He’s tall, dark and sanguine, with cold blue eyes, one of
which was glass. When he approached me with the idea of adapting several
manuscripts concerning missions of Tana Standish, his black hair sported a
white streak on the left, and he had a livid thick scar down the left side of
his face. He walked with a limp and had plastic surgery. At the time of the Prague Papers (1975) he’d have been twenty-nine.
***
As a young communications rating Swann was as reckless as
any other able seaman. However, he quickly learned he had a facility for
foreign languages. He picked up Malaysian and Indonesian while stationed in HMS
Terror in the Far
East .
Then the sheer chance of sharing
a Mercedes taxi with Keith Tyson, all the way back from a Sembawang village
brothel, changed his life. He got chatting with Tyson and they found they both
had a strong interest in languages. [See Secret
file 05 – Keith Tyson, to be released later].
Tyson took Swann under his wing
and they spent several evenings out on the town, down Bugis street, tasting the
exotic foods on the street stalls and frequenting the girlie bars while
avoiding the attentions of the convincing catamites and transvestites. A place
with a heady atmosphere, spicy aromas and Tiger beer.
Although Keith never mentioned
the SAS, it was obvious to Swann that his new friend was secretly fighting in
the Borneo conflict and had just managed to
swing a brief ten days’ leave in Singapore
As far as he could see, Swann
could never hope to transfer to the SAS as they recruited from Army
regiments. There was of course the SBS,
but he didn’t particularly like going to sea and travelling in Gemini landing craft
didn’t appeal. He supposed that fact would have excluded him from the SAS
selection, anyway.
Still, spurred on by Tyson’s
example, Swann wanted to get involved in clandestine work of some description.
So he studied German, Russian and French, hankering after promotion to Radio
Supervisor (Special), whose tasks involved listening in to foreign radio
broadcasts and messages.
He continued to excel at sport,
was keen on climbing, and completed a survival course on the moors when
seconded to the RAF and on his return was immediately de-briefed by Admiral Sands
who worked for the Director of Naval Security (DNSy). It was at the time of an RN
officer defecting – Swann’s previous Divisional Officer, in fact - and the
ramifications went deep. He was interviewed with zeal; his responses and
observations actually impressed the Admiral a great deal. And one of the
referees he tendered happened to be Keith Tyson.
Swann
didn’t re-engage beyond his initial engagement, mainly because he was
head-hunted by Sir Gerald Hazard, a friend of Admiral Sands.
***
On November 26, The
Prague Papers are released. This book is published by Crooked Cat. It is
based on a manuscript handed to me by an MI6 agent, Alan Swann. It needed some
knocking into shape, as it had been a collaborative effort by a select group of
agents, all intent on telling the story of Tana Standish, psychic spy, whose
career spanned 1965 to 1988. They asked that her story be told as fiction.
Certain information was divulged in order for me to write
the book; yet some has been concealed to date. This is the fourth secret file
to be released ahead of the book. One other will follow.
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