Covert Action

5 The Scouts

Pavel Zelinkow had a nagging feeling that someone or something was not as it should be. He had been engaged in covert undertakings long enough to feel when things were wrong. During the many years he was with the KGB and for the few months he remained with its successor, the Federal Security Service, he had come to respect the CIA and other Western intelligence services. Out of that respect, Zelinkow had developed a sixth sense that warned him of trouble — when the other side might be plotting something or preparing to move against one of his own operations. The Federal Security Service, or FSS, had neither the teeth nor the professionalism of the old KGB. There would, he reflected, probably never be another organization like it. When most in the West thought of the KGB, they thought of Beria, SMERSH, Lubyanka, and the like. Or saw them only as thugs or the puppet masters of the Czech and East German services. Few today understood the reach and capability of what had been the KGB. There had been dignity and purpose and service to the motherland. Some of his mentors were among the most brilliant intelligence professionals ever to play the game. They had taught him his craft, but a great deal more; they taught him to be cautious and to try to anticipate the moves of the opposition.

“You have a nose for this business,” one of them had told Pavel early on. “We can teach you a great deal about the mechanics and tradecraft, but never abandon your instincts. Your instincts are what separate the army of spies from the true intelligence professionals.”

Zelinkow’s instincts were now telling him that something was indeed amiss. He had long ago learned to spot the fingerprints and subtle overtones of opposition services — the CIA, Mossad, MI-6, but primarily the CIA. If not always the most accomplished, they certainly had the most resources. He had the distinct feeling that some organization or force was now playing the game with a little more skill and a little more flair than a state service. He understood this. After all, he thought, have I not taken my game up a notch or two since leaving my post and office at 3 Dzerzhinsky Square? Those of us who engage in covert activity evolve, just like technologies and species.

Zelinkow had been with the KGB’s Ninth Directorate, the directorate responsible for terror and diversion, where he had made quite a name for himself. When Gorbachev began to dismantle the KGB, he began first with the Ninth Directorate. This had proved to be a blessing in disguise, for it launched Zelinkow into the world of private intelligence work ahead of the horde of out-of-work KGB officers coming behind him. He was on his own now, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t use some assistance from time to time or an occasional helping hand from his former organization. Zelinkow was browsing through the French-language edition of the Times of London when an attendant approached him.

“Monsieur Boulez, there is a gentleman at the front desk asking for you.”

“Merci,” Zelinkow replied in flawless French. “I’ll come at once.”

Zelinkow’s guest was a wizened, shrunken man with alert eyes and a perpetual, playful smile. He had to be well into his seventies, but his sturdy Tartar genes made him seem ageless. The man wore a greatcoat, fur hat, and sturdy shoes. He appeared very much out of place standing here in the United Premier Club at Orly Airport, though he would have easily fit in with other travelers passing through the Moscow Airport. Zelinkow embraced the old gentleman with real affection.

“Boris Zhirinonovich,” he said in Russian, just loud enough for the older man to hear, “welcome to Paris. It is good to see you again. Thank you for coming.”

The older man held him at arm’s length for a moment to take him in. “And you, Pavel. You are looking well.”

“Please, come up to the lounge,” Zelinkow said, reverting to French. “I have a table for us.”

He led the older man up the stairs to a private table off to one corner in the expansive lounge area. Once seated, he ordered coffee, vodka, and a plate of sausages. They conversed easily in French, and could have done so in a half a dozen other languages. When the waitress had left them, they reverted to their native Russian.

“So tell me about yourself, Boris. You have managed to stay out of retirement, from what I gather?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Zhirinon replied. “I am what the American attorneys would call ‘of counsel.’ I am called in to advise on matters of policy and occasionally for an operational matter. Vladimir still deludes himself that if a few of us old-timers are around, the old organization is still what it was. Nothing could be further from the truth, but it does allow me to keep my hand in the game. Although, as you well know, the game is nothing what it used to be.”

“But, old friend, there is very little that goes on in the FSS that you do not know about.”

“Or cannot find out,” the old man said with a smile.

“That too. And tell me, how is your family? You have what, five grandsons, or is it six?”

Zelinkow drew him out, but carefully. Boris Zhirinon was not a man to be flattered or manipulated. He had, at one time, been head of Ninth Directorate and the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service when it became a separate entity from the KGB. He had been “retired” for more than a decade, but old spymasters, East or West, never totally come in from the cold. Furthermore, Zhirinon had been not only Pavel Zelinkow’s superior and mentor; he had been Vladimir Putin’s, as well. Putin had been a colonel in the KGB and a fifteen-year veteran of the service. With the old Soviet Union facing collapse, he retired and began his meteoric political career. At only fifty years of age Putin became head of the Russian state, highly impressive in a country governed so long by an entrenched oligarchy. But Putin did not forget his roots, nor those who had helped him along the way.

