+ Escapades Dan

January 1970: Cornwall you could buy it in the shops. 1986: The Gluepot, Auckland Park Ave, Auckland His two older sisters were wondrous I saw Dan once more in the formative I first met Daniel Gawn the day we creatures, wafting by in clouds of years – purely by chance – when I was moved into our new street. I was incense and plaited hair, foot soldiers 21. He was shifting steins at Ponsonby’s five, and friendless but resourceful. for the hippie revolution. I ate my Gluepot pub. In a genetic surge, he’d Setting off from our place – number first slice of Vogel’s bread at Dan’s monstered up, as broad as his dad still, 16 – I knocked at every door. house watching Jesus Christ Superstar but taller than me. Typically jovial At 10, I struck gold: a mum wheeled out on their video player. I thought it – he was always easy to like – this Dan, aged four. We headed straight out was all downright subversive. son of a hippie mum and soldier dad to his backyard to play. He had a black We never hung out at my place. With all told me he’d just joined the army. Labrador pup, Zulu, in a cage with a the tie-dye and bean sprouts, maybe things Ironically, I’d already served three mirror for company. Immediately I began were more relaxed over at the Gawns. We years in the army, but in the reserves barking orders. We were explorers on played war all over the neighbourhood: – or “cut-lunch commandos” as my Mars, the mutt was a dangerous alien and stalking each other along hedgerows smart-arse friends liked to say. if anyone was going to die it would have with deathly concentration, our hands I lost touch with Dan until 2009, when Peter to be Dan – but I might be able to revive hunched into the shape of a Lee Enfield he turned up to my one-man show at him with our stunning space technology. rifle for him, a German Schmeisser for Downstage in Wellington and we managed Dan eyed me up dubiously. We poked me. Two little boys with imaginary toys. a quick catch-up. He’d just punched his sticks through the cage at the dog until We were the bane of the street, digging 20-year service card, hung up his uniform Dan’s mother found us and sent me home. holes under fences, charging through and landed a corporate gig with Telecom. I was back the next day. Within a flower gardens, mangling wet washing With his crewcut and bulky frame, his week we were inseparable. Dan was underfoot, all in the grip of a frantic civilian clothes seemed an odd fit. He short and stocky like his dad. I towered make-believe world of life or death. joked that his work stories had got boring, over him, which I rather liked – mostly My brother James told me Dan after exotic army postings to the likes he did what he was told. He did chores was a dork. He said any family called of Angola, East Timor, the Sinai and Fiji for pocket money. I stole coins out “the Gorms” had to be dorks. during the 2006 coup. Dan and his new of milk bottles on the street. He did “Gawn,” I corrected him patiently, telecommunications colleagues did their ballet, and later karate. I did nothing. but it never caught on. planning in the “war room” – and during His dad was ex-SAS from the guerrilla Then, at age 11, everything changed. one of these meetings there was a brief war in Malaya; my father a veteran Almost overnight, in the kind of power outage. “At least no one got killed,” of a more gentlemanly conflict: the brutal snap decision only children he’d wisecracked, and was taken aside naval battles of WWII. Their family and dictators are capable of, I stopped and admonished for being insensitive. bought organic food; they drank water going round to the Gawns. Maybe Dan He knew he was ready to move on, but at filtered through an algae-choked was getting harder to boss around. the time we met didn’t know where to. plunger and made muesli before When I was 15, we moved away. A few years later he sent me some

Dan Gawn and Peter Feeney were inseparable as children. Armed with imaginary guns, they played war games all over the neighbourhood. Gawn became a TWO LITTLE BOYS Lieutenant-Colonel in the army and Feeney an actor, sometimes entrusted with a wooden sword. He tells the tale of two childhood friends who, decades later, peter feeney is a north & south contributing writer. find themselves reunited on a madcap film-making mission to Afghanistan.

84 | NORTH & SOUTH | august 2013 NORTH & SOUTH | august 2013 | 85 They love the idea. I can’t stop smiling. It’s like searching for a needle in a haystack and finding the farmer’s daughter.

Dan Gawn (at right), with bodyguard (“meatshield”) outside the Kandahar airstrip in Afghanistan.

