[African Diamonds 01.0] The Angolan Clan

by Christopher Lowery

  For a couple of days it seemed that the optimists’ opinions were justified. The army presence was more evident and it was effective. Street violence and vandalism were less frequent, the streets were full of people trying to buy the few supplies that were still available in the stores. Lisbon was almost a beautiful city again.

  On Friday, March 14th, Charlie and Nick were in Olivier’s office when Alberto called. Olivier listened for a few minutes then put the phone down.

  He turned to the others, his face ashen. “It turns out that amongst Spinola’s supporters, there were seven members of the Espírito Santo banking family. They’ve all been thrown in prison for treason and bank fraud. There’s even a rumour that the CIA was involved in the attempt. But that’s not the worst part.” He stopped, gathering his wits about him. “As a result, that communist bastard, Gonçalves, has just nationalised all commercial banks. That means us!”

  Nick and Charlie looked at him, then at each other. “Oh shit,” they said simultaneously.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  April – June, 1975

  Lisbon, Portugal

  In practise, the nationalisation programme was a combination of incompetance and treachery. A Nationalisation Committee was created for each large enterprise, reporting to the Council of the Revolution, the new Marxist military government. The APA committee was named in the third week of March and held its first meeting with Olivier and his senior staff on Thursday the 20th. The members of the committee had no business experience at all. Two of them were from the Ministry of Tourism, which was now virtually inoperative, and the third was an army captain, seconded to the Ministry of Finance. They had a list of documents which they required and it was clear that they wouldn’t be able to understand anything they were given. Rather than antagonise them, Olivier and Charlie befriended them. Explaining various points until the men were completely befuddled. Their next meeting was arranged for the following week.

  “How did it go?” Nick hadn’t been in the meeting.

  “Piece of cake, we’re their new best mates. With their help I think that we can get more money to Geneva, not less.” Charlie was confident, but there were unseen forces at work.

  Manuel de la Peña, the army captain, sat in the Toston Bar in Cintra with Jorge Gomez and three of his informers from APA. The soldier didn’t understand the APA business, but Gomez did. He had begged his boss, Major Tavares, to be seconded to the nationalisation committee, but the major had ruled it out. Gomez had spent thousands of francs in Switzerland and come up with virtually nothing. And he didn’t want a repetition of the embarrassment of last December’s arrest of Bettencourt. His ears were still ringing from Alberto’s scolding.

  “Intercommerce is the key to the money smuggling. It has to be.” Gomez took a drag on his cigarette. “There’s more than half their business going through that company now. They’re obviously skimming a margin off in Switzerland and handing it over to the Bettencourt family. You must be able to find something, something to do with Bern.” His obsesssion was becoming apparent to the soldier. “I went up there a few months ago and I don’t trust the people. I know they’re crooked. You’ve got to look at those contracts. It must be there somewhere.”

  De la Peña nodded and promised to dig deeper into the business. But there was nothing to find. The contracts were perfectly in order, and showed a reasonable margin. Goods were shipped and money was received and paid and that was all he understood. Charlie and Nick were running rings around the nationalisation programme. During April and May, they and Mario worked diligently to sign up and execute more deals with the few remaining Portuguese manufacturers and Angolan producers, and InterCommerce in Berne continued to be their biggest trading partner.

  The committee listened carefully as Charlie explained that since the revolution it had become almost impossible to find a credible business partner. “We’ve been lucky to find a prestigious company like InterCommerce, since almost nobody wants to do business with Portugal anymore. Of course they take a margin on the contracts but we don’t have any choice. This seems like an expensive solution but it maintains APA’s activities and produces enough profits to pay our expenses and salaries until times change.”

  They nodded their understanding of this requirement. They were on salaries too.

  By this time most business owners had fled the country, leaving their companies in the hands of the nationalisation committees, guaranteeing that the business would quickly fall into bankruptcy. Thanks in great part to Alberto, APA was the exception, with its two top executives still running the company. The government was already selling off the countries’ gold reserves to bail out the companies that had been nationalised. The members of the committee were delighted to find themselves running one of the only remaining profitable businesses in Portugal, and they were not slow in bragging about this to their communist bosses.

  In late May, Manuel de la Peña announced that APA had been chosen as the best run and most profitable nationalised business in the country. “The only one, they mean,” quipped Nick. The Prime Minister, Vasco dos Santos Gonçalves, would come to the offices the next day, to congratulate the nationalisation committee and their management team.

  Shaking hands with the Prime Minister, a dyed in the wool Marxist, and posing with the nationalisation committee for the television cameras, Olivier and Charlie almost peed themselves with laughter. They had become the most famous capitalist-communists in the country by diverting profits to Switzerland and leaving just enough to pay the salaries for the Marxists in Portugal. It was a surreal moment in the midst of the chaos going on around them.

  Alberto called when he saw them on TV. He just said, “You owe me. Big time!”

  When Jorge Gomez saw the news report he was incandescent with rage. He stormed into his boss’s office and demanded to be appointed to the APA nationalisation committee. He was certain there had to be something going on.

