by Simon Mann
That Kimche knew all this was flattering and telling. Luckily, I too had been digging. When – back in ’89 – I had fled Monrovia, with my protégé Emmanuel Shaw and the ex-Mossad pilot Jonathan, in Shaw’s Beechcraft Baron, the Israeli 70-strong Praetorian Guard, assigned to President Samuel K. Doe – all ex this and that – had themselves fled.
The next-door safety, and better food, of Conakry (capital of Guinea Republic, an ex-French colony and therefore food-friendly) was where these careful men fled to. This escape they carried out in their speed yachts, paid for by their illegal diamond trading. Their hobby during years of supposedly looking after their pet despot.
David Kimche, I had found out, had been the Mossad desk officer responsible for the Doe bodyguard op, one of many ops in West Africa then under his aegis. Being David he made no bones about it. ‘Oh God, what a disaster!’ We laughed at my having crossed with one of his ops so long ago.
Since then, we had become friendly, talking at length, long distance, after Nicholas Elliott’s sudden death. I arranged to meet David in London. Before the meeting, I took a three-page paper on the situation in Angola to his hotel. It told exactly how and why Tony and I were involved. What our objective was. I’d put several days’ work into those three pages. I had only one chance. The nub of the argument was simple: help me buy the ODABs for Angola. You can help end a war.
We met for dinner. I was nervous. I sat down opposite David and he slipped an envelope across for me to pocket. It held my three-pager.
‘Congratulations, Simon!’
‘Why?’
‘Your paper. It’s excellent. If I was still on my old job, I would want to hire you.’
I blushed. From an ex-number two of Mossad, praise did not come higher.
‘Will you help, though, David?’
‘Your paper makes sense. The cause is just. Peace is what we all want. Nothing is worse than war. Nicholas would have helped you, and he would have told me to help you.’
David smiled at the thought: ‘That’s enough… Now let’s eat and talk of other things: your beautiful Jewess, Amanda, for one. How is she? And how come you are not married yet, and not surrounded yet by little Jews?’ With Nick and David in Moscow – the former in my full-time employ – all had seemed well. Nick’s reports said as much. Then the project turned sour. Nick became defensive. David evasive. Nick asked me to come to Moscow, expecting success any day.
As soon as I got there, and received an update from Nick and Giorgio and David’s associates, I knew success was a distant hope. Nothing more. I knew I’d made a big mistake. I should have been in Moscow from the start.
In Moscow I saw that no real progress had been made to secure the purchase of the ODABs. I went to work with Nick. We sat down and drew a Michelin 1:500,000 road map of ODAB release land. We had to lay it out as a map. That was the only way we were going to make sense of the Byzantine highways and byways of the Orthodox Apparat.
This was the only way to see what was what.
On our map each committee or organisation had to be marked up. The names and positions of the members had to be marked. Who was the titular decision maker? Who was the actual decision maker?
Once that circuitry was all drawn up, and carefully colour-coded, we moved on to the paperwork. Flow chart lines had to be drawn to show how the various documents, each with its own name, must move back and forth between the committees.
A signature here, a stamp there, approval by such and such committee over there. Further lines had to be drawn, also coloured, to show other factors. Inter-committee rivalries. Turf wars. Family relationships.
I began to wonder: how had it taken the West so long to win the Cold War? These people had tied themselves up in knots. It was a miracle that it was bicycles that came out of the back end of bicycle factories.
Nick and I had adventures. One particular document was only signed thanks to our visiting a military hospital. We strode up to the bedside of some old apparatchik colonel as if we owned the place. The old boy thought that a basket of fruit and a bottle of smuggled vodka were more than enough. He signed. I prayed that our hospital visit hadn’t killed him.
Amanda visited. For that week I took an attic suite at the five-star Kempinski Hotel. It sported a big-budget movie view across the Moscow River, onto Red Square and its three cathedrals – Assumption, Annunciation and Archangel Michael.
Nick would climb out of our attic and onto the roof. Facing the Kremlin, he would cup his hands to his mouth and yell: ‘Come on, you Reds!’