I can get my head around the idea of counter-offer. The sun’s streaming in the film additional subjects in Tanzania and producing a pilot episode of the show, French doors as I open the email. They Kenya. A month of wrangling later and which I imagine involves me hiring the love the idea and offer a co-production I’ve managed to swing a flight to Dubai right people and making them coffee deal. I can’t stop smiling all day. It’s like by setting up some travel-writing gigs. while they do the actual work. But how searching for a needle in a haystack By night I’m on stage performing a Neil do I know, after spending $150,000 of and finding the farmer’s daughter. Simon play, by day racing around getting someone else’s money, that a network A week after our doco deal is struck, shots in my arm and buying warm socks. will be interested in the result? And NHNZ tells us we don’t need Fawad: Mum rings: “Dan Gorm from how do I go about selling it to them? if we can convince a broadcaster to number 10? How is that lovely boy?” Above: Model man Peter Feeney at a 1989 Melbourne photoshoot; and (at right) in costume for his role in the 2001 TV series Mataku. Good-sort John Harris from Greenstone run with the idea then they’ll fund She hasn’t seen him for 40 years. Pictures gives freely of his advice but it it. So we ready ourselves to pitch to Dawn on November 7, 2012, finds Peter comes at a price – a terrifying glimpse into networks. From Dubai, Dan and J.J. fire Feeney, one-time thespian, lugging a a strange world teeming with sales agents, me more potential subjects (eventually two-tonne suitcase to a waiting taxi. shots of him at Kandahar Air Force He’s got my number from my website consuming this enterprise would international broadcasters, media markets we get to 20, of all nationalities). base in Afghanistan and told me he was and he has an idea for a television become, I might well have run a mile and backroom deals. Who am I kidding? NHNZ tweaks and tinkers with our November 9-13, 2012: Forming, working for Supreme Fuels, running documentary series. He proceeds to right then. Instead, I remember my I decide we need help. Dan and proposal. They reject the title Terminal Storming, Norming fuel for the American military. pitch: every week we pick a different bank balance. My acting instinct his ex-army partner in crime, J.J. 2 because everyone thinks it’s an airport Dan picks me up at Dubai airport. He I sent him a brief reply – person – an anti-piracy security guy, kicks in. I lift my sagging shoulders. Smith, keep researching till we have show. We all kick around Expats on reminds me of his dad: sad around shaking my head at his appetite a mine clearer, humanitarian worker, “Sure, Dan,” I tell him, “you’ve come documented about a dozen demented the Edge (too corny) and DangerMen/ the eyes, cheerful in demeanour. Our for danger – and that was it. doctor, UN worker. We watch them to the right place. Let’s do it.” individuals who do interesting jobs in DangerWomen (too gender-exclusive). reunification has all the expectations of a fly out of Dubai’s tatty Terminal 2 to So Dan enters my life again. Oddly, scary places. I pull in Donny Duncan, We plumb the depths with Killer Careers rock-band revival: what if it disappoints? February 20, 2012: Auckland to Dubai the kind of destinations you normally we’re back on the same page – both top Auckland director of photo­graphy (too reality TV). At last, Dan and I I ponder