Cry Havoc Page 13

  The idea is that Executive Outcomes would be reborn under a new name. We would train up his men, then accompany them into action. We’d take over an Iraqi city that was well clear of Baghdad but well within the zone of air supremacy of allied air forces, operating from well outside Iraq. Saddam would then have a horrible choice: come after us and risk being annihilated from the air, or leave flying the flag of rebellion. Saddam would have to tolerate the presence of a foreign force in his own land.

  Q Ships means buying an old cargo ship in the Far East, then sailing her round to Karachi. There she would pick up genuine – and genuinely nasty – nuclear weapons-grade fuel or other bomb parts. From Karachi the ship would sail for Basra. En route – in the Persian Gulf – she would be stopped and searched by the Saudi Navy. As the Saudi boat closed, the Q Ship would bounce and burn the Saudis. The international outrage from all directions would be deafening.

  The Q Ship – once in Basra – and once word of her deeds and cargo had been cunningly leaked – would be loathed far and wide: an attack on Basra to take her would be justified, and war would begin. Of course, my plan is not to actually kill any Saudi sailors. Just to make sure that the world believes we have.

  By May 2002, David tells me he’s discussed both plans in face-to-face meetings with Tony Blair and Jonathan Powell. They like certain elements, dislike others. David asks me to continue to work on these options, but to explore others. It is clear that they’re going in.

  I’m irritated. I tell David that he and Blair are not taking this seriously enough. They need to move on from casually kicking about ad hoc plans. If they’re going to risk the lives of British soldiers, they need to prepare properly. If they go in half-cocked, our soldiers will get killed.

  ‘That’s what soldiers are for, isn’t it?’ counters David.

  Irritation turns to fury. I tell David he has no idea how much it hurts when one of your men is killed or wounded. The guilt. The fear that you hadn’t been diligent enough. It is the first of many screaming matches.

  That August in 2002, David and I fly to Israel. We waltz through the bedlam of Ben Gurion Security. I find myself at the King David Hotel, on the edge of Jerusalem’s old city. I’m in a lavish three-room suite. David is across the hall, alone in four.

  For this trip, David Hart has warned me about talking to my old friends. They are peaceniks now. Out of favour with the people we will be with.

  I can’t be bothered to tell Hart that anyone acquainted with war is a peacenik. That war is the last resort, only to be put on the menu when a justifiable objective (like survival) can be achieved by no other means.

  I remember dear Nicholas Elliot too (another peacenik and spy), and his adventures in Israel. The funny story of the time when Nicholas had been sent to the desert dressed up as an Israeli Army Intelligence Captain. He was there on behalf of MI6 in order to make a trade. He was to hand over a copy of the entire Egyptian Order of Battle. The Israelis were to allow Nicholas to ask a few choice questions of a captured Egyptian General.

  On the way to the front, Nicholas talked of the importance of the correct handling of information before it becomes usable Intelligence. His host, an Israeli General, stopped the jeep and waved at the desert.

  ‘Don’t tell me that, Nicholas, this bloody place is meant to be flowing with milk and honey … apparently it does: for three weeks of the year … but that was when Moses’ scouts were here…’

  On the way back from the interview they stopped for a swim, stripping naked.

  ‘My God, Nicholas … I’m impressed … your service is thorough!’ said the General, seeing that Nicholas was circumcised, and thinking this was all part of his cover.

  David Hart and I begin our mission

  We’re driven to Mossad HQ. There we meet two government ministers and three directors of Mossad, two retired, the other – Meir Dagan – appointed a week earlier. David introduces me as ex-Special Forces. As if Mossad don’t know. I’m the man who can kick things off in Iraq. The new Mossad chief is dismissive. Rude.

  ‘No, no, that is not how you must do this. You must go in big. A full-scale invasion is the only option.’

  We argue the toss. Then the head of Mossad puts us straight on another matter.

  ‘Unfortunately, you have chosen the wrong country. You should really be invading Iran. But anyway, you’ve chosen Iraq and now you’ve made too much noise. You have to do it now. Two things. If you don’t do it now, you will look ridiculous. If you don’t win, you will look ridiculous.’

