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  Nobody really read my book before the attacks. Then after the attacks it became a bestseller, one of the biggest-selling non-fiction books in America after 2001. I made money from it, but never a fortune. I have no island. I took only small fees from media interviews to pay my expenses, when I could have asked for six-figure sums. My motivation wasn’t financial and it never has been.

  I kept feeling that I should have done things differently, and I still wonder today whether if I had shouted louder, banged my drum with more passion or intelligence, perhaps someone would have heard me who could have done something, anything, to prevent the tragedy. I felt deeply, intrinsically involved. I had written a book about al Qaeda and bin Laden and it occurred to me that because I had – other people hadn’t. Maybe there was someone out there who would have got the message across better than I did. Were any seasoned writers unable to cut a deal with a publisher because The New Jackals had already been written? What if there was someone desperate to write a book who could have made more noise than me?

  Heaping further weirdness into my life, suddenly the actor and producer Kevin Spacey was in contact, wanting me to front a TV show. This was many years before he was accused of being a predator. Spacey had seen me chatting on Good Morning America, one of the flagship US shows. He had his own company producing movies and shows for television. It was the first time anyone had suggested I present a TV show, and I was intrigued.

  Initially I went with my friend Claudia to the premiere of one of his movies in London. At the after-party we were ushered through the velvet rope into the VIP section where champagne was flowing, and then from there into the VVIP section, where a group of Hollywood A-listers were sitting more sedately and drinking cups of tea and coffee. For them this was less of a party and more of a professional requirement. Spacey welcomed me like an old friend. We hit it off. He was political and interested, angry and upset about the world. We chatted, partied, argued and debated for hours. Claudia and I were buzzing by the end of the night.

  I was in the back of a cab driving to a party in Notting Hill a few weeks later with friends. Robbie Williams’ song ‘I Will Talk and Hollywood Will Listen’ was on the radio. Robbie was singing: ‘I wouldn’t be so alone, If they knew my name in every home, Kevin Spacey would call on the phone’, and then thirty seconds later Spacey called me on my mobile. We were all a bit freaked by that. My friend Jason said it was such a coincidence it might make him religious.

  I met Spacey a couple more times before he invited me to the Century Club, a private members’ club on Shaftesbury Avenue in Soho, London, to meet ‘his team’. Arranged in a line were the head of his production company, his lawyer, his female publicity agent, his manager, all of them deeply tanned, dressed entirely in black, and looking fabulously wealthy and successful. They were the epitome of Hollywood power. Spacey, it turned out, wanted me to front a television talk show, an alternative to the Charlie Rose show, which had been a fixture on US TV for decades, and consisted of the eponymous host interviewing all manner of entertainers, writers, politicians, athletes, scientists and sports stars. Anyone remarkable, basically.

  ‘Sounds interesting,’ I said.

  I signed a deal, became friends with Spacey, and when he was in London or I was in New York he would invite me along to a party, a meal or a premiere. Ultimately nothing ever came of the talk show, obviously, otherwise I would probably be on my island by now, but I still met some incredible people through him. He was friends with Hollywood royalty, the Clintons, models, sports stars. I remember after one party sitting with Chelsea Clinton and another friend outside a simple restaurant near Southwark tube station. It was dark and distinctly unglamorous, because our table was lit by the light from the back of a bus shelter.

  Chelsea was a real delight; friendly, witty and relaxed, with no visible security. Even when some late-night revellers spotted her and asked for a photo, and then came back ten minutes later and jokingly but physically tried to drag her to a party, she was just bemused and amused. No Secret Service appeared. We talked about life and the world, as you do after a few too many drinks, and for some reason started chatting seriously and I mentioned a powerful article I’d read about a women’s health project in the Horn of Africa. I started to explain the issue in simple terms. I had completely forgotten who I was talking to.

  ‘Yep, there are huge health challenges in that area,’ she said, deadpan. ‘I’ve been there a few times.’ She wasn’t cutting me off, just tactfully reminding me of her life.

  ‘With her mum. On Air Force One,’ said her friend with a slight giggle.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  I met some extraordinary people through Kevin and had a string of short and superficial relationships. I swapped drunken dating tips with George Clooney, went to Naomi Campbell’s birthday bash, flew in private planes to parties, misbehaved and drank far too much champagne. Attendance at those celeb events was supposed to be the pinnacle of social success, what many seem to fantasise about while flicking through glossy mags. They were fun, but also forced and hollow. When I eventually started my TV journeys I found them infinitely more memorable and thrilling than a Hollywood party.

  Spacey existed in an A-list world and people flocked to him. I was walking along Piccadilly with him and a few other friends one evening and he was talking about how much he loved London because he didn’t get hassled like he did in Los Angeles. At that exact moment someone leapt in front of him like a jack-in-the-box.

  ‘It’s you!’ they shouted. ‘It’s him!’ again, to no one in particular. They had a complete celebrity meltdown.

  ‘Keep moving,’ Spacey said to me. ‘It’s when we stop that it can get chaotic.’

  But within seconds people had turned and spotted him. It was as if a veil had fallen, revealing him to them, and people began to swarm around him. We all had to jog through a department store to get away.