this as we drive south through Years later, I’m strolling along Castor read about in a Tintin comic: Kabul, in our late 40s, groping for new and all-round nice guy, to advise me settle on Missionaries, Mercenaries the desert. We’re off for two days Bay on Auckland’s North Shore; just Kandahar, Baghdad, Beirut, Damascus, directions, trusting to an ancient on all things practical in film-land. and Madmen. Then my wife, Nicola, camping in Oman to break the ice. another dad bent with cares. Well, Mogadishu, Khartoum. Then we follow bond of mateship we hope has Finally, about four months and a dreams up DangerLands, which Neil Jet-lagged out of my skull, I wake up I have my baby Tilly in a backpack, them around for a week while they do somehow stood the test of time. For thousand emails after Dan’s original and the NHNZ team jump on. Phew. disorientated in a dried-up wadi –a so I’m slightly more bent. Tilly’s my their crazy, dangerous work. “So,” he now, the documentary’s the thing. phone call, my pitch document has been Neil pitches to TVNZ over a cocktail at stream bed – at 4am. I gaze up at the third. Our children seem to have a concludes, “wanna make it with me?” worked up to a fever and I fire it blind the global TV market at Cannes. They turn stars. The Islamic crescent lies directly magical, inverse relationship to money: Objections explode in my brain February 21 to November 7, 2012: at Neil Harraway, head of development down the show. Al Jazeera does the same. overhead, cut out of the sky in the the more we have, the less I earn. My like cluster munitions: “Dan, ideas Development Land at Natural History New Zealand. He then jets off to London where form of the moon. I watch jetliners phone rings. It’s the last person in are cheap. These things are a lot of We have an idea for a documentary, NHNZ is a prestigious international he drums up enough interest from arc across it. I reflect that Dan and I the world I would have expected. work. I wouldn’t know where to but I have no idea how to make one. company; I figure we start at the top other quarters to justify going the next both dragged our childhood game of Dan, from Dubai, clears his throat: start. I’m an actor. You need to talk I spend days pulling figures out of my and slide our way down. Nervously, I step. NHNZ writes a cheque for the “playing war” into adulthood – with me “How are you, Mr Producer?” to a producer. I don’t want to die.” bottom, producing budgets to convince request their participation as consulting princely sum of $5000 for me to go embracing the first half of that equation This is rather a stretch from under­ Then he says the four magic Afghan entrepreneur Fawad Al Dost – producers to help us make and sell a pilot to Afghanistan and shoot a teaser. (the playing bit) and him the latter. employed actor. I start correcting words: “I have an investor.” the investor – to part with his money. of our doco. We feel we have a trump card: Simultaneously, I find out that ex- Come daylight there’s still a lot to him when he interrupts: “Here’s Looking back, if I’d known how He wants a 10 per cent return on his we want their expertise, not their money. TVNZ journo Kim Vinnell is in Africa; she catch up on. Dan married his childhood one for you to ponder…” convoluted, frustrating and time- investment. Or is it 20 per cent? A few days later, Neil’s back with a comes on board, agreeing to research and sweetheart in his early 20s and had two