All this time our map was becoming more dense, more coloured, not less. Documents were clogged up in the mazes without escape, lost without their balls of string. Nothing was moving to its next step. Each tick in a box threw open more boxes. They each needed their tick. There was always a box within the box.
Our Moscow holiday was costing a fortune. Tony was becoming even more pissed off than I was. By now the thing had turned around. My failure was letting down the Angolans.
I suggested to Nick, who was staring at our Michelin ODAB release map in a glazed funk, that I try a new route. A new way out of the maze. I wanted to push buttons and pull levers that owed nothing to David or Nick.
Nick looked sick. Heresy.
What I had suggested could be a really bad idea. Moscow, in the summer of 1994, was packed with desperadoes, each of them desperate to sell their non-existent Mr Fix-It powers to any ignorant, dollar-rich, non-Russian-speaking Anglo-Saxon. It was the only business in town.
Unless you were an assassin. An inside-track Mafia. Or KGB.
‘Nick. OK … look: here’s the deal: ten days from now – if I don’t think we have made real progress…’ – my eyes drifted back to our Michelin map, despite my trying to force them away – ‘…then I’m going to try something else. OK? That’s 12 July, and I’m noting the date.’
But on the seventh day it was Nick who hit the ball back to me. Try whatever you like, he cried. Once again we stared at our map. It was as though a will of the wisp was out there, always a step ahead, always doing just enough to thwart us.
We’d had enough. So had our livers.
Eventually it was agreed: Nick would keep his post as our dealer. But I would try my way, my contacts.
I telephoned Sparky in London. Would it be OK to talk to Maria and the General about a problem in Moscow? If Sparky needed to know more, then Tony could brief him in London. Sparky told me to carry on as I wished. He would take that briefing from Tony. Over three five-star courses.
Sparky was my old SAS boss. He had joint-venture partners in Moscow, Maria and the General, with whom I had enjoyed adventures in the past.
To understand my connection to the General, you need to understand the General’s connection to Sparky. It goes back to the Cold War.
In my British Army days, during the Cold War, NATO had believed that the Red Army’s Special Forces were the Spetsnaz. They had been rated good, but not that special. Only after the Soviet Empire collapsed had NATO found out how poor their INT had been. The real Special Forces of Russia, their equivalent of the US Delta or the British SAS, were the KGB’s Alpha.
General Viktor Karpukhin, KGB, had been the commander of Alpha when, in August 1991, hard-line Communists launched a military coup against President Boris Yeltsin. These Kremlin hard-liners opposed the reform programmes being forced through by Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev. They ordered Alpha into Moscow’s White House Parliament Building: kill or capture Yeltsin!
The General went into the White House with his troops, then called the Kremlin hard-liners. He was there, he said, but to save Yeltsin. If they wanted Yeltsin, he said, they had to get him first.
Yeltsin went on, in 1993, to seize almost dictatorial power in Russia. That in turn made his old ally the General one of the country’s most powerful men.
Following those events, the General had decided to set up a private security company. The new Russia was going to need plenty of private security. Besides, he wanted something be
tter for his ex-Alphas than a state pension. The result was a new company, Alpha A.
New to the game, General Karpukhin sought a British partner. He chose Defence Systems Limited (DSL), an outfit with Sparky at its head. DSL had been founded by Alistair Morrison, ‘Mogadishu’ Morrison, ex-Scots Guards and ex-SAS, and also a good friend of mine.
Now DSL was run by Sparky, also ex-Scots Guards and ex-SAS. Sparky had been my boss in G Squadron 22 SAS, although he had left before the contact in which Richard Westmacott was killed. In fact, Sparky’s father had been a wartime officer in the Scots Guards. He had been commanded by my father, then Officer Commanding Right Flank 1st Battalion Scots Guards.
When I told my father about this role reversal, all he said – quietly – was that he hoped the son was a better map reader than his father. This veiled warning turned out to be a good one because, on one famous occasion, Sparky made G Squadron very lost indeed: he’d misread the scale, and the vertical interval of the contour lines, on a map of a most unfriendly and mountainous piece of deeply frozen Norwegian island, Senja.
