Free Bodyguard by Craig Summers Page A

family home told us they’d had no idea he was risking life and limb.
    You can only grieve so long in this game. There was no word from Jim in Tehran either. We were so knackered and insular ourselves that we’d barely spared a thought for Kaveh that day. It was extraordinary that all this had happened at the same moment he was laid to rest.
    I finally spoke to Sue and, of course, she was worse than me. My girls had been told as well. As we hit the sack that night, there was indecision and uncertainty over whether we should come or go. We decided to sleep on it. 
    In the morning, we revisited the bomb site for Simpson’s World on BBC World. We spent half an hour walking round the scene. John asked me for my thoughts as the camera was rolling. I loved it just like the first time back in the bar at Charleroi. I was now well and truly bitten by the TV bug.
    But you could see the crater and the scorch marks in the earth. The blood from the bandages where Kam had died was still there. Things like this happen, as sad as it was. In my head I wasn’t carrying the same baggage as the day before but I still knew it was time to go home. A translator called Huwer approached us and said that, with all eyes on Baghdad, he could take John and Tom to Kifri. John was adamant that he wanted to continue and told me to go home. Fred was already on his way and Dragan too wanted to see his baby for the first time.
    I was split – my responsibility was to John but he had ordered me back. I also had to look out for Fred and Dragan. Ultimately, I took my lead from John: if he said go, then go I would.
    On 11 April, we were driving home, overland to the border and on via Istanbul. It had been the right call to go. On the 9th, the Yanks staged the money shot of the toppling of Saddam’s statue. John hadn’t made it in time for the fall of Baghdad but, my goodness, in chasing the story he found himself at the heart of it. As for me, what I was asked to do next couldn’t have been more extreme.

HELLS ANGELS
    A couple of months later, I was on the plane to Boston. This trip was like no other – a welcome break from paperwork and numerous trips back to Baghdad to set up the Bureau there. In that short time, Iraq had changed so much it bore no resemblance to the country that had taken Kaveh and Stuart out and nearly did for John and me.
    My old friend Sam Bagnall had called. ‘Would you like to infiltrate the world of the Hells Angels?’
    What? Too bloody right; you couldn’t get me out there quick enough. Sam had already got some undercover stuff in the can: would I like to go to the legendary annual event that Hells Angels from all around the world fly into? I was heading for the World Run in Laconia, New Hampshire. My mission was simple: were they all long-haired, drug-dealing, gun-touting individuals? This was right up my street. Whatever covert pieces I could get would be the icing on the cake after Sam had got access to a former American cop who’d been working undercover as a Hells Angel for the previous two years. We had also sent an overt crew into the media scrum for general views of Laconia and bog standard interviews with the local police – but this stuff was ten a penny, and all the international news crews had the same footage.
    Jason Gwynne, the producer whom I had worked with on the Sam Hammam show, was also coming with me. He trusted me, knew I could handle myself, and of course my bald head on a good day could persuade you that I was borderline Hells Angel.
    ‘What do you know about Hells Angels?’ Jase asked.
    ‘They ride bikes and have leather jackets and wear their colours on their back,’ I stereotyped.
    ‘Do you know how they get the colours on their backs?’
    ‘Well, I know you become a “prospect” before you become a Hells Angel. You wear your “chapter” on the back of your jacket, but you don’t have the Hells Angels wing.’
    If there was a test to pass, I had walked it. Most people didn’t know