  It was the third time that Major Tavares had turned him down. “You’ve still produced nothing but innuendo about APA and I don’t intend to be embarrassed again. You’ve found nothing here nor in Switzerland, and until you do, you’ll keep your head down. Stick to your investigative duties and find some proof. Then we can discuss this again, not before.”

  The major was becoming tired of Gomez’s obsession with APA. According to the members of the committee, the business was sound and healthy and Bettencourt’s team were hard working and honest. Alberto had told him the same thing when he had casually posed the question at a recent meeting of COPCON. He was not about to be made to look a fool again in front of the top brass. Not after last Christmas’s fiasco and certainly not after the prime time TV item with the PM. He filed the request and resolved to forget about it.

  On May 29th, Nick called Mario to check on a contract for delivery of coffee to Italy. “The InterCommerce people are bugging me. We’re two weeks late on completing.” They had decided it was too dangerous to disclose to him the true relationship with the Swiss company.

  “It’ll leave on Friday, barring acts of God or the MPLA.” Mario sounded tired. He had worked miracles to create and execute business for them over the last few months, but Nick didn’t need to tell him it was about to come to an end, he’d already worked it out for himself.

  “Sounds like things aren’t going so well down there. How bad is it?” He asked.

  “On a scale of ten, I’d say it’s about seven and a half. They say the airport’s still under Portuguese control and functioning, although it’s becoming flooded with families trying to get out of the country. I hear there’s thousands of them camping around the airport grounds and car park already. The roads around Luanda are fairly safe until you get further out of the city. The MPLA is getting stronger by the week, we’re hearing that they’ve got massive shipments of arms from Russia. Now they’re more occupied with trying to grab other chunks of the country than consolidating their hold on Luanda, so it’s not as bad as it might be here in the city. In any case the
re’s no real opposition to them here. They’ll just come back and take it when they’re ready. When the last Portuguese troops leave in a few months, it’ll fall into their hands like a fat plum. All juicy and ripe for the Cubans to rape and plunder.”

  “What the hell have the Cubans got to do with this?” Nick was confused.

  “Haven’t you been listening to the Lisbon grapevine? Everybody knows the Russians have enlisted thousands of Cuban troops and instructors to come down and teach the MPLA how to behave properly when it comes to a democratic takeover.”

  Nick called Henriques. He was now seriously worried about the safety of the Angolan and his family. He repeated what Mario had told him.

  For the first time, Nick detected a nervous tremour in Henrique’s voice. “I know the situation in Luanda isn’t too bad. But up here it’s getting worse. The Zairian soldiers that Mobuto sent down have pissed off and the MPLA has moved in just south of us. So we’re trapped between units of the NFLA and the MPLA, and now they’ve cut off our bloody supply route to ship the merchandise out.”

  Henriques’s only export arrangement was an official contract with ANDEC, the Angolan National Diamond Export Company, who bought the diamonds in their rough state at a fraction of their ultimate price. If he couldn’t deliver his diamond production, he was finished.

  “So how are you surviving? You’ve got about a hundred people working for you. What’s happened to them?”

  “Easy. We’re still surviving by the oldest way in the world, bribery.” Nick heard the scratch of a match and a deep drag on a cigarette at the other end of the line. “I’ve made deals with the local unit commanders of both the FNLA and MPLA. They open up the road and let us through once a week, so I can ship the merchandise to ANDEC in Luanda. I get paid in cash, although it’s a real crap price, and then I split the cash with the rebels. They leave me enough to pay the wages and expenses and for Manuela and me to eat. So we’re surrounded by corrupt bastards who are stealing from us. But don’t knock it. It works!

  “For the rest of the time we’ve got to find out every day which way they’re going to move, so we can sneak around between them without getting caught in the middle. There’s only about fifty or so soldiers on each side so it sounds easy, but it’s a fucking nightmare. Still, so far we’re managing to survive.”

  “But, why the hell don’t they just kick you out and take over the mine and sell the production to ANDEC themselves. Are you sure they need to keep you alive?”

  Henriques laughed. “Are you seriously suggesting that the rebels could actually agree on anything, even on screwing me out of my business? No bloody chance. And if either of them tried to take it over, my people would be gone like a shot. Nobody to operate the equipment, to dredge, to pressure hose, to manage and maintain the screening machinery, the grease table controls. And that’s just the extraction. There’d also be no bugger who knows about sorting, grading and valuing. They wouldn’t know a diamond from a piece of shit! The mine would be as dead as a doornail. For the moment, they need us alive and working to keep making money, so we’ll stay until they don’t.”

  “But if it’s that close to drop dead, why hang on?” Nick insisted. “It’s one thing to lose your business and your money. But it’s better than losing your lives. Just get out. Take what you can get away with, jump in the van and drive away from it all.”

  Despite Nick’s arguments, Henriques was adamant. He had now learned that the FNLA had received arms shipments from China and he was convinced that they would get funding from the US and South Africa and be able to fight off the growing strength of the MPLA. He and his family would stay until he was convinced there was nothing left to stay for.

