Jeremy Duns > Quotes

“It’s the edgier option, of course, to believe that all government officials are corrupt liars and that our democracies are akin to totalitarian regimes. But if journalists take that approach too far, they might be surprised to wake up one day and find that corrupt liars in real totalitarian regimes have taken advantage of their blinkered rebellion against the status quo, and that the imagined devils they heralded emerge from the darkness in shapes they hadn’t anticipated.     ~ THE END”
― Jeremy Duns, News Of Devils: The Media And Edward Snowden

“You can tell no one about this. Not the newspapers, not your aides – nobody whatsoever. If we have any indication that you have told anyone, or indeed have even considered telling anyone, your daughter and grandson will die. If you don’t follow our demands to the letter, they will die. If you don’t agree to all of the conditions we have set out for the summit, they will die. If it becomes clear in the summit or at any other time that others know of this, they will die.”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land

“Convinced by the display, the other guard ran to the boom and raised it. Oka climbed back into the truck and the driver pressed his foot to the pedal. As the truck passed the boom, the bandaged men suddenly all stood, revealing their weapons, and fired through the rear of the truck at the guards, cutting them down. The convoy swept into the camp.”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land

“All he had to contend with now were his memories, which weren’t pretty. In prison, he’d managed to stave them off with dreams of survival, escape, even revenge. Now he had nothing to focus on but a stretch of cold grey days in Sweden until death. And looming over everything was guilt: for the lives he had taken directly and for those that had been taken as a result of secrets he’d betrayed”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land

“Udah Atnam walked at a brisk but steady pace through the kitchens. In the driveway, the chauffeurs were still smoking and talking among themselves. He passed them and walked through the gates, where he climbed onto a parked Yamaha motorcycle. It was a job well done, he thought, and he had repaid the debt. He placed his helmet on his head, fastened the strap, and turned the key in the ignition.”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land

“Paul Dark lit a cigarette and raised it to his mouth. The moment the tip glowed, he inhaled deeply and leaned back on his elbows. He squinted in the afternoon sunshine, taking in the view that stretched out before him. The hillside was dotted with squares of brightly coloured blankets, each of which was home to a Swedish family with young children – like small islands of social democratic prosperity, he thought. A few feet away, Ben was running around pretending to be an aeroplane with another boy, while Claire was seated cross-legged next to him on their blanket, one finger entwined in her hair as she browsed the arts section of Dagens Nyheter , a pair of sunglasses perched on her head. He leaned over and found his own pair, which he pushed tight against the bridge of his nose. So here it is, he thought. Fifty. Half a century.”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land

“But she’d been lucky to survive at all. The doomsday scenario Edmund Innes had outlined to her in 1969 hadn’t quite come to pass, but the Service was now a shadow of its former self. She was one of the few survivors of what was still referred to, on the rare occasions it was referred to at all, as ‘The Purge’. The prime minister had been unimpressed by Review Section’s report into Dark and the other traitors and had decided immediate root and branch reform was needed. Dozens of officers had been discreetly ‘retired’ as a result. A Conservative government had been elected a few months later, but any hope it might take a softer line had soon been dispelled by the new prime minister’s insistence that the agency immediately inform him of all the remaining skeletons in its filing cabinets or face the possibility of a full parliamentary inquiry.”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land

“Towards the end of the year, he had heard whispers about a group of Palestinians who had set up base in an old villa in one of the quieter suburbs, where they were said to have an arsenal of explosives and sophisticated electronic equipment in the basement. These were the big boys: well-trained professional freedom fighters, or terrorists, depending on your particular ‘bag’. In the circles Dark was now hovering around, the Palestinians were most people’s bag.”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land

“He knew how it ended, because he had seen it before. It was always the same: the man with the gun didn’t even flinch as he pulled the trigger, and then her cranium exploded and the spray of blood stained the water . . . He woke, his body soaked with sweat.”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land

“What do you think would have happened to me if I had been captured by your men?’ ‘You would have been killed, of course.’ ‘Yes. At last we are being honest with each other. I would have been shot in the back without a trial, then left to rot where I fell. Compare that to your situation at the moment, Joshua. You were captured at a terrorist camp in possession of illegal weapons, in the very act of training terrorists to attack this country. You’ve committed treason by the laws of this land, and yet here you are talking to me. Why are you not dead?”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land