  Then the Pentagon’s news filters all the way down the chain to the likes of me: ‘Casus belli is no longer an issue. We’re going to invade Iraq anyway, and for whatever reason. We’re going, and we’re going HEAVY.’

  The US and UK invade Iraq in March 2003. I’m convinced they’re doing the right thing. Heavy is the best way, and they’re going for the right reasons. Tyrants and tyranny are not OK. My father George had been a pacifist at Cambridge in the 1930s. But the spectre of Hitler’s tyranny left him with no choice but to join up and fight in World War II. Grandfather Pop had gone into the Great War in the same way. The Kaiser could be as big a shit as he liked, a tyrant – until he invaded Belgium. Abuse of power equals bully. Bully means: ‘You’ve gotta fight.’

  I had been ready to put my arse on the line to fight Saddam’s tyranny. I would have gone on the ground for Raising the Flag. I would have gone to sea for Q Ships. I had loved the feeling of plotting with David – the endeavour, the risk – maybe action just around the corner.

  For me, though, the 2003 Iraqi campaign is over. No job for Mann.

  Later, David Hart wants me to do a highly paid job, in post-invasion Iraq (as do a couple of other people), but I have other fish to fry. My own ARC. I ask David if he wants to be an investor in the EG coup. No, he doesn’t.

  To ensure our coup happens, I decide to go to a man who is a likely investor. I target my new best friend, Mark Thatcher. One sunny southern winter’s day, we go for a walk on Table Mountain. The unique flat-topped rock is like a natural city wall protecting Cape Town. One local legend calls Table Mountain the slain dragon of the sea. I tell Mark that Table Mountain’s name is echoed in that of the constellation Mensa, Latin for ‘table’. The Mensa constellation can be seen in the Southern Hemisphere around this time of year – August – just below Orion. Of course, he knows I haven’t walked him up here to talk of star stuff. He knows very well that I’m up to something, so now I tell him all about the EG plot. I ask if he’d be interested in investing.

  No surprise.

  He nearly bites my hand off, but Mark makes one thing clear that day on Table Mountain. Not only does he want to share the spoils of our EG adventure. He wants to play an active role in our op, and in whatever comes next. To be an officer.

  I’m not surprised by his enthusiasm. Mark is a habitually naughty boy. He loves the craic. However, I can see that this mission offers much more to him. He can become ‘one of the boys’. SAS. EO. That’s where Mark wants to be. Sure, he can gain influence, and power, in an oil-rich country. He can win the approval of his mother – as well – but, I tell him, first you have to meet the Boss.

  At the meeting, Thatcher talks about his love of boys’ own adventure. He buys into our plot. Just as I knew he would. He puts up $300,000. He wants protection, though. He is high profile, under scrutiny.

  We agree to help Thatcher stay super-secure. He will not put his money in through a Logo Logistics shareholders’ agreement, like everyone else. Thatcher’s money is to come in via a false joint venture with Crause Steyl (our old Executive Outcomes pilot) and his company, Africa Air Ambulance.

  Two days after the meeting with the Boss, Thatcher asks to meet me. We are to have another lunch together that day. But first he wants a chat.

  Mark speaks about our proposed Plan C: how it involves the use of an old oilfield support vessel – the MV Cape Endurance – that can take a Mi-17 support helicopter on the aft work-deck. Some of the South Africans wou
ld be landed on Bioko Island – site of the capital, Malabo – by air, while the main party would go ashore by RHIB support boats.

  The plan is similar to that which worked to such good effect in Soyo. I had asked Mark, an experienced helicopter pilot, if it would be possible to operate an Mi-17 off the aft deck. He had been worried about the ‘air recycling’ effect.

  Then he brought in his own helicopter team to advise. He even came with me to look over the vessel in question, while she was making ready, still tied alongside, at the Cape Town waterfront.

  At the same time, Mark and I were also looking over the FV Madeline in dear old Haut Bay Harbour. I still have my Republic of Haut Bay passport somewhere. It was just a joke. But it was one that didn’t amuse the Zim authorities when they found it in my kit.

  The Madeline was being made ready to sail to EG by Peter Bush, a Cape Town fisherman friend of mine. She was one of Niek’s EG businesses. She was also Niek’s E&E vessel. Who knows? I wondered. She might end up the E&E vessel for everyone. And of course, she would be available to help with whatever other options came up.

