BOLLIER
By that stage Bollier was beginning to show signs of fear. But of what or whom? The Libyans, the Americans, the Germans? Even the British? He knew from his contacts with former East German STASI what could happen to those seen as indispensable. The FBI too had demonstrated that a man's career could be destroyed with a few strokes of the pen. As for Libya, who could guess what Gaddafi's hit squads might perform in the back-streets of Zurich? So was he trying to be all things to all men, giving the impression that both green and brown circuit boards were widely available? He claimed to know of a company in Florida that made boards identical to his own, but when asked, could not produce the proof. Immediately after the bombing of Pan Am 103 he had indeed written a letter to the CIA claiming that Libya carried out the attack. Yet that letter was, he now claimed, written under duress following warnings from an ingelligence agent, an American.
He and his co-director Meister supplied to the world's secret services items possessing but one purpose - to dismember and kill. They stood before relatives killed by a bomb triggered by a device constructed in a nicely furnished laboratory and smiled and nodded, and sometimes told the truth and sometimes lied. The problem for me, from all four days and five hundred pages of his evidence, was to know which was which. He was trapped in a web of evil created by men whose trade was deception and murder. It extended across oceans deep into the court of Kamp Zeist. It was all around him, in the faces, the expressions, the unspoken intrigue. Bollier was deeply afraid.
GIAKA, STAR WITNESS
In his statements to investigators Giaka claimed that Fhimah had spoken of ten kilos of TNT delivered to Luqa Airport by al-Megrahi, at that time based in Tripoli. And when Fhimah opened his desk drawer, Giaka saw two large boxes holding yellowish material. He recalled that the explosive was accompanied by airline rush tags. The TNT was later taken to the Libyan consulate in Malta. Fhimah, stated Giaka, also stored in his office $10,000 in traveller's cheques. When asked about events on the evening prior to the Lockerbie attack Giaka stated: "It was on 20th December 1988 that I saw the brown Samsonite-type suitcase carried by Fhimah and al-Megrahi at Luqa Airport." Fhimah and al-Megrahi, continued Giaka, then walked through customs without the suitcase being opened and checked.
Unfortunately for Giaka the court was now aware that the un-redacted CIA cables revealed a motivation other than a search for truth and justice. "Giaka will be advised in no uncertain terms, on 4th September, that we will only continue his $1,000 per month salary through to the end of 1989. If Giaka is not able to demonstrate sustained and defined access to information of intelligence value by January of 1990, the CIA will cease all salary and financial support until such access can be proven again." Thus, a CIA double agent had been taken aboard the USS Butte, moored as a permanent intelligence outpost in international waters twenty seven miles off Malta. There he was told that unless he came up with something useful for the CIA, he would be hung out to dry above a Mediterranean swarming with intelligence officers from Libya, a country he had betrayed.
THE BURDEN
Throughout the years Jane has faced a terrible enemy, fighting to exclude every emotion save that which might keep our family together. Now I can see, all squeezed into this one moment, the extra burden I've placed within her heart, borne silently and lovingly. Torn between her anguish and what I must do for Flora, I've added to her suffering, always spirited away in search of something I can never define. As I look into the camera, and behind it the puzzled eyes of Shelley Jofre, it is now I understand. I cannot speak, humbled, all resolve gone. I've faced the world's press, robed judges, ministers, dictators, yet with these few glistening tears I am a broken man.
Our tenth Lockerbie memorial service will be something special. I've prepared a centre-piece. It is a ladder with two hundred and seventy candles, each with its own tiny blue shroud, the colour of Pan Am, and there's a mirror at each end, creating a river of light into the infinite. A candle is a special thing, the light of the world, a flickering soul, a symbol of what we are. My ladder of candles will I hope be restrained and dignified. When we used it in 1993 for our five-year anniversary service at Westminster Abbey, some folks were kind enough to say that it was beautiful.
There is to be a trial, but what comes next? Even if guilty the two accused are but minnows in a huge pond. Do more dark forces lurk behind the politicians, forces who have yet to show their hand? If the trial is delayed I don't know what I will do. Maybe our campaign will never end and those poor souls never find rest. Will I have failed them?
Home...