by Dick Couch
Claude Renaud was quite surprised, therefore, when he was contacted by a Frenchman named Georges Frémaux. At the time, Renaud had been drinking his way through his meager savings while living in a sleazy flat in Maputo. Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, was much cheaper than Joburg. Frémaux asked Renaud to meet him in Harare to discuss a project, and had made all the arrangements, including round-trip airfare from Maputo. During the hour-and-a-half flight, in one of the 737’s four first-class seats, Renaud managed to throw down four Crown Royals on the rocks. At Harare Airport, a waiting car whisked him to the Hotel New Ambassador. Following the written instructions left for him at the desk, he took a cab that evening to the Crown Plaza Monomatapa Hotel, where Monsieur Frémaux was waiting for him in the dining room. There, over dinner and coffee, Frémaux, aka Pavel Zelinkow, laid out his project. He wanted Renaud to recruit and train a force of sixty men to provide security for a medical experimentation project in Zimbabwe. It seemed that a small, well-financed research group that Frémaux represented was very close to perfecting an AIDS vaccination. In order to bring their product to market, they wanted to bypass animal testing and go right into using the test vaccine on humans.
“I want you to understand that this is clearly illegal,” Frémaux told him. “We have no right to test this vaccine on humans. But in Zimbabwe, especially in the remote Tonga Province, we have an ideal situation. Perhaps one in three Zimbabweans have the AIDS virus, so any cross-section of test cases will give us a control group and an infected group. And given the remote location of our facility in this province, we will have little outside interference while we conduct these vital experiments. You see,” he said, carefully lowering his voice, “this is about human suffering and about money. If we can move directly to human testing, then we can make this vaccine available perhaps two or even three years sooner than if we go through channels. But not if we go through the silly procedures imposed on us by the bureaucrats.” He leaned forward, taking the measure of Renaud. “And most of those bureaucratic requirements are imposed on us by the American and European pharmaceutical companies. So you see, it’s about money. A lot of big pharmaceutical companies are working on an AIDS drug. If we get there first, we beat the big guys to the bank. But we need security, and we need discreet security, so we can perfect our drug. I want them to be well trained and able to protect and defend the project if necessary. And we may need you and your men to assist in looking for volunteers among the local population.”
Frémaux did not have to spell it out for Renaud, but the former Scout did have one question. “What about the Zimbabwe Republic Police? What’s to keep them from interfering with the operation?” Renaud was asking if he was expected to pay off the local police or any army unit that might come snooping around with his own funds.
“That has been taken care of,” Frémaux replied. “And if more funds are required to ensure their lack of interest in the project, then we will take care of that as well. As you can see,” he said as he handed the contract across the table to Renaud, “all expenses associated with the project will be carried by the project, and you will have broad discretion as to the hiring and management of your retainers.” Frémaux watched closely as Renaud leafed quickly through to the page that detailed his compensation package. He saw Renaud swallow hard, and his eyes dilate.
“Here is a packet of information that covers the site in Zimbabwe, which is in fact a small luxury hotel, and the basics of what you will need to recruit your force. You will be able to conduct sustainment training on-site, but we prefer that you set up a bush training camp for your initial interviews, testing, and basic training. You will have to be sure of your men once you bring them to the operational site, as the secrecy of the work there must be absolute. Any breach of security could lead to compromising the site and endangering the project. And as you can see, there is a sizable bonus to be paid at the completion of the project, but only if security is not breached. I too will enjoy a comparable fee on completion, so I am trusting you to do your job and do it quietly. I hope, Monsieur Renaud, I have chosen the right man for this task.”
Renaud assured this precise, serious Frenchman that indeed he had chosen the right man. Frémaux had given Renaud an encrypted cell phone and a single international number, making it clear that Renaud was to call if he had questions and provide ongoing status reports. Frémaux handed over a check made out to Renaud personally, drawn on a bank in Zurich, and gave him account information for a second bank in Bern on which he could draw operational expenses. With that, Georges Frémaux bid him a good evening and excused himself.
The next morning, when Claude Renaud presented his draft to the Bank of Zimbabwe, he was expected. He was paid in South African rand and walked out of the bank with more money than he had ever seen in his life. Rather than use his new cell phone, he called the Crown Plaza from a pay phone and asked for a Mr. Frémaux, only to be told they had no guest registered by that name. Renaud flew back to Mozambique. He had not been back to his dingy flat in Maputo more than an hour when the cell phone rang. It was Frémaux, phoning to ask if he had a pleasant flight back and if their arrangements were satisfactory. Over the next four months, as the recruiting and training progressed, they talked often. Renaud was aware that Frémaux seemed to know a great deal about him and the progress of his work, but Renaud knew absolutely nothing about his employer. The personal checks continued to come, however, and were honored when he came in from the bush to cash them.
