Wilbur Smith - C08 Golden Fox

by C08 Golden Fox(Lit)

  However, Ramsey maintained a particular interest in the ANC. He never lost sight for a moment of the fact that South Africa was the gateway to the entire continent and the ANC were the freedom fighters of South Africa.

  Raleigh Tabaka, his old comrade from London, was promoted to ANC chief of logistics in Angola. Between them they chose the site for the main ANC base in northern Angola.

  They flew hundreds of hours together in an Antonov military biplane. They scoured the northern seaside province of Kungo before they found a site suitable for their base.

  It was a small fishing village situated on a lagoon and estuary of the Chicamba river. The mouth of the lagoon was open to the Atlantic, and at high tide vessels of two hundred or so tons burden could cross the bar and enter the river. In addition there were extensive fields of peasant cultivation a few miles upstream. Although these had been neglected during the savage decade of civil war, it would require very little effort to open a landing-strip over the level deforested fields. The fishing village had likewise been abandoned during the war and there was no local population which otherwise would have had to be evacuated or eliminated.

  However, the main recommendation for the site was its distance from any South African border or base. The South Africans were formidable opponents.

  Like the Israelis, they would not hesitate to violate any international border in hot pursuit of a guerrilla unit. Chicamba was out of range of the South African Alouette helicopters, and thousands of kilometres; of mountain had jungle isolating it from any overland hostile expedition by the Boers. They named the base Tercio.

  Raleigh Tabaka took the first cadre of five hundred ANC recruits up to Tercio base in a fishing trawler requisitioned by Admiral Coutinho from the Portuguese canning factory in Luanda.

  They began construction work on the airstrip and training camp immediately.

  When Ramsey flew in ten days later the airstrip had been cleared and levelled and was in the process of being surfaced in red clay and gravel that would set like concrete and ensure a good all-weather runway.

  On his second inspection, Ramsey was so impressed by the remoteness and security of the area that he decided to set up a separate compound near the mouth of the river, overlooking the beach.

  He planned this as his own private headquarters. He always needed a secure base for communications where sensitive KGB training and planning could be undertaken, and where intense interrogation and elimination of captives could be undertaken without risk of discovery or interference.

  He ordered Raleigh Tabaka's men to give construction of his own beach compound the utmost priority. On his next visit he found that the fencing and defences had already been laid out and that work on the interrogation block and the officers' quarters was far advanced.

  On his return to Havana, he requisitioned the necessary radio and electronic equipment and had it flown out to Tercio base on the next available transport.

  On his frequent visits to Havana and Moscow, Ramsey kept well abreast of all the dozens of projects he had in progress down the length of the African continent, in particular his own personal case, the operation and control of Red Rose.

  Looking back down the years to her recruitment in London and Spain he realized that he had underestimated just how valuable Red Rose would one day become.

  Since she had entered the South African Senate she had served on five house bodies. From all of these she had delivered extraordinary intelligence in the form of reports and recommendations on all the various subjects covered by those committees.

  Then in February she was made a member of the Senate Advisory Board on African Affairs. Through her Ramsey received the information, only hours old, that President Ford and Henry Kissinger through the CIA had signalled Pretoria that they would not oppose a military adventure by the South African army into southern Angola. He learnt from Red Rose that the CIA had promised South Africa diplomatic support and military equipment to support their thrust towards Luanda.

  After alerting his superiors in the Lubyanka, Ramsey flew to Havana to consult Castro.

  "You were right all the way, El Jefe,' he told him admiringly. 'The Yankees are sending in the Boers to do their dirty work for them." 'We must let them stick their head into the trap,' Castro smiled. 'I want you to return to Angola immediately. Take my personal orders. Pull back our forces and hold them on a defensive line on the rivers south of the capital. Let them come in before we tweak Uncle Sam's beard and kick the Boers in the cojones." In October the South African cavalry crossed the Cunene river and made a spectacular dash northwards in their fast Panhard armoured cars. In a matter of days they had swept to within a hundred and fifty miles of the capital. They were superbly trained and well-led young fighting men, and their morale was high, but they lacked bridging equipment to cross the rivers and artillery to engage heavy armour.

  When they reached the river, Ramsey sent a signal to Havana.

  "Now,' said Castro grimly, 'we pull out the rug. Let the armour loose." The South Africans were held on the rivers by the Russian T-54 tanks and assault-helicopters. Ramsey released the news of the South African presence to the Western media and the diplomatic storm broke just as Castro had predicted.

  Nigeria, after South Africa the most powerful nation in Africa, switched its support within days of the South African presence being disclosed to the world by Russian and Cuban intelligence. It abandoned Savimbi and his UNITA movement and formally recognized the Sovietsupported MPLA government.

  To emphasize its position, Nigeria sent thirty million dollars in aid to Agostinho Neto in Luanda.

