Chapter 27   COMMUNIST SPY DEFECTION

It must have been in the 80s,  ...... but the date – or at least, the year,  is not as important as the story.

At that time, a very close and good friend of mine used to import goods and merchandise from Poland. Poland then was very much a communist country ruled by the iron fist of the USSR through the very feared KGB Secret Service.

I may not remember the year, but I very definitely remember the month, April, and the first day of that month too. I thought I would play a joke on my friend it being April Fool’s Day.

The Hi-Tech communication system at that time was the Telex Machine.

 This consisted of an electronic typewriter, which had a fat, long roll of paper on which to type a letter or a message, as well as a spool with a long paper ribbon on the side. As you typed your words, the writing would come up on the top roll of paper as in a normal typewriter. However the same message would come out on the side ribbon, in the form of punctured holes in a given sequence. Cable and Wireless operators in Gibraltar were so adept that they could actually read the whole letter just from looking at the sequence of holes on the ribbon. To any a normal telex user this was not easily readable, if at all.

Once you had finished writing, you needed to send the contents of your letter to another telex user anywhere in the world so that he could receive your message; and this is what the ribbon with the function of holes was used for. One end (the beginning)  would be placed on a reader and by pressing a button, the ribbon would pass through the reader. It would decipher the sequence of holes and send that signal on to the receiver's telex machine. That telex in turn, converted this sequence back into a written page. Even as I write this, such complication seems convoluted compared to present emails, but as I say, at the time that was amazingly Hi-Tec!

So I wrote to Peter, for such is his name, along the lines of:

"Mr. Piotor - using excuse business trip with samples and in Tangier to Mons Calpe to Gibraltar. Please arrange political asylum. I want defect from communist Poland to the Freedom of West. This is Secret. It is highly confidential. KGB must not know! Will explain when there. Tell no one. Top secret."

and then I signed it "T. R. Ajin"

So that 1st of April, I sent it off as an April Fool joke.

Little did I know the ruckus that would ensue! In fact, I sent it that morning and then continued working as I did every other day ...... but it was not every other day for Peter anymore.

On receiving this "Secret & Highly Confidential" telex, Peter actually fell for it! But I am getting ahead of myself.
I continued working that day and actually forgot all about this joke.
The next day I had a visit from my friend Joe Ochello. Joe was a serving Police Officer at the time and in the detective division I believe. I think the top officer of the CID then was a Mr. Llambias, an austere man with a reputation of strict control of all aspects of that department.

Joe walked into my office at TEO. Although a few years older than me I knew Joe well. He was a very smart dresser when out of uniform and so, a very good client. In later years he managed La Caverna disco under the Queen's Hotel. He was also a proficient and romantic poet.

"David, did you send a telex yesterday?"

"Joe, I send telexes every day, several times a day in fact."

"No, no .... I'm talking about ….a special telex to Peter ------"

"Aaahhh si si .... Did he get it? Did he fall for it? It was an April Fool joke"

Joe laughed and laughed.

"I knew it!" he exclaimed." I told them it was a joke and nobody believed me"

"Yes, it was a joke .... but how did you get to know about it Joe?"

"No me veas la que se ha liado!" (you won't believe what you’ve done) "even Sir Joshua Hassan is involved with it!"

"Oh shit!"

"Shit ... pero SHIT!"

Though Joe was still laughing ... the smile had dropped from my face.

Here is what happened:

Peter received the telex and believed it to be authentic. Let me tell you, anything with the words KGB, the initials of the dreaded Russian Secret Police, could be enough to give you the Heebie Jeebies in those days, and Peter ... ... Heebie Jeebied BIG TIME!
His main import/export business was with Poland. The last thing he needed was a deflection from...... possibly a spy?.... to land on his lap.
Obviously, he was going to keep it secret, this was too big for him to handle .... Who can blame him?

He went to the old Police Station in Irish town and told his story.
This was hot stuff! James Bond a lo Yanito!
Inevitably it went all the way up to Mr Llambias who spent quite a few hours cross-examining him. Reputedly never a pleasant experience.

Apparently it was then that Joe Ochello started to smelled a rat ..... but there was a little detail at the end of the telex which apparently gave authenticity to this backfiring joke of mine .... the telex ended with the words: “Sir Joshua Hassan” !
He was the chief minister of Gibraltar, and coincidentally, my divorce lawyer too, at the time.  The telex message I had written prior to Peter’s was to Sir Josh ….. but the perforated tape had broken off from Sir Josh’s message ….and consequently it actually headed the message to Peter!

So obviously this Polish spy, “Mr T R Ajin”, wanted to go to the pinnacle of officialdom in Gibraltar.
T R Ajin could only be a TOP SPY!
Guess what?
Sir Joshua was also Peter’s Lawyer !

What else could happen but that Mr Llambias requested an urgent meeting with Sir Joshua. But Sir Joshua was ... NPI as we say today ... about the whole thing. Sir Joshua apparently refused to contact the Governor until there was some more concrete evidence. Mr Llambias sent a couple of CID officers to the harbour to be there when the Mons Calpe ferry arrived at afternoon from Tangiers. When it did and there was no Polish Master Spy T R Ajin on board, Joe again approached Mr Llambias and tried to convince him that this was most probably an April Fool joke, but his boss would have none of it.
Joe then approached Sir Joshua who, despite being the top man in government, was also so very open to all who wanted to talk to him. He explained his theory and Sir Josh apparently felt Joe could be right and gave him the go ahead to find out more.
And that is how Joe ended up in my office the next day.

I know we laughed, but with hindsight I imagine Peter must have gone through a harrowing experience, cross-examined by the ever-so-serious Mr Llambias and wondering how he got involved with a KGB threat and a Polish defector.

I did apologise profusely later, and Peter being the wonderful friend and person that he is, forgave me and did end up laughing at this caper gone wrong.

I asked Joe:
"Apart from the date, April Fool's Day, what gave you the idea that this was a hoax?"

"Because when I read this Polish spy’s name,  it came out not as: T. R. Ajin ... but as in Spanish ….. TRAJIN!"

Exactly so Monsieur Poirot!
"trajin" is the word we use in Yanito Gibraltar for a trick, a hoax!...

"but what threw us all off ,” continued Joe, “was Sir Joshua's name on it. That was a master stroke on your part David!

"Que Master Stroke ni Master Stroke!" I exclaimed. " I did not know about it. What must have happened was that the previous text I had written was in fact to Sir Joshua and I must have torn the last part of that telex's paper strip short, so it automatically got added to my next telex which was to Peter!"

Joe later confided in me that I was very lucky not to have faced prosecution somehow or other from a very angry CID. What stopped Mr Llambias from going ahead with that was the thought that he could well have ended up with egg on his face.

Needless to say, I have never played an April Fool joke since that day!
(If anyone has a good photo of Joe Ochello, either as a cop or in his usual smart civvies, please feel free to add to this post)