With this mandate to raise and train a force, and more importantly, the funds to make it happen, Claude Renaud set out to create his version of the Selous Scouts. Perhaps one day, he told himself as he bent to the task, they will call us the Renaud Scouts. The first thing he did was to visit the site of the original Scouts training camp at Wafa Wafa, about an hour by Land Rover from the town of Kariba. In the thirty years since Captain Ron Reid Daily formed the Selous Scouts, the huts of the camp had been taken over by squatters. Renaud thought of moving them out, but the camp was too close to the lake for the kind of training he had in mind. Further inland from the Wafa Wafa, he found a disused game preserve, one that had been used for the breeding of native species for export to foreign zoos. With a modest payment to an official in Kariba who was responsible for land reallocation in the area, Renaud leased the property for a year. He now had a hundred square miles of bush, several thatch-roofed huts, and a large prefab metal barn. He hired some local labor and set them to cleaning the buildings. The barn he turned into a barracks with military-style, metal-framed bunk beds. One of the huts would be used for equipment storage, while the other would serve as a cook house. He hired two of his cronies from Executive Outcomes to mind the work on the buildings while he booked himself on a flight from Harare to Johannesburg.
South African law prohibits the recruitment of mercenary soldiers, just as laws in the United States prohibit the sale of illegal drugs. But mercenary brokers can be found in South Africa, just as drug dealers can be found in the United States. Renaud knew just where to go and who to talk to. After he cleared customs at the Johannesburg airport, he rented a car and drove two hours east to the town of Ventersdorp. There he arranged a meeting with Moses Shiabe, who had contacts with veterans from the famous, or infamous, 32nd Battalion of the South African Army. Disbanded soon after Mandela came to power, the 32nd had fought for years in the Angolan and Namibian wars, and were considered the best bush fighters in the South African Army, or any army, for that matter. These black veterans were used to working with, and taking direction from, white officers. Most spoke Afrikaans and English as well as their own tribal dialect. All were professional soldiers—hard men not given to bragging or bravado. They were also brutal men, used to the harsh life in the bush. If so directed, they would kill anyone of any age or gender, without hesitation and without remorse.
Renaud met Shiabe at his ramshackle home on the outskirts of Ventersdorp, and for a fee of 1,000 rand, about $160 U.S., he was allowed to look at a roster of available cand
idates. There were hundreds of names. Renaud ticked off thirty-five and told Shiabe to select fifteen more. Of the thirty-five, Renaud had soldiered with most in the South African Army or on a contract with Executive Outcomes. Others he knew by reputation. He gave Shiabe a generous bonus and admonished him to make the final selections with care. His only direction was that none were to be Shona or Matebele, the two dominant tribes in Zimbabwe. The fifty men were to be given a signing bonus and plane ticket from Johannesburg or Pretoria to Harare. Shiabe would arrange for their visas as laborers or construction workers. He had done this many times before, and these soldiers were quite used to filtering into black African capitals under false documentation. From the Harare airport, they would be met and ferried to the training site.
Once back in Johannesburg, Renaud was free to do what he had always dreamed of doing. He went to the Broken Tusk Bar for a drink and to recruit a contingent of white mercenaries for his force. This was a new role for him, one that he openly relished. White mercenaries looking for work made daily treks to haunts like the Broken Tusk to learn if someone was hiring. Renaud himself had done that often. Now he was the man with the contract; he was the one hiring. The Broken Tusk was a dingy clapboard storefront in the warehouse district. A single bare lightbulb illuminated the doorway and the peeling sign over the door. Inside, it was a standard workingman’s tavern with a tattered wooden bar, high stools, and a scattering of tables. The fixtures and furnishings were yellow with grease and cigarette smoke. Behind the bar was a small kitchen grill where a black man in a camouflage-pattern beret and dirty apron dealt out a surprisingly palatable array of dishes. He had cooked for many of those who frequented the Broken Tusk in the South African Army. The owner was a disheveled man in his late seventies with bloodshot eyes and skin baked to the color and texture of rawhide. He had served with Mad Mike Hoare and Black Jacques Schramme during the Congolese wars, and had the stories to prove it. No one knew his real name; he simply answered to the name of Gunner. Few could remember when he was not behind the bar at the Broken Tusk. It was late afternoon when Renaud made his entrance, and the Tusk was a little more than half full.
“Well, look what the warthog just dragged in,” Gunner observed when Renaud walked in. He had no high regard for Claude Renaud, but a customer was a customer. Gunner could not remember what war story he had last told, but if he had served someone at his bar only once, no matter how long ago, he never forgot what they drank. As Renaud eased himself onto a stool, Gunner set a mug of Castle Lager and a bar scotch chaser in front of him. Renaud laid ten 100-rand notes on the bar.
“A round for the lot, mate,” Renaud said. Gunner raised an eyebrow. He also remembered who bought and who didn’t, and Claude Renaud had never paid for anyone but himself.
“The bar or the house?”
Renaud savored the question for a long moment before answering. “Make it for the house.”