  In the United States Senate, Dick Clark, the Democratic representative from Iowa, began the process of making certain that the South African expeditionary force in Angola was isolated and deprived of support. He accused the CIA of co-operating illegally with South Africa, and Kissinger and the CIA took evasive action. Members of the joint chiefs threatened to resign unless American support was withdrawn immediately. In December the Clark amendment was rushed through the Senate and all American military aid to Angola was cut off. It had all worked exactly as Castro had planned it.

  Another African nation was delivered, trussed and tied, to Soviet sovereignty, and millions of black Angolans were condemned to another decade of brutal civil war.

  In Moscow Colonel-General Ramsey Machado was awarded the Order of Lenin, first class, and the medal was pinned on his chest by General Secretary Brezhnev personally.

  Then Ramsey was called urgently to Ethiopia. The creeping revolution there had reached a crucial stage.

  As the Ilyushin began its descent into Addis Ababa, Ramsey sat behind the Russian pilot on the flight-deck so he had an uninterrupted view of the savage mountainous country ahead.

  Over the centuries all the trees around the capital had been cut down for firewood, so the hills were bare and desolate. In the misty blue distance rose the peculiar flat topped mountains known as the Ambas that were so characteristic of this mysterious corner of eastern Africa below the great horn. The sheer sides of the Ambas dropped many thousands of feet into the rocky valleys, in the depths of which great torrents gouged ever deeper into the red earth.

  It was an ancient land into which the Egyptian pharaohs had first sent their armies marauding for slaves and ivory and other exotic treasures.

  The Ethiopians were a fiercely proud and warlike people, most of them Christians, but members of the Coptic Church, an ancient branch of the Catholic Church that had its origins in Alexandria in Egypt.

  Since the country had been ruled by the Negus Negusti, the Supreme Emperor, Haile Selassie. He was the last absolute monarch of history who ruled by decree. All his decrees were formally ratified by his Derg, a council made up of nobles and great rases and chieftains. So complete was his power that he personally ordered every facet of his country's government from the most momentous decisions of state down to the appointment of middle ranking provincial civil servants.

  Despite these absolute power
s and the feudal organization of his government he was a benevolent dictator much loved by the common people for his almost saintly virtues and his total incorruptibility. In stature he was small and delicately boned, with tiny feminine feet and hands and delicate facial features.

  In his personal habits he was austere and abstemious. Except on occasions of state, he dressed in unadorned clothing and ate frugally and simply.

  Unlike other African rulers he accumulated no great personal wealth. His main, perhaps his only, concern was for the welfare of his people.

  In the forty-five years since he had been crowned emperor he had steered Ethiopia through rebellion and foreign invasion and turbulent times with a quiet wisdom and tenacity to duty.

  Only five years after his coronation, his mountainous kingdom had been invaded by Mussolini's generals and he had been driven into exile in England. His nation had resisted the invader, fighting tanks and modem aircraft and poison gas with muzzle-loading rifles and swords and often with their bare hands.

  After the defeat of the axis powers Haile Selassie returned to his Ethiopian throne and ruled in his old benign fashion. However, there were new forces let loose in the world. In his cautious efforts to modernize his country and bring this largely pastoral and agrarian society into the mainstream of the twentieth century, Haile Selassie allowed the virus to enter his little kingdom.

  The infection began in the new university that he endowed in Addis Ababa.

  Long-haired wild-eyed Europeans began to preach to his young students a strange and heady philosophy that all men were equal, and that kings and nobles had no divine rights. As the ageing emperor's physical strength waned, so the very elements seemed to conspire against him. Africa is a land of savage extremes where heat follows icy cold, and drought succeeds flood, and the eartk turns bountiful or hostile with neither rhythm nor reason.

  A terrible drought fell upon Ethiopia, and with it rode the other ghostly horseman, famine. The crops failed, the rivers and wells dried, and the s ' oil turned to dust and blcw away on the desert winds. The flocks and the herds died, and at their mothers' withered dugs the infants were tiny skeletal figures with huge haunted eyes in skull heads too large for their wasted bodies.

  The land cried out in agony.

  African famine was an old story of no particular interest, and Africa was far away. The world took no notice, until the BBC sent Richard Dimbleby to Ethiopia with a television crew. Dimbleby filmed the dreadful suffering in the villages. He also attended a state banquet in Addis Ababa.

  With calculated malevolence he intercut scenes of famine and lingering death with those of feasting nobles dressed in scarlet and gold lace and flowing white robes and the emperor seated at a board that groaned with rich food.

  Dimbleby had an enormous following. The world took notice. The young students from Addis Ababa University, trained by their carefully selected mentors, began to march and agitate. The Church and the missionaries preached against total power vested in one man, and dreamt of that elusive Utopia where man would love his fellow-man and the lion would lie down with the lamb.

  Many of the members of the Derg saw the opportunity to settle old scores and for personal advancement. In a Ve totally unrelated but significant development, the Arab oil-producers doubled the price of oil and held the world to ransom. In Ethiopia the cost of living soared, placing unbearable hardships on a populace already hard hit by famine. There was runaway inflation. Those who were able hoarded food, and those who could not went on strike or rioted and looted the food-shops.