“It is said, Pavel, that you had a hand in the stealing of two nuclear weapons from the Pakistanis. Of course, when that question has been put to me, I say that nothing could be further from the truth. I tell anyone who asks that Pavel Zelinkow, not unlike myself, is retired from the business — that his interests are in the theater and the opera, not international weapons theft.” The older man smiled and sipped cautiously at his coffee, looking fondly at his young protégé. Zhirinon also enjoyed letting Zelinkow know that his recent activities had not gone unnoticed.

Zelinkow’s features remained impassive, but he was taken aback that Zhirinon could have any way of knowing about his activities. “It is true that I have a passion for the theater and the opera, my friend. But like yourself, I do try to keep my hand in the game. Would this be wrong, so long as the small amount of work I do does not hurt Mother Russia? Or perhaps even helps her?”

“What is wrong and what is right these days?” Zhirinon said with some resignation. “The West grows stronger, as do the Chinese. And to the south, the Muslim states snap at us with impunity. There are enemies wherever we turn.”

“Then,” Zelinkow offered, “perhaps our only strategy is to make sure that our enemies remain the enemies of each other. America became a great power by allowing Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia to spend themselves on each other.” Zhirinon remained silent, so Zelinkow continued, aware he was on dangerous ground. “Had the nuclear weapons taken from the Pakistani arsenal been detonated in Afghanistan with loss of American life, then would not the West have responded by moving forces into the area, possibly even into Pakistan? Would that not lure them into a move that would prove costly and divisive, much as it has in Iraq?”

“Possibly,” Zhirinon replied, “and possibly not. Playing games with the Americans is always dangerous business. The deepening of the rift between America and the Muslim world is not a bad thing. The trick is that the hand of Islam must be plainly shown in any move against the West. American politicians are led by American public opinion. The Americans can be terribly complacent, or they can be swift avengers.” Then the old man smiled slyly. “They can also be manipulated, but manipulating America is like guiding a bear into a small room — a bear is not as stupid as he looks and can move much faster than would seem from his lumbering appearance.”

Zelinkow considered this for a long moment. The old fox obviously knew more than he was saying. It was hard to know whether he carried an official or semi-official portfolio, or none at all. There is only one thing of which Zelinkow could be certain. Boris Zhirinon loved his country and would do all he could in its defense.

“What do we fear most, Boris? What is Mother Russia’s enduring concern?”

They both knew the answer: China. With an economy three times as strong as Russia’s and five times the population, how much longer would it be content to sit on its own side of the Siberian border? The undeveloped resources and land China so desperately needed were simply too tempting. Only force of arms could ensure that those resources remained under Russian control, and those resources alone were the motherland’s only path back to her former greatness.

“What if,” Zelinkow continued, “the Islamists were so foolish as to attack America in such a way as to bring about a massive retaliation? I am speaking of an attack so heinous that the moderates and the fundamentalists in all of Islam would come under siege. Would not such an attack allow us to then secure our southern borders and free us to turn our attention to the East?”

What Zelinkow now implied was that this would allow Russia to repatriate Georgia and Ukraine back into greater Russia, and permit them to once and for all deal with the Chechens. Russia had finite military resources. Chechnya and the “Stans” along their southern border tied up far too much of those resources. If the Muslim nations on Russia’s border were forced to look south, not north, then those resources could be deployed to better advantage along the Sino-Russian border.

“Just what kind of foolish attack are we talking about?”

They talked for another hour. They spoke guardedly, often obliquely, but were honest in the way of spies who have slightly differing agendas. Neither told the other exactly everything, but they did agree that a deepening rift between the Muslim world and America would benefit Russia. And this would not be their last conversation on the matter. They were also forced to agree, with much reluctance, that the Western vodka they were drinking was superior to that distilled in the motherland. When their flights were called, they again embraced and parted for different concourses. Zhirinon caught an Aeroflot flight to St. Petersburg, continuing on to Moscow. Zelinkow flew KLM to Berlin and on to Rome. Neither traveled under his own name, nor with a Russian passport.

The small cocktail lounge of the Makondo Hotel was intimate, well appointed, and well stocked, but there was no one behind the bar. At the Makondo, which meant “eagle” in Shona, services were kept to a minimum by a reduced contract staff from neighboring Mozambique. They were paid in cash, treated well, and totally intimidated by Claude Renaud and his men. They occupied separate quarters and came to the hotel in shifts to prepare food, clean rooms, and keep the premises in order. They tended to everything on the upper floors, but were forbidden to go into the basement on penalty of death. If the rumors circulating among this captive, resident staff were accurate, it was a penalty worse than death. The patrons in the bar might have to serve themselves, but the absence of a bartender allowed them to speak more freely. The lounge was the exclusive province of the hotel’s clinical personnel.

