Licensed to Kill (42 page)

Neither Mann nor Thatcher were really part of polite society in the UK, but in South Africa they were minor local celebrities—Mann for his life as a mercenary, and Thatcher for his jet-setting days as racer, pilot, bon vivant, and famous son. The two had much in common, including their love of flying, and over many neighborly dinners they would discuss their adventures and business ventures. Though Thatcher has publicly maintained he had no foreknowledge of the coup, it is inconceivable that they did not have discussions about Mann's upcoming gig in Equatorial Guinea, particularly considering how many times Thatcher met with others involved.

Thatcher met with Simon Mann and Niek du Toit at Lanseria airport near Johannesburg in July of 2003, ostensibly to discuss Thatcher's purchasing two of Niek's Russian-made Mi-8 helicopters for a mining operation in the Sudan. Niek was to meet Thatcher four times over the months leading up to the coup but claims to have never specifically discussed the planned operation with him. In December 2003, Mark Thatcher met with Greg Wales and coup pilot Crause Steyl at Lanseria airport, and later with Simon Mann and Crause Steyl in Constantia, South Africa. According to Thatcher, he eventually agreed to invest in Triple A Aviation Services (the “AAA” comes from “Air Ambulance Africa”), and funded the purchase of a French-made Alouette III helicopter that could double as an ambulance or a gunship for the coup.

Triple A Aviation, with Crause Steyl as one of the owners, was set up in January 2004 to hold Thatcher's contribution and to act as a buffer against his exposure if the plot was discovered. Thatcher transferred $275,000 to Triple A on January 8, and the final payment of $255,000 was deposited on January 16. Bank records show that $100,000 was transferred on March 2 from Triple A to Mann's Logo Logistics, essentially creating a pass-through to the coup investment.

After the exposure of the conspiracy, Thatcher claimed he had no knowledge of the coup plot and insisted that he only intended to contribute funds for purchase of an air ambulance. It could almost be plausible that Mann, Wales, and Steyl kept Thatcher uniformed about the actual final destination of his investment, if memos seized from James Kershaw's computer after the coup didn't express concern that “MT” might be discovered as a backer and insist that all precautions be taken to protect his involvement.

It is unclear why Mann continued to seek Thatcher's money, since by the time Thatcher had decided to put in his half million, Simon had already received a $5 million promise from a Verona Holdings of Vaud, Switzerland. He may have worried about the other investors actually following through with their deposits or have been planning other uses for future endeavors. The five-page Verona Holdings contract outlines how Logo intends to develop potential projects in the fields of mining exploration, commercial fishing, aviation, helicopter charter, and commercial security in the following countries: Guinea Republic, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Angola. Equatorial Guinea is not mentioned. Simon's signature is clearly legible on the last page of the document, but that of his new business associate appears as nothing more than a scribbled line with a bump at the end. Thus far, the person or people behind Verona Holdings have yet to be identified.

With the money finally coming in, things were finally looking up for the conspirators. To end the year on a good note, Mark Thatcher threw a big Christmas bash, held at his home in Constantia. Mark flew his seventy-year-old mother down for the occasion, and Simon, Greg Wales, and other coup plotters were in attendance. Guests at that party recall Wales and Mann discussing the idea for the coup as casually as if it were a horse race.

The Best-Laid Plans

Any good conspiracy requires multiple layers of cover stories and intrigue, and Mann had experience creating credible diversionary tales from his experience with Executive Outcomes and Sandline. For all public purposes, Mann's Logo Logistics activities were part of a mining security contract in the Congo, and versions related by different backers were mostly variations on this same story. Even the mercenaries hired for the job were told they would be guarding a Congolese mine.

Mann may have told a variety of cover stories, but the July 22, 2003, document titled “Assisted Regime Change” makes clear the intent of the plotters. The document is one of a number that have surfaced through the legal proceedings against those charged for the coup attempt. They all sound like accurate representations of the conspirators' plans, but since they were slipped to the prosecution by a journalist and not all seized directly from Mann, it must be mentioned that there is the slightest possibility one or all could be forgeries.

