by Wilbur Smith
Swiftly they moved on, passing on their left the square around which were clustered the cathedrals of the Archangel, of the Annunciation and of the Assumption. The immense spires and towers and golden domes burnt in the pale spring sunshine. The peach and cherry trees in the gardens were in full blossom. They swung into the square, passed the palace of the Praesidium of the Supreme Soviet and drew up at the front entrance of the Council of Ministers building.
There was an honour guard paraded to welcome them and a dozen political and military dignitaries.
Deputy Minister Aleksei Yudenich stepped forward to embrace Castro and lead him into the Council of Ministers. In the Hall of Mirrors, Castro began to speak from his seat at the head of the long table.
He spoke clearly, pausing at the end of each sentence to allow the Russian translator to catch up with him. Even Ramón, as an old and intimate comrade-in-arms, was fascinated by his grasp of the African situation and his calculated assessment of the risks and options open to them. He had absorbed every word of Ramón’s briefing.
‘The Western Europeans are divided and spineless. NATO depends militarily on America. They would never be able to muster any organized response to our determined entrance into the Angolan arena. We need not waste serious thought on them.’
‘What about America?’ Yudenich asked soberly.
‘America is still bleeding from the humiliation of Vietnam. Their Senate will never allow American troops to operate in Africa. The Americans have been whipped. They are still snivelling with their tails between their legs. The only threat they pose is that they might choose a surrogate army to fight for them.’
‘South Africa,’ Yudenich forestalled him.
‘Yes, South Africa has the most dangerous army in Africa. Kissinger may recruit them and send them across the Angolan border.’
‘Can we afford to fight the South Africans? Their lines of supply are shorter than ours by ten thousand miles, and their troops are reputed to be the finest bush fighters in Africa. If they are equipped and supplied by America . . .’
‘We won’t have to fight them,’ Castro promised. ‘As they cross the border, America and South Africa will be immediately defeated, not by Soviet or Cuban might, but by the practice of white minority government and the policy of apartheid.’
‘Explain this to us, Mr President,’ Yudenich invited.
‘In the West there is such a desire by American liberals and the European anti-apartheid movement to destroy the white régime in South Africa that they will make any sacrifice to that end. They will sacrifice Angola rather than let South Africans defend it. The moment the first South African crosses the border, our war will be won. There will be such an outcry from the American Democratic Party, and from the champions of so-called democracy in Europe, that the South Africans will never get to do any fighting. In the face of hysterical worldwide condemnation they will be forced to retire. Their attempted intervention will settle the matter firmly in our favour. Once the South Africans have tarnished the shield, no Western politician will dare to take it up again. Angola will be ours.’
They were all nodding agreement. All the generals and ministers. Castro had amazed Ramón once again with his powers of rhetoric and persuasion. It was the main reason that Ramón had prevailed upon him to come to Moscow in person. None of Castro’s generals or ministers would have been able to swing the issue as he had just done. His shrewd and devious view would appeal irresistibly to the Russian mind.
‘He calls me the Golden Fox,’ Ramón smiled to himself. ‘But he is the king of all the foxes.’
However, Castro was not yet finished. His timing was consummate. He smiled genially down the long table, stroking the curling bush of his beard. ‘Angola will be ours, but that will be only a beginning. After Angola the ultimate prize is South Africa itself.’
They all leant forward eagerly, their eyes shining like a pack of wolves scenting blood.
‘Once we have Angola, we will have South Africa surrounded, with bases on her very borders from which our black freedom fighters can strike with impunity. South Africa is the treasury and economic power-house of the whole of Africa. Once we have it, the rest of the continent will fall into our laps.’
He placed his huge hands palm-down on the table-top and leant forward over them.
‘I pledge you all the fighting men we need to do the job, a hundred thousand if necessary. If you provide the weapons and equipment and transport, there is a ripe fruit for the plucking. Shall we do it, comrades? Shall we make the bold and courageous stroke together?’
Only a month later a group of Portuguese military officers, loyal to the Red Admiral Coutinho, handed over the strategic military airbase at Saurimo to Colonel Angel Botello, who was chief of logistics in the Cuban air force. Saurimo was five hundred miles inland from the capital of Luanda, and therefore comparatively secure from surveillance by the CIA and other Western agencies.
The first Ilyushin Candid transport landed at Saurimo twenty-four hours later. On board were a full cargo of military equipment and fifty Cuban ‘advisers’. The Russian military observer on the same aircraft was Colonel-General Ramón Machado.
It was an exhausting but exciting period for Ramón. His reputation and his nickname were swiftly spreading the length and breadth of the continent. The Cuban contingent brought the name with them from Havana.
‘El Zorro,’ they whispered it abroad, ‘El Zorro has arrived. Now things will begin to happen.’
Like the fox, his namesake, he was constantly on the move. He seldom slept two consecutive nights in the same bed. Often there was no bed at all but the mud floor of a grass hut, the cramped seat of a light aircraft or the dirty wooden deck of a small launch threading its way through the swamps and sand-bars of a remote African river.
El Jefe had been right as usual. There was no concerted Western response to the Cuban build-up. Admiral Coutinho was able to head off the few timid enquiries, while Western journalists were successfully prevented from collecting hard evidence in the field. The arms and troops were flown in to Saurimo, or shipped to Brazzaville in the Congo and distributed from there by light aircraft and river-launch to the MPLA cadres in their camps deep in the bush.
Angola was only one of many operations that Ramón was running simultaneously. There were Ethiopia and Mozambique to deal with, as well as his network of agents, and the co-ordination of the activities of the South African freedom fighters. Angola was a marvellous new springboard for the liberation movements. Ramón set up training camps for both SWAPO, the South-West African People’s Organization, and the ANC, the African National Congress.
The headquarters of the two organizations were sited in separate areas of the country. SWAPO were in the south where they were able to cross the border into South-West African Namibia readily and to operate amongst their own tribes, the Ovahimbo and Ovambo.
However, Ramón 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.
<
br /> 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 Ramón 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, Ramón 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, Ramón 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 1975 she was made a member of the Senate Advisory Board on African Affairs. Through her Ramón 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, Ramón 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, Ramón 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. Ramón 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 Soviet-supported 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 Ramón Machado was awarded the Order of Lenin, first class, and the medal was pinned on his chest by General Secretary Brezhnev personally.
Then Ramón was called urgently to Ethiopia. The creeping revolution there had reached a crucial stage.
As the Ilyushin began its descent into Addis Ababa, Ramón 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 1930 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 powers 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 modern 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 earth 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 soil turned to dust and blew 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.