The Mozambicans and Renaud’s security contingent had been told that this was a private research effort to develop cures for AIDS, Ebola, and other Africa-centric diseases. At the top of the agenda was AIDS, and many of those brought to the hotel-turned-clinic were already infected with the AIDS virus. It was further explained that the families of these unfortunates were paid a fee for their loved ones volunteering for this research, with the added bonus that they might in fact be cured of the disease. Neither the small housekeeping staff nor the soldiers really believed this story, but it kept them out of the off-limits areas.

Helmut Klan helped himself to a generous dollop of schnapps and found a table in the corner. He was soon joined by a man in a white lab coat. Klan had always wondered why laboratory personnel were so fond of lab coats when off duty. Most evenings the bar looked like a Good Humor convention. There were perhaps fifteen of them altogether, but they all seemed to need a drink at the end of the day. Perhaps, Klan reflected, it was the work that they did. He rose to meet his guest.

“Hans, my friend, how goes the battle?”

“We are close, Helmut, very close. I want to set up another series of tests to confirm the incubation period. Then we can move to manufacturing and packaging. If all goes well, perhaps another few weeks — three at the outside.” English was spoken in the lab, as its personnel represented a half dozen nationalities, but when these two spoke in hushed tones, they naturally reverted to their native German. “I hate to ask this of you, but I will need another group of hosts.”

“How many?” Klan asked.

“Ten, but preferably a dozen.” In reality, he needed only six, but with the prevalence of AIDS in Zimbabwe, that many were needed to find at least six free of the virus.

Klan nodded. He had no choice. “But you think this will be it; this will be the last of the testing?”

“There are no givens in this venture, Helmut, you know that. But I see nothing further after this.” He held up a tumbler half filled with whiskey. “We need to wrap this up; my liver can’t take much more.” He took a large swallow from his glass, drawing his lips back along his teeth. “I need to get back to a cooler climate and some good Munich beer.”

Dr. Hans Lauda was the head of the medical team. He had been a top geneticist at the University of Bonn when he had a falling out with the dean of the medical faculty over stem-cell research. Once you were sacked at a German university, there was little else to do but look for work in the private sector. He worked for several small pharmaceuticals, one of which asked if he’d like to work abroad on a classified project. Lauda’s wife, who missed the trappings of the academic life, had long since run off with an economics professor, so he took the job. For four years he had lived well in a villa just outside Baghdad, engaged in biological weapons research for Saddam Hussein. In late 2002, with the threat of the American invasion on the horizion, he had been paid off and asked to leave. His laboratory and the results of his work had been packed up and shipped off to Damascus.

With a nice stash of euros in the bank, Lauda had gone to the south of France to, in his words, de-Arab himself. After a year of good wine, plump women, and a thorough cleaning at the tables in Monaco, he returned to Berlin to look for work. But there he found that the pharmaceuticals were offering only journeyman clinical wages. Lauda’s appetites had grown well beyond that kind of pay. He was then contacted by Helmut Klan and asked if he would like to go back overseas. Klan seemed to know a great deal about his work in Iraq. He didn’t say exactly where overseas, but the job would only be for about six months, and the money was good — very good, even by Baghdad or Berlin standards. Lauda was paid a retainer and told to wait until the rest of the “research team” was assembled. Dr. Lauda fully anticipated that this research would be highly illegal, judging by the money offered, but then he was accustomed to that. He had worked for four years in Iraq for General Ali Hassan al-Majid, better known as Chemical Ali. There were no illusions about the research he would be doing or what that research product might be used for.

“Keep me posted on your progress, Hans. We all want out of here as soon as possible. I’ll see about the hosts.”

Klan knocked back the schnapps and took his leave, glancing around the empty lobby as he crossed the foyer to the front door of the hotel. Some hotel, Klan mused. In reality the place was a little shop of horrors. He could easily have put this off until the following morning, but he wanted to get it over with. It was a pleasant enough evening, so he set out to complete his mission. He was anxious to return to his suite for another schnapps and a good book. The Makondo Hotel had an elaborate spa, massage room, and juice bar in a separate building from the main hotel complex. Klan suspected that the Japanese and then the Saudis had used it for a whole host of carnal pleasures, but Claude Renaud had turned it into something of a noncommissioned officers’ club. They had set up a few dart boards and carried in a billiard table. Instead of juice they had an ample supply of the local sweet African beer. It was quite different from the Munich brew that Hans Lauda longed for.

