Twenty-five years ago, as the Berlin Wall was falling, I was back in the UK, holed up in my abandoned but still unsold apartment in Beaconsfield, spending long dark evenings in the telephone kiosk next to the railway station, recording conversations with my contact in British Intelligence, a gentleman with the exotic name, Reginald von Zugbach de Sugg. All very John le Carre. We had been talking on and off for a month. He, necessarily cagey. Until the week the Wall came down. When he got all animated on me. Let me include a few excerpts from the book [huntforthatcherassassin/], by way of explanation ... Matters finally came to a head in Poland, the homeland of the first non-Italian Pope for centuries. The Poles take their Catholic religion seriously. And their Nationalism. And they had hated the Russians through all of their various occupations of Poland, including the Communist one in the 20th Century. In 1981, inspired by the visit of the new Polish Pope, John Paul I, or as the Poles still knew him, Karol Wojtyla, the Poles established a free trade union/political party called Solidarity. This entity sought to challenge the monopoly of the Communist Party. Such challenge in the past would automatically have triggered the Soviet Army, massed on Poland’s border, to invade and crush the insurrection. Indeed, throughout the Eighties, a cat-and-mouse game was played between Solidarity and the Soviet leaders, with the Polish Communist Government playing a very nervous referee. Then, with the ascension of Gorbachev, as General-Secretary of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, the signals from Moscow seemed to change. Or rather, they stopped. For the first time in generations, the Polish Government was apparently being left on its own to do what it saw fit. Step by careful step, looking over their shoulders with anxious anticipation, the Poles went through the process of legalizing Solidarity. Eventually, in the Fall of 1989, the Polish Government announced that it would be holding partially-free Parliamentary elections in 1990, and that it would be allowing Solidarity to take part. It was a foregone conclusion that Solidarity, under the direction of its charismatic leader Lech Walesa, would win those Elections, and bring to an end the dominant role of Communism in Polish affairs. Everyone around the world held their breath, waiting on Moscow. But Gorbachev did nothing. And with that, the floodgates opened. Hungary declared that it too would be holding Elections. Czechoslovakia opened its borders to the thousands of East Germans who finally sensed freedom. And East Germany, under enormous pressure, tore down the Berlin Wall. All in the space of a few months. No-one, not even Reggie and his pals, had foreseen the collapse of Communism happening that fast. The Velvet Revolution staggered the world with its speed, and, for the most part, its lack of bloodshed. “We thought maybe 1991, 1992,” exclaimed an overjoyed Reggie, “but not this soon.” Reggie had been taking large amounts of money clandestinely into East Germany for the CIA. “All is forgotten and forgiven with respect to Lebanon,” Reggie explained. Whatever trouble Reggie had been in was now gone. His enemies had become his friends. He had a talent: he could speak German in whatever dialect his new friends fancied. Reggie had also been given new and completely different information in respect of Hugh’s activities. Hugh had been laundering large amounts of money into Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. For whom, Reggie would not or could not say. However, according to Reggie, Hugh had made at least two visits himself to Bulgaria and Yugoslavia within the ten month period before his death. This money was to be used either to bump someone off, or to buy them out. Whatever or whoever it was, ‘others’ had not been in favor of the operation. Steps were taken either to deny Hugh access to the money, threaten him, or kill him. What remained the same was that the villains were unchanged. They were still the Mafia, acting on behalf of the CIA. This complete change of direction was more than I could handle after only one bottle of wine. I threw something of a wobbly at Reggie over the telephone. He was impervious. He kept jabbering away about seeing friends of his from [Knights of] Lazerus and British Intelligence on the TV News, parading around the streets of the former East Berlin, rejoicing at the fall of the Wall. “I keep telling you, dear boy,” he laughed, “you’ve got to read those two books. It’s the only way you’ll understand what’s happening. We’re about to win a war we’ve been waging for a thousand years.” I knew I wasn’t all that good at history, but it was my impression that Eastern Europe had been under the Communist yoke for only fifty years. “There are all sorts of interesting people, with all sorts of interesting agendas, running around Eastern Europe, trying to recreate it in their own image,” declared Reggie. “It’s not just what you’re reading in the newspapers.” A typically cryptic comment was his declaration that “all the forces of Christendom had been allied against ‘The Bear’ [Russia]. And it wasn’t even against ‘The Bear.’ Because they were on our side, too.” “We’ve been preparing for this battle for a thousand years,” Reggie exclaimed, “and this time, we’re going to be victorious.” Knights of Malta were organizing in Hungary. Reggie had not only been carrying money into the East for the CIA. He had been in Dresden, East Germany the week before using US dollars to free half a dozen Knights of Lazerus from jail. “Remember the warning you were given about the double-headed eagle,” Reggie asked, “well, the eagle on my ring is from a different branch, but the same ‘family’ as Otto von Hapsburg. That’s what it’s all about at the moment. This is no longer about Hugh, or me, or you. It’s about major changes in the world political balance. On levels you can only begin to imagine.” Reggie had one more personal warning for me before he hung up for the last time: stay away from -------------. This was the close friend of Hugh’s, whom Reggie had identified as being both British Intelligence and a Knight of Malta, “although his primary allegiance is to the latter, and the two loyalties have now probably come into conflict.” Cant wait for the book to be commercially published next June, can ya ... ??
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 19:53:37 +0000
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