Cry Havoc

by Simon Mann

  The climb begins. Soon there is an accident. I am cut off high on the mountain. Men have been killed, others injured. Some of us are now cut off. Our route down is severed. Avalanche.

  So what do they do? Fold their tents, head for London. What do they say when, halfway down the valley, they meet a rescue party coming up? They deny us. They deny their involvement. They keep going – hard – for London.

  My message to them is simple: hope that I don’t get off that mountain alive.

  It isn’t as if I expect the ‘Brothers-In-Arms’ to risk their lives, or their freedom, or their fortunes for us in prison. But I do expect them to do something … anything.

  Throughout this time, there are the usual endless rumours and stories that, somehow or other, I will be released. Prisoner transfer, or a pardon, or whatever. But, of course, this will only come from the President. But, of course, others will need to have their wheel bearings greased as well. The legs of the goat…

  I scratch my head.

  I need a way of telling people in the UK one thing, when I mean the opposite. This comes about because my whole position with the EG people is that Simon Mann is 100 per cent with them. On their side.

  Given that this is so, how can I refuse to pay this sum, or that sum, to this one or to that? For my song-and-dance act to work I have to be able to beg Sarah or Amanda, or my friends, to pay over money, when – at the same time – I can be confident that they will do no such thing.

  Hernia two comes and goes. Throughout the op, I say out loud ‘Drake’s Drum’. My Tunisian doctors think it is prayer. Too much to tell them.

  I had been so dreading it, but then it hurts much less. No terrible popping feeling afterwards. Carefully, I wait for the doctors’ ‘off games’ time to run out, then – more carefully – I get my exercise routine going again.

  I’m like a machine. It’s me giving two fingers to everyone: home and abroad. Look! I am in this much shit, but I can still be tougher than you, and have as much fun. You see, some of the jokes that I tell myself, and some of my wit against myself, is funny. Actually.

  As time goes on, I see Obono and the General decreasingly often. I become less and less hopeful that my work for EG, during the inquisition and then my trial, will pay off.

  I have to face it: my 30 years might be 30, or ten, or another five. It doesn’t matter much. As I tell Obono: if you don’t let me out of here soon, there will be nowhere for me to go.

  I will have no lover, no home.

  As that route of escape closes, I think of others. In Zim, they believe that the only escape possible from a Chikurubi-style maximum security prison is by a helicopter flying over the exercise yard with a rope dangling. That was done – in the UK – at the same time as an exercise yard punch-up kicked off.

  In Zim, they have a steel grid over the section, but not in EG. A helicopter could come in, to coincide with the walk from the block to my court house. The walk would be sure to happen when the British Consul visits, an event that can be found out and pinned down well in advance.

  Looking out from my cell window, always quickly and carefully (my viewing public do not like me to do otherwise), I can see Cameroon, Mount Victoria, the bright-green rainforest … only 15 miles across the bright-blue sea. Amazing how beautiful nature is when denied.

  My escape heli could be there – maybe on a docudrama shoot about brother-murdering chimpanzees or some such – then fly in and pluck me to safety. CS gas should take care of any guards wishing to make their weapons dirty. Low and fast should take care of any over-enthusiastic interceptors.

  Once in Cameroon, we would dump the heli and jump into a King Air 200 or a Pilatus PC-12, then out. To Europe. The heli would be an old-time Jet Ranger – £200,000 at the most. The plan could work. I spend a day or two dreaming, note-taking. How? (But fear not: the notes are indecipherable to anyone but me.)

  With a little bit of luck the plan could work.

  Then I think about Operation Wormwood Scrubs, the Chikurubi escape plan I had made. I had been let down. Why would I be able to get backing for this heli plan when I couldn’t get backing for that?

  I need something cheaper.

  If Uncle Bertie comes into EG as a businessman, then he could set up a microscopic business infrastructure – just enough to buy a prison officer into connivance. The officer would have to be paid to re-settle his family in Cameroon, or somewhere, but in advance. The officer would take me out of Black Beach in the boot of his car. Their security is lax. I watch.

