Cry Havoc

by Simon Mann

  I wave back, mop a tear. How many times have I watched someone else go out? It gives hope, but it unsettles.

  An unreal lunch follows, and champagne, served in a private dining room in the General’s hotel. I have a big tip in my pocket – my unspent escape money – that I give to the Paraiso staff who have fed me all this time.

  Then comes the crunch: Amanda. Is she going to tell me to fuck off?

  It is what I have dreaded, and at the same time tell myself: it is likely. Her last letter…

  Well, I hope she doesn’t. I think she might. I won’t blame her if she does. I badly want to hold her to me.

  ‘Sorry’ is not a strong word.

  Taking Sarah’s phone, I go to my room. There’s Amanda. We talk. We start to laugh. I hope, against hope. Maybe we are lovers. Laughter makes it feel as if we are at the start of a love affair. Not the end.

  That night we have dinner. Obono joins us. Talk is difficult because of the language problem.

  ‘Simon … this morning, you prisoners all agreed to never come back to Equatorial Guinea.’

  ‘Yes, General.’

  ‘Well … we want to tell you that this is not for you. You are welcome to come back … although we would rather you did so without your 69 men.’

  Very funny.

  Next morning, the Dassault 900 Falcon is straight and level in the cruise, en route from Malabo to Luton, England.

  The Falcon is hired for the job. The plane is five-star, and – as I am about to find out – top-dollar. Everything feels unreal. The plane. Breakfast, elevenses, drinks, lunch. The carry-on.

  Wankers’ black leather biz jet executive chairs all around.

  Sarah and Edward find everything as strange as I do. There is so much to say. Yet we say nothing.

  I try to ask a question, about something during the five years, something that had upset me, only to see Sarah purse her lips and colour up. Behind her shoulder, dear Edward, by one sideways shake of his head, signals me: leave off.

  A little later, Sarah speaks to me. ‘Simon … you know – your lawyer for all these years…’

  Ha ha ha (do you mean the mozzie who helped me spend £3,000,000? On legal fees? That mozzie?)

  ‘…Well look … er … some people like him, others don’t … OK?’

  ‘And I won’t?’

  ‘Well … I just feel that maybe you and he are best not to meet. There isn’t any point.’

  I’m too stunned to think. Not stunned by what she has just said, but stunned by everything that is happening. Later, it strikes me how odd this business with the lawyer is. I say nothing. I’m just letting everything freewheel. I can see that they are watching me closely for symptoms of craziness, to which I have undoubtedly succumbed. I am to get used to that scrutiny.

  Sitting back in my wanker’s black leather biz jet chair, I close my eyes, breathe deeply and count to ten. I listen to myself about who I am, and what I have been about. The Falcon’s chairs are smarter than in Pien’s old Hawker.

  So what the bloody hell did go wrong?

  I look at the virtual instrument panel. Old, broken. But there are readings still there. The dials and lights still tell me things. Other things I have picked up. Yet other things that I have had told to me.

  Hints. Lies? Who knows?

  I’ll never know for sure. I do know that. In this game you never know … I can be sure of that at least.

  But here is how I’d bet. The Boss is well known and liked by the CIA. Having grown nervous about their own plans to put together an EG coup, the CIA have a quiet lunch with him.

  They tell the Boss that President Obiang has got to go, and that Severo Moto, duly elected, would be acceptable. An operation by the Boss to that end is desirable, but wholly deniable. They will help in any way they can, so long as that deniability stays intact. ‘Plausible deniability’ is the slogan. There will be no CIA money. There will never be an admission.

  This is a covert operation, a secret one. But more than that: this is a clandestine operation. Meaning that it is deniable. It will always be denied, no matter what.

  Once Moto is in power, the Boss must keep his hands, and Moto’s, off the oil concessions. Who doesn’t want Obiang to crash and burn? Who doesn’t want a slice of the action when he does?

  So why can he not raise the cash? Today – writing this – I still don’t know. With me he starts the GO STOP GO STOP. We’re like an aeroplane that is both low and slow. It’s a bad place to be. Plan D fucks up. The CIA take stock. They do not like what they see. Too many people know. Too many agencies are involved: South Africa is pushing to go. The UK knows but is doing nothing to stop it: tacit approval. If things go wrong, then they will go really wrong.

