Early Travels of Isobella Giles

Packing properly is very important. It calms one before the journey, makes the transfers and the searches bearable, allows one to focus on the point of the journey. Isobella Giles from her first excursion made a list of absolutely everything she would put in her single wheeled travel case, plus, sometimes, in later years, irritatingly, a notebook computer.

At Dar es Salaam, ex British Airways, economy class (this being more than ten and a bit years ago), she took a pre-arranged taxi to the old, now the domestic, terminal where a three seater single prop plane was ready to take her and one other to Zanzibar. A watcher, observing her disembark, noted she wore a frock patterned with red pastel roses, though she was logged wearing worn denim blue jeans at Heathrow. On landing, she ducked out the cockpit, walked long stride to the terminal not glancing back allowing porters to collect her bag. She gave, "an impression of carefree confidence," when coming through the glass door of the small arrivals hall, arm extended, long white hands,

"Hi, I am Bella Giles, so pleased to meet you".

Later she was to express a moment of irritation at the presence of the watcher, brown eyes flashing anger. This flare of eye was to become a point of mention since her voice and expression was always, unfailingly, calm and diplomatic, professionally unemotional. Of the watcher she had said "There is such a thing as trust you know" but at the end of her early travels, when she had concisely, in excellent grammar perfect English, summarised many a watchers scribbles, ran her own teams too, there was no more mention of trust. "It is too big a word for what we do".

The plane from Chipping Norton dropped in tight circles so as to avoid the danger of rocket propelled grenades on the descent to Baghdad airport. Bella Giles had been concerned that this stomach to gullet falling would make her sick but to her quiet satisfaction it did not at all, Her steady smile and relaxed manner all the way through the airport, into the armoured truck, through the gates of the Green Zone entrance impressed the Officers, both serving and retired. Lt Col (ret) John T. Snelling, in charge of the Project ground operations, had been told, by radio, "our visitor is a tough one" and was further charmed by Bella's poise and politeness, perception and ability to take note. Others, ambitious men for whom this, like other wars. was a chance to shine, noted Bella too. The first night, accommodation being tight Bella got a camp bed in a room shared with two other Officers, "but it was ok, I put on a coat over my pajamas, went out like a light" Eight months earlier Bella had watched on a TV images from a Baghdad square showing the toppling of a large statue of Saddam Hussein. She remarked, when writing up, that she had never connected the image with her journey. "The reconstruction presents us with opportunities". The image of the statue falling she associated with eating choclate whislt watching TV.

Eighteen months after the earthquake the road to Kashmir was still badly damaged. The hours of consecutive hairpin bends, the sudden sight of chasmic drops, two days of hard driving in an BHC Landrover, were very tiring. "I had to wear a burka, for modesty, though I did not find it very flattering. As usual none of the chaps wanted to go. Family commitments" There is a picture of Bella standing beside a landrover, it is raining there are, as always in these pictures, a crowd of wide eyed children. There are broken buildings, water filled craters, gaunt proud men eyes directly in the camera. Bella is at three quarters profile, face hidden by the shadow of the burka. There are no recent pictures though she owns her own digital camera bought on a whim in Dubai. "I am not sure why I went. Though they think it is good to show a face at the site of disasters"

For most of her twenty four trips to Washington DC Bella stayed in a functional hotel near to the Office. It was more rooms than a hotel, you got in with a plastic key, there was no reception though in the morning breakfast was offered in a side room. Bella, being English, went there to get hot water for the tea she had packed and to observe who might be familiar. She walked each morning to the Office dressed smartly, dark skirts, jacket, lipstick. The Office rivalries were occasionally intriguing, sometimes, when she had to respond, annoying. "Most of my colleagues, not all, are decent people who believe in what we do and are very friendly and helpful." Her reports were well written often read. more perceptive than in the beginning, aware of other options. Bella observed that as the scope of electronic surveillance has increased the only way to keep something confidential was to write in pencil, on paper, then shred and burn the shreds.

Bella said "You just think, remember the truth you have decided on today, forget it for a new one tomorrow!*

Bella said "When I started my travels there were the bad and the good, now, I am as likely to be arrested as you"

When Bella started travelling she was twenty two, when the early travels were over she was nearly thirty seven. Although there are no photographs, her hairdresser stayed the same, a chap she had grown used to with a shop on the High Street. "Isobella has kept her hair a little shorter in recent summers."