  The boot would work.

  The officer would set off for Cameroon immediately in a cocoro, a local fishing boat.

  Once out, I would set sail. I had found in my sailing mags a review of collapsible sailing dinghies. I identified the best one: the Saturn SD365. It would be easy for Uncle Bertie to smuggle one into the country. The boat was 12 feet long, but with the right kit on board I was sure I could make it to Gibraltar. From there, England would be a doddle…

  A happy two days are spent in my cell plotting and planning escapes. There’s nothing like working on a kit list to raise morale. Then I think again: would ‘London’ back even innocent little escape plans such as the one I have been dreaming up? The whole thing would cost less than £200,000. They won’t go for it. They’re useless. I shout at them, thinking they are in my cell, for an hour or two. Then I cry.

  Next day, back in shape, I think how to do it on my own. Over the wire and into the hills. I’m an SAS jungle soldier. I can beat anyone in the jungle. And I know it. I think how to do it. The authorities don’t know this but I’m hoarding the money that I am now allowed for buying toothpaste and coffee, money brought in by the Consul. I have already saved £300, with another £50 to split between the two officers for next Christmas. Tips.

  I pace up and down my cell. I dream of running around in the jungle, until I can steal a fishing boat… Escape…

  It won’t work. Without some outside help, I will not succeed. If I try – and fail – then all my hard work making sure that the EG crowd think that I am their best friend will go up in smoke. For God’s sake. I’ve even written a six-page security paper for them. They love it. Poacher turns gamekeeper.

  I’m struggling with my exercise routine, but hanging in there. Just. Each day it’s a big task to do the exercises. If I follow my weakness and don’t do the exercises, I know that each day will become a bigger task.

  In my daydreams about being free I think about rowing single-handed across the Atlantic. A race from the Azores to Antigua. I’ve read everything I can find in my mags about this race. I think of the woman who will meet me at the finish. It’s always Amanda. If she’ll have me…

  My Concept Zero rowing machine – hanging in there by hanging off my fucking door grille – is a good way to train. Rowing training. Getting ready. But what if I’m never free? Never out of here. Ten … 20 … 30 … 34 years … my full sentence?

  Suicide raises its head. Up until now, I have always believed I will escape by one means or another. But now … do I want to do 30 years, then die in here? I test myself: if they offered me a pill by which to willingly kill myself, would I take it? If the answer is YES, then I should kill myself, by whatever means I can find. It won’t be hard. Not to do so would be cowardly.

  I ask myself.

  NO, I answer, despite the thought that YES might make things easier for Amanda and the children.

  Perhaps my escape has to be virtual.

  I read about the Concept 2 rowing machine – the real one – in a magazine. The British Olympic Gold Medal-holder for rowing, Sir Steve Redgrave, is advertising them. More or less £1,000, but I know they are the best. The ad has the measurements. Bingo. I measure. The thing will fit in my cell. If I can persuade them to let me have one, then persuade my family – or somebody – to buy me one, I will be all set.

  What I could then do is have my own chart of the Atlantic. The Azores westward. Home! I could then row, in real time … marking out my real/virtual chart positio
n as I go. Sleep. Eat. Row. The virtual thing is no harder than the real thing.

  Piece of piss … because it’s there … actually.

  One of the things I miss about having my cell so clean is the gladiatorial spectator sport of Spider Wars. I used to lie on the floor and watch the spiders battle away on the ceiling and up in the corners. There is a vast number of flies. Plenty of food. I watch as different species work in different ways, forcing out others. Now that everything is clean, there are fewer. Also I am waging war on the flies with my moz net, fan, insecticide.

  I, Lord of the Flies. Mambo Makonzo Mahombe. Species jump.

  One day I am shocked to see a mess on the shower floor. I look again: many small objects … they’re moving! What…?

  The shower floor is covered in small spiders, shilling-size, hundreds of them. My spider-watching has been tolerant – enemies of the flies are, of course, friends of mine – but not hundreds. Not in the shower. I start stamping on them, up and down, over and over.