86 | NORTH & SOUTH | august 2013 NORTH & SOUTH | august 2013 | 87 been invaded by everyone forever, most road we’re more like an old married I feel hopelessly lately the Americans in their collective couple. I’m waffly, roundabout and moment of madness post-9/11. quite enjoy the odd moan. Dan’s blunt, ill-equipped But never mind the rockets, the traffic direct, uncomplaining – and full of in Kabul is the real killer – I’d bet good jargon. When I won’t give up on an for our foray to money there’s no such thing as an Afghan elusive subject he reproaches me for driving test – and if a beaten-up Ford ECTAFCOA – escalating commitment a war zone. utility doesn’t get you, the air pollution to a failing course of action. will. In 2007, it’s bad enough to result You can’t argue with that. I pretend life in an “excess annual mortality” of 2287 One afternoon we’re outside a provincial people – that’s twice as many civilians airport, sitting on our bags waiting and death for a who died that same year in the war. interminably for our turn to be searched. living. He’s been Sure enough, a week into my stay I get Dan draws three concentric circles in the the Kabul cough. “A large part of the dust dirt: influence, concern, other shit. “In a there, done that. is fecal matter, Pete, donkey dung and so war zone, Pete,” he drawls, “you learn fast on,” Dan informs me sagely. I stop picking that your circle of influence is very small.” my nose immediately. It’s only later I Whenever we pack out, I’ve never discover this widely held belief is an urban seen a room’s sprawl transformed faster through the next day’s itinerary when my legend. Maybe Dan was pulling my leg… into a carry-all. He’s out the door while mind drifts for a moment – only barely in any case the dust is like chalk, it gets I’m still trying to find my toilet bag. resisting the urge to strangle me when I everywhere. My hands become wrinkly However, as Russian writer Dostoyevsky ask him if he can just repeat that last bit… and white, like an albino tuatara. They observed, it’s easier to die on the cross for But Dan gets really angry with me only never sweat, no matter what the heat. humanity than share a cabin overnight once, after I attract a crowd by handing Peter Feeney (centre) lines up with Fawad Al Dost’s bodyguards and office staff outside the Afghan entrepreneur’s Kabul compound. We race all over the place, talking up with a man with a cough. No longer my out felt-tip pens to a flock of children the doco and pointing my camera at junior, Dan’s impatient about having to tailing us on Chicken St. He didn’t mind anyone who doesn’t point a rifle back. explain simple procedures twice. With a me risking my own neck, he tells me Childhood friends, once we get on the familiar air of command, he’ll be running later, but I was also unnecessarily making children. A clutch of daredevil escapades acting. I’d always secretly wanted to do the goat, farting about in tights on denied him promotion so at one time he it but lacked the confidence, thinking it stages or swinging swords on sound- was the most senior 2nd Lieutenant in was only for other, more exalted people. sets, I feel hopelessly ill-equipped for the army. He then spent eight years at Perversely at this moment, the nadir of our upcoming foray to a war zone. the rank of captain before leaping up the my existence when I had nothing to lose, I I pretend life and death for a promotion ladder, reaching lieutenant- finally found the courage to give it a crack. living. He’s been there, done that. colonel in his 17th year of service. I started off in theatre and small guest After his Telecom NZ stint, he was roles in overpaid American cable TV November 14-24: Kabul headhunted by Supreme Fuels to work in such as Xena and Hercules. After five Our Afghan escapade starts with Afghanistan, supplying fuel to the American years my decision paid off: I got cast as Kabul: smog, cars, dust, honking horns, military. There he befriended Fawad, and a lead in an Australian mini-series. The Bollywood tunes, burqas and bikers. together they ran tankers through Taliban same year my first book, a novel called Five million people packed into a city attacks from Pakistan over the border and Blind Bitter Happiness, was published by built for a tenth that number. I love it. all over the ’stan. Dan was on salary, and HarperCollins. I tried my hand at casting, My first night, staying in Fawad’s did okay; Fawad became a squillionaire. writing, directing and teaching. A late house, I wake to a popping noise – While Dan was clawing his way up the starter at every­thing, I married at 41. a Taliban rocket, I’m told later by army chain of command, I had remained Some of this manic activity had filtered Chris Carter, former Labour Cabinet unsure of my direction, travelling and through into popular consciousness. minister-turned-director of the UN’s doing odd jobs – including modelling – Dan told me he’d caught a few films of Governance Unit in Kabul, while until I settled on an honours degree in mine over the years, including Black sipping the worst coffee ever brewed politics at the University of Melbourne. Sheep – the 2007 Kiwi zombie-sheep at the Intercontinental. But Dan’s the Postgrad study took me to Russia. comedy in which I play the sinister light sleeper; the packs of rabid hounds In St Petersburg, 27 years young but Angus, whose genetic experiments aim to that own the Kabul streets at night feeling much older, alone in a seedy transform placid herbivores into vicious have roused him even earlier with hotel room (if you don’t count the carnivores, and who’s not above shagging their baying. I sleep through almost empty half-litre bottle of vodka), I the odd sheep to help things along. anything, but the army has taught him contemplated an incinerated existence. I burst out laughing when Dan to wake at the smallest sound – except, Just ditched by my girlfriend, my master’s tells me he holds my profession in his wife tells me later, a crying baby. thesis had also been inconsiderately some awe. It’s too ironic. I hold his Afghanistan is awash with history, scuppered by the fall of communism. life in awe. He’s the real thing. The poverty and guns. The government I tried to think of possible professions: easygoing follower of my childhood is a corrupt and tottering edifice teacher, writer, surgeon – until it hit has become the steely leader of men. propped up by aid. Sitting astride the me: I can do all of them with a gig called In contrast, after years of playing strategic silk route, this country has