Fat Greek

Casinos have never enthralled me, crooked business funded upon the foolish and the desperate. In Europe and Uncle Sam's parlour they are presently quite supervised so the ropier ones have gone south, even unto Africa, where they lodge in the basements of shopping centres or, as in Fat Greeks, the upper floor of the smartest hotel in town. Not liking these places is a view but using them is still a consideration: amongst the foolish, desperate and greedy we find our information and our living. I don't like to leave the beach, but once I went to Fat Greeks just to look at the man and his charm. He is very fat, two hundred kilos, his thighs jammed together so that there are seeping ulcers. Within a minute of coming under his glance he sent over a glass of wine, within an hour, "where is your place, I will buy it and open a casino". Fat Greek eats. I said to Shelly, "Methinks a waste of time, he will surely just expire upon his own."

A variant of poker known now as Texas Hold 'Em has become the most popular commercial form of the game because the number of open cards allows players to make a calculation of the odds on their hand winning. This allows the illusion that the game is more of skill than chance or bluff. A professional poker player, a Spade Man, will, when behaving, always play the odds, if you play enough and the other players know less or play less of the odds than you then, in the end, the probabilities will out and there will be a profit. The thing is to find high stakes card rooms with lots of rich bad players and place a couple of Spades. It is not easy, to come out good a Spade needs to play seventy thousand hands a year, which means four nights of ten hours a week. If too many of the players are any good, they know the arithmetic, it wont work, the Casino wins via the rake. But in southern places lots of people have been stealing with impunity for decades and these new card rooms, of which Fat Greek runs one, are a place for Spade Men to play.

Why don't Spade Men play on their own account? Because, to play those odds for those hours they need to concentrate, to endure the adrenalin surges each hand creates, to will the right card to drop, to live without daylight and in consequence, like most. like me, they have vices, always related to sex and alcohol. And they have dreams, they think they are good, therefore the cards, one day, will free them from the mundane. I knew these dreams. So I know how ever much a Spade makes he will blow it and so need a Staker, someone to put up the funds and split the percentage. So we staked a bit, for while it had worked, but then Fat Greek had cottoned and banned our best Spades from the table.

The Bulgarian dealers enter clacking a clip clop on the shining tiles, two by two, six deep, pencil thin in pencil skirts, faces made up to blank all but the scarlet smile. At the entrance the principal hostess, in toe length dress, "voluptuous sheen" comes to my mind. Fat Greek squatting puffing on a low stool watches the table fill. Shelly, now Maureen from Glasgow, short term under manager, fusses and busy bees. She looks the part, a bit of quick suntan, a slap of makeup over prison pallor. I mused that the lighting in prisons and casinos is alike. I glanced at our mark:the card room manager, a smooth Boer, white teeth, lily white arse (Shelly's description), gleaming white shirt black pointed shoes, called, at least in here, Myron.

The players gather. Mohammed, coiffured oiled dark hair, tinted glasses, cigarette held finger and thumb under the palm, Dubai money, drives a Lexus, serviced apartment upper floor, down town. JP, one of several Asian importers, fortunes made from textiles, nuts and bolts, second hand clothes, iron-mongery. They come to show off, to play, to lose money but strictly to each other. There are Chinese, latterly more, but there are always Kong's in card rooms. A fool or two, a Singh. a greasy haired Scandinavian, maybe someones Spade?

Myron says "Playing tonight? Five hundred thousand initial buy in. Only players allowed inside the card room once we deal"

I say "not tonight". Maureen, experienced casino worker, once of Glasgow, via America, keeps her back to me as I leave. After the dry casino air the tropical night sheens my face until I reach the the harbour breeze. My cab slinks out along Ocean Road, I remember the uplifted feeling, put it down to adrenalin but maybe it was twenty four hours with out an alcoholic drink. There would be a long time of waiting and watching, nothing much for me to do. I counted the misgivings, noted that it felt good, intoxicating, as dangerous as new sex, to be operating again after seven years of laying low. And on my own account, not a partner or an employer or any good reason to disturb the peace, my life of lies, false promises, oppurtune delusions.