The Assisted Regime Change document lists as its number-one objective: “To replace, in the shortest possible time, the controlling unit of a country.” The four-page plan outlines the most important steps to quickly replacing all the existing power structures of a country, and recommends a functional PR program to market the new and improved leadership domestically and abroad, a disinformation campaign to discredit the old regime, and a formal pogrom against the previous supporters—all to begin within twenty-four hours of a coup.

Another July 22 document crudely lays out a two-part contract between “Mr. M” and “Captain F.” Mr. M is clearly Severo Moto, and Captain F is former SAS captain Simon Francis Mann. The copy of the contract I viewed had Simon's signature but not Moto's, and it established the intended business arrangements and cash bonuses to be given by the leader of the provisional government to the backers and executors of the plot. By signing, Moto would agree to pay four unnamed participants (possibly Crause and Neil Steyl, Niek du Toit, and Simon Witherspoon) $1 million each, six men would get $50,000 (the advance team with Niek), and seventy-five men $5,000 each (foot soldiers). Captain F was slated to earn a generous $15 million for his role. If the coup was successful, each would also be given EG citizenship, passports, letters saying they were members of the armed forces, and immunity from extradition. Captain F would also be contracted to become the new president's personal security contractor and would be given a diplomatic passport, any rank of his choosing, and controlling interest of a “newco.” A common name used to describe a yet-to-be-formed business entity, the newco would handle much of the business deals to be redirected to the benefit of the coup backers. Moto probably did not realize that if he agreed to give Captain F the right to hire, train, and command his bodyguard, he would have literally signed his life away. Another document that purportedly originated with Mann indicates that after the coup, the power behind the new EG president would not hesitate to dispose of Moto if he turned out to be less than completely pliant.

The “Bight of Benin Company” (BBC), written in the archaic British schoolboy style typical of Simon Mann, is a Machiavellian plan laced with paranoia and greed. The document lays out a plan to turn EG into something resembling the British East India Company. It details the coup backers' intent to claim the sole right to make agreements and contracts with the newly installed government—essentially becoming a board of directors that would dictate the decisions and actions of whoever ruled Equatorial Guinea. The BBC makes it abundantly clear that Moto is disposable and that his main backer, Eli Khalil, was not to be trusted.

The document lists nine reasons why the backers should not count on Moto, ranging from the interference of tribal supporters “who are desperate to get their noses in the trough” to concern that “he may die, or be incapacitated, at an inconvenient moment.” The document then goes on to list ten remedies, the first being that the same forces that brought Moto to power could be used to bring the new dictator down. They would also insulate Moto from getting any opportunity to gain public support, keeping him under twenty-four-hour surveillance and gathering or making up information that could be used for blackmail or negative publicity. Plans to groom the newly installed dictator's successor were also critical to Simon Mann's thinking.

Moto is not the only one who has a noose and a trapdoor carefully prepared for him. The BBC document also voices much concern about how closely “E. K.,” or Eli Khalil, must be managed. The planner's criticism ranges from “may have exaggerated view of his level of control over ‘M'” to may have “ulterior motives.” The suspicion was that Khalil could be secretly “working for the French, being part of the usual Lebo [Lebanese] conspiracy, which includes diamond trading, money laundering and…an exaggerated view of extent to which oil companies can be screwed for more money, actually the thing most likely to get the USG pissed off.” As a well-documented “middleman” for French and Nigerian oil interests, if the coup had been pulled off as Khalil had wished, he could have become a major player in pushing the country's upcoming negotiations of oil leases from the Houston cabal toward TotalFinalElf. Just as Lebanese businessman Hassan Hashem is currently the éminence grise for President Obiang, Khalil would have advised Moto from the shadows. His first piece of advice would probably have been to arrest and/or expel the mercenaries and to shift the balance of favor toward the French in granting new leases and security partnerships.

In this document it appears that Simon Mann does not even trust Niek du Toit. “NDT” comes under suspicion as possibly working for Obiang, or even having his own plans. Since du Toit was partnered with Obiang's half-brother and national security advisor, a man reputed to have his own ambitions for the top post in EG, it's entirely possible Niek could have cut his own separate deal that would have included booting Moto, Mann, and everyone else.