  Obviously this was many years before Spacey was publicly accused of inappropriate behaviour. He never behaved in an unacceptable physical way towards me or in my presence. One time a group of us had been partying and we went back to his private apartment next to the Athenaeum Hotel in Mayfair, which Spacey would book into under an assumed name so the paparazzi couldn’t find him. The others left and I was alone with Spacey. We had all been drinking, and I suddenly felt that he might be working up the courage to make a pass at me, so I just laughed and left. Reading the reports now of how he groped young men has been a terrible shock. When I knew him I could tell he was attracted to women and men, but I never saw him behave like a predator. I liked him and thought of him as a friend. I only stopped seeing him much later after I started dating my future wife Anya, and felt the partying and shallower social side of life needed to end so I could focus on my relationship.

  That was in the future, though. When I first met Spacey in the early 2000s I was writing, but no longer about terrorism. In the aftermath of 9/11 I was approached by a former Colombian judge who had personally investigated and waged war against Pablo Escobar, at one time the world’s biggest drugs trafficker and ‘narco-terrorist’. She had been the target of multiple, extraordinary assassination attempts by an army of hitmen. A surface-to-surface missile had been fired at her home inside an army base. She had helped to defeat the Medellin Cartel, but then had to flee to the United States, where a huge chunk of the federal budget for protecting foreign dignitaries was spent on keeping her alive. She remains one of the bravest, most selfless people I have ever met. I thought she had an extraordinary story that I was sure would make an exceptional and important book. I worked on it for six months. I spent a small fortune researching the story. But nobody was interested. South America was a dead zone, publishers said. They wanted me to write another book on terrorism.

  I tried to turn it into a movie. A top female producer came aboard. Then the actress Selma Hayek took out an ‘option’ on the story, basically paying a small sum to secure the rights, and would have been perfect for the main role. But she became
pregnant and the whole thing withered away.

  I talked with publishers about books, and production companies about TV projects, but nothing really inspired me. One idea that came through was that I should infiltrate al Qaeda for a BBC TV series. I’d had some crazy experiences by that point, but even I thought that was a mad idea.

  Then one sunny Saturday afternoon I was playing football in Kensington Gardens with a group of friends, including Danny and Tony, who I was living with in a flat near Ladbroke Grove. We sat around on the grass afterwards, sharing beers and chatting. I was saying I needed a project, something of substance, something really involving.

  ‘Mate, you need to try something new,’ said Tony, laughing. ‘You need to find yourself a whole new adventure.’

  I’m not the sort of person who deliberately seeks out an opportunity. I haven’t plotted and planned a career. But I have been open to change and chances. From when I was at the Sunday Times, I’ve volunteered, and when people have asked me to try something new I’ve generally said yes.

  As luck would have it a friend of a friend had been playing football and was now sitting with us listening. He was a producer-director at the BBC and we got talking, and he invited me in to the Beeb for a chat. I didn’t know it then, but the BBC had already been doing some research on me. By the time I showed up at the White City complex near TV Centre, they had already decided I had potential as some kind of presenter. They had reviewed shows I’d been on, interviews conducted with me, and some of my writing.

  I met up with Karen O’Connor, the head of the BBC’s international documentary strands, then called Correspondent and This World. She was a producer and a commissioner. That meant she had the ability to create or pick ideas and had access to the funds to get them made. She was an impressive character, tougher than some of the FBI agents I’d met while investigating bin Laden.

  We sat in her small office, surrounded by mountains of tapes, photocopying paper, maps, files, folders and chaos. The whole place looked like a fire hazard. I thought I was there to have early and probably fruitless discussions about presenting some TV shows, but gradually I realised she had already made up her mind to get me involved.

  I didn’t really have to do anything. There was no interview. I didn’t have to take a screen test. We just talked around a few ideas, the most appealing of which was to go on a journey through Central Asia, the countries to the north of Afghanistan, a forgotten corner of the planet that fascinated both of us, and then turn it into a TV series. Karen and I looked at an atlas together. We decided there was no area of comparable size about which so little is known in the West.

  We talked about the possible style of the series. We wanted it to be a journey and a real adventure, and we wanted to incorporate both the joy and the darkness of the countries I was visiting, what I called the light and the shade.

  ‘Normally there are travel shows, and then we have current affairs documentaries focusing on specific issues,’ she said. ‘What we’re talking about is a slightly different kind of TV programme. Something that blends elements from both.’

  I loved the idea. It sounded completely different and thrilling. I remember Karen turning to me and saying with a terse smile: ‘What do you think, Simon? Are you interested? It won’t be easy.’

  ‘All right,’ I said, perhaps a little too casually. ‘Sounds exciting. Let’s do it.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Anthrax and Caviar

  I never set out to be on TV. I didn’t chase down production companies and bombard them with my show reel. I just worked on books and projects that fascinated me. And eventually, to my surprise, TV came calling.

  It might be the pinnacle of popular culture, but television can also be shallow. I was an author, which gave me some credibility, but at least part of the reason I found myself with a BBC series was because I was a thirty-year-old with my own hair and teeth.

