How I came to write Code Zulu
On 22nd November 1987 The Mail on Sunday published a two-page article I had written under the headline “THE END OF A PERFECT SPY”. It told the extraordinary story of 22-year-old Bashar Samara, an Israeli-born Arab. Samara was a deep-penetration agent working for the world-renowned Israeli intelligence service, Mossad. He had successfully infiltrated a British ‘sleeper’ cell of Palestine Liberation Organisation terrorists but his cover had been blown by a freak set of circumstances.
Three months earlier a prominent Arab journalist, Ali Al-Adhami, had been gunned down and killed in London after publishing a cartoon which lampooned PLO leader Yasser Arafat’s love life. Scotland Yard’s Anti-Terrorist Squad began a series of raids on the homes of known PLO sympathisers and soon found the boarding house where their suspected assassin had been living. In his haste to escape the gunman had left behind documents which indicated to detectives that they had stumbled upon a PLO sleeper cell. From the papers, police were able to draw up a list of cell members including the name of Bashar Samara. Two weeks later Samara was arrested as he walked off a cross-channel ferry with his English girlfriend. They were returning from a holiday in Israel. Samara had been unaware of the Cartoonist’s murder and was not expecting to be arrested. But, being detained under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, he was forced to reveal his true mission to his Special Branch interrogators. The revelation gave Scotland Yard a major diplomatic headache. If they released Samara he would almost certainly be walking to his death. So in order to avoid compromising the Government, the Yard decided not to tell Whitehall the full facts. Instead they arranged to have Samara deported under the Immigration Act because his ‘presence was not conducive to the public good’. Samara disappeared and was presumably given a new identity. His girlfriend, who had no idea that he was a spy, told The Mail on Sunday that the couple were engaged. She was planning to emigrate to Canada where her fiancé would join her, she said. But Scotland Yard asked the paper to withhold her name and refrain from publishing pictures of her. “If you print it she is dead” a senior detective told me.
Two of the main characters in my book Code Zulu are based on Bashar Samara and his girlfriend. The prologue to the book is also drawn from personal experience when, in 1977, as Head of the Press Bureau at Scotland Yard, I dealt with the murder of three prominent Yemenis who were shot in broad daylight by a lone gunman as they got into a car outside a London hotel.
As for the South African element, I wrote a story in 1986 revealing the existence of an Arab terror cell based in the Cape Province. Twelve South African citizens – all Moslems of Malay origin – had been arrested at Athens Airport attempting to fly to Harare. They had false passports and a hit-list of African political leaders. At the time the PLO were giving military training and support to South African militants and Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi was hosting representatives of the banned African National Congress at terror camps in his country. More recently, intelligence reports emanating from the United States indicated that Al Qaeda has a strong foothold in South Africa and is exploiting the country’s banking system.
I am a fifth generation descendant of the British 1820 Settlers to South Africa. I was born in Port Elizabeth and grew up in the country until moving to Britain at the age of fifteen. My grandfather, Albert Baker, was a lawyer (student friend and legal representative of Mahatma Ghandi, incidentally) who spent many years defending Zulus in the South African courts. A Zulu poet wrote a satirical nickname for him, whilst he was still a teenager and rather over-confident. The name in Zulu is :Jojo Kalo, Jojo nsimu –ka-nketshan’ Goqo vimbel’ zinkomo zi ka Kwini; nomasiki-siki, inyoni esindwa sisila. The poem uses imagery involving animals, birds, and the Queen’s cattle kraal to paint a picture of someone who is impertinent, inquisitive, and confident. In other words a poetic Zulu version of “Too big for his boots”.
In later years Grandpa Baker became a missionary and did great work among the Zulu people. As a child growing up I was constantly aware of the Zulu language being spoken around me and often heard tales relating to Zulu legend and idiom. My cousin, Kenneth Rycroft, became professor of Zulu studies at London University’s school of Oriental and African Studies. He composed and recorded Zulu traditional music and wrote the Zulu national anthem for his friend Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Hence the character of Annabelle Rycroft in the book.
The cover blurb for Code Zulu reads: “An ingenious code, devised from the ancient African myths, legends, and superstitions of the Zulu nation, holds the key to this intriguing terror plot. Nothing is what it seems. Murder, blackmail, kidnap, betrayal and treachery all form part of the fast-moving story as the action switches from London to South Africa, Malaysia, the Middle East, and back again. April McIntyre, bright young Deputy Director-General of MI5, activates a sleeper agent and infiltrates him into a cell which plans a spectacular terrorist outrage against an iconic British institution. She thinks she is in control but even she is shocked and amazed by the final outcome”.