  Then the CIA find out about the ex-USAF Boeing 727-100 that I buy in record time, very cheap, without proper export documentation. Uncle Sam’s fingerprints again. Then they find out that a known CIA pilot rode shotgun on the ferry flight, making sure for me that I got my airplane on time. Uncle Sam’s fingerprints are on a smoking gun.

  Before the March 2004 coup attempt, all hands were versus Obiang. Many hands were helping the coup along. There was the story of the Spanish warships. There was the US State Department report that put Obiang and Co. at the top of the tyranny class.

  But, hey presto! Just months after the coup attempt, Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor, welcomes the great tyrant Obiang to Washington – as a friend of the American people.

  Meanwhile, back at the EG ranch, Obiang is keeping his side of the bargain. Talk to anyone in EG: things there are far from perfect, but they are a thousand times better than they were in 2004. In the seven years since the coup, EG has progressed forty. Health. Education. Infrastructure. Human Rights.

  Everyone that I managed to have a private conversation with in EG – about five people in eighteen months – said the same. When the 2004 coup plot failed, everything started to change. Fast.

  This Falcon cockpit gives me a strange refuge. I can sit up there, on the jump seat, and talk flying to the two pilots. Later the second officer goes aft and tells Sarah (not a great flyer) that she needn’t worry: I will be doing the landing, but they will keep a close eye on how I do.

  For a second she loses it, then laughs.

  Sitting in a real cockpit brought back many thoughts of my flying. My solitary cell. My flight simulator. We fly, chatting through the flight-deck intercom, France passing by below. Now there is a real French ATC talking to us, rather than me hamming it.

  Suddenly, I hear ‘London radar’ – the cool voice of the very best Air Traffic Control. I swallow and brush away a tear: I’ve made it back to Blighty. There have been many times when I thought I never would.

  It strikes me that there will be five years of new tech to catch up on. Below is the Channel, then the white cliffs. England green and little patches. How it should be.

  The light is clear, the afternoon sunny. Good weather cumulus puffs. The whole place is laid out below. Welcome home. I feel there is nothing I want, everything is mine… Then I remember that Amanda may, even yet, give me my marching orders.

  It dawns, my brain revving to catch up on the new hand of cards that I’m holding: life is going to hold many more problems than I’m used to. But then none will be the size of my one old big problem – getting out, getting home. Escape.

  Luton is a blur. Sarah’s husband, Hugh, hugs me off the plane. He has been a huge help to her, I know that. Then he sets off to fool the press. I go to the Harrods exec jet terminal (of all places), where I’m greeted by the smiles of Charlie Wake (last seen in Chikurubi, when he tried to broker the deal) and New Scotland Yard (last seen in EG, in my courtroom).

  We drive up the M1 to Courteenhall in Northamptonshire, Charlie’s home. Beautiful. So many funny teenage memories: so much love and laughter. There is my brother Richard, then Peter, Jack and Sophie. My head and heart spin. Then we set off to drive to the safe house. Fiona Stean’s. I can only just remember who Fiona is. Amanda has
set this up for us. We had agreed our plan in our phone call of the night before.

  Amanda doesn’t want to meet me on my turf. Or that of my family and friends. I agree.

  Charlie’s car draws up. As I climb out I see her. She is hiding, then peeping. Then we’re holding one another for a long time. Peter and Charlie quickly take my bags in. Then they leave.

  There we are. Looking at each other. Touching each other. We cry. She sizes up my suit.

  ‘Pilot, you look like the binman… And your suitcases! They’re the same ones you left with. My God – I don’t believe it – you’ve still got your same stuff.’

  I think I look good – strong and lean: Odysseus with Athene’s blessings goes home to Penelope. But my Penelope looks at me, then looks away. I don’t look good. I need some of Athene’s magic.

  I look like someone who has just escaped from somewhere awful.

  She probes me for craziness, screening me before I meet our four children. She will do so for three days. She has defended them for five and a half years: they aren’t now going to be messed up by me.

