‘So, John, when are you going to resign?’ asked one of my colleagues, and John chuckled ruefully, shaking his head in defeat.
As we prepared to leave, I turned to him on sudden impulse. He had not said as much, but under the ebullient cheerfulness that was his customary public face, I thought I glimpsed a certain dismay. He seemed buffeted, a man no longer in control of his destiny.
‘I've just moved into a larger flat in London, John, with a separate guest room. If you ever need a base’ – the phrase ‘bolt hole’ was on the tip of my tongue – ‘somewhere to rest up, just give me a call.’
The response came a few months later. A call from Davos, where John was attending the World Economic Forum. ‘I was wondering if I could take you up on that offer of a room?’ He gave no hint of how long he planned to stay or why he needed a place for the night when presumably, as a government VIP, he enjoyed the pick of London hotels. When he called again, this time from Oslo, where he was attending a conference, I asked whether his visit was something I could mention to journalist friends in London, always keen to see him. ‘Er … Probably best not. If you don't mind, just keep it to yourself for now.’
Something, clearly, was up. And on the morning of 6 February 2005, when the capital was wrapped in a cold white cocoon, he arrived on the doorstep of my London flat, let in by a genteel elderly lady from down the hall who seemed, to John's quiet amusement, to find nothing remotely suspicious about a huge black man in a KGB-style black leather jacket, herding a pile of luggage so large it was clear that this would be no weekend stay. As he deposited the various bags in my guest room, which suddenly looked very small and cramped, John's mobile phones trilled and vibrated, like a chorus of caged starlings. How many did he actually have: three? four? more? He asked for a glass of fruit juice, took a deep breath, and gathered his thoughts.
‘One of the first things I need to do,’ he said, ‘is resign.’
He was on the run, he told me. In best espionage style, he had summoned two taxis to the London hotel where he had been staying with Justice Aaron Ringera, head of Kenya's Anti-Corruption Commission, paid one to drive off in any direction and taken the second. Whatever I might have fondly liked to think, his appearance on my doorstep at this moment of crisis was scarcely a tribute to the intimacy of our friendship. Quite the opposite, in fact. He was there precisely because so few people in Kenya knew we had ever been friends.
‘They told me it was them,’ he said, pacing the floor. ‘These ministers, my closest colleagues, sat there and told me to my face that they, they were the ones doing the stealing. Once they said that, I knew I had to go.’
‘If you're walking in the savannah and a lion attacks, climb a thorn tree and wait there for a while.’
Kamba proverb
He came bearing toxic material. A nervous tremor scurried along my spine as he explained that he had done the unthinkable, wiring himself for sound in classic police informer style, taping the self-incriminating conversations of the ministers who were supposed to be his trusted workmates. The explosive contents of those recordings had been systematically downloaded onto his computer, which now sat quietly in my spare bedroom. ‘It might be an idea,’ he said, ‘for me to find a third party to take the computer while I work out what I'm going to do.’
Suddenly, I was plunged into an unfamiliar world – of covering my tracks, watching what I said. In this world of subterfuge, even the simplest procedure grew vastly complex. Sitting at my computer, John wasted no time in typing out his resignation letter. He drafted it slowly and carefully. While he did not want to give anything away that might constrain his actions later on, he was also determined to make it clear to the careful reader – and he knew State House, the intelligence services and the media would be analysing every word – that he was not leaving happy in the knowledge of a job well done. There would be no ‘spending more time with my family’ clichés. The circumstances of his resignation alone, announced on a one-way trip into exile, must at this stage do the rest for him, sending a damning message about the true nature of the NARC regime.
He was in a hurry to cross that Rubicon; the letter needed to be faxed immediately to State House. But whose fax machine to use? If I used my own, his location would immediately be revealed. My parents' fax would be no better – given my family's unusual surname, it would immediately lead anyone with half a brain back to me. Nearby Camden Town was full of little newsagents willing to fax documents for customers. But in my experience, most were run by sulky Asian shopkeepers who had no truck with international calls. In any case, a Camden Town telephone number would once again point Kenyan investigators in my general direction. In the end, despairing of getting it right, I walked into an independent bookshop I regularly patronised and asked the owner – a laid-back, gently humorous man who had done me many favours over the years in return for my loyal custom – to fax the letter, hoping he wouldn't notice its recipient (‘President's Office, State House, Nairobi’) as it passed through his hands. He was a Jewish émigré's son. His father had fled the Nazis and saved himself from the concentration camps; I told myself he should understand about life lived under the radar.
The resignation was splashed across the front pages of Kenya's newspapers in three-inch capitals the next day, the only topic of conversation on the FM radio stations, morning chat shows and Kenyan websites. ‘STATE HOUSE SHOULD BE CONDEMNED NOW! PARLIAMENT SHOULD BE CLOSED! TAXPAYERS, STOP PAYING YOUR TAXES, IMMEDIATELY!’ ran one typical blogger's entry. The one that followed quietly summarised the national feeling: ‘Shit.’ Even the international media ran hard with the story, realising this was an event likely to damage relations between the Kenyan government and its new-found foreign friends. After only two years in his post, the living, breathing symbol of Kibaki's good intentions had thrown in the towel, the shining white knight had fallen off his horse. Who could remember a similar event in African, let alone Kenyan history? Permanent secretaries never surrendered their jobs, they were either ignominiously sacked or, if they were lucky, allowed to present token resignations. Had John resigned in Nairobi, it would already have been remarkable. The fact that he had chosen to do so from self-imposed exile – indicating he believed his life would be in danger if he stayed in Kenya – made it one of the hottest African stories of the year. In Britain's House of Commons, a Labour MP tabled a private member's motion expressing his ‘deep concern’, while the missions of the United States, Britain, Canada, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Japan and Switzerland called in a joint statement for Kibaki to take swift action to restore his government's credibility.
In the days that followed, the Kenyan government mounted a quiet manhunt. As Special Branch descended on John's house in Nairobi – ‘It was just like the old days,’ a friend who lives in the same district later told me, ‘with police cars drawing up in the night, neighbours woken, dogs barking’ – staff at the Kenyan High Commission in Portland Place scoured London. They checked the addresses of John's known friends, people he had grown up and gone to school with. Nothing. They canvassed the roads around Victoria Station, an area of cheap lodgings patronised by Africans who can't afford the top hotels. No luck. No one thought to check the home of Michela Wrong, former Africa correspondent of the Financial Times.
But the pitfalls inherent in a life of deceit were swiftly becoming obvious to me. I'd had colleagues who had crossed the invisible line of journalistic neutrality and become part of their own story, giving succour to African asylum-seekers, paying their legal fees, sneaking money and papers across borders. But it had never happened to me. And, it turned out, I wasn't much good at this stuff. David Cornwell, better known as John le Carré, a veteran of subterfuge, later told me that a cover story only works if prepared ahead of time, its structure and corroborative detail laid down well in advance. But I had had no time to prepare my ‘legend’. I was reacting on the hoof, and within hours, not days, I was tripping myself up.
The main problem was that I didn't want to mention John's presence