Three months earlier a prominent Arab journalist, Ali Al-Adhami, had been gunned down and killed in London after publishing a cartoon which lampooned PLO leader Yasser Arafat’s love life. Scotland Yard’s Anti-Terrorist Squad began a series of raids on the homes of known PLO sympathisers and soon found the boarding house where their suspected assassin had been living. In his haste to escape the gunman had left behind documents which indicated to detectives that they had stumbled upon a PLO sleeper cell. From the papers, police were able to draw up a list of cell members including the name of Bashar Samara. Two weeks later Samara was arrested as he walked off a cross-channel ferry with his English girlfriend. They were returning from a holiday in Israel. Samara had been unaware of the Cartoonist’s murder and was not expecting to be arrested. But, being detained under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, he was forced to reveal his true mission to his Special Branch interrogators. The revelation gave Scotland Yard a major diplomatic headache. If they released Samara he would almost certainly be walking to his death. So in order to avoid compromising the Government, the Yard decided not to tell Whitehall the full facts. Instead they arranged to have Samara deported under the Immigration Act because his ‘presence was not conducive to the public good’. Samara disappeared and was presumably given a new identity. His girlfriend, who had no idea that he was a spy, told The Mail on Sunday that the couple were engaged. She was planning to emigrate to Canada where her fiancé would join her, she said. But Scotland Yard asked the paper to withhold her name and refrain from publishing pictures of her. “If you print it she is dead” a senior detective told me.
Two of the main characters in my book Code Zulu are based on Bashar Samara and his girlfriend. The prologue to the book is also drawn from personal experience when, in 1977, as Head of the Press Bureau at Scotland Yard, I dealt with the murder of three prominent Yemenis who were shot in broad daylight by a lone gunman as they got into a car outside a London hotel.
As for the South African element, I wrote a story in 1986 revealing the existence of an Arab terror cell based in the Cape Province. Twelve South African citizens – all Moslems of Malay origin – had been arrested at Athens Airport attempting to fly to Harare. They had false passports and a hit-list of African political leaders. At the time the PLO were giving military training and support to South African militants and Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi was hosting representatives of the banned African National Congress at terror camps in his country. More recently, intelligence reports emanating from the United States indicated that Al Qaeda has a strong foothold in South Africa and is exploiting the country’s banking system.
I am a fifth generation descendant of the British 1820 Settlers to South Africa. I was born in Port Elizabeth and grew up in the country until moving to Britain at the age of fifteen. My grandfather, Albert Baker, was a lawyer (student friend and legal representative of Mahatma Ghandi, incidentally) who spent many years defending Zulus in the South African courts. A Zulu poet wrote a satirical nickname for him, whilst he was still a teenager and rather over-confident. The name in Zulu is :Jojo Kalo, Jojo nsimu –ka-nketshan’ Goqo vimbel’ zinkomo zi ka Kwini; nomasiki-siki, inyoni esindwa sisila. The poem uses imagery involving animals, birds, and the Queen’s cattle kraal to paint a picture of someone who is impertinent, inquisitive, and confident. In other words a poetic Zulu version of “Too big for his boots”.
In later years Grandpa Baker became a missionary and did great work among the Zulu people. As a child growing up I was constantly aware of the Zulu language being spoken around me and often heard tales relating to Zulu legend and idiom. My cousin, Kenneth Rycroft, became professor of Zulu studies at London University’s school of Oriental and African Studies. He composed and recorded Zulu traditional music and wrote the Zulu national anthem for his friend Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Hence the character of Annabelle Rycroft in the book.
The cover blurb for Code Zulu reads: “An ingenious code, devised from the ancient African myths, legends, and superstitions of the Zulu nation, holds the key to this intriguing terror plot. Nothing is what it seems. Murder, blackmail, kidnap, betrayal and treachery all form part of the fast-moving story as the action switches from London to South Africa, Malaysia, the Middle East, and back again. April McIntyre, bright young Deputy Director-General of MI5, activates a sleeper agent and infiltrates him into a cell which plans a spectacular terrorist outrage against an iconic British institution. She thinks she is in control but even she is shocked and amazed by the final outcome”.
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