Episodes in Mikes Life Story

He was obviously a spook!! The following is Mike's colourful first installment, submitted on 10th Feb 2005:

Foreword

Having read the respective adventures of both Jim and Red it reminds me of one of my ole gran’s aphorisms: my boy, she said, (she always called me that even at 21 after I’d joined up), if you knock on any door in any street in any city you’ll find a story there … some are just more lurid and hairy than others!!!

She was right …

(‘Scuse me, I think I hear a knock on my door…!!!)

If anyone wanted a potted version of the life and times of moi all they’d have to do would be to cobble together relevant bits from: the odd James Bond genre, The Third Man, The Barefoot Contessa, Casablanca, Carve Her Name with Pride, The Graduate, Gone with the Wind, Kismet, Paint your Wagon, The Planemakers” (BBC TV series 61 – 62), The Rose Tattoo, A Tale of Two Cities and “Dr Zhivago. Then there are the bits that would never make it past the censors …

A snippet re Zhivago…I spent the greater part of my selling life behind the Iron curtain 1984 – 89 (and then after The Wall came down 1989 –1992) in Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary; also Czechoslovakia & Yugoslavia (as they then were). And I soon discovered that the best way of doing business was to have a “local team” consisting of a sneaky waiter, knowledgeable barman, a sharp female interpreter/driver - and stacks of $1 bills.  In the Sofia Hotel (after Communism they got the Balkan Sheraton plus others) this pianist got to know me by sight after my first request for “Lara” (via sneaky waiter passing business card and dollar bill). Thereafter she’d play it every time I entered the restaurant…whereupon said sneaky waiter would come to collect the dosh - $2 dollars this time;  but it was all a game and we all knew it…never forgot her name – Zlatka Atonassova.

Snippets re The Third Man/007.  Poland was even more corrupt than Bulgaria, but in a more sophisticated sort of way;  made nearly all my dosh dealing currency on the black market via sharp female driver/interpreter. She used to drive me all over Poland in her Toppolino (they didn’t have much else) on the occasions when I hadn’t gone in by car.  I always marvelled at how these miniscule things, bung full inside and laden on top, were able to groan along in agony for miles on end.

Funny thing about the currency black-market though … standard practice was to look up the ‘official’ black-market rate in the evening paper to see who was offering the best deal!!! Paradoxically of course, if you got caught you were for the high jump anyway.  But the dollar opened all sorts of doors. My interpreter was able to cut the five-year waiting time for her Toppolino to six months and then re-selling it as a second-hand model for more than the original price … very odd situation …But I suppose the same thing applies in Europe to Ferraris and Lambos … and other motors of that ilk ..

Anyway, I eventually discovered (through above-mentioned knowledgeable barmen in various hotel bars) why, quite regularly, different attractive women were always button-holing me.  One of the companies I “represented” in my embargo-busting days was one called Nuclear Enterprises Ltd, and apparently it was the job of these women to try to find out what I was up to and whether I was spying, because of course the police and secret service knew exactly who was in the country, why, from which country and from what company, and the word “Nuclear” in those days was a sort of lightning rod for the Commie secret service!!.

Mind you, one very clever one nearly fixed me… she said I reminded her of a cross between Clarke Gable and Omar Sharif… hmmm, I thought!   She’d obviously done her homework… nearly worked …close shave though.

Oddly enough she it was who warned me that the West’s agents had me under surveillance.  Things suddenly clicked into place because I’d started noticing in Poland and Bulgaria that although the Commie Customs & Immigration people were giving me less and less hassle entering. The Brits, by contrast, were giving me lots of grief when I returned to the UK!! So having been stopped once too often and asked one-too-many out-of-the-ordinary question I packed it all in – pretty sharpish.   So when I returned to Warsaw in the post-Commie era I thanked her of the unpronounceable name, Malgosata Drzmzewski, very profusely.

Pity that, because it stopped my bootleg caviar thing between Poland and UK.

Actually once a Westerner had inveigled his way into the general picture life was quite pleasant … particularly so once the local cops acknowledged you in the street with a salute … only to meet you round the nearest corner for a dollar tip … for whatever service that had previously been rendered, or might be in the future.

It occurred to me that if I were going to defect to the East at some point it would’ve been Bulgaria. The wimmin seemed to have this need to flaunt whatever they had … and even if they didn’t have it, they flaunted it anyway!

Anyway … all that skullduggery took place in Vienna, Zurich and Geneva and involved the ‘currency of corruption’ so beloved by The Gnomes.

So it was quite amazing that what with having to be in Switzerland so often ‘on business’ and the ITU exhibitions in Geneva, I never bumped into Jackie there. And so the wheel comes full circle. But that’s another story …

FOOTNOTE

Jackie was the one who I used to go and see in Ilford during ’56 when Chas Chambers, Don Ransome, Mike Burridge and Bill Wood were stationed at RAF Watton.  Then while doing my two-and-a-half years from October 56 to April ’59 with 13 Sqdn at RAF Akrotiri I got the standard issue ‘Dear John’ and never saw her again until we met up with her again 48 years later in May 2002 quite by chance.

So since Chas it was who used to ferry me down on to Ilford on his 250 Beezer I took Jackie down to Isle of Wight so he could see the reason  for all the urgency and hassle in those early days.

But hopefully, when and if there’s a get together, lubricated larynxes might be encourage further anecdotes.