  To say that this is an odd scenario would be an understatement. We are both aware of how odd. That night we are frightened of each other. I offer not to sleep in the same bed, but she says no, so we sleep together – but fully dressed.

  I so badly want things to work between us. It also feels exciting. The start of a new love affair. Will she? Won’t she? Amor vincit omnia – I hope – but not the way that Chaucer’s Abbess thinks she means it.

  When can we go home? I ask. I want to see the children. But Amanda wants to be sure that I’m safe. She can’t tell me that. She hates my spindly legs. She fears that I will have lost my marbles, or become wildly intellectual … pretty much the same thing.

  She finds out that in Black Beach I used to ration myself to only two bread rolls per day. I used to write down in my book exactly what I ate. It was a part of my sanity programme. Like making sure that there was one inch of water at the bottom of that day’s 1.5-litre water bottle. That was a bit crazy, but it’s about the only thing.

  Amanda says that there are three in our marriage now: us two and Kass. It isn’t true really. Kass was everything to me in Black Beach, by the end, because she was a way for me to enjoy a proxy life. Hers.

  Once I am out, then Kass quickly sinks into being something that I had created, and written, and am proud of. Nothing more. I can laugh at how shrinks would have a field day because of her – because of my writing her in the first person – but it was just a laugh.

  I think my clothes are fine, but Amanda does not. She is right, so my son Peter takes us to GAP in Banbury. There is a sweater that is 20 per cent off, because of a hole in the cuff. We both like that. It makes me feel that it is an old friend. At the till, Amanda points out that the hole is big: bigger than for 20 per cent off. Maybe it’s big enough for 30 per cent?

  ‘Why? You been making it bigger?’ asks the check-out girl, smiling and quick.

  For me it’s great to be back in England. Living with people. For so long I have lied to myself that I don’t miss any of it at all.

  Amanda pays with chip and PIN. I’ve never seen that before. Just like I’m amazed that Amanda – no techno-nerd – has mastered her iPhone. She trots off: on-line shopping on her MacBook is like rolling off a log.

  I start to sob. It can happen any time. It seems to be triggered by anything. At the start it happens a couple of times a day, then less and less. It hasn’t happened for a while now. It’s just a huge wave of emotion that sweeps me down and around and around. Like a sea wave, I let it roll me, then I bob up. It doesn’t hurt. It feels as though it cleans me.

  Amanda and Peter march me to the hairdresser. It’s hard to answer normal questions. What do I do? Where do I live?

  I don’t know. Nothing? Black Beach prison?

  I have no passport, driving licence, credit card, address book, phone, laptop, money. I can’t keep up when people start talking around me and making arrangements, plans for the future.

  I let them finish then ask, ‘So … what are we doing?’

  My brain is not used to talking to anyone but me. Multi-party conversations about time and movements are foreign. I make myself breathe well, knowing that my mind needs to get back up to speed. Everyone is keeping one eye on me. Not really believing that I can be 100 per cent OK … but I am.

  I must have passed some test because Amanda says, OK, if you’re sure, we can go home, but it’s full-on, the kids will be crazy – we won’t be alone like we are here in Fiona’s house.

  I must have passed some other test as well, because – in all the many ways that lovers love – she and I are lovers again. It is wonderful. It is also scary: I’m as vulnerable as a teenager.

  The Boss and Mark Thatcher send me a joint message by means of their joint lawyer. My lawyer passes it on – unadorned. They say how happy they are that I am free. They say they will welcome my putting straight the record: that they had no part in the events of 2004.

  We’re driving: Peter, Amanda and me. We hoot with laughter. I don’t know which bit I laugh at more. Is it their cringe-making lie? Or is it their asking me to lie for them? Or is it that they have written so promptly … now … after their deafening and absolute silence of these past five and a half fucking years, when so often the worst of the despair has been my loneliness. Deserted in a mountainscape, into which I had set forth in the company of people I liked, loved even, but who had run away and left me.