  A green furry leg unfolds itself from the drain hole in the shower floor. Another. Two more. A Thing comes out: bright green, furry, long-legged. The size of my hand outstretched. The size of a dinner plate … and very cross. It’s Mummy.

  I stamp. Squelch. Yuk. I wash the floor with the hand rinse.

  From that moment on, I keep something over the shower drain hole, unless I’m showering. God knows what Daddy might look like.

  One night I wake up to the sound of pop-pop-pop. It cannot be small-arms fire, but that is how it sounds. I try to doze back off. It must be about 2 am. The popping grows in urgency. I take out my earplugs, worn to fend off the many ghastly night-time prison noises – coughing, idiotic screaming from malaria sufferers, praying by the godly, the crying of our very own Little Dorrit (in a nearby cell a woman is being held with her new-born baby) – and listen well.

  It is small arms.

  As a soldier, I can tell: whatever is going on is amateur stuff. The firing is the noise of undirected troops blatting off rounds more or less because they feel they ought to. I make myself lie in bed. I don’t even get up for a piss.

  I know they are watching me on the CCTV. I know they will be very interested to see if I am interested in what is happening. In a paranoia zoo like this, any interest by me can be easily extrapolated.

  Two days later I find out: whatever it was that went on, the night of the sporadic small-arms fire, it is now being portrayed as a bungled coup attempt. Another one.

  Great shortcomings and weaknesses in the security of the President’s palace area, in which Black Beach prison also sits, are shown up. Then I hear: my friend General Manuel has been fired.

  I sit on the floor, my head on my knees. I cry.

  I tell myself that it doesn’t matter, but I know it does. He is the man with whom I have my best relationship. He is the man who has come closest to making a promise that I will get my pardon. He is the man…

  It is a terrible blow. My spirits dive to the bottom of the pit. I can’t drag them up. For days I am listless and sad. I try to buck up. I cannot. I have to dig. Get tough with myself: I know what to do. I know my routine.

  ONE – strict daily routine

  TWO – physical exercise, every day

  THREE – something creative, every day

  FOUR – logging of the first three

  All along, I’ve had to make myself not think of Amanda and home. It is a painful thing to do. To push away the very ones I long for. I have to do it.

  I do it.

  Of course, it doesn’t entirely work, maybe because I don’t want it to entirely work. I know that long-term prisoners often ask that their families stop all writing and visiting. It’s easier not to deal with it than to have it thrust upon you. Any letter takes me a week to get over, especially Amanda’s lovely notes. Letters from Sarah can wipe me out for a month. They make me so angry.

  Freddy is the one who most easily gets past my defences. Although it was Peter and Jack going to war that brought home my unhappiness the most harshly. They have both done two tours by now. Peter Afghan twice. Jack Iraq, then Afghan. My life is wasted. Can’t I be killed instead of one of them … if that is how it is to be?

  I have written a screenplay now. It is fiction but based on truth: The Story of the Coup. The screenplay starts off where Straw Hat ends. Again, the officers catch me reading out loud. I have found that the dialogue only works if I have read it out loud, acted it out. The characters are wild, the accents varied and strong.

  Now my low spirits need a lift. I need a creative project. Part of the Four-Legged Sanity Plan. I think of writing a fiction book for Freddy: a boy’s book. Then I remember how old he is. He was seven when I left home. He’s 13 now.

  When I was 13 I wanted to read grown-up books: Buchan, Bond, Hornblower, Alistair MacLean, Arthur Bryant.

  I’ll write a book like The Thirty-Nine Steps. In honour of The Thirty-Nine Steps. It has to be different, though, so I become a girl lead, her story told in the first person, by Kass. Days pass, weeks, months. I become a dog with a bone, writing Kass.

  Then I’ve written it. Finished it four times over. So I start another. Halfway through Kass 2 – on a Saturday morning – I get taken over to my courtroom. What’s up?

  There are Obono and Miguel. I haven’t seen them together since the trial. Not since Miguel read out my 35-year sentence. I haven’t seen Obono for weeks.

  I sit.