“So you say,” Gunner replied neutrally and set about building drinks.
Those who provided mercenary services had long referred to themselves as PMCs—private military companies. It was the custom for the hiring agent of a PMC to buy a round for the house when he had a contract and needed men. A house round announced that Claude Renaud was hiring. Not a few in the Broken Tusk looked puzzled when another of what they were drinking was placed in front of them. Most could not fathom that Claude Renaud had a contract. But the chance for work, however remote the prospect, could not be ignored. Even from the likes of Renaud.
“Why, hello, Claude. How have you been keeping?”
The speaker was a painfully thin man, with stringy blond hair and a muskrat-like mustache. He wore a black T-shirt, jeans, and military boots. He had been an eighteen-year-old trooper in the Rhodesian Light Infantry when he volunteered for the Selous Scouts. He and Renaud had entered the training together; Renaud had made it, but he had not.
“Well, Reggie. Quite well, in fact. You fancy a game of darts?”
“Absolutely,” Reggie replied.
They took their drinks to the rear of the Tusk. As if to document his intent, Renaud ignored the three notes that remained on the bar. There were two dartboards on the rear wall—no pool tables or pinball. The two began to pitch darts. Reggie was in fact quite good, but he played down to Renaud’s game. Then, one by one, men began to push away from their tables or drop from their bar stools to join them.
It took Renaud the better part of two months to get his group assembled—fifty blacks and ten whites in all. Arming and outfitting men, even a force as small as this, was no small undertaking. But Mr. Frémaux seemed to anticipate his every move. It was always a different shipping agent and a different receiving dock, but when Renaud called Frémaux with an order, it was air-shipped within days to Harare, usually in crates labeled as tools or building supplies. The AKM assault rifles, with a generous measure of training ammunition, were indistinguishable from those carried by the Zimbabwe Republic Police. The uniforms, less badges and insignia, were also the same. For static-defense weapons there were two .50-caliber machine guns and several Russian-made RPD light machine guns. The only thing with a substantial punch were twenty Czech-made RPG-7s. Renaud as of yet had no idea how he might use the rockets, but no mercenary force that he had ever been with were without them. Every mercenary soldier in Africa could use an RPG-7. They could make short work of a reinforced bunker or an armored car.
The mechanics of the mercenary or PMC business usually required a long apprenticeship and a great deal of local knowledge. The new African nations had a long and contentious affair with armed intervention and mercenary force. Therefore there were strict laws governing the sale and ownership of guns, let alone military weapons. One had to know when to follow the rules, what rules could be circumvented, and what officials to bribe. Fortunately, the corrupt nature of fledgling African bureaucracies and deteriorating economic conditions made almost anything doable if you had the money. Renaud felt that none of these problems were beyond him, but it was as if the mysterious Mr. Frémaux did not want him to be involved with these details. He had only to ask, and the requested items magically appeared. Men and materials were ferried to the camp by a small fleet of Toyota 4x4s that Renaud had bought at a premium from a defunct shooting safari concession near Kariba. From the technicals in Mogadishu to Al Qaeda irregulars in Afghanistan to park rangers in Kenya, they had all learned from experience that Toyotas were the toughest, most easily maintained off-road vehicles in the world. Renaud had managed to procure a Mercedes stake truck for moving large pieces of equipment over unimproved roads, and a newer Land Rover for himself. He somehow couldn’t picture Mike Hoare in the cab of a Toyota 4x4.
Pavel Zelinkow, who Renaud knew as Georges Frémaux, trusted Renaud neither to provision his force nor to make sure the proper officials in Harare were taken care of. Zelinkow paid a former executive with Sandline, a well-regarded British PMC, to make the arrangements. He had been on the procurement side of Sandline’s operation and knew his business. The man had no idea where or for whom the weapons, ammunition, and material were destined; he simply delivered the needed arms and equipment to a shipping agent in Nairobi who was paid to forward them to Harare and not to question the contents of the crates. Nor did Renaud have any clue who was so capably equipping his force. Frémaux had never given him a company name, and even if he had, it almost certainly would have been a phony. Cutouts and shell companies were a part of the PMC business. Really, all Renaud knew was that he would command a group of seasoned mercenary professionals, and that he would be well paid to do it. Questions that might or should have occurred to him were lost as his long-held dream materialized.
Once in camp, Renaud called his company to quarters and addressed them. He told them that their duties would be to provide security for a hotel/research complex and to patrol the immediate countryside to ensure there was no local or governmental interference with the work to be conducted there. They were also told that they would have to monitor the volunteers who would
be participating in the research effort. Like all paid mercenaries, the assembled soldiers received this information with stoic indifference. They did not particularly like, and certainly did not trust, Renaud, and they had no illusion that this venture was legal. But then they always worked in the shadows, with or without host government sanction. All they wanted to do was to collect the balance of their fee, which in this case was more than a standard wage, and live to spend it. All else was secondary.