by Simon Mann
Some bastard had picked up his chosen name from what I had said in prison, or from my message through my lawyer, then sold the story.
Here in Chikurubi, five years’ actual time is a magic number. More than that and a man should tell his wife that she is free to get on with her own life and enjoy it. Not wait.
Five years is when many men become prison homosexual.
Even if I get out of prison tomorrow, Amanda might not want me back. I wouldn’t blame her. The hurt I’ve done her is horrible. I can hear her pain behind her jolly loving letters … her jolly loving notes really. She isn’t a letter writer, that’s for sure. But the notes are so wacky – they are so ‘her’. They make me weep.
You see, Straw Hat – my book – is my way of saying sorry … my real way, I mean, because just saying it is no good. The book is my real voice of that time, even though it mostly isn’t about that time.
Day to day – in my mind – I am moving through a hellish landscape. I may go to Equatorial Guinea, to be tortured and killed. It can happen any day, with no notice.
It will be: ‘Mann – get your blankets! You’re off.’
Sometimes I rack myself some more, by thinking of Amanda with someone else. But then, why should she not be?
All around the prison are my other 69 men. They all got two years or so, to my eight. I blame myself for their being here. I blame myself that we were unable to do the deals we thought we had done: plea bargains and fines, then go home.
I did what I could. I put their cause before mine in all the choices I made. It was the least I could do.
Facing their anguish, every one of the many times we were all in court, was too much to take. I faced it because … what choice did I have?
Then there was the epic row about the men’s pay. Their first month’s payment had been held up because Niek and I had decided to up it, at the last moment. Just before I left South Africa for the last time, I had told someone to pay it: $3,000 per man, I think it was … maybe more. He told me the next day – by which point I was in the Cresta Motel, Harare – that the payments had been made.
Except they hadn’t. I don’t know what happened. Now I’m powerless, in prison, but the men look to me for that money. There is no money in South Africa now. Everything has vanished. I sign over my Aerostar 600 as a way of raising cash, but even that goes wrong, with accusations that people stole the plane, then that they stole the engine and the avionics.
I’m a prisoner. A non-person. I can do nothing.
‘How do you survive in prison?’ is a FAQ. ‘How do you not survive in prison?’ would be more like it. If you break down – lie on the floor of your cell in tears, cry out – nobody will come.
There’s no way they can help if they do come.
I have had to make myself stop thinking of Amanda and the children. I don’t want photos of them. They are barred from my mind. It hurts more to let them in than to keep them out. Even so, the bar doesn’t work.
In all my efforts to get free nothing works for me. All the time I am being fed garbage by lawyers, the only voice of the people who are trying to get me out. ‘London’ is how I call the team, so that they are not muddled with Amanda and home. Amanda is never ‘London’. David Hart is ‘London’ and he brings in the lawyer, Ben Romney. When David gets sick, he leaves, so then my sister, Sarah, and brother, Edward, take over. Others come and go. My eldest son, Peter, does his heroic best. Amanda is always with ‘London’ but never within.
When I try to tell them what to do, they ignore me. They go their own way. I am the bad child. It is my stupidity that put me here. I am a Zombie – a dead person breathing. Just existing. Far far away.
I can do nothing. So I am nothing.
Then I find out that this is how it often happens. I find that everyone I talk to has the same shit: their money, their children, their power to make things happen outside – all lost.
Amanda is no longer one of ‘London’. I have to keep them apart – rightly or wrongly – because I hate ‘London’. It will turn out that I am right. She hates them too.
I can’t go on griping like that without telling the story. The trouble is that I am grateful to everyone who tries to help in any way. I thank them and I mean it. They’re great. They don’t have to help at all. This is my fault.
The only ones who should help don’t.
The difficulty is that just because someone helps – and has my thanks – doesn’t mean they do a good job, however much they may try. That doesn’t mean they are trying to do me down … but they should listen to what I am asking.