In any conspiracy involving vast sums of money, the deceit involved stirs intense paranoia as each conspirator jockeys for the best position to promote their own selfish interests. Until the coup went down, however, everyone involved had to continue to maintain a façade of trust and cooperation.

Mann had always tapped into the same people to run his operations, and this time he enlisted the help of former leaders of the 32 Battalion and ex-EO hands like Simon Witherspoon and pilots and brothers Neil and Crause Steyl. Those three and Niek were referred to as the “Million-Dollar Men” because each stood to gain a million dollars from the operation—Niek for his role inside EG and for using his contacts with the Zimbabwe Defence Industries (ZDI) to arrange for a weapons purchase, Simon for leading the mercenaries during the ground operation, Neil for flying the fighters into EG, and Crause for flying Moto from Spain to Malabo. Mann also quickly put together the by-now-standard EO-style complement of Ovambo gunmen from Pomfret, South Africa, recruited by Niek du Toit and handled by twenty-four-year-old accountant and computer programmer James Kershaw. Recruiting a mercenary army wouldn't be a problem in a place like Pomfret, an abandoned military base and home to ex-members of 32 Battalion. Anyone with enough money could easily raise a thousand-man army in twenty-four hours, making the desolate village a favorite of EO and Sandline in the days when they required manpower.

According to Crause Steyl, who had been hired to coordinate the air logistics, Simon's original plan was laid out in his meetings at a resort near Pretoria, South Africa, between Greg Wales, Steyl, and Niek du Toit. As part of his new venture, Niek was to lease two Armenian-crewed cargo planes. They would be painted blue and white with the logo “PANAC,” short for Pan-African Cargo. One was a twenty-passenger Antonov prop plane, the other an Ilyushin 76, a massive four-jet engine overhead wing cargo plane.

On the night of the coup, rebels would attack and take control of an airfield in the Kolwezi region in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Two DC-3s would fly the sixty or so men and mining security equipment from South Africa to a staging area in Ndola, Zambia, first, and then on to Kolwezi when the signal came that the landing strip was secure. The old Antonov was supposed to fly first from Malabo to Harare, Zimbabwe, to load in the wooden cases of ammunition and weapons, and then on to Kolwezi at the appropriate time. While the plan sounds somewhat convoluted, it was designed to avoid being seen anywhere respectable while loading a weapons cache onto a plane with a small army of obviously irregular soldiers. When the DC-3s and Antonov arrived, men and weapons would all load onto the massive Ilyushin cargo plane.

The Ilyushin would be carrying a cargo more interesting than even a load of armed men. A collection of luxury SUVs would also be on board and used as an enticement to bring Obiang out to the airport. The president would be invited to accept these as a gift from Niek and his partners. Once on the tarmac, the president and his Moroccan security detail would be overpowered and “detained.”

Once the airport was secured, the men were to use the SUVs and the minibuses from Niek's local taxi service to move the mercenaries to secure the military base and police stations. The helicopter paid for with Mark Thatcher's investment in Triple A Aviation would already be on the island and used as a gunship to deal with rebellious units and as an air ambulance for any wounded in the action. With only about five dozen mercenaries planning to subdue an army of a few thousand Equatoguinean troops and police, the plotters were either naïve, overly optimistic, or more likely had set up a network of local co-plotters who could ensure they would expect little resistance.

Meanwhile, as the coup was occurring, Severo Moto would be traveling with Greg Wales, David Tremain, and Karim Fallaha in Simon's South African–registered Beachcraft King Air plane flown by Crause Steyl to Bamako, Mali, from the Canary Islands. Once they got the signal, Moto and the entourage of investors would fly in about thirty minutes after Obiang was neutralized. If everything went smoothly, the Equatoguineans would awake to a new era of enlightened and mercenary-installed leadership.

According to Khalil, an initial contingent of six hundred Spanish soldiers would be waiting off the coast to be landed by ship as an advance group of three thousand Spanish peacekeepers Moto planned to invite in to help “restore law and order.” Moto would declare a new era of human rights and democracy, while Eli Khalil and his cohorts would become stunningly rich from leasing lucrative oil plots to oil companies.