On his way to the spa complex, Helmut Klan considered the leader of his security force. He could understand Hans Lauda and the other members of the clinical staff, but Renaud was an entirely different species. He stepped through the screen door and closed it quietly behind him. From the entranceway he paused to watch Renaud. The big mercenary was commanding attention over a group of his men, who were mostly white. All were dressed in veld patrol attire — shorts, short-sleeved bush shirts, and rough-out boots. His voice boomed above the others; he clearly enjoyed the limelight.

Men like Claude Renaud, who have served in special military units at a very young age, tend to mature very quickly. They soon acquire a confidence and self-assurance well beyond their years. They can find themselves the object of respect, even envy, to civilians and conventional military units. All this is a powerful cocktail for a young warrior. For most, it becomes a personal yardstick by which they take measure of themselves, and it drives them to improve and extend their warrior skills. Knowledge of self becomes an engine for growth that allows them to succeed in any number of personal endeavors. But occasionally, it freezes a man in place, at a single point in time; he never moves beyond it, nor has any desire to. Claude Renaud was such a man.

Renaud grew up in Durban, South Africa, at a time when being white conferred a great many advantages. Yet as a young man he failed at many things. His father was a mining engineer, his mother a heavy drinker. An only child, he attended a private school, as did most white children in Durban, but struggled with his studies. Renaud was not dull, but tended to be more cunning than intellectually curious. Since he was bigger than most of his classmates, he easily assumed the role of bully. Before he was expelled from school at the age of fifteen, he had a taste of what it was to have others fear him and to curry his favor to stave off his wrath. No other experience gave him such pleasure or sense of self-worth as the physical domination of others. His father managed to get him a job at a mining concession, and since he was white, he was given a junior overseer’s position. He immediately became abusive to his crew, physically and verbally. But these black men were very stoic about his excesses, denying Renaud the ability to intimidate them. This only encouraged him to further denigrate them. Most mine owners worked their blacks unmercifully, but in their own fashion they did take care of them, much as a hunter cares for his gun dogs. Few mine owners tolerated mindless abuse of their workers. It wasn’t even a racist issue for Renaud; he simply had a need for others to fear him. After repeated warnings, he was fired, and personally escorted from the concession by the mine foreman.

“You’re not capable of working with other men,” the foreman told Renaud, “let alone being in charge of them. Now beat it, and don’t come back.”

Renaud’s next move was the wrong one. In his rage and humiliation, he swung on the foreman. The big Afrikaner, like Renaud, had been a bully in his youth, but he had grown out of it and was now a tough but responsible mining foreman. He easily slipped Renaud’s punch and then proceeded to beat him within an inch of his life. The beating was not personal, but it was physical and emotional, as the foreman knew it would be for a young man like Renaud. The foreman hoped that perhaps this might cause him to reflect on why it had come to this, and perhaps help him to see things differently. The effect was just the opposite. It convinced Renaud that he was not tough enough, or perhaps not brutal enough. He returned to Durban in complete humiliation, his face swollen and distorted from the pounding he had taken. People stared, and their looks of pity, along with a few smirks, seared his soul. That night he met a middle-aged black man on a side street, a minor municipal employee on his way home from work. Renaud dragged him into an alley and beat and kicked him to death. It was the only tonic for the rage that burned inside him.

Renaud immediately left South Africa and made his way north to Salisbury. He was only sixteen, but he lied about his age and joined the Rhodesian Army. During basic training, he worked hard, for he was someone who, when motivated, could focus his energies on a specific goal. He graduated at the top of his recruit class and found himself in Rhodesian African Rifles. At last, Claude Renaud felt he was where he belonged. The struggles for succession to the colonial powers was just beginning to heat up, and that meant the Communist-backed guerillas were moving against the European rulers still in power, as well as the fledgling black democracies. The white men were leaving, and power would evolve to the strongest, which in Africa meant the most brutally persistent. Government by consent of the governed was an idea with little traction on the continent. Rhodesia held on longer than most because of its superb army. This holding action was a little more vigorous because the Rhodesians, whites and blacks alike, were highly professional. They also could be almost as ruthless in the field as the Communist-backed insurgent forces vying for control of the country. But even during the brutal counter-guerrilla sweeps, where the killing and burning could often be indiscriminate, Corporal Claude Renaud had to be repeatedly cautioned by his sergeant and lieutenant. One day, after he shot some guerillas who were trying to surrender, the battalion sergeant major took him aside and said, “I’ll give you a choice, Renaud. I’ll see you up for court-martial, or you can join the Scouts.”