  Mark, better than I, can see the highways and by-ways for making money out of post-op EG, as well as the pitfalls. I tell him about my big worry. I fear the Boss’s greed is spiralling out of control. In truth, I’m every bit as worried about Mark’s. Then I see that Thatcher has a different outlook to the Boss on the benefits of Moto’s gaining power in EG. His is closer to mine.

  We can change EG. We can make EG into an African Singapore, or a Dubai. EG must have an infrastructure. Basic utilities, running water, schools, a university, proper hospitals. We look at what Dubai has achieved and how. Like EG, Dubai has oil. But, smartly, it has ruthlessly nurtured other industries: tourism, financial services, real estate.

  These sectors now earn more revenue for Dubai than oil. EG could be the seed point from which everything could change in the basket-case region of West Africa. Thatcher is determined to play a major role in post-coup EG. He’s planning to centre himself on Malabo.

  Depending on how the Boss behaves, I may have to do the same. I’m determined to see this through. I’m not doing all this so that the current corrupt regime is replaced by another. I worry that this outlook may leave us isolated.

  There are many powerful agencies and people who don’t want democracy in oil-rich, diamond-studded West Africa. Political and economic stability is simply not in the interests of big oil or big business. Therefore, it’s not in the interests of the world’s major governments.

  Democracy and stability would mean trade regulations. Transparency. The G8 nations would find themselves dealing with an African version of OPEC. It is cheaper, more straightforward, to deal with corrupt dictators. Or rebel groups desperate for money. I know only too well how oil and diamond companies thrived when Angola had been kept in a state of civil war.

  Both the MPLA and UNITA had been desperate for money to fund their armed struggles. The MPLA sold oil concessions – behind closed doors – to companies from the richest countries in the world.

  EG is the third-largest oil supplier in Africa. The world powers – who need this oil – will do anything to prevent this coup taking place. Unless it’s their coup.

  If we don’t get on with it, then someone is going to stop us. Fuck us up.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  1993: THE ANGOLAN WAR

  25–30 MAY 1993: HOBACHERE BUSH CAMP, ETOSHA NATIONAL PARK, NAMIBIA. LONG: 16.9403; LAT: -18.8076.

  With Soyo done and dusted, the Angolans wanted to talk about what was to happen next, even more than we did. A meeting was agreed.

  We flew to Windhoek International, Namibia. The RV itself came straight out of Wilbur Smith. Secrecy was as necessary as speed. We flew onward by light aircraft – from Eros Airport, Windhoek – to a place called Hobachere, north and west of the Etosha Pans and the National Park.

  Flying into Hobachere were EO’s four principals: Eeban Barlow, Coebus, Tony Buckingham and me. With us were Crause – the Red Baron – and Amanda, love of my life and great lover of the bush … not to say the craic too.

  It’s real bush there, but pretty: thick and dry, in strange-shaped rocky hills, or kopjes. If you don’t know the airstrip, it’s hard to spot, even with GPS. Once it’s spotted, then first you beat up the camp, so they’ll send a wagon for you. The 20-minute walk can make you Special of the Day.

  Then – second – you beat up the strip itself, very low and fast. That’s because there is often game on it. They need to be scared off. Buck like to graze the edge of the strip. That way they have better fields of view around them, and more time to flee. They are always on the menu. Spotting predators in time is the name of the game.

  The Angolans flew in clandestinely, from Luanda, refuelling at Benguela. Joaquim David was one, General Luiz Faceira the other. Faceira had been our FAA general at Soyo, with us in Cabinda. Amanda straight away christened him ‘General Savile Row’ since, out of combats, he looked so strangely dressed.

  Also from Angola came JD’s bodyguard, dubbed ‘the Leopard’ by Amanda, so feline and predatory was his face, the more so because of the stripes of his tribal scars.

  Our finely worked-up proposal for the MPLA was twofold: land and air. Coebus presented. Land first. He told the MPLA generals that to win the war they needed a brigade of 2,000 men. That, he told them, in a war like Angola’s, is the smallest force that can safely work on its own. Take on pretty much anything. That brigade would be formed of three battalions.