  Karen had already decided I was going to travel with Will Daws, a former stand-up comedian turned producer-director with a strong reputation. He had the unenviable task of creating and shooting the programmes. We would be joined by a relative youngster called Dimitri Collingridge, an assistant producer who spoke fluent Russian and had an exotic family background that included an auntie who was a Russian baroness and possibly also a Russian spy, and a cousin called Nick Clegg who was an MEP and the future Deputy Prime Minister.

  That was it. Three of us. So much for the days when a camel train of people would leave the BBC and head off on shoots carrying hampers. We were supposed to travel light, filming on small cameras in tricky countries and difficult situations.

  The three of us would visit Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in a series that Will had wittily titled Meet the Stans, which would be broadcast late at night on BBC Two. It was meant to be a one-off, and even while I was helping to research our route and plans I was thinking about what I would do when I returned.

  Before we left I was told I would need to complete a couple of health-and-safety courses. I raised my eyes. I had followed arms dealers and terrorists. But the BBC insisted.

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s not exactly sitting in a classroom,’ said Karen with a smile.

  The first course was chemical weapons training, deemed necessary partly because of the developing conflict in Iraq, the ongoing fighting in Afghanistan, and some of our filming plans for Central Asia. I met Dimitri for the first time when I picked him up from home and we drove down to an army barracks south of London. We got lost three times on the way, which I thought boded badly for the epic adventure we were about to undertake. But then we were locked in a chamber wearing respirators and full nuclear, biological and chemical suits while tear gas was pumped in through openings, and I had other things to worry about.

  After release I was told I had to complete something called a ‘Hostile Environment Course’, which was apparently mandatory for anyone from the BBC heading to countries deemed excessively tricky. The course was a six-day residential at Easthampstead Park in Berkshire, a council-run conference centre in a grand, sprawling Victorian mansion.

  The joining instructions were all very military. ‘This is not a hotel. Report by 0800 hours. We have attempted to identify representative tasks for operational deployments to Hostile Environments,’ said a flurry of emails. ‘You will need to be able to run 100m in body armour and helmet without stopping, drag a similar size/weight casualty 30m . . .’

  On arrival we were drilled by ex-special forces soldiers who taught us how to find hard cover if bullets started flying.

  ‘Don’t believe the rubbish you see in films,’ said one officer. ‘A car door is like a paper bag to a Kalashnikov bullet. You need to get behind the engine block, a tree trunk, a thick wall, or solid ground.’ They explained how to identify small-arms fire and large-calibre weapons. They showed us what to do if we found ourselves in a live minefield, were kidnapped, or if we were caught up in a demonstration that turned into a riot.

  We were a mixed group. A few of those on the course were working on children’s TV shows or an internet project and were going somewhere risky only briefly. Others were veterans of wars and riots, stationed in the Middle East or sub-Saharan Africa, and had only returned to the UK briefly for the course. It turned out that completing the course only provided certification for travel to tricky places for three years. Some people had done the course several times. I’ve since earned stripes by doing it five times.

  Other groups were using the conference centre at the same time. On the second day we were told to walk across the manicured lawn at the back of the mansion and react appropriately to anything we discovered. As we strolled across the grass, certain something awful was going to happen, a gunman in camouflage and a balaclava ran out from among the trees ahead of us carrying a Kalashnikov. He paused, lifted the assault rifle to his waist, opened fire on us with a full clip of blanks, and we all scattered like frightened deer.

  As I was running zig-zag towards a fallen tree I glanced
up at the mansion. The team from IBM’s Southern England Sales Conference were milling around the windows during their tea break. As the gunman changed magazines and opened fire again, I could see their jaws dropping at the scene of horror outside. God knows what the guests at the Berkshire Wedding Fair, which was taking place in another wing of the centre, must have thought. People have got completely carried away on the courses. One senior BBC member who did it leapt over a fallen tree, cracked two ribs and had to be taken to hospital. It was all so surreal I thought it ripe for comedy. I’m amazed nobody has turned it into a sitcom.

  After we dusted ourselves down, it was on to the medical side of the course, which was gruesome but fascinating. First we would have the proverbial scared out of us with details and images of bullets travelling through human flesh. Then combat medics showed us how to treat battlefield injuries.

  ‘Get your hands in there and get some compression on the wound,’ they’d say enthusiastically. ‘I want to see your fingers covered in fake blood.’

  We were shown how to turn off the blood supply to the hands by pressing hard into the soft flesh of the upper inner arm, and how and where to press into the groin to halt catastrophic bleeding in a foot, either after someone has stepped on a landmine or been in a car crash. But it also applies if you have injured yourself in the kitchen or cut the top off your finger like I did as a child. It works immediately. We practised on each other, with one person monitoring the pulse in their wrist, and then another turning off their blood supply. Why aren’t such basic life skills taught in schools?

  The fact we were trained by highly skilled and experienced soldiers made a huge difference. They had shocking stories but also practical suggestions. I learned you can pack bullet wounds with tampons in an emergency, and use a crisp packet and some gaffer tape to save the life of someone with a serious chest wound.