Walker: London 2012

1988.

Chapter 1

Henry Stillman was feeling good. He’d finished his second meeting with Brendon Doolan on a high, having sucked the Aussie Bastard in for money which, as it wasn’t Stillman’s own money, he didn’t care how much of it he ended up spending to achieve his objective. Doolan had insisted on payment on delivery, so he’d not be stitched up. This job had to go without a hitch. The rewards were huge, but for those involved commensurate with the risks. It was as well that Doolan was a man who’d do anything for money. To him money was the be-all-and-end-all, an end in itself. Stillman was fortunate at this particular time that Doolan was so desperate for money he’d do anything to straighten out his personal finances. And that included blowing up the Olympic Stadium for the London 2012 Games.

As Chairman of the inner London Authority’s planning and housing department for over ten years Stillman had learned everything he needed to know about builders, who formed companies without assets, and used bank overdrafts to begin building projects, relying on overstated measurements and contract variations to obtain advanced payments with which to line their own pockets. Under pressure to deliver, they’d threaten the client with bankruptcy, and ask, and usually get more. Few got rich, and most of those who did then lost it gambling in Casinos or to bookmakers. In the beginning Stillman paid over the top to avoid arguments until he wised up, and employed his own quantity surveyor to measure the work in progress. Then he got a better idea.

Instead of issuing tenders to every applicant, he chose three builders who were established, reliable and capable of good quality work to tender, and to these three he awarded the contracts in rotation. To stay in this privileged position the contractor had to agree to pay Stillman 1% of the contract value in cash on contract signing. From then on he earned on every Local Authority contract. The cash he squirreled away in a Swiss deposit account. By the time he retired from local politics his cash balances amounted to several million pounds, earning 5% annually and rising. He also lived in style, in an expensive house furnished in a royal manner. He’d enjoyed the ease with which he’d amassed his private fortune, and by the time he decided it was time to move on, he was comfortably able to join the House of Commons as a Member of Parliament, believing his dishonestly accumulated wealth a just reward for twenty five years of devoted service to the local council.

Now he wanted a seat in the House of Lords. To become Lord Stillman was the summit of his ambition but it was an honour that money could not buy, so he had to do everything his boss wanted and trust him to reward him commensurately, which with the current Prime Minister De-Vert would be a gamble.

After the ten plus years running the housing department he was selected to represent a safe seat constituency in South London as Member of Parliament, taking over from a 70 year old retiree who’d held it for twenty years through four general elections.

Stillman did not have the right education, school, university or connections to become a member of parliament without two and a half decades in local politics. But a safe Labour seat, in a working class constituency where a significant proportion of the electorate lived off benefits, always voted labour, were indifferent to education, hated the upper classes, knew their rights; if you were one of them, you could be their MP for life.

He had lived in this constituency for most of his life. Thinking and speaking as they did, he had become one of them, and when he wasn’t engaged in sucking up to Prime Minister De-Vert he represented them well. That did not stop him seeing them as lazy and ignorant, and cringing at the thought of being considered as one of them by anyone other than them.

On entering parliament he volunteered to work in the Whips Office, toadying to junior and senior ministers, so that after four years everyone knew him. After retaining his parliamentary seat at his party’s third consecutive general election victory he was appointed a minister in charge of The Ministry of Information Technology (IT). IT was a poisoned chalice as he found himself responsible for failed, over-budget, badly designed computer systems throughout government departments and the civil service. The job was impossible for someone who wasn’t a computer professional who could understand the requirements, evaluate the solution, and assess the overall package of software and support required, measure the capacity of hardware proposed, and prevent the techies buying everything on offer, regardless of need, just because they wanted it. He was never going to be in control, and that’s how it had been for his predecessor, Guy Westbrook who had done great damage by his incompetence and dishonesty. He had been guilty for not bringing in an expert to advise when major projects collapsed because suppliers delivered out of date processors and incompatible peripheral equipment. Instead he created a smokescreen and defended the indefensible.