  By the end of the month, Portugal suffered regular riots and violent demonstrations, fire-bombings, sacking of political premises and bloody head to head confrontations between moderate socialists, extreme right-wing elements and the ever more powerful left-wing extremists, under the control of COPCON, the communist controlled secret police. Every day saw an escalation in the numbers of injuries and deaths occurring throughout the country.

  Hundreds of thousands of Portuguese and African colonialists had now fled back to Portugal, swelling the numbers of unemployed, and the economy continued to slide towards total bankruptcy. Immigrants and workers fought for ownership of abandoned properties, shops, cafés, farms, anything that they thought might help them to earn a few escudos to feed their starving families. Portugal continued to drift inexorably towards civil war.

  Despite the increasing influence of the moderate socialist members of the MFA, grouped around Ernesto Melo Antunes and Mario Soares, the Marxist Prime Minister, Vasco dos Santos Gonçalves, continued the nationalisation of virtually all the remaining large companies in the country. All key industries, utilities, support services, insurance companies newspapers, radio and television stations, were taken over by the Council of the Revolution, who censored all media reports. By the end of the year, the government’s share of the country’s gross national product would reach seventy percent.

  Astonishingly, Cascais was still relatively untouched by this nationwide hysteria and mayhem. It was still just a quiet fishing village. An island surrounded by a raging sea of political madness and hatred. They were now used to the shortages in the shops and regular cuts in electricity and water and managed to cope with them, thanks to Ellen’s planning. The continual processions of right and left-wing demonstrators and workers in the streets had become more boring than frightening. Ellen still played tennis and golf with Maggie and their friends, and the two families spent their weekends together. Ronnie and Alan and the other children were happy and industrious at St. Julien’s, apparently oblivious to the chaos that surrounded them.

  Maggie reported back regularly from the Australian Embassy. So far, neither they, nor the British Embassy had given any evacuation instructions. Charlie relayed the same information from Alberto. There was still no need to panic, things would settle down. But Ellen knew that their time in Cascais couldn’t last much longer. It was coming up to the end of the school term and she wanted as little disruption in Ronnie’s life as possible. It was a logical time to take a decision about their immediate future. She asked Charlie what his plan was. Shouldn’t they start preparing to make a move?

  He told her about his agreement with Olivier. “Nick and I will get four percent of the capital of Bettencourt SA. Our contribution is one million dollars of profit, plus we’re signing five year contracts. The whole capital will be fifty million dollars, so our shares will be worth two million and that’s just for starters. The value of the company is likely to go through the roof once we get into business properly. So, I think we’ve solved the problem of starting again.”

  “Well, why on earth are we still hanging around in this pathetic excuse for a country? Let’s just get out while we can.”

  “We need to bring another quarter million dollars of profit, Ellen, that’s why.”

  “How long is it going to take?”

  “Another month. The contracts are already signed, we just have to ship them. If we jump ship now, we’ll lose them. Nick and I need until June 30th and we’re out of here.”

  At the prospect of restoring their fortunes and moving to a new life in Switzerland, Ellen was convinced, despite her misgivings. She agreed to see it through until the end of June. It means Ronnie can finish his school year, she reflected, less disruption for all of us.

  Charlie was relieved. He and Nick could concentrate on shipping the remaining contracts and building their stake in the Geneva business.

  In the second week of June, Olivier, Nick and Charlie were lunching in a restaurant in Estoril. They didn’t have meetings in the bank any longer. In addition to the nationalisation committee, they knew that Gomez had many more informants inside of APA.

  “I have good news. I signed the deal for the sale of the property company this weekend.” Olivier raised his glass in a mock toast.

  “Well done.” Charlie
was impressed. It wasn’t easy to sell Portuguese real estate these days, even at a knock down price.

  “It always takes longer than you expect. But twelve and a half million dollars was worth the wait. Ruiz says we should have the banking license next month so I think it’s time to make a move. Things are completely out of hand here. I’m becoming seriously concerned about getting out of the country alive. We’re going to leave it too late if we wait any longer.”

  Olivier was right. The violence that was engulfing the country had now come to APA. Amost every day there were fights and standoffs in the offices or corridors between the various political affinities. Just the previous week, a full fledged battle had taken place in the car park between militant left and right extremists. Two Marxist militants had been almost kicked to death and six more employees were taken away with knife wounds. Olivier had hired an armed bodyguard to escort the senior staff in and out of the building and the executive level sixth floor was now sealed off from the other floors, accessible only by the restricted elevator.

  The hospitals were overflowing and tents had been erected in the car parks and surrounding gardens. The Hotel Tivoli, where Nick had stayed, was closed to visitors and the rooms had been taken over to accommodate some of the growing numbers of starving, sick and wounded that the hospitals couldn’t hold.

  Even their unusually friendly relationship with the members of the nationalisation committee and the behind the scenes support that they received from Alberto were wearing thin. They were, after all, capitalists, and they were still running a nationalised company in a Marxist environment. The country was reaching breaking point. It was ready to explode and they were right in the line of fire.