88 | NORTH & SOUTH | august 2013 our bodyguards and him a target. Nevertheless, his zero-risk stance to security drives me nuts. I can’t stand being locked up all the time, then whisked away suddenly in an armoured SUV. Why can’t I just walk down the road and buy a banana? Patiently, he tells me: “I’ve survived decades in conflict zones for a reason – I’m careful.” I obey. This is his turf, and there’s one legacy it seems from our years of dodging imaginary bullets in the burbs: we trust each other. And I get my own back on a Kabul street next day: I’m walking backwards filming, he fails to wrangle me properly, and I trip on a kerb and fall over. Anyway, by the time we get to Kandahar later in the trip I’m not tempted to go shopping in a souk for bananas or anything else: the feeling of danger is visceral. Ex-SAS Commanding Officer Richard Williams (left) in the Hindu Kush with his prospecting team of geologists, miners and former soldiers, including ex-Royal Fusiliers officer Andrew (centre). White faces are not welcome here. Dan is unfazed by our wee run- ins. He has a serving of Kentucky Fried Management wisdom for every peruse an insanely ambitious menu. It occasion. “We’re forming, storming and One legacy offers dishes embracing every cooking norming,” he tells me one day, by way tradition on the planet: there’s either a of apology for halting my early morning from our years squad of Gordon Ramsays in the kitchen stream of chatter with a “Shut the or one very imaginative egomaniac. After fuck up please till I have my coffee!” of dodging a dinner of sushi, toasted sandwiches His politics lean to the right, but he’s a imaginary and steak we sojourn to the bar, empty lifetime contributor to Greenpeace thanks except for a tall blond man in the corner. to, he tells me, all that time spent in Third bullets in the Dressed in a sheepskin bomber jacket, he World countries. He expresses pride that looks like an oversize character out of a as a soldier and peacekeeper he’d taken on burbs: we trust Biggles book. What attracts my attention bullies and helped those affected by them. though is his face: he’s wind-burned. Dan also gets on with most every­one, each other. “That guy’s been out in the bush,” from the Bangladeshi national pumping I say. “He might have a story.” his gas in Dubai to a five-star general “Anyone who comes into a bar on their at International Security Assistance own is looking for company,” says Dan. Force HQ in Kabul. He treats all of them a green tea – which is unnerving. Propelled by hope and desperation exactly the same way: with respect. So it is that a week into Peter in in equal measure, we introduce He still plays rugby at 47 and wins Wonderland, Dan and I find ourselves ourselves. Andrew turns out to be hands-down a press-up competition washed up in the restaurant of expat affable and talkative – more evidence with some Kiwi squaddies half his age hang-out, the International Club. We’re that he’s been in the field too long with at Bagram Air Force base. A hard man, here to meet Chris Carter’s chief of staff. people who don’t speak English. He’s he’s also hard to pigeonhole. But who Earlier that day we’d been bumped off an ex-Royal Fusiliers officer, recently cares because we’re also a great team, the weekly RNZAF flight to Bamiyan. retired after 12 years of almost non- alternating as hard cop and soft cop, There we’d planned to film Kiwi engineer stop fighting for Queen and country. having a ball as we schmooze a rag-tag Tony Woods bringing solar energy to We tell him we’re in the country to succession of motley adventurers, trying 2500 homes – their first electricity scope ideas for a documentary series. to convince them to let us film their in 5000 years of human habitation in He tells us the work he’s doing could classified, or commercially sensitive, the remote, mountain-fringed region. fire up a dozen. We shout him beers or just plain dodgy goings-on. This was bad news. We’d met some but he’s cagey on the details: loose lips One time we get run out of a walled interesting people but for reasons of sink ships and all that… Finally he heads compound by a suspicious ex-CIA security, safety or confidentiality had not back to his compound across the road, operative with an insane glint in been able to film them doing anything assuring us he’ll mention us to his boss his eye – swimming in communist interesting. Tony had become our great and return later. Now the place is deserted, conspiracy theory for too long will white hope. I remind Dan if we don’t but for us. We’re the lepers of Kabul. do that to you. On the dusty street we capture some interesting footage soon “We won’t see him again,” says Dan. find ourselves sans bodyguards – who the whole trip could be a fizzer. I agree. have driven up the road in search of We sip our overpriced Heine­kens and The night is not boding well. It’s