The Ministry of Information Technology had been set up to feed De-Vert’s obsession with controlling the media through the analysis of data; to do which he needed information, statistics, and lies. Spying on people was the real task of the Ministry of Information Technology. It was given access to every computer in the civil service, all passwords had to be copied to the Ministry of Information so it could look at every page of secret and restricted passing through the Civil Service and government. When the disasters piled up De-Vert didn’t fire Westbrook, who had become his chief spy; he shunted him along to a less exposed job in a Government reshuffle. Stillman’s time in the Whip’s office had brought him to DeVert’s attention, and his willingness to cover up the fiascos at the Ministry of Information Technology endeared him to him. There was always a place in a De-Vert government for a fall guy and Stillman could be one of them. But Stillman was no fool, he kept every piece of correspondence and wrote up minutes of every meeting between himself and De-Vert. He had fought and won too many tough battles as a County councillor during which time he’d learned how to be a skilful politician, not putting his head above the parapet until the shooting had stopped. He knew when to remain in the shadows, and when to take the limelight. Taking responsibility for the IT scandal closed the book on an issue that DeVert knew could have tarnished him personally.

De-Vert was vindictive and, like a mafia godfather, surrounded himself with unsavoury henchmen. He saw power for himself as more important than performance, and to keep it, he and others in the cabinet had to deliver. Stillman knew that although De-Vert was his accomplice he had to tread carefully or on the turn of a card he could be toast. Everyone thought the next election would be De-Vert’s Armageddon, so they lied to him about everything including the economy. In the election campaign he would fight like an attack dog, protected by his henchmen. Most of his cabinet he regarded as his enemies so he kept them close for fear of a conspiracy. He used them to make promises about health, education, public spending, taxation, with no particular intention of honouring them. They believed that one day he’d self destruct but until then he was the boss, the giver and the taker-away.

He liked people who were willing to take on dangerous jobs that he did not want to be involved with. The danger of the IT job was not from De-Vert but from the people who were being spied on. After Westbrook went, Stillman became their target.

Westbrook had taken money bribes from the IT suppliers which gave them license to supply sub-standard services and Stillman knew how much Westbrook had taken, and how he’d fiddled the books.

So that he could never be implicated in Westbrook’s fiddles and mismanagement, on his appointment he paid for an independent audit by CMPG, one of the big five auditors, so if asked he could prove who was responsible and evidence of the bribes.

De-Vert was fighting for his political life. He was in the last chance saloon and the only thing he had to keep him in power was power. It was that which drove him down the path of evil and why after a few months taking flak at the Ministry of Information Technology he asked Stillman to run the Ministry of Sport. De-Vert saw Stillman as corrupt, leading the lifestyle he did was impossible for a council house boy, unless he had his hand in someone’s till. He had devised a plan that he believed would win him another election. To carry out the plan he needed a person with scruples like himself. His plan was to wreck the London Olympics and in the chaos that followed call an election. He believed Stillman was the man to do this. If he succeeded he promised him a seat in the House of Lords as Lord Stillman of somewhere in South London where he’d been born. Stillman, like the rest of De-Vert’s cronies, wanted a seat in the upper house, with a fat pension and expenses, and for everyone to address him as Lord. He could then hobnob with the hoi polloi and pretend with the high and mighty.

Stillman had no interest in sport and the Olympics didn’t matter a toss to him. To him it was an expensive junket, and a waste of public money. He had never attended a public sports event, unlike some politicians who professed allegiance to their constituency football or cricket teams. His lack of interest in sport complemented his irreverence for the Olympics, so he was unconcerned about thwarting the ambitions of public figures responsible for making the London 2012 Games a success. The job given to him by the Prime Minister was to wreck the games in a manner that would provide a reason to call an immediate general election. It was a massive task given that De-Vert’s poll ratings were the lowest ever recorded for a Prime Minster and likely to fall even lower. Without an excuse in the form of a major disaster, it would be suicide for his party to call an election before the final day of this parliament. It would be certain obliteration of his party and the wilderness for him and his cronies.

Stillman delegated the writing of his weekly ministerial press releases to Dominic Whitman and Richard Carey; two PR tricksters who had been assigned by De-Vert to watch him and to report back to him. They’d worked for De-Vert for years at the murky end of politics and knew all the tricks. Their job was always to protect him so that nothing could ever be pinned on him personally. Threats to the games came from many places and the favourite suspects were terrorists. Others targeted suppliers of goods and services, undertook cyber attacks that led to data theft and affected financial transactions, crooked staff were hired on temporary contracts, card skimming, and stealing data from credit cards was rife. All of these crimes were blamed on faceless Muslims, Al Qaeda or Pakistanis by Whitman or Carey whose aim was also to create imaginary threats to De-Vert.