When I joined Devon Oil and Gas, I wanted to find business for Tony. I introduced him to pretty much everyone of influence I knew. One of those was Sparky, not least because I valued him so highly, as a soldier and as a friend. I had hoped that my old SAS boss’s new Russian joint venture could throw up something interesting in oil and gas.
That’s when the General, with the snow of Dzerzhinsky Square puddling off his boots on to the carpet, turned up at DOG’s London office. The General was helping Tony win an oil exploration licence in Turkmenistan.
With the General, but lithe in her furs, came Maria, the interpreter. Stavros asked Maria what she used to do in the good old days of the Cold War.
In a gravel voice of ice and Stolichnaya, she answered, ‘I – KGB – I – seductress.’
The General, Maria, Tony and I had made an unforgettable trip together. To Ashgabat, in Turkmenistan, an ex-Soviet splinter republic on the Caspian Sea. On the Silk Route. We set off in high hopes.
In the midst of a smelly slum tenement that the Turkmenis called a luxury hotel, we found out why the General knew the capital city of Ashgabat so well. It had been the forward operating base for Russian Special Forces into Afghanistan.
We drank terrible vodka. We laughed at the utter filth and corruption. But we secured no oil deal. That didn’t stop us four becoming friends.
It was for that reason that I hadn’t made contact with the General or Maria since I’d arrived in Moscow. It would be impossible to see them and not explain what I was up to.
I was sure the General would not settle for that. He had ways of finding out pretty much anything he wanted in Moscow. Well, now I needed his influence and his help. The question wasn’t so much could he help, but would he help?
I was asking a lot. The General was now my big hope.
I made the call. Maria’s wonderful voice answered. We agreed to meet for tea at our hotel the following day.
I lost count of the number of tea pots we went through. Nick had been banned, although I spotted him snooping from behind an aspidistra, twice. Maria took careful notes of my account. I told her the full story, using the paper I had written for David Kimche as notes.
As we parted I couldn’t stop myself from asking: ‘Can you help, Maria?’
She looked at me smiling, but puzzled: ‘Simon – we can help! But it is General will say will help.’
‘Yes. Thanks. When will you be back to me?’
‘Simon. Please. You – and little Scotch friend’ – she rolled her eyes towards the aspidistra – ‘must not leave Moskva. I will call – soon as can. Less than ten days.’
‘OK. Great.’
‘Well – you will have definite yes, or definite no. Also: you have been in great danger. You are in great danger. Please, do not terminate existing contacts. But put to sleep, yes?’
Four days later, Maria phoned me. She asked for another tea ceremony, this time at the Kempinski.
I was there on time, thrilled to see that the General was with Maria. He embraced me, Russian-style. It had been winter when we’d last met in Moscow. In a bearskin cap and a fur coat, he’d been enormous. Now in his summer coat there was less of him, but not by much.
We sat.
‘Simon – please – General Viktor like you. You … er … impressed General in Ashgabat, in Turkmenistan – please explain situation in Angola – your position and Tony – your plan … intention – why you want the ODAB.’
The General had chuckled at the Ashgabat and Turkmenistan mentions, to which I grinned. The Ashgabat epic had been fruitless, but had become something of a comic legend. But now I had to focus my energy: how well I spun this yarn could change the fate of many for the better.
The same arguments that I had rehearsed on David – and then on Maria last time – were used again. They had worked before. Even so – the slow repetitions – as Maria translated for the General – made his very Russian mask all the more opaque. Were those arguments working now?
I knew that the MPLA were not much better than UNITA. But then it was not the MPLA who had restarted the war. UNITA had not been elected. For the poor people of Angola, it was only the MPLA who could play Hobbes’s Leviathan. The MPLA had a mandate to enforce peace and stability.
Human rights, civil liberties, consensus government, gas and light: these would follow. If I could help shorten the war by one day, then I would have achieved something worthwhile.