The Selous Scouts ran their own training facility at a bush camp called Wafa Wafa, some forty miles from the town of Kariba. The name came from the Shona phrase Wafa wasara, “If you die, you die.” It was a good name for the facility. The training itself lasted only three weeks. It was more a testing than training, designed to summarily weed out those who hadn’t the heart or the temperament to fight in the bush. Claude Renaud, who could on occasion summon within himself a tenacity and vitality, managed to complete this grueling entrance exam. The proudest day of his life was when he was allowed to wear the coveted chocolate beret with the silver osprey badge. Like most elite forces, the Scouts kept pretty much to themselves, but Renaud loved nothing better than going into a bar in Kariba wearing military bush attire and his beret. He was a Selous Scout, and no one could ever take that away from him.

But the Selous Scouts were not parade-ground soldiers. They spent long periods of time in the bush, living off the land and tracking insurgents to their base camps. They often fought vicious, bloody engagements where they were heavily outnumbered. It was a difficult and dangerous business, one that required skill, patience, and a great deal of courage. A man, black or white, was treated with the respect he earned in the field. The Selous Scouts were one of the few fully integrated elite military units where whites served in the minority. The backbone of the Scouts were the warrant or noncommissioned officers, men who had spent years in the bush and had earned their leadership positions on the battlefield. Most of these hard, capable men were black. Following a raid into a ZANLA base camp area where the resistance had been particularly stiff, Renaud shot and killed several bound prisoners — executed them, in fact. Not only was this brutal, it was tactically unsound. Many of those they captured were “turned” by the Scouts and served the government cause, often with great distinction. When Renaud’s warrant officer called him on this, he said something to the effect that the only good kaffir was a dead kaffir. After the company returned from the raid, the warrant asked Renaud to step out onto the dirt parade ground in front of the barracks. For the second time in his life he was beaten half to death, only this time it was by a black man in front of his company mates. The black warrant officer was as tall as Renaud, but just a fraction of his bulk and very fast. Following the thrashing, Renaud was dragged before his company commander and summarily dismissed from the Selous Scouts. This beating and abasement became a burning coal in the pit of his stomach that could never be extinguished. Every few years someone, somewhere, would bring it up, and he was forced to relive the humiliation. He never forgot the beating, nor the man who had given it to him.

From there, Renaud made his way back to South Africa, where a former Selous Scout, under any circumstances, was welcome in the South African Defense Force. After four years of undistinguished service in the SADF, mostly in Namibia fighting UNITA guerillas, he took a job with a Johannesburg security firm. He was assigned to guard the homes of wealthy white South Africans, a line of work that suited him; his size and presence was enough to discourage most casual thieves and burglars. It all ended when Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress came to power in 1994. It wasn’t that whites were persecuted in postapartheid South Africa, but the traditional advantages afforded whites were rapidly disappearing. Renaud and any number of ex-military security guards found themselves out of work when their patrons took what was left of their personal wealth and headed for Europe, Australia, or America. With the South Africa he knew disappearing around him, Renaud learned that an organization for former SADF personnel with experience in the colonial wars was hiring — a private military force called Executive Outcomes. They payed well, and between jobs he could hang out in Johannesburg with other white mercenaries while they waited for work.

Something in Renaud sensed that the sporadic mercenary contracts were his last chance to remain in some kind of uniform — and the only work he knew. So when he was on the job, he did what he was told and no more. He was capable enough, and few whites in the mercenary trade were model soldiers. Most had something in their past they preferred not to talk about. Renaud still wore the silver osprey badge of the Selous Scouts on his beret. The reputation of the Selous Scouts and the Rhodesian Army still inspires fear and awe in central and southern Africa, and Renaud traded heavily on that reputation. He could always find work as a hired gun, but no more than that. Any chance at something more than journeyman’s mercenary wages was quickly extinguished when someone mentioned his exile from the Selous Scouts. Like honor among whores, those who paid for mercenary services wanted only to deal with those they could trust — military leaders who had a reputation for honesty and discretion. Leadership skills and integrity were essential in riding herd on a group of mercenary soldiers. Renaud had long wanted to contract for his own force, but while his spotty reputation was good enough for an occasional hiring and tall talk in the bars where expatriate mercs hung out, no one wanted him as a principal. No responsible government or mining consortium would contract for an unreliable mercenary leader. Mercenary intervention was dicey business at best, without the risk of an overzealous or excessive force. The contracting sources looked for reliability and integrity, and for those who managed mercenary undertakings, reputation was everything. If they found themselves on the wrong side of an issue, or if the forces under their direction used excessive means, it could spell disaster, financially and in the court of world opinion. As they said in the trade, it would “ruin the brand,” and they would not see another contract. Most mercenary contracts in Africa involved securing and guarding mining properties; it was about the ore — that and attracting as little attention as possible.