Stillman’s loyalty was to whoever could advance his career, and his best bet now was the tyrannical DeVert. However, he knew that to DeVert he was fodder, to be fed to the lions at anytime, with his acute instinct for self preservation, he handled Whitman and Carey with care and suspicion. The task ahead of him was going to be very difficult.

The truth about the construction of the Olympic Stadium was that things were going from bad to worse. Questions were asked daily in the House of Commons, which Stillman answered by revealing new initiatives all with upside to the games, while actually planning to steer them onto the rocks. To give him time, Stillman needed Whitman and Carey to churn out lies for the press to print. However, journalists like Archer, the chief sports writer for the Telegraph, knew that Stillman’s press releases were lies. He had followed the building of the new stadium, and visited it four times, after reading LOCOG’s press releases on progress. The staff he talked to at the stadium knew the real position, that it was behind schedule. As a result his newspaper articles contradicted Stillman’s press release statements but he needed to know the real reason for the delay. Was it financial, or was it political?

Archer’s spies told him that Stillman and Brendon Doolan, the chief executive of Bodin Wrigley, the main construction contractor, had visited the site twice in the past week, so clearly understood the main problem; that work had stopped because sub-contractors had not been paid. Although there was an ongoing pretence that progress was being made. Failure to pay the sub-contractors could have been because Stillman had suspended payments to Bodin’s, and invoices for payment piled up in his in-tray from suppliers who threatened civil servants with stopping work. Many already had. As their cash ran out they’d no option but to lay workers off which slowed the construction program. The International Olympic Committees had reported in mid year that every construction program on the Olympic site was late.

Contract terms stated that sub-contractors’ invoices, accompanied by certified Architects’ certificates were for payment on presentation. Any delay paying wages brought in the Trade Unions which could be trouble for De-Vert, who relied on them to fund his political party during an imminent general election. The cash payments to the contractors for the government exceeded £3million per week.

De-Vert had killed every athletics initiative set up by UK athletics so by 2011 the best UK coaches were working in America taking their expertise away from UK athletes. The British Olympic Committee remained silent, almost as if they were part of a conspiracy. The recession had forced businesses to abandon sponsorship and the phone and communications supplier had gone bust taking £40 million of advance payments. To these well publicised disasters the public had reacted negatively having already paid for a £400 million shortfall in the Olympic Village project providing competitors’ accommodation. Additional costs were continually being added to Londoners’ annual property taxes without their agreement.

Nevertheless, any reason for delaying paying construction invoices needed substance. Stillman’s civil service audit squad had visited the stadium site with architects, and quantity surveyors to re-check measurements and sign-offs, this created a delay of one week and prompted an argument within the treasury who claimed that overpayments had been made. Stillman used this information to his advantage with Doolan. Withholding payment had been his show of strength. Doolan responded that if the cash didn’t flow immediately, then the unions would see Bodin Wrigley out of business for late payment of wages to site workers within days and although Doolan was the spokesman for all the stadium contractors, his only concern was for Bodin-Wrigley.

To wreck the London 2012 games, Stillman needed an accomplice close to the action, and Doolan was that man.

So he agreed to pay up. In return, Doolan agreed to wreck the stadium. Like De-Vert, Stillman had got his man. There were no witnesses to the discussions between them and his notes recorded only references to stadium build and progress.

Bodin-Wrigley’s contract to build the Olympic Stadium was the largest project they had ever undertaken. The structural framework inside the stadium was complete; which left the approach infrastructure, the communications, safety, and electrical systems yet to be started. After two and a half years, the hard part was just beginning, and it was Doolan’s job to drive his senior managers to complete these tasks on time.

But it was now too late, he had fiddled too long and he knew he could no longer deliver.

