Embassy.
London was quite a change from the windswept rigs in the North Sea. It was a calm sunny morning as he left his small hotel
near the South Kensington Underground station. He crossed Cromwell Road and followed Exhibition Road between the Natural History
Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. He passed the Imperial College on his left and turned left into Kensington Gore,
where the Royal Albert Hall faced the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens.
Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s prim and proper husband, was said to have died of rage and shock on hearing about his son
Edward’s exploits with a loose woman. Dockrell’s own mother accused him of sending his father to an early grave, as she put
it. In Dockrell’s view, the Victorians would have felt at home in present-day Prince Edward Island. The island had been the
first Canadian province to vote dry and had kept prohibition until 1948. The wrath of a vengeful Lord was believedto hover particularly close over the island. It was focused there, so to speak, meanwhile freeing the population of nearby
Nova Scotia to holler and whore to their hearts’ content.
After the death of his wife, a neighboring old farmer had taken himself a young second wife. She was too lively for him, and
after only a few months of marriage she led the sixteen-year-old Douglas Dockrell astray. One afternoon the old farmer caught
them making love on the straw in his barn. The farmer came at Dockrell with a pitchfork, trying to spear him in the gut with
it. The old boy was fast and light on his feet; he’d been handling a fork all his life. Dockrell was lucky to get away with
a scrape along the ribcage from one fork tine in the farmer’s first thrust. He took the fork away from him before he could
try for a second, grabbing the implement’s handle and twisting it out of his attacker’s hands.
The farmer ran for his farmhouse and Dockrell ran for home, which was in town. The youth heard the shot as he ran. At the
time he thought the gun was aimed at him. Next day he heard the farmer had shot himself. Dockrell’s father denounced the widow
as the cause of her husband’s death—this was when Dockrell learned he had not been the only one easing her loneliness. In
a rage at Dockrell’s father for his self-righteousness, the widow screamed at him that his own son had been involved. At first
Dockrell’s father refused to believe this. When it finally sunk in, he had a stroke and lived less than a week.
Dockrell put these thoughts out of his mind and went to work. He could not trust the Iranians. He had no idea how many people
they wanted him to kill—with the Iranians it might be an endless succession, a lifetime of steady work. Presumably there was
a finite number of American oilmen they wanted liquidated. He had just killed the seventh for them. Were there ten or twenty?
Or seven, and now that he had completed his work, would his own death be a final seal of silence on the affair?
He intended to sanitize the meeting place by patrolling the area of Kensington Gardens around the Albert Memorial. He kept
on the move for the next two hours between Queen’s Gate and Alexandria Gate, and back into the Gardens as far as The Flower
Walk. It was tedious, but by the time he was due to meet the Iranian emissary, he judged he was safe from attack from the
park side. He could still be attacked by the emissary himself or from a car passing on Kensington Gore, but this was less
likely and a risk he would have to take.
The meeting went smoothly, almost exactly like all those before. The man delivering the stuff to him seemed low-level and
ignorant of what he was doing. As usual he had one large envelope stuffed with his advance payment of $200,000 in U.S. currency,
and a smaller envelope containing information on his next victim. He would count the money carefully in his hotel room. But
first he was curious about where he was to go next. China?
London was quite a change from the windswept rigs in the North Sea. It was a calm sunny morning as he left his small hotel
near the South Kensington Underground station. He crossed Cromwell Road and followed Exhibition Road between the Natural History
Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. He passed the Imperial College on his left and turned left into Kensington Gore,
where the Royal Albert Hall faced the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens.
Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s prim and proper husband, was said to have died of rage and shock on hearing about his son
Edward’s exploits with a loose woman. Dockrell’s own mother accused him of sending his father to an early grave, as she put
it. In Dockrell’s view, the Victorians would have felt at home in present-day Prince Edward Island. The island had been the
first Canadian province to vote dry and had kept prohibition until 1948. The wrath of a vengeful Lord was believedto hover particularly close over the island. It was focused there, so to speak, meanwhile freeing the population of nearby
Nova Scotia to holler and whore to their hearts’ content.
After the death of his wife, a neighboring old farmer had taken himself a young second wife. She was too lively for him, and
after only a few months of marriage she led the sixteen-year-old Douglas Dockrell astray. One afternoon the old farmer caught
them making love on the straw in his barn. The farmer came at Dockrell with a pitchfork, trying to spear him in the gut with
it. The old boy was fast and light on his feet; he’d been handling a fork all his life. Dockrell was lucky to get away with
a scrape along the ribcage from one fork tine in the farmer’s first thrust. He took the fork away from him before he could
try for a second, grabbing the implement’s handle and twisting it out of his attacker’s hands.
The farmer ran for his farmhouse and Dockrell ran for home, which was in town. The youth heard the shot as he ran. At the
time he thought the gun was aimed at him. Next day he heard the farmer had shot himself. Dockrell’s father denounced the widow
as the cause of her husband’s death—this was when Dockrell learned he had not been the only one easing her loneliness. In
a rage at Dockrell’s father for his self-righteousness, the widow screamed at him that his own son had been involved. At first
Dockrell’s father refused to believe this. When it finally sunk in, he had a stroke and lived less than a week.
Dockrell put these thoughts out of his mind and went to work. He could not trust the Iranians. He had no idea how many people
they wanted him to kill—with the Iranians it might be an endless succession, a lifetime of steady work. Presumably there was
a finite number of American oilmen they wanted liquidated. He had just killed the seventh for them. Were there ten or twenty?
Or seven, and now that he had completed his work, would his own death be a final seal of silence on the affair?
He intended to sanitize the meeting place by patrolling the area of Kensington Gardens around the Albert Memorial. He kept
on the move for the next two hours between Queen’s Gate and Alexandria Gate, and back into the Gardens as far as The Flower
Walk. It was tedious, but by the time he was due to meet the Iranian emissary, he judged he was safe from attack from the
park side. He could still be attacked by the emissary himself or from a car passing on Kensington Gore, but this was less
likely and a risk he would have to take.
The meeting went smoothly, almost exactly like all those before. The man delivering the stuff to him seemed low-level and
ignorant of what he was doing. As usual he had one large envelope stuffed with his advance payment of $200,000 in U.S. currency,
and a smaller envelope containing information on his next victim. He would count the money carefully in his hotel room. But
first he was curious about where he was to go next. China?
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