Claude Renaud was quite surprised, therefore, when he was contacted by a Frenchman named Georges Frémaux. At the time, Renaud had been drinking his way through his meager savings while living in a sleazy flat in Maputo. Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, was much cheaper than Joburg. Frémaux asked Renaud to meet him in Harare to discuss a project, and had made all the arrangements, including round-trip airfare from Maputo. During the hour-and-a-half flight, in one of the 737’s four first-class seats, Renaud managed to throw down four Crown Royals on the rocks. At Harare Airport, a waiting car whisked him to the Hotel New Ambassador. Following the written instructions left for him at the desk, he took a cab that evening to the Crown Plaza Monomatapa Hotel, where Monsieur Frémaux was waiting for him in the dining room. There, over dinner and coffee, Frémaux, aka Pavel Zelinkow, laid out his project. He wanted Renaud to recruit and train a force of sixty men to provide security for a medical experimentation project in Zimbabwe. It seemed that a small, well-financed research group that Frémaux represented was very close to perfecting an AIDS vaccination. In order to bring their product to market, they wanted to bypass animal testing and go right into using the test vaccine on humans.

“I want you to understand that this is clearly illegal,” Frémaux told him. “We have no right to test this vaccine on humans. But in Zimbabwe, especially in the remote Tonga Province, we have an ideal situation. Perhaps one in three Zimbabweans have the AIDS virus, so any cross-section of test cases will give us a control group and an infected group. And given the remote location of our facility in this province, we will have little outside interference while we conduct these vital experiments. You see,” he said, carefully lowering his voice, “this is about human suffering and about money. If we can move directly to human testing, then we can make this vaccine available perhaps two or even three years sooner than if we go through channels. But not if we go through the silly procedures imposed on us by the bureaucrats.” He leaned forward, taking the measure of Renaud. “And most of those bureaucratic requirements are imposed on us by the American and European pharmaceutical companies. So you see, it’s about money. A lot of big pharmaceutical companies are working on an AIDS drug. If we get there first, we beat the big guys to the bank. But we need security, and we need discreet security, so we can perfect our drug. I want them to be well trained and able to protect and defend the project if necessary. And we may need you and your men to assist in looking for volunteers among the local population.”

Frémaux did not have to spell it out for Renaud, but the former Scout did have one question. “What about the Zimbabwe Republic Police? What’s to keep them from interfering with the operation?” Renaud was asking if he was expected to pay off the local police or any army unit that might come snooping around with his own funds.

“That has been taken care of,” Frémaux replied. “And if more funds are required to ensure their lack of interest in the project, then we will take care of that as well. As you can see,” he said as he handed the contract across the table to Renaud, “all expenses associated with the project will be carried by the project, and you will have broad discretion as to the hiring and management of your retainers.” Frémaux watched closely as Renaud leafed quickly through to the page that detailed his compensation package. He saw Renaud swallow hard, and his eyes dilate.

“Here is a packet of information that covers the site in Zimbabwe, which is in fact a small luxury hotel, and the basics of what you will need to recruit your force. You will be able to conduct sustainment training on-site, but we prefer that you set up a bush training camp for your initial interviews, testing, and basic training. You will have to be sure of your men once you bring them to the operational site, as the secrecy of the work there must be absolute. Any breach of security could lead to compromising the site and endangering the project. And as you can see, there is a sizable bonus to be paid at the completion of the project, but only if security is not breached. I too will enjoy a comparable fee on completion, so I am trusting you to do your job and do it quietly. I hope, Monsieur Renaud, I have chosen the right man for this task.”

Renaud assured this precise, serious Frenchman that indeed he had chosen the right man. Frémaux had given Renaud an encrypted cell phone and a single international number, making it clear that Renaud was to call if he had questions and provide ongoing status reports. Frémaux handed over a check made out to Renaud personally, drawn on a bank in Zurich, and gave him account information for a second bank in Bern on which he could draw operational expenses. With that, Georges Frémaux bid him a good evening and excused himself.

The next morning, when Claude Renaud presented his draft to the Bank of Zimbabwe, he was expected. He was paid in South African rand and walked out of the bank with more money than he had ever seen in his life. Rather than use his new cell phone, he called the Crown Plaza from a pay phone and asked for a Mr. Frémaux, only to be told they had no guest registered by that name. Renaud flew back to Mozambique. He had not been back to his dingy flat in Maputo more than an hour when the cell phone rang. It was Frémaux, phoning to ask if he had a pleasant flight back and if their arrangements were satisfactory. Over the next four months, as the recruiting and training progressed, they talked often. Renaud was aware that Frémaux seemed to know a great deal about him and the progress of his work, but Renaud knew absolutely nothing about his employer. The personal checks continued to come, however, and were honored when he came in from the bush to cash them.