The fat in the contract had been eaten up, diverting money supporting unprofitable ventures in Asia. On the back of this contract Bodin-Wrigley had become the biggest infrastructure and stadium building business in the world but was overtrading, without a capital base or sufficient bank facilities to carry a large slow payer. Their funding from Hong Kong banks was at its limit. In the southern hemisphere they were over-extended relying on the Olympic Stadium revenue to cover their position in Asia. Brendon’s instructions from company HQ in Sydney were to exploit every opportunity to increase contract payments. They needed big money.

When Doolan began his meeting with Stillman to sort things out, his agenda was ‘How much more could he screw out of the British government?’ In the Olympic stadium build they had cut corners that would remain undiscovered until they were well clear of any warranty period, after 2012. However, they were dangerously late and a disaster before completion would guarantee some big down the line payments to Bodin’s.

Doolan arrived at Stillman’s ministry office late in the evening seen in and out only by the security guards at the entrance.

Clear as to his objectives, Stillman’s pitch to Doolan was tentative. He avoided conveying the impression that his proposal was politically motivated.

He said for reasons of security only, the government wanted to switch the track and field athletics events to a different stadium. The Americans had questioned the UK’s security arrangements and demanded security levels that were not feasible in the East End of London. Even to the extent of making it a no-go area. A ring of missile protecting stations surrounding the stadium had been mooted. Because of obligations to the International Olympic Committee, the government could not switch unless a catastrophe occurred and the new stadium could not be used.

We’re construction, not the Army, said Doolan, referring to Stillman’s comments. He held himself back from saying the fucking army as he remembered who he was talking to, who paid the bills.

Basically I want to know, can you make what you’re building unfit for purpose? said Stillman.

This was not what Doolan was expecting from his meeting with the Minister responsible for delivery the games. However, coming from the top he saw the opportunity that presented itself.

Governments moved in mysterious ways and it wasn’t for him to probe its reasons, he was here to be paid for work done, or, it would now seem, work not done?

The Stadium won’t be complete until early 2012, he said.

We do not want to use it, said Stillman. 2012 is not on the Government’s agenda. We need an East End 9/11 in the spring of 2011. I don’t mean a disaster that kills anybody, but one that’s huge, that forces the Olympic Committee to accept we go elsewhere.

Where will you go?

There are many places, said Stillman, where security is not an issue, but here with the comms set up it’s a time bomb waiting to explode. We can’t take the risk in London.

Before he could agree to help, Doolan needed Stillman to spell out his requirements.

Tell me what you have in mind? he said. This prompted a proposal for which he was unprepared.

Drilling into the supporting structure of the stadium, inserting dynamite and blowing it to smithereens, said Stillman. Would that work?

Jesus Christ, Doolan stood up as he spoke.

Could a British Government cabinet minister be serious, was the first reaction that sprang to Doolan’s mind. There must be other ways that could be as effective. It seemed like the craziest idea to Doolan. The stadium was massive and constructed from the highest quality materials and any damage most likely to be only superficial, could be repaired. Destroying or rendering unusable this stadium would require careful planning and considerable resource and expertise for which Doolan would need to consult an expert.

Is there another way? said Stillman, sensing Doolan’s reluctance to blow up his new stadium.

There must be. I need time to think about alternatives, he said to Stillman, knowing this could be the opportunity he needed to wipe out the company’s losses which might exceed 100 million Australian dollars by end 2011.

Stillman’s was a big ask, and as much as he wanted to grab the opportunity, he needed to know if the stadium could be destroyed, and if so, how it could be done. Then given that it could, who could he get to do it? It would cost big money to get anyone to become involved in wrecking the Olympic stadium.

Give me a week, and I’ll see what I can come up with, he said to Stillman. Meanwhile I need you to authorise payment of my invoices, he said, or we may not be here next week.

I’ll do it tomorrow, said Stillman, confident that he had recruited a partner. They shook hands in a manner that gave Stillman encouragement that he’d chosen a desperate man willing to do a massive deed, which would create a disaster and a level of confusion of a magnitude that could dupe the electorate into re-electing De-Vert in a hastily called general election.