The first big blow against my faith in ‘London’ comes when Maggie Victor asks me straight out, ‘What are “London” playing at?’ Maggie is my South African lawyer. She’s senior. She’s white, but did a load of work for the ANC when they were the enemy of Pretoria. She’s a judge now, and a great lady. Here’s how it goes one day inside Chikurubi, when I haven’t been tried yet – only a couple of months after my arrest:
‘Simon, I really want to help you, but I must understand what is happening in London – please tell me: what’s going on?’
I stare at her – confused. We are not in the usual meeting place in Security. We’ve been sat at a table and two chairs in Reception, the desk where the guy runs paupers’ burials, a busy post. So – for once – we can talk without the goons listening, or so I hope.
Maggie can see my muddle and misery about her question. My brain is in a panic. It scrambles to take on what this means. ‘I must get home’ is the only thought I can easily handle.
‘I’m really sorry to say this – I know how it will hurt you – but I have to know, if I am to help. You must tell me: what is going on?’
All she sees is the same confusion, so she goes on.
‘You see, “London” are indulging in armchair strategy. They are complacent to the degree of danger you are in … they lack any sense of urgency … they are not pressing the buttons they could press … I need to understand why. Do you see?’
I see little but churn up one thought. David Hart – he’s in charge of getting me out, right? Maggie V nods.
‘He’s very close to some of my Brothers-In-Arms and their families … maybe they are his priority?’
I think about how Mark screwed up so badly. At just the wrong moment for us. He had been fine – out of South Africa. Then, with what looked like incredible stupidity, he returned. He was arrested.
Three South African prosecutors visited me in Chikurubi. They said that they would get me out, to South Africa, with an immunity to prosecution, if I would turn state’s evidence against Mark. I refused.
(I won’t forget those three. Two were classic old-school Boer police. There’s the old South African joke: if you’re looking for a criminal, then find a policeman. The third was young and very quick. Cape Coloured. A lawyer. The other two were the sort who pierce the skin at their wrists, so as to wear their Long Service Award cufflinks. They don’t own any shirts with long sleeves.)
Mark pleaded guilty under the Foreign Military Assistance Act of 1998 (FMA) my Act, I called it (or the Face the Music Act) as it came into being because of EO.
I can’t understand why Mark went back to South Africa. I can’t understand why he pleaded guilty. To this day, the FMA hasn’t been used successfully against anyone who pleaded not guilty, anyone who fought their case. Instead, having pleaded guilty, he paid a big fine. RSA RANDS 2,000,000. But why?
Whatever their reason was, the effect on all of us in Zim, and Niek and his men up in EG, was catastrophic. At that time, we were very near a deal. EG had not yet made headway with Mugabe and Co. But as soon as Mark pleaded guilty to supplying money which he knew would be used for mercenary activity, it was an admission of there having been a coup plot. The Zimbabwean Black Supremacists went crazy: demanding again the death sentence for all of us. Me especially.
Mark’s return, arrest and plea – by accident or not – torpedoed – sank without trace! – any chance we had of
a slap, a fine and a ticket home.
Back in the Chik Max paupers’ burial area, Maggie and I kick the thing around some more, but neither of us knows. I am in no position to find out. Maggie looks more uptight, not less. Then I find out why.
‘There’s a group in South Africa – your friends – they agree with me that “London” are not helping you. These South African friends are offering to help you – they’ll go all the way for you, Simon…’
My mind reels at the shock of what I am hearing. I must be quick: at any moment this oasis – of our being able to talk – can be snatched from us.
‘…but you must know that, if you let them help, then “London” will probably hand the job over. They’ll stop helping.’
‘Maggie, I’m grateful – thank them all please – but I cannot go against “London”, Amanda, my family … it’s impossible.’
Then there’s a letter that I write to David Hart, asking him to please try and get the lawyers all working together. The lawyers had all asked me to do this. I get a letter back: they are working together, and if you don’t like the way I am helping you, then I will stop. Fucking hell.
All my life I’ve wondered about that saying ‘There’s nothing colder than charity.’ I mean: if you need charity, then how can it feel cold, when you get it? Right? Wrong.