  The first and spearhead battalion would mostly be made up of EO South Africans, soldiers in armoured BMP-3 Russian Armoured Personnel Carriers (APCs). ‘BMP’ is short for Boyevaya Mashina Pekhoty, Fighting Vehicle of the Infantry, known by the South Africans as Die Verwoesters, the Destroyers. They will need 18 weeks to train the other two battalions, each of 600-plus Angolan soldiers. The annual price of Coebus’s land plan will be just under $30 million.

  His proposals were accepted, in full and for immediate action. It was an acceptance that underlined just how badly the war was going for the MPLA government. Or it underlined just how ill prepared the MPLA had been.

  Unlike UNITA. The Boy Scouts. Be Prepared. Ever Ready.

  My air proposals were also accepted. But with a phased delivery programme, as expected.

  So, from June 1993, we were hard at it, putting those proposals into effect. By September the EO battalion was ready. It had deployed to Saurimo, the capital of Lunda Sul province. The two Lunda provinces, Lunda Sul and Lunda Norte, in the north-east corner of Angola, are the biggest diamond source (by value) in the country. Just as Angola is the biggest diamond source in the world.

  The strike brigade then slowly formed around that spearhead battalion. Offensive operations began. All UNITA woes were by now the result of EO action. Or so UNITA radios were busy telling one another.

  A UNITA jeep accidentally turning over was brought about by the South Africans. To UNITA fighters, the South Africans’ durability and courage, throughout the Border Wars, and then again at Soyo, had gained mythical status. They knew them too well, were audibly scared.

  Our strike brigade made a concerted attack on Cacola, an important UNITA HQ and a diamond centre. The force had engaged hard-core UNITA units and beaten them. A telling victory. Other than Soyo, it was UNITA’s first defeat in a major-units set-piece battle.

  With Soyo won, and our great plans now fast going ahead – those by which we hoped to win the Angolan war outright – Tony and I worked from our smart new London offices at 535 King’s Road, Chelsea. With the offices came a brand-new Bentley Mulsanne Turbo Nutter Bastard, with chauffeur. We bought them all for cash. I was hardly ever there, but it was great fun when I was.

  Michael Grunberg ran the place. Clever, able. An accountant and a management consultant. We had needed someone, or we would have fallen into chaos. Michael was ideal; right for the job. He was an old family friend. Jewish. He’d watch my back for unscrupulous – unfair – money movements. Our yuppie off
ices were full of snazzy secretaries. Part-time models. Friends of Michael.

  One day, a model bleeped my phone.

  ‘There is a Nicholas Blackwell calling for you Simon, Nicholas Blackwell of Franklins.’

  I shifted awkwardly in my leather exec chair, turbo nutter wanker. ‘That the Franklins? Stockbrokers to the great and the good?’

  ‘That’s what he says,’ she said drily.

  Blackwell was the Senior Partner at Franklins. I had some family connections with him but I hadn’t seen or spoken to him in years. So – much as I loved him – why the sudden call?

  ‘Nicholas?’

  ‘Hello, Simon. Your secretary … she as lovely as she sounds?’

  ‘Yes. Thanks.’

  ‘Ha ha! Jolly good. Jolly good.

  ‘Listen, old chap. Edward Lipman asked me to call you. He wants you to ring him, so he can get you over for a drink. I don’t know why he can’t call you himself, but he doesn’t know you, and it’s obviously important. I have no idea what it’s about; none at all. Can you do that for me, old chap?’

  ‘Course, Nicholas. Where do I call him?’

  ‘Oh – well, he’s the main man at MBC Minerals. Call their London HQ.’

  ‘Will do. Thanks, Nicholas.’

  ‘Thanks. Bye.’

  ‘Bye.’

  Edward Lipman, son of Laurence.

  The Lipman mineral dynasty. My mother and father were both great friends of Laurence.

  What could his son, Edward, want with me? Apart from anything else, the family link was strong enough for him to have got in touch with me directly without fagging someone as high up the food chain as Nicholas Blackwell.

  When I rang, Edward was a cheery and hail fellow. He had a mouthful of cherry stones. Wah wah pedal to the floor.