Doolan was in the last chance saloon and unless he took the big risk and went for the big reward now, he would sink ignominiously without trace on the other side of the world. He was a gambler who took chances and if he took this chance, and it went wrong, and he ended up behind bars doing time, what the hell? In typical Australian fashion, after serving his sentence, he’d be accepted back into the society he’d temporarily vacated, with an enhanced reputation. In Australia nobody gave a rat’s arse about the Pommie Olympics and if one of their own blew the stadium to smithereens, in search of a hundred million pounds and was sent to prison, he’d attain the same aristocratic status that the convicts sent to populate their country in 1811 had done. If a government minister was authorised to recruit someone for this job he assumed he would be protected. Although Stillman was a cabinet minister, Doolan was not naïve; he knew that if they were caught, everyone involved, including himself, would be thrown to the lions.

Before his second meeting with Stillman he confirmed that the work needed to be completed by Bodins on the stadium was beyond them. He could never supply completion certificates, avoid health and safety testing, or a full test at an official handover of a fully tested completed stadium. Stillman’s offer would save Bodin’s millions, with the opportunity to turn a disastrous money losing project into a financial success, by creating the biggest construction industry disaster ever. He decided that part of the deal was that the existing contract he paid in full, with an immediate release of the 5% retention, held against potential failures.

Bodins was desperate for cash and he needed it now.

Although, generally full of bullshit, and clearly able to convince himself of the upside of such a monstrous plan, Doolan was not stupid. For which reason he asked himself ‘Was he up for this’? The contract to build the 2012 Olympic Stadium had in 2007 been his opportunity to prove to the directors of his Australian parent company in Sydney that he was the real deal, and could run a major contract. So far he had failed. Bodin-Wrigley was a family controlled business listed on the Sydney stock exchange. His father, Michael, started it in the 1960’s, and remained the controlling shareholder, but would never put his son in control of the business because he didn’t trust him. He watched his every move, thought he was stupid, and couldn’t stand to be near him. He’d sent him to England to run the Olympic Stadium project because his divorce and indiscreet womanising and gambling around their home town of Sydney had embarrassed him. Michael loved his daughter in law, and his three grandsons, and his son’s presence in Sydney had begun to jeopardise that relationship so he sent him to London.

Outwardly Brendon could come across as a quiet, efficient and competent professional but he delivered the opposite. He was insecure and a gambler. When Stillman offered him personally a seven figure sum to destroy the Olympic Stadium, it was a godsend. He owed money to Casinos all over London, with credit limits they’d set only when they discovered he was the man building the Olympic Stadium. He needed one million pounds to cover his roulette debts or his shabby fragile world would come crashing down around him and he’d have to deal with the tough boys.

Stillman had done his homework; he knew about Doolan’s gambling debts and that he was dealing with a loser who needed to straighten himself out, and get back in favour with his father. Stillman convinced him that whatever methods he used to halt the games, it would always be seen as a terrorist act. Stillman’s PR team of Whitman and Carey had the task of collating potential terrorist threats, many they would invent and pushing out stories that connected them to the Olympic Stadium.

The destruction of the stadium was a massive task and none of Doolan’s work colleagues could be involved. He had cultivated a ‘Bridge Over the River Kwai’ ethic with them as a team building the stadium that went from the lowest to the highest, so he needed to find outside criminal expertise to help him. Secrecy was essential, and an exploder for this type of work had to guarantee success.

From lonely nights in cheap bars and gambling clubs he knew he could recruit a criminal element who’d try it, but this job’s technical complexity needed a demolition expert, not an I’ll try anything for money criminal.

The only person he knew with these qualifications was an explosives expert unconnected to Bodin-Wrigley’s who lived in Western Australia. Whether he would do it, would depend on the money he was paid. He worked for Union Consolidated Mining in Kalgoorlie in Western Australia. His name was Ricky Fend. When 5 years before Bodin’s acquired a 19th century Copenhagen dockside grain warehouse, with four feet thick stone walls, they employed him to demolish it tidily and efficiently. That was in a built up area and required precise explosivity. He did that job well and was in and out in ten days. Doolan reckoned he could do the same with the Stadium.

When he called him at Union Mining and said he had a job and was he interested, he got a positive response. Mindful of security and that when he discovered the dangerous nature of the job he could not be sure Fend would do it, he did not persuade him to come to London to discuss the job. Instead he took a 21 hour flight to Perth for a face to face meeting. The airline schedules enabled him to fly to Perth, stay two nights, see Fend, and be back in four days. An urgent visit to company headquarters in Sydney was the excuse he