Now I know what that saying means.
Then comes the first helicopter deal, Helicopter One. My Zim lawyer is going to London to meet them. At last he is about to really become my lawyer. He tells me that the Zim government are desperate for some helicopter parts. They can’t get them because of sanctions.
My crowd in London can get them for sure, so I tell the Croc. Then I write a secret note that I get to ‘London’ by my other lawyer, an ace. I tell it to him through the steel mesh in security, the place I usually see lawyers. He takes it down and reads it back.
My message is that this helicopter deal is the way to get me out. I beg them. I know ‘London’ get that message and understand it. Then – little Boy Scout – I say that, if they can’t do it, then I will understand. But, in that case, they must tell me that they are not doing it. I have other routes – just as good as ‘London’, if not better. I can switch ‘on’ my other routes.
I hear nothing back. Security is everything. Then, much later, when it is all too late – I find that ‘London’ did exactly the worst they could have done: they decided that they couldn’t do a sanctions-busting deal; but they didn’t tell me that they couldn’t do a sanctions-busting deal. They torpedoed me.
Then – later yet – ‘London’ try to do a helicopter deal – Helicopter Two – but it fucks up. So why didn’t they do the first one, when everyone was hot to go?
But ‘Escape’ is the name of the game.
When we all meet, when there is a court appearance, we talk about what to do in the likely event of our being shipped to EG. We know what happened to Gerhard Merz. We know what is happening to Niek.
We know by now how to undo and open our handcuffs.
They will fly us together. We run through what we will do. Some of us may be killed but we will overpower the aircraft. No question. Then what? We will not be welcome anywhere. Fly into EG, I suggest. I am only half joking.
Then I have to be serious. There is an escape being put together by the South Africans but I veto it. A full-on heli assault of Chikurubi. Even if it works, we would end up killing many of the officers. I tell the South Africans that I will barricade myself in my cell rather than be a part of such an escape. These prison officers are not our enemies. If we end up bringing about their deaths, then it is murder. Thus far, we have done nothing wrong. The EG Coup didn’t happen. And, if it had, it was to be bloodless.
As time goes on I know that ‘London’ are screwing up. The job of getting me home is being handled badly. Right. But Cell 6 is not the place from which to sort out something like that. Even from Cell 6 I can see: the job isn’t simple.
I try to think how to help. How can I guide ‘London’ to help me better? I remember a success: how I won the diamond concessions in Angola. No small victory. No easy job.
‘London’ need a Country Manager. Someone who will come to Zim once every six weeks. He will check on who is doing what and will cross-check the information through his own circuits, not the same as those of our Mr Fixits, the lawyers, and the other Zimbos attached to our cause.
I write to ‘London’ and tell them, but nothing happens. They don’t even reply. Then – like a miracle, out of the blue – Mike Christie visits me. How he does it, I don’t know. But I see him for an hour each day in the Security meeting place, almost unbothered by goons listening. Three days.
This is a miracle. Visitors who are not lawyers can only meet inmates in terrible cubicles with filthy plate glass, so you can’t see, and broken telephone handsets, so you can’t talk.
Mike Christie is an old guy, and my great friend. Tiny, chain-smoking Marlboros, wealthy, successful, always cheery. He is a South African of Greek extraction. We worked together on the Yetwene diamond mine, in Lunda Norte, Angola, and became friends. Then we both invested and worked together on a gold-exploration prospect in Guyana, South America, once British Guiana – where Conan Doyle was inspired to write The Lost World and where Sir Walter Raleigh went in search of El Dorado.
We didn’t find gold – not in economic quantity – but we had a wild adventure, and passed our S Level exams in high-altitude mountainous jungle logistics, by porter and chopper.
Anyway, back in Chik Max – and in the course of our wonderful chats – Mike tells me that he is ready to spend the next 18 months of his life helping to get me out of prison. He won’t charge me. He’ll come up to Zimbabwe from Cape Town once a month.