90 | NORTH & SOUTH | august 2013 Later I arrive at a mining camp in the Hindu Kush mountains, ready to play my latest role of thoughtful documentary producer. Overnight, Andrew’s done his Google homework and caught me on a Spartacus episode. He greets me, grinning: “I saw your bottom last night.” Yeech.

Postscript November 25, 2012, to the present: Auckland and Dunedin

Everyone loves the footage. It blows our original series premise out of the water; Richard and crew are now a whole series. Feeney (at right), posing in blazingly non-PC fashion, at Fawad Al The edit and written pitch are done by Dost’s Kabul office compound with bodyguard, Nasir. February 2013 and the NHNZ sales teams in London and the US are poised to go. We send a memorandum of getting late and it looks like Carter’s the Afghans running their own security as understanding to Richard’s company, a chief of staff has stood us up. We order the 2014 International Security Assistance formality that asks permission to pitch the up our car and settle in, somewhat Force (ISAF) troop withdrawal deadline series to broadcasters. Or so we think. No despondently, to wait. Then, as nears – which is important because if reply. We wait. Two weeks pass. Three. promised, Andrew walks back into the they can’t, the aid money’s going to dry We prompt again. Nothing. I’ve sunk more bar. We couldn’t be more surprised. up. But the aid won’t last forever – the than 600 hours into the project and we’ve With him are Devin and Keith, two government needs other sources of hit yet another wall. No one will talk to us, burly South Africans – though Andrew, revenue too. As well, the young people are so we have no idea what the problem is. an ex-UK representative rugby player “effing poor” and therefore vulnerable to It’s yet another hurdle, and it won’t it turns out – still towers over all of us. the attractions of insurgency. It’s critical, be the last. I commence a campaign We learn that these guys are prospecting in his view, that “things get moving” and of Skype- and cyber-stalking, working for minerals – in a war zone. This basic infrastructure­ (the architecture on Devin, Richard’s deputy. Three gets our attention. But I know we’ve of recovery, as he puts it) is built. weeks on, it suddenly pays off and we struck gold when their boss, Richard Not content to narrate history, he wants get an answer. The wheels of tortuous Williams, strolls in an hour later. In this to nudge it along. Until recently Richard’s negotiation begin to grind again. The moment our prospects are transformed been busy in uniform, chasing – and killing final hurdle nears: actually selling the and we have a potential TV series. – insurgents in Afghanistan and before series to a network. Will they spurn us, Richard, till recently commanding officer that, Iraq. But he was also instrumental in as you would the rabid dogs that roam of the British 22nd SAS Regiment, is funny, getting oil out of Kurdistan when no one in packs through Kabul after nightfall? over-educated, supremely intelligent, thought that was possible, which helped Dan won’t grow old waiting. He’s razor-sharp, no stranger to risks, and a man turn that region’s prospects around. already moved on: he’s now vice- who (we discover later) the camera loves. No one much fancies mining president of operations for Guardian Over a pint, he gives Dan and me a Afghanistan’s mineral riches right now, but Medevac in the Middle East, guiding geopolitical rundown on Afghanistan. Richard and his rough-neck band of miners, their expansion into Rwanda and Haiti. About 70 per cent of Afghans, he tells ex-soldiers and adventure capitalists are up Neil, our man at National History, us, are under 25. All they’ve known in for having a go. They’re going to bring jobs has left and gone freelance. I’m the adult life is the allied intervention. They to this country: people can’t live on AK-47s last man standing, a lonely King Lear have little affinity with the Taliban. alone, Richard observes. He’s also keen – figure, madder by the minute. Everyone here agrees that since 2001 God knows why – to grant us access to one Come September, though, I might just a lot has been done wrong, but Richard of his operations next day. We’re saved. be running around Badakhshan province maintains a lot has been done right too. I’m up at five the next morning, before behind my camera­man, hot coffee in There are 18 million cellphone subscribers Richard can change his mind. Today, one hand, cable in another, keeping an out of a total population of around 31 I’m flying solo. Walking briskly with eye out for stray rockets. Or not, as the million (the figures for Burma, he reels Dan to a waiting armoured car, I get my case might be. They might turn out to off, are just two million cellphones for an 15-second situational awareness briefing: be roads to nowhere but, if nothing else, estimated 60 million people). He quotes “Always do what other people do,” he the last year has opened up doors in T.E. Lawrence: “The transistor radio is tells me. “Don’t walk anywhere unless development land hitherto closed to me. the biggest enemy of the tribal system.” you see someone walking there first. If all else fails, I tell myself, I have Intelligence indicates that the Taliban Mines are everywhere in those hills. If enough Emirates miles from my business- want a voice in any post-2014 settlement, there’s a fire-fight, watch Richard. If he class trip to fly to the moon and back. he says, but no longer seek to be the gets down, get down. If he runs, run.” Maybe I’ll ask Dan to come along for dominant one. Richard is positive about How reassuring. the ride. +

92 | NORTH & SOUTH | august 2013