told him that I needed to get a BBC crew down to Punta Arenas. He agreed to lease me the King Air provided he could fly with me to bring it straight back. The hourly rate was three hundred US dollars and the round trip was likely to take somewhere in the region of about twelve flying hours. A bargain, I thought, at less than four thousand dollars. Somewhat less of a bargain, however, when he added that I would also have to leave a deposit of fifteen thousand dollars, again in cash, before taking off from Santiago. I was in no mood for bargaining. I agreed on the deal and told him that I would call him the following day to confirm the number of passengers and what time we would like to leave.