I was proud of my job. I was sure that I was right. UNITA had sinned, and they had attacked Tony and me. If UNITA had big bad dragon friends, then Tony and I would fight them too.
Under the all-seeing gaze of the General, there was nowhere for any falsehood to hide. I could sit there and face their search because, although matters of rank, pride and money had all got me involved in this operation, taken together they now had less weight than my will to end this war.
I spoke. Maria translated. The General nodded. I was thankful for the effort I’d put into that three-page staff paper. My thoughts and arguments were clear, ordered. Then Maria’s last paragraph had been delivered. We were done.
For ever – over teas and cakes – the General studied me, then spoke. Maria, the seductress, expertly started her interpretation before the General had stopped. ‘The General asks – in principle – do you know how many Westerners have been killed in Moscow this year, so far?’
‘Quite a few – bankers mostly.’
‘Twenty-three to date.’
‘Do you know how much danger you have been in? Of death? Or arrest, and a summary imprisonment?’
‘Probably not.’
‘Definitely not.’ The General stopped, and with him Maria. An age passed. ‘Yes. I will help you, Simon. I do not promise, but I will do my best.’
‘Thank you, General Viktor. Thank you very much.’
‘Several times you – and your friend, er … da – this Nick – you have thought you had the ODAB deal closed. Am I right?’
‘Yes!’ I replied, surprised.
‘Since you spoke to Maria, last week, we have made our enquiries. One…’ – the General held up his index finger – ‘…of the reasons that I would like to help you is this: I do not like the … tinkerings … of foreigners in our affairs. They won the Cold War, but now they must not toy with us.’
‘I don’t understand…’
Maria stopped me. An elegant hand. The General hadn’t finished. Maria’s smile suggested that she was watering down his words.
She went on: ‘The General says: your ODAB deal is being clandestinely blocked, here in Moscow, by a foreign power. The General says: this foreign power has no right to block, or to unblock, anything in Moskva – not one drainpipe. The General says…’
Maria broke off and spoke to the General in rapid Russian.
She shrugged, smiled, then dropped her voice: ‘The General says: the Soviet Empire is broken – thank God – but Mother Russia is not – thank Go
d. Mother Russia, he says, is her own power, always. It was ever so.’
I kept quiet. The General watched me and laughed. He spoke again, and Maria smiled. ‘Simon, the General says you understand well – you studied us well under Peter Vigor at Sandhurst, 1971. You were his top pupil – Intake 50 – you won prize for Soviet Studies – Niet? Ha ha ha!’
I forced a laugh. The hairs pricked outwards on the back of my neck. For God’s sake – they do their homework. And they didn’t mind letting me know. I had to enjoy the joke. ‘Come now, General! There’s no need to show off! Ha ha ha.’
The General was serious again. ‘The General says: he will help because he can see…’ – Maria turned for clarification – ‘…and here he is agreeing with me, Simon, that you are sincere: you are determined to try to bring this war to an end mainly – mainly – because you want peace. Is that so?’
‘Yes, Maria. General, yes.’
‘A speedy end to that war is something the General also wishes to see, Simon. Despite your enemies, UNITA, and all their friends, he believes you can do it. He will help.’
The General closed off our Kempinski tea with a question: ‘Simon – have you ever seen an ODAB 500 detonation?’
‘No.’
‘Well, you have waited in Moskva for two months, so far – am I right?’
‘Yes, nearly two.’
‘If you have to sit in Moskva for another six, it will be worth it!’ He paused, then Maria translated again: ‘I have seen the ODAB detonate, in Afghanistan. You are right: it can end the war.’
‘I hope so. I hope we can end it.’
Maria said something to the General. He replied and Maria turned back to me: ‘There must be no mention of us. None. You will still be in danger. Russia is a dangerous place. We – the government – are not fully in control. If you do get into trouble, then we will be trying to help, but you will not see us. Don’t ask for us. Don’t talk of us.’
‘Thanks. I understand … but I have to brief Nick. Do you accept that?’