“Shaw had thought this a brilliant way to sow dissent within ZANU, which had split from ZAPU several years earlier following power struggles within the movement. But Campbell-Fraser felt the manoeuvre had been politically naive: he would have either clearly incriminated specific targets within ZANU or left it open enough to suggest ZAPU might also have been involved, thereby creating a much wider field of suspicion. Instead, Shaw had fumbled it with a halfway house, with disastrous results. One of ZANU’s founders, Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole, had left to form a more moderate group, while a firebrand figure within ZANU, Robert Mugabe, had consolidated his power by accusing rivals of collusion in the assassination. Far from fostering divisions, Shaw’s unsanctioned operation had made ZANU stronger, more militant and, worst of all, united behind Mugabe, who Campbell-Fraser felt was much more of a threat than Sithole had ever been, let alone the murdered Chitepo.”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land

“So here he was, at Nkomo’s door to beg. But if he was going to walk straight into the lions’ den it was vital that he gain the lions’ trust, and he wasn’t going to do that bringing his bodyguards with him. Nkomo and his men could simply kill him, of course – take him somewhere and shoot him as a traitor to the cause – but he didn’t think they would. It would rid them of a potentially dangerous rival, but it would only serve to make him a martyr and was too risky for their own reputations: anyone thought to have been involved in such an act would be cast out forever.”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land

“His loyalty was to Rhodesia, and he would do whatever it took to ensure it remained under white rule – ‘in civilised hands’, as Smith himself had once put it. And Campbell-Fraser was prepared to work without Smith’s knowledge, or even against him, if he felt it was in Rhodesia’s best interests.”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land

“The Commander had dragged him along on a ‘fact-finding mission’ to meet him and a few others in the Service last year, but the only facts he had found were that England was still as cold and dreary as it had been when he had left it as a child and that British intelligence was run by pompous asses.”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land

“The BBC had made a television series a few years later but for her nothing could match the magic of the books, which had transported her into a world where solving puzzles was not simply an intellectual pursuit but a form of combat on which the fate of nations could hinge.”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land

“On the wall facing him was an oil painting of two Spitfires taking off, a none-too-subtle reminder of the prime minister’s war record for the British, his having flown for their air force. The painting had been a gift to the PM from a group of British supporters a decade or so earlier. A lot had happened since, although there were still a few in Britain who believed in white Rhodesia. The rest of the room was decorated in the usual heavy government style: wall-to-wall red carpet, curlicued lintels over the door and, despite the heat, thick curtains in a hideous floral pattern framing the windows.”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land

“Yes, he had survived, he had outlived Father, he had fallen in love and started a family. But he was still a man on the run, and he always would be. He had no right to smoke cigarettes in the sunshine, watching a boy who called him ‘Pappa’ and giggled when he rustled his head against his stomach. He should be dead, or rotting in a cell, or at the very least pissing his days away in a frozen little flat in Moscow. He remembered Donald Maclean’s sad long face, the expression of bitterness he’d had in his eyes . . .”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land

“Weale had joined the Scouts from the regular army within a few weeks of it being formed. The regiment’s ethos was inspired by the British SAS, with whom several of its senior officers had served, either during the Second World War or in the Malayan emergency or both, but the selection process was even more gruelling: it took seventeen days, the first five of which required living entirely off the land at a training camp on the shores of Lake Kariba. On the fifth day, candidates were given the rotten carcass of a baboon as a reward for making it that far. The few who remained after that – usually around 10 per cent – were given the most meagre of rations to survive the rest of the course to supplement their diet of living off the land. A further four weeks’ training followed, during which they were still monitored for suitability. Successful recruits therefore started out with a strong sense of camaraderie and great pride, as each man knew that the others had also gone well beyond the norms of human endurance and behaviour to become a Selous Scout.”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land

“In recent years, Vorster had launched a charm offensive on black African leaders in an attempt to ease the international isolation South Africa faced as a result of apartheid. His idea was to rebuild diplomatic and trade links by exploiting Western fears of a Soviet takeover in the region, presenting himself as a statesman who could come to peaceful terms with his black neighbours. This stuck in Smith’s craw, as during the war Vorster had been a general in the Ossewabrandwag, a South African paramilitary group that had been so pro-Nazi it had even adopted their salute. It was there that Vorster had first met and befriended his spy chief van den Bergh. Smith hated the British with an implacable intensity, but they had at least been on the right side together during the war with Hitler.”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land