  Amanda wants to incinerate my bags and suitcase and everything in them. I can’t see why, until I twig. All this stuff has been in African prisons. Malaria, TB, AIDS, filth, starvation, death… It’s all contaminated. So am I. I need blood tests for everything. I know I don’t really. I’m fine. But there is a sort of ceremony that has to be gone through: a protocol of detoxification. (Later I test positive for Leptospirosis, but only half positive. I don’t have it. I’m clear.)

  We’re driving fast. South. Peter’s at the wheel and I’m beside him. Amanda is in the back, iPhone embedded in her ear, or texting away. I know that however joyful this all is, everything has been thrown upside down by my having been reborn.

  It is a rebirth, just as Cervantes said it was. Just how he wrote it in one of the stories within the story of Don Quixote. As we drive I think of all the books I’ve read in prison. Then I start boring Peter and Amanda with what I think is funny ‘Kass’ chat.

  My nerves are on full alert. At home, Inchmery, a house I have dreamed of but never thought to sleep in again, wait Freddy, Lilly, Bess and Arthur – as well as Marilyn, Amanda’s mother, and Mr Shamm, her … our … housekeeper. He comes from a poor farming village near Lucknow, in India. A worker of miracles, I am told.

  When I left them all in the lurch, Freddy was seven, Lilly five and Bess three. Arthur was a bun only three months in the oven. Now Freddy is 13, Lilly 11, Bess nine and Arthur five. I can’t think how we are all going to get along with one another. I don’t know them. They don’t know me.

  Neither do I.

  We drive into the grounds by the nanny cottage, to avoid the press at the front gate. Amanda is used to all this, and laughs at their inability to cover the ground. We drive through the garden, over the lawn, a cold grey seascape on our left. It is impossibly beautiful.

  Peter starts to cry.

  Then I see Freddy and we hug for a long time.

  There are the girls, Lilly and Bess – Lovely and Beautiful. Then Arthur, the Viking. Marilyn. It is too much. I sit on the sofa. Not crying. I can’t yet. I have missed so much that I can never get back. So much that I can never give to them.

  Freddy shows me the book of photos and text that Amanda has made of his bar mitzvah the year before. He’s proud of it. I am of him.

  Arthur sits on the sofa playing with a Nintendo DS, earplugs in. He is hard at work. The Gamer. I watch, because every now and then his eyes come off the game and peek up at me. Then they dive back. I catch one peek. A tiny smile touche
s one side of his mouth as his eyes fall back down.

  We go to bed that night and I stand out on the cold balcony. Light wind, light rain: very English Channel. The oak tree is right there. Odysseus’s bower, his bed made by his hand. Penelope’s trick to be sure it was him.

  The beach. The sea. Tide running. Siberian geese honk, friendly. It isn’t possible that I have gone from maybe a lifetime in Black Beach to maybe a lifetime of this … in less than a week.

  In the morning we lie in. I forget that there is a school run (in fact being kindly taken on by Marilyn, giving us our time together). I am so in love again, but immature, excessively sensitive, jealous … aware that Amanda has built up a life and a circle of friends in which I play no part, and of which I don’t know.

  Amanda? We have fallen back in love. It is very wonderful. There is anger there yet. The pain of so much time lost. But mostly we enjoy each other, each day.

  We take it day by day.

  POSTSCRIPT

  So far as I can tell, I am physically and mentally fit … like a cartoon Napoleon fantasist, safely locked up in his loony bin. A doctor friend was kind enough to look up the medical problems that I was statistically likely to have on release: a middle-aged white man coming out of five years in tropical prisons. Messed-up kidneys was his answer. Cause: not drinking enough water, probably because the water was suspect. But my kidneys are fine. The SAS training that I remembered and carried out all the way through – always make sure your piss is clear, never yellow – was the best tip I had ever had, my friend told me.

  Today, I keep my fitness training going as best I can. Now I have a bloody great stick to beat myself with. I say, ‘Get going, arsehole … if you could keep training all the way through prison then you can bloody well do it now…’ Looking at my charts and exercise logs gives me a strange feeling these days, but I am sure that my sanity system helped me hugely. The four legs: DAILY ROUTINE : PHYSICAL EXERCISE : CREATIVE ACTIVITY : LOGGING WHAT YOU DO.