  ‘Simon, the President is to announce the pardon of you … and Niek … and the other three … the news will be out on Monday, then you will be free.’

  I look at them.

  This is impossible. This is what I’ve been waiting and praying for … but this isn’t possible. I can’t speak. Obono and Miguel look shocked at my lack of reaction. I go back to my cell. I try to write Kass. I can’t. Instead I write down how I feel. In my heart I don’t believe it.

  Amanda’s last letter spelled it out for me: I had ruined her life.

  All this time – since my arrest – I had been trying to keep thoughts of her at arm’s length. All this time I had told myself how – were I ever to be free – I would be without Amanda. That was my defence. Aiming off, by getting my head around the next calamity. Hope for the best. Expect the worst.

  I am about to find out. Or am I? I have heard so much rubbish. Maybe this pardon is rubbish?

  I aim off again. There is no pardon.

  Sunday passes, then Monday. Nothing. I was right to aim off.

  There’s a football match this afternoon. I can hear what’s happening without climbing on my chair to watch. Even now, I have to be careful about standing on the chair. Big Brother is watching me.

  These football matches are more than just football. They are an escape out of Black Beach. The teams are groups of people who get themselves together. Before the match, they line up in two rows to sing the national anthem. Referee and linesmen stand in the middle, their faces masks of officialdom.

  The match starts. The sound is deafening in my cell, made worse by my being just over where the match commentator shouts away. He is pretending to be the radio reporter. He sits on the hen house to do so.

  It’s 4 pm on the day of my supposed pardon. Nothing like a pardon has happened. They’ve fucked up. The pardon is rubbish. The match is over. The crowd – all the other prisoners and the officer on duty (only ever one here, unlike Chik Max) – are dispersed. The ref must be cleaning out his whistle. The players are washing one another down at the great water tub. The chickens are back to their tireless business: pecking, babies, mating, fighting, pecking.

  I stand on my chair to look out.

  Two older prisoners are on their up-and-down walk, pacing the concrete that was just now the pitch. They have their transistor radios held to their ears. Long ago I gave up wanting a radio. Just as I throw out so many wants. ‘I want’ doesn’t get.

  I stretch around a little. I see Niek. Two of my others. They’re sitting on one of two DIY benches placed under t
he old army tent, rigged for defence against the equatorial sun, whose line of passage runs over the top of us.

  The two old radio listeners halt. Tense. They look at Niek, then walk over. They are grinning. They shake his hand. Everyone is grinning and shouting. Niek straight away looks up at my cell. He sees that – odds against – I am there, looking back. He gives a thumbs-up.

  It’s true.

  We are pardoned.

  I step back off my chair and sit in it, head in hands. Weeping. Tears flooding between my fingers. My whole body shaking.

  I am to be free.

  Tuesday.

  The lieutenant and an officer bring me my suitcase at 7 am. I’m doing exercises. Still not believing. They don’t believe what they see.

  ‘Don’t you know what’s happening?’ the lieutenant asks.

  I do know. But I don’t believe.

  Dressed in the suit I last wore five and a half years ago, I walk out of my cell. Am I really never coming back to my cell? Do I really feel a sadness at leaving my home of 18 months?

  No, I tell myself – that is nerves. Fear of the unknown future. Quite normal, I tell myself … reminding myself not to say things to me out loud any more.

  I walk to my courtroom, sure that the suit fits fine. Very fine: Richard James, Savile Row, a New & Lingwood shirt, Hermes tie, the highly polished Ganes brown lace-ups, bought when I was commissioned in 1971 – all decked out in a suit several sizes too big.

  The courtroom is crowded. Out of the window I see Sarah and my brother, Edward, get out of a big 4x4.

  Shock.

  Now I believe!

  Speeches, papers, speeches, thanks. Niek du Toit refuses to thank anyone for anything. I’ve been told that Niek and the others will be flying out with the South African President, Jacob Zuma. I have no means of checking that.

  Into the 4x4 with Sarah and Edward – and the General. We drive off.

  As we go, there is a cheer from all the prisoners, the football crowd, on their pitch, the exercise yard.