“You know, this “Zimbabwe” you still believe in. It’s just a dream, my friend – or rather a nightmare. You think those fools can run a country? Not a chance. They’re at each other’s throats already, and they’ll be worse if their revolution succeeds. They’re bloodthirsty, the lot of them.’ ‘So they’re savages? Murungu trained you well.’ Oka shook his head. ‘No, not savages. Ordinary men corrupted by power, leading others who have turned bloodthirsty through a lack of discipline. Through fatigue and desperation from fighting a war they cannot win. You know this as well as I do.”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land

“At the end of the avenue, a large villa was set back from the road with a surrounding fence covered in hessian. This was ‘The Vatican’, the secret headquarters of the Department of National Security and Order – ZAPU’s spy agency. It made for a more discreet location for a rendezvous than Zimbabwe House, ZAPU’s headquarters in the city, which was believed to be under constant surveillance by the Zambian authorities and perhaps others. The Vatican was an anonymous-looking four-bedroom villa, but several sentries were positioned just behind the wrought-iron front gates. As the car drew in, one of the guards called through their arrival on a radio set.”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land

“In the following months, he had supplemented these documents with other material, including a Zastava M57 pistol, the brutish-looking Yugoslavian copy of the Tokarev TT-33, and one of Husqvarna’s discontinued bolt-action rifles, both of which he’d bought through the Palestinians’ circle. Along with three more passports and a bundle of cash, he had buried it all in a hide in a cemetery on the outskirts of the city.”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land

“One evening after work, he had found himself walking in the diplomatic quarter of the city and passed the British embassy. He’d been oddly gripped by the urge to walk in and give himself up. It would be so easy, and would solve so many problems. ‘My name is Paul Dark.’ And then it would all be out of his hands. A secret trial, a long sentence . . . well, so? He could cope. And it would be just: he’d be repaying his debt to society, as they said.”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land

“Intelligence from another Scout unit indicated that several members of ZANLA’s Central Committee were currently staying there. The plan was simple: drive into the camp and capture or kill as many terrs as possible. Looking over his men, Weale was confident of their success. All were dressed as ZANLA terrs, down to the tiniest detail, and were armed with AK47s, RPD light machine guns and RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launchers. A Unimog led a column of Ferrets and homemade armoured vehicles known as ‘pigs’, all painted in ZANLA’s camouflage patterns and with a few of their flags flying. Twenty-millimetre Hispano cannons were mounted on the front of the pigs, supported by twin MAGs on swivel mountings on the sides.”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land

“Weale was in command of a detachment of forty-eight Selous Scouts, the most secretive and deadly of the Rhodesian special forces groups. The regiment was named after the British game-hunter Frederick Selous, a fact of which Weale approved: his grandfather had fought alongside Selous in the Second Matabele War. Weale’s great-grandparents had settled in Britain, but he’d lived all his life in Africa”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land

“As much as she wished she had brought a gun with her, she knew it wouldn't have helped as she could hardly have just shot him if he failed to do what she said. That was something for the pictures.”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land

“Seeing no alternative, the Service had supplied the PM and senior members of his government with information about various ‘unfortunate episodes’, but not everyone had been persuaded. The new foreign secretary had been particularly persistent in questioning Innes about his predecessor’s assassination. In the end, Sandy Harmigan had come to the rescue, taking the floor from a flustered Innes one hot Tuesday afternoon in the Cabinet Office. In a virtuoso performance, he had deflected all the foreign secretary’s complaints, saying that it had been a horrendous, unprecedented and tragic sequence of events but that he knew from agents in the field that the terrorist responsible had been killed in a clandestine operation in Rome and the group he represented ‘cauterised’.”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land

“He remembered the morning of his birthday when she had given him the wallet, and Ben bounding onto the bed to give him his card, and then the three of them in Haga Park. He bit into his cheek unconsciously, his ribcage thumping as the shame and guilt and rage coursed through him. He snapped the wallet shut. All his training said he should destroy the photograph, as it could ruin his cover if found on him, but it was the only concrete link to his family he had left. Besides, he told himself, he might need it later to help find them.”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land

“The Commander hates the Brits.’ As do I, he felt like adding. ‘He doesn’t usually stand for “God Save the Queen”, it’s true, but Roy and I go back a long way. And we happen to have complementary aims here, which is of course the continuation of white rule in Rhodesia. Strange bedfellows and all that.”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land

“Within the upper echelons of the agency, The Purge had been felt a necessary emergency measure: better to remain a stripped-down core than be packed up entirely. Had they not brushed the worst horrors under the carpet, so the reasoning went, several of them might have been disgraced, or even imprisoned.”
― Jeremy Duns, Spy Out the Land