With this mandate to raise and train a force, and more importantly, the funds to make it happen, Claude Renaud set out to create his version of the Selous Scouts. Perhaps one day, he told himself as he bent to the task, they will call us the Renaud Scouts. The first thing he did was to visit the site of the original Scouts training camp at Wafa Wafa, about an hour by Land Rover from the town of Kariba. In the thirty years since Captain Ron Reid Daily formed the Selous Scouts, the huts of the camp had been taken over by squatters. Renaud thought of moving them out, but the camp was too close to the lake for the kind of training he had in mind. Further inland from the Wafa Wafa, he found a disused game preserve, one that had been used for the breeding of native species for export to foreign zoos. With a modest payment to an official in Kariba who was responsible for land reallocation in the area, Renaud leased the property for a year. He now had a hundred square miles of bush, several thatch-roofed huts, and a large prefab metal barn. He hired some local labor and set them to cleaning the buildings. The barn he turned into a barracks with military-style, metal-framed bunk beds. One of the huts would be used for equipment storage, while the other would serve as a cook house. He hired two of his cronies from Executive Outcomes to mind the work on the buildings while he booked himself on a flight from Harare to Johannesburg.

South African law prohibits the recruitment of mercenary soldiers, just as laws in the United States prohibit the sale of illegal drugs. But mercenary brokers can be found in South Africa, just as drug dealers can be found in the United States. Renaud knew just where to go and who to talk to. After he cleared customs at the Johannesburg airport, he rented a car and drove two hours east to the town of Ventersdorp. There he arranged a meeting with Moses Shiabe, who had contacts with veterans from the famous, or infamous, 32nd Battalion of the South African Army. Disbanded soon after Mandela came to power, the 32nd had fought for years in the Angolan and Namibian wars, and were considered the best bush fighters in the South African Army, or any army, for that matter. These black veterans were used to working with, and taking direction from, white officers. Most spoke Afrikaans and English as well as their own tribal dialect. All were professional soldiers — hard men not given to bragging or bravado. They were also brutal men, used to the harsh life in the bush. If so directed, they would kill anyone of any age or gender, without hesitation and without remorse.

Renaud met Shiabe at his ramshackle home on the outskirts of Ventersdorp, and for a fee of 1,000 rand, about $160 U.S., he was allowed to look at a roster of available candidates. There were hundreds of names. Renaud ticked off thirty-five and told Shiabe to select fifteen more. Of the thirty-five, Renaud had soldiered with most in the South African Army or on a contract with Executive Outcomes. Others he knew by reputation. He gave Shiabe a generous bonus and admonished him to make the final selections with care. His only direction was that none were to be Shona or Matebele, the two dominant tribes in Zimbabwe. The fifty men were to be given a signing bonus and plane ticket from Johannesburg or Pretoria to Harare. Shiabe would arrange for their visas as laborers or construction workers. He had done this many times before, and these soldiers were quite used to filtering into black African capitals under false documentation. From the Harare airport, they would be met and ferried to the training site.

Once back in Johannesburg, Renaud was free to do what he had always dreamed of doing. He went to the Broken Tusk Bar for a drink and to recruit a contingent of white mercenaries for his force. This was a new role for him, one that he openly relished. White mercenaries looking for work made daily treks to haunts like the Broken Tusk to learn if someone was hiring. Renaud himself had done that often. Now he was the man with the contract; he was the one hiring. The Broken Tusk was a dingy clapboard storefront in the warehouse district. A single bare lightbulb illuminated the doorway and the peeling sign over the door. Inside, it was a standard workingman’s tavern with a tattered wooden bar, high stools, and a scattering of tables. The fixtures and furnishings were yellow with grease and cigarette smoke. Behind the bar was a small kitchen grill where a black man in a camouflage-pattern beret and dirty apron dealt out a surprisingly palatable array of dishes. He had cooked for many of those who frequented the Broken Tusk in the South African Army. The owner was a disheveled man in his late seventies with bloodshot eyes and skin baked to the color and texture of rawhide. He had served with Mad Mike Hoare and Black Jacques Schramme during the Congolese wars, and had the stories to prove it. No one knew his real name; he simply answered to the name of Gunner. Few could remember when he was not behind the bar at the Broken Tusk. It was late afternoon when Renaud made his entrance, and the Tusk was a little more than half full.

“Well, look what the warthog just dragged in,” Gunner observed when Renaud walked in. He had no high regard for Claude Renaud, but a customer was a customer. Gunner could not remember what war story he had last told, but if he had served someone at his bar only once, no matter how long ago, he never forgot what they drank. As Renaud eased himself onto a stool, Gunner set a mug of Castle Lager and a bar scotch chaser in front of him. Renaud laid ten 100-rand notes on the bar.

