I guess I just lacked confidence. Or maybe I had an excess of it back then? (What a fool, though! What a gullible fool!)

Just try and imagine (if you can) how that might feel? If the sum total of your role in the grand panoply of human history was that of an idiotic obfuscator? Not a traitor or a plotter (surely there’s some measure of glamour in those Judas roles? I mean at least you have the comfort of a dark yet coherent subterranean agenda?), but as someone who persistently – no, determinedly – gets things wrong. An incompetent dope. You are presented with the facts (whatever they may be) and then you gamely proceed to cook up a series of the worst possible hypotheses. You conjure a miserable five out of a happy two plus two.

When Scott died, unexpectedly (from a heart attack), while the book was still being edited, I carefully pondered my options and then ran, long-distance (like a skinny barefoot Kenyan) with the information provided. How could I not? I fully understood the risks. But this was huge. The CIA had known – they knew! – way in advance, that Lee Harvey Oswald posed a serious threat to American national security. Scott had all the documentation to prove it! Why didn’t they admit to this, you wonder? Because it made them look like a bunch of incompetent chumps, that’s why. But they knew. They knew.

This was career-making stuff. This was the world’s biggest scoop. A coup. This could finally undo the Tlateloco mess. This could set me up for life. Was Scott’s death suspicious? Yes. No. Who could say? Were the FBI desperate to stop the book? Uh … does a rabid dog crave water?

Publish and be damned, though! That was my mentality. So I put out my feelers. I cast around for all my best media contacts. I made calls. I wrote letters. I honestly thought they’d be biting my arm off at the wrist! But nobody – nobody – seemed eager to take the bait. I was ignored, fobbed off, laughed at, avoided. No one wanted to risk it. But why? Why?! My theory (but who can trust my theories?) was that British Intelligence had put the word out on me. Institutional self-protection. Their people knew people who knew people … Everybody was implicated. I suddenly found myself (although it wasn’t actually sudden, it was lethally gradual, like frostbite) sitting bang in the middle of yet another ‘left-wing cover-up’ scenario. There were sly winks and subtle nudges, casual rumours, incriminating documents in circulation which nobody ever read, nobody ever saw – even compromising photos.

What could I do? I booked a flight to England (we were broke, but I needed to confront this many-headed Hydra, head-on) then suddenly there were a whole host of ‘visa problems’ (if I leave, they tell me, there’s no guarantee of ever getting back in again). A house burglary. My car’s brakes are tampered with. The bank stops my credit. A friend is imprisoned. I can’t travel, can’t travel; so Kimberly takes the flight instead – and … and, well, she never comes back.