  Many of the young army officers were products of Addis Ababa University, and they led the mutiny of the Army. These rebels formed a revolutionary committee and seized control of the Derg.

  They arrested the prime minister and the members of the royal family and isolated the emperor in his palace. They spread rumours that Haile Selassie had stolen huge sums of public money and transferred them to his Swiss bank account. They organized demonstrations of students and malcontents outside the palace. The mob clamoured for his abdication. The priests of the Coptic Church and the Muslim leaders joined in the chorus of accusation and demands for his abdication and the installation of a people's democracy.

  The military council now felt strong enough to take the next significant step. Through the Derg they issued a formal declaration deposing the emperor, and sent a deputation of young army officers to arrest him and remove him from the palace.

  As they led him down the palace steps the frail old man remarked quietly: 'If what you do is for the good of my people, then I go gladly, and I pray for the success of your revolution." To humiliate him they confined him in a sordid little hut on the outskirts of the city, but the common people gathered in their thousands outside the single room to offer their condolences and pledge their loyalty. At the order of the military council the guards drove them away at bayonet point.

  The country was ripe, but it was all teetering in the balance when the Ilyushin touched down at Addis Ababa Airport and taxied to the far end of the field where twenty jeeps and troop-trucks of the Ethiopian army were drawn up to welcome it.

  Ramsey was the first man out of the aircraft as the loading-ramp touched the ground.

  "Welcome, Colonel-General.' Colonel Getachew Abebe jumped down from his command-jeep and strode forward to meet him.

  They shook hands briefly. 'Your arrival is timely,'Abebe told him, and they both turned and shaded their eyes as they looked into the sun.

  The second Ilyushin made its final approach and touched down. As it taxied towards them, a third and then a fourth gigantic aircraft turned across the sun and one after the other landed.

  As they pulled up in a staggered row and switched off their engines, the men poured out of the cavernous bellies. They were paratroopers of the crack Che Guevara Regiment.

  "What is the latest position?'Ramsey demanded brusquely.

  The Derg has voted for Andom,' Abebe told him, and" Ramsey looked serious.

  General Aman Andom was the head of the Army. He was a man of high integrity and superior intelligence, popular with both the Army and the civilian populace. His election as the new leader of the nation came as no surprise.

  "Where is he now?" 'He is in his palace - about five miles from here." "How many men?" 'A bodyguard of fifty or sixty.

  Ramsey turned to watch his paratroopers disembarking.

  "How many members of the Derg stand for you?" Abebe reeled off a dozen names, all young left-wing army officers.

  "Tafu?' Ramsey demanded, and Abebe nodded. Colonel Tafu commanded a squadron of Russian T-53 tanks, the most modern unit in the Army.

  "All right,' Ramsey said softly. 'We can do it - but we must move swiftly now." He gave the order to the commander of the Cuban paratroopers. Carrying their weapons at the trail, the long ranks of camouflage-clad assault-troops trotted forward and began to board the waiting trucks.

  Ramsey took the seat beside Abebe in the command-jeep, and the long column rolled away towards the city. Parched to talcum by drought and fierce sunlight, the red dust rose in a dense cloud behind the column and rolled away on the wind that came down hot from the deserts to the north.

  On the outskirts of the city they met caravans of camels and mules. The men with them watched the column pass without showing any emotion. In these dangerous days since the emperor had been deposed they had become accustomed to the movement of armed men on the roads. They were men from the Danakil desert and the mountains, turbaned Muslims in flowing robes or bearded Copts with bushy hair and broadswords on their belts and round steel shields on their shoulders.

  At an order from Colonel Abebe, the jeep swung on to a side-road and skirted the city, speeding down rutted roads between the crowded flat-roofed hovels. Abebc used the radio, speaking swiftly in Amharic and then translating for Ramsey.

  "I have men watching Andom's palace,' he explained. 'He seems to have called a meeting of all the officers in the Derg who support him. They are assembling now." 'Good. Al
l the chickens will be in one nest." The column turned away from the city and sped through open fields. They were bare and desiccated. The drought had left no blade of grass or green leaf The chalky rocks that littered the earth were white as skulls.

  "There.' Abebe pointed ahead.

  The general was a member of the nobility, and his residence stood a few miles outside the city on the first of a series of low hills. The hills were bare except for the grove of Australian eucalyptus trees that surrounded the P9 palace. Even these drooped in the heat and the drought. The palace was surrounded by a thick wall of red terra cotta. At a glance Ramsey saw that it was a formidable fortification. It would require artillery to breach it.

  Abebe had read his thoughts. 'We have surprise on our side,' he pointed out. 'There is a good chance that we will be able to drive in through the gate..." 'No,' Ramsey contradicted him. 'They will have seen the aircraft arriving.