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THE MALTESE DOUBLE CROSS -- ILLUSTRATED SCREENPLAY & SCREENCAP GALLERY |
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[Narrator] The Roman theatre in Sabratha, Libya, hot and sandblasted.
In its splendor when Africa provided the grain for Rome, and the Libyans, Septimus Severus was Roman Emperor.
1,500 years before the birth of the American Republic.
Two Libyans cast, without ever auditioning, have now become players in a new play with a very old plot: White hats and black hats.
The play goes like this: Basset Megrahi, terrorist 1, a frequent traveler in his work for Libyan Arab Airlines always using his own passport, arrives in Malta and using a false passport checks into the Holiday Inn, one of the only two luxury hotels in Sliema not owned by Libya.
[Abdel Basset Ali Al-Megrahi, Libyan suspect] They say I used a false name, that the courts will [illegible] me of that accusation.
[Narrator] In the meantime, second terrorist, Lamin Fhimah is rigging the bomb in the Libyan Arab Airlines office. Could it be this office?
Or perhaps this one? Using Semtex he has stored there amongst the Libyan Maltese and other employees and of course, Mr. Bollier's device.
[Lamin Khalifah Fhima, Libyan suspect] It just does not make any sense for me to use explosives or even store them inside one of the airline offices in the airport.
[Abdel Basset Ali Al-Megrahi, Libyan suspect] This office employs both Libyan and Maltese staff. So how could such dangerous things be placed there? And how could we have turned a blind eye if we had seen anything?
[Narrator] When the great war fleet stops in Malta, the warship [inaudible] would unload sailors looking for what every sailor seeks at the foot of this Sliema street. Now shoppers look for other kinds of cheap deals.
[Dennis Kline, FBI Investigator] What was more valuable than the suitcase and the tracing of the suitcase were the clothes in that suitcase. There were some baby clothes. There was an umbrella. There were different items that were not really consistent with having come from this worn suitcase. You figure a suitcase from a man, owned by a man would just have men's clothes in there. There was a suitcase that had several different items in there from babies to adults to casual items. It turned out that apparently, as I recall, that one of the items of clothing, not to be specific, was traced, as the suitcase might have been.
[Narrator] Bomb-damaged clothes made in Malta had been found in the Pan Am 103 debris, so secret agent Megrahi must have scrambled up and down this shopping street from shop to shop, finally buying baby clothes, pants in different sizes, an umbrella at Mary's House. Tony Gauci and Paul Gauci, the brother owners. Megrahi, truly incognito, not as lucky as Dalkamoni and Khreesat in Neuss, had not been filmed. So over two years, Tony will make 18 separate statements, Paul 4 to the FBI and Scottish police as they try to get the brothers to identify the clothes buyer. 50 years old, 6 feet, testy, full hair, had been there before, had been there again, had been there once, had seen him in a bar several months later.
The baby clothes had a sheep's head, no, an entire lamb embroidered. I will sign though I do not read English. Twenty years older than the photograph. Similar, but not identical. Maybe. Perhaps. Like him, but not fully like him.
Like the man in the Sunday Times.
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