Погиб при исполнении…
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Одиннадцатого сентября в Южном Окланде при исполнении служебных обязанностей погиб полицейский сержант Don Wilkinson. Светлая память…
Ниже статья из газеты Sunday Star Tiмes написанная журналисткой Ребекой Хейте / Rebecca Hayter, хорошо знавшей павшего сержанта:
Secret police lead secret lives. Don Wilkinson, the police sergeant gunned down in South Auckland on September 11, was single without children.
His name was Don. Not short for Donald, and without other Christian names. Just Don. It suited him because he lived a life without clutter; it was good to do the job with just one syllable.
I met him in 1980 in Wellington. Don was training in telecommunications with Civil Aviation. Socially, he chose the fringes. Often an observer, or in a group of just one or two, legs apart, a beer in his hand, quietly nodding, head towards the floor but listening; sometimes, a sudden chuckle. Often an agreement: "Yeah, yeah." A wry comment.
He was more comfortable in active pursuits: playing squash, tramping, sailing or cycling, than doing the social thing. His wit was dry and odd. He liked literals. When he offered coffee or tea, he would say: "Beans or leaves?"
Through his childhood years he didn’t know his father but had a close bond with his stepfather which lasted, although the marriage didn’t. His family life was unsettled, but he carried little bitterness. It made him a man in his own skin, self-reliant and using that freedom to work in the danger zone. He could do without the complexities of relationships.
In the early 80s he spent a year in Antarctica; there was a dim, black and white video of him running naked for the mid-winter swim. Back in Auckland, he worked for Civil Aviation at Auckland Airport.
He sailed across the Tasman in a ketch; the storms he could deal with but not the politics of the husband and wife. His Toyota Celica was his only obvious indulgence. He spent hours in his room playing his guitar and singing. His music tastes were wide and off-beat, played on an expensive stereo with massive speakers, and no matter what he tried the neighbour’s tom cat kept coming in and spraying them.
Then, in the late 80s, I had a call from the Secret Service. Don had given them my name as a reference. A man came to my work and flashed his badges. He took out a notepad and asked me about Don: about his drinking habits I could honestly say I never saw him drunk. About his sexuality straight, but no relationships with women.
"No women?" the man said. I shook my head. Basically I was the only woman in his life at that time and I was his flatmate’s girlfriend.
Clearly, the Secret Service were looking for discretion. I told the man he wouldn’t get anyone more discreet than Don.
The man asked if there was anything odd about him.
"He talks to the carrots," I said.
"The carrots?"
"Yes, when Don Ameche’s cooking dinner, he lifts up the lids on the pot and says, `Hey, carrots, you’re bubbling away happily there, aren’t you?"’
Don Ameche? Jack, one of the guys in our crowd, named him. It turned out Don Ameche was an American actor who turned up in westerns.
Don Ameche disappeared. Several years later he strolled up when I was working on my yacht at Okahu Bay. "Where have you been?" I asked him.
"Somalia." He shrugged. Somalia was on the news every night; a place of war and bombs.
"What the hell were you doing there?" Another shrug.
He disappeared again, came back a year or two later. "Where have you been?"
"Bosnia." We stopped asking what he did there. Or in Baghdad. Or Russia.
One day in the car, on our way to Buddy, the musical, a news story about feeding hormones to chickens came on the radio. "That’s what I like about New Zealand," he said crisply. "So much trivia."
There was a considered wisdom to him for a few years; sometimes, a little irritating, as though he was miles beyond us in knowledge of humanity. Because he never spoke of his assignments in the war zones, we couldn’t even begin to imagine them. My only understanding is that, when an operation was planned, Don would be sent in ahead to set up phone lines and communication.
He told us more about Italy the Mafia maybe and even wrote us letters. He lived in a nice apartment in Brindisi and the family downstairs made him pastries. For four or five years, he phoned me every year on Valentine’s Day.
When Don Ameche came back to Auckland, the Secret Service came to see me again. Don had applied for a job with the police, undercover.
This time I knew the drill: I talked about a man who liked his own company. Who formed close attachments with people but it was depth without words, maybe an occasional close and tight hug. Who never got involved in the "he said/she said" of social inconsequence.
If you asked his opinion, he’d give it but it might not be pretty. If you tried to change his mind and defend your cause, well, he’d made up his mind. When he got bored at a party, he left, usually without saying goodbye. If you left a message on his phone, sometimes he’d call you back.
For undercover work, he was just about perfect.
Until his mid-30s, he had badly bucked teeth; it hadn’t occurred to me that they bothered him until he got them fixed. He was fit as a buckrat: loved playing squash. Sailing, he wandered up and down the sidedecks without hanging on; it doesn’t surprise me he wasn’t wearing a protective vest when he died. He was bowman on my boat for the nationals and we won. We teased him he was like a monkey; squatting like an African to work on the deck. Tramping with the guys, he stormed on ahead.
Two years ago he bought a block of land at Waimauku. On New Year’s Eve, my partner was away and instead of going to a party I visited Don Ameche. Barefoot, he showed me through the bush, indicating the species of native trees. Above, us, birds were preparing for the evening. Beside the stream he had cleared the blackberry and had built small bridges through the swampy bits. He had filled in the swimming pool as it was too much hassle to maintain.
He had obviously made a panicked trip to the supermarket for my visit to buy steak and salad. His pantry was chocka full of tinned fish and instant pasta. We carried the dining table out onto the deck to eat dinner and Don surprised me with placemats and candles. In a rare admission, he said he had recently met up with his biological father but added little detail. That night I mentioned friends who had died many years before, back in our Wellington days.
"I’ve seen it so many times," he said.
I asked what he meant. "Overseas," he replied. I imagined bullets around deserted towns. Mates lying in the street. Sometimes it was easy to forget that Don Ameche had another life of friends beyond our circle.
We have one story of Baghdad: that he climbed up a pole to install telephone lines with bombs exploding nearby and a sniper at the base of the pole to protect him. I imagine him squinting as he worked.
From reading the newspapers since his death, it seems most of Don’s friends didn’t even know he worked in the police.
Recently we were both going to the same party. I rang Don Ameche and asked him if he’d like to come to our place for dinner first. "Oh no," he said, "that would be way too much social responsibility for one evening." As it turned out, he didn’t even go to the party.
I don’t like the fact that Don Ameche was gunned down at 46 but I feel he had reached a completeness in himself and at least a bullet is quick and clean. If he had to die, that was Don Ameche’s style: just get the job done. Конец Цитаты
Full list of all New Zealand police officers killed in the line of duty
Wilkinson, 46, was killed by a single shot to the upper body after he and his colleague who was also shot several times were disturbed as they attempted to put a tracking device on a vehicle outside the suspected P lab. Neither was carrying guns but armed support officers were a block away.
An officer who has run a number of covert operations says Wilkinson’s death could not be blamed on bad police practice.
"You can’t predict the unpredictable," the officer told Sunday News. "No one is to blame.
"You couldn’t have armed officers next to these guys because if they are spotted, that blows the cover."
Wilkinson’s role in police’s Technical Support Unit was communications planting and monitoring listening and tracking devices.
Wilkinson had previously worked for the United Nations field service in Italy, Somalia, Iraq, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