Bingo! I have someone who can be the person to pull together what’s happening between ‘London’ and here. Mike is the perfect man for the job in every way, but mostly because he has done this shit – all over Africa – many times before. He knows how to make them love him.
Mike Christie knows how ‘the legs of the goat must pass’. Mike will make sure that they do. As we talk, in my last meeting with him, the door behind me opens, pushing against my chair. A shaven, shiny, black-skinned head shoves half round the door, at chair height.
‘Shumba, excuse me, give me your water, please,’ the head, Ringo, hisses in a stage whisper. From under my chair I take my favourite five-litre plastic container. It is filled with drinking water.
Mike carries on where we were at, a slight frown furrowing his always creased sunburned brow. Much of his head, in fact, due to baldness. A little later, we are rushing. We need to run through all our plans before they call, ‘Time, Shumba! Handei!’ What is Mike to say to ‘London’? What priorities?
‘Shumba, mvura ino pisa!’ whispers Ringo from floor level behind me, the door again pushed open.
I half turn, take the scalding hot container and shove it beneath my chair.
‘Detenda, Ringo.’ Thanks.
Mike’s frown is back amongst the creases. He breaks off our stuff.
‘What the hell is going on?’
‘Don’t worry … it’s my hot water … You know, for tea.’
‘Yes, yes … but before, you gave water to that man! I thought that water was the big problem … that you don’t get water in your section – what is it? – in FB1!’
‘Water is a problem … That’s why I had to give him some … to heat up … except it’s a swap: my good cold water for his good hot…’
Mike’s frown was growing, but we had vital matters to deal with.
‘Look, Mike – it’s too complicated … leave it! Please.’
So we carried on.
Then Mike went to London, together with a letter from me explaining what he was to do. Guess what? ‘London’ don’t just switch Mike off, they piss him off. He tells me about it in his last letter. He had cancer once before, then made himself better. When he visited me he hadn’t looked great. When he offered to spend 18 months getti
ng me out they were his last, and he knew it. A year later he dies.
What amazes me is that I don’t tell ‘London’ to bugger off.
My lawyer came into the circus on the say-so of David Hart. Things are going so badly that I want to see him.
Then a fellow inmate – an educated guy called Wicknell – tells me that the Croc is far more of a crook than I think he is. Wicknell’s stories are terrible. I don’t know if they are true or not, but by this time my view of the world is grey. I must at least pass a warning to my London lawyer.
Having sent a request to my London lawyer that he visit me, sent through the Croc because by now I have no other way, I eventually get a reply. The Croc tells me through the steel grille in Security’s office. ‘He says he’ll only come and visit you when there’s something that’s important enough to make a visit worthwhile.’
I’m without words, and without breath for a minute or two. No wonder the Croc looks nervous.
I construe what my London lawyer has said into English. At best he’s telling me that he thinks I’m an idiot. At worst … at worst doesn’t bear thinking about.
I’m a prisoner. There’s plenty of time to think.
Chikurubi Sunday afternoons are for sleep. Like outside Sunday afternoons. It’s dead. Halfway through one of these afternoons, Security come into the section. They want me. A senior prison officer (SPO) training up to be a padre looks twitchy. He won’t tell me why I am suddenly popular. The SPO doesn’t like me. He knows I don’t believe any of his mumbo-jumbo. Once, I’d asked him why he didn’t find a proper job. As well as being a lay preacher, he fills his spare time being a prosecutor when there is a prison trial. One of those where you lose remission.
Full of the love of Christ is this one.
None of that tells me why he is now so nervy, silent to my questions. What’s up, Doc? I am off somewhere? Blighty? Fantasy Island (EG)? Santa’s head shed – up in Lapland?
I wait outside Security.
Then there’s a man in front of me… It can’t be… Charlie Wake. As I live and breathe.
He is one of my oldest and best friends – from 14, at Eton – and has three beautiful sisters – Diana, Caroline and Sarah. His mother, Julia, and father, Sir Hereward Wake, were like second parents to me, on lovely school holidays without end. Our fathers had been great friends, also at Eton, and then during the war.