“A round for the lot, mate,” Renaud said. Gunner raised an eyebrow. He also remembered who bought and who didn’t, and Claude Renaud had never paid for anyone but himself.

“The bar or the house?”

Renaud savored the question for a long moment before answering. “Make it for the house.”

“So you say,” Gunner replied neutrally and set about building drinks.

Those who provided mercenary services had long referred to themselves as PMCs — private military companies. It was the custom for the hiring agent of a PMC to buy a round for the house when he had a contract and needed men. A house round announced that Claude Renaud was hiring. Not a few in the Broken Tusk looked puzzled when another of what they were drinking was placed in front of them. Most could not fathom that Claude Renaud had a contract. But the chance for work, however remote the prospect, could not be ignored. Even from the likes of Renaud.

“Why, hello, Claude. How have you been keeping?”

The speaker was a painfully thin man, with stringy blond hair and a muskrat-like mustache. He wore a black T-shirt, jeans, and military boots. He had been an eighteen-year-old trooper in the Rhodesian Light Infantry when he volunteered for the Selous Scouts. He and Renaud had entered the training together; Renaud had made it, but he had not.

“Well, Reggie. Quite well, in fact. You fancy a game of darts?”

“Absolutely,” Reggie replied.

They took their drinks to the rear of the Tusk. As if to document his intent, Renaud ignored the three notes that remained on the bar. There were two dartboards on the rear wall — no pool tables or pinball. The two began to pitch darts. Reggie was in fact quite good, but he played down to Renaud’s game. Then, one by one, men began to push away from their tables or drop from their bar stools to join them.

It took Renaud the better part of two months to get his group assembled — fifty blacks and ten whites in all. Arming and outfitting men, even a force as small as this, was no small undertaking. But Mr. Frémaux seemed to anticipate his every move. It was always a different shipping agent and a different receiving dock, but when Renaud called Frémaux with an order, it was air-shipped within days to Harare, usually in crates labeled as tools or building supplies. The AKM assault rifles, with a generous measure of training ammunition, were indistinguishable from those carried by the Zimbabwe Republic Police. The uniforms, less badges and insignia, were also the same. For static-defense weapons there were two .50-caliber machine guns and several Russian-made RPD light machine guns. The only thing with a substantial punch were twenty Czech-made RPG-7s. Renaud as of yet had no idea how he might use the rockets, but no mercenary force that he had ever been with were without them. Every mercenary soldier in Africa could use an RPG-7. They could make short work of a reinforced bunker or an armored car.

The mechanics of the mercenary or PMC business usually required a long apprenticeship and a great deal of local knowledge. The new African nations had a long and contentious affair with armed intervention and mercenary force. Therefore there were strict laws governing the sale and ownership of guns, let alone military weapons. One had to know when to follow the rules, what rules could be circumvented, and what officials to bribe. Fortunately, the corrupt nature of fledgling African bureaucracies and deteriorating economic conditions made almost anything doable if you had the money. Renaud felt that none of these problems were beyond him, but it was as if the mysterious Mr. Frémaux did not want him to be involved with these details. He had only to ask, and the requested items magically appeared. Men and materials were ferried to the camp by a small fleet of Toyota 4x4s that Renaud had bought at a premium from a defunct shooting safari concession near Kariba. From the technicals in Mogadishu to Al Qaeda irregulars in Afghanistan to park rangers in Kenya, they had all learned from experience that Toyotas were the toughest, most easily maintained off-road vehicles in the world. Renaud had managed to procure a Mercedes stake truck for moving large pieces of equipment over unimproved roads, and a newer Land Rover for himself. He somehow couldn’t picture Mike Hoare in the cab of a Toyota 4x4.

Pavel Zelinkow, who Renaud knew as Georges Frémaux, trusted Renaud neither to provision his force nor to make sure the proper officials in Harare were taken care of. Zelinkow paid a former executive with Sandline, a well-regarded British PMC, to make the arrangements. He had been on the procurement side of Sandline’s operation and knew his business. The man had no idea where or for whom the weapons, ammunition, and material were destined; he simply delivered the needed arms and equipment to a shipping agent in Nairobi who was paid to forward them to Harare and not to question the contents of the crates. Nor did Renaud have any clue who was so capably equipping his force. Frémaux had never given him a company name, and even if he had, it almost certainly would have been a phony. Cutouts and shell companies were a part of the PMC business. Really, all Renaud knew was that he would command a group of seasoned mercenary professionals, and that he would be well paid to do it. Questions that might or should have occurred to him were lost as his long-held dream materialized.

Once in camp, Renaud called his company to quarters and addressed them. He told them that their duties would be to provide security for a hotel/research complex and to patrol the immediate countryside to ensure there was no local or governmental interference with the work to be conducted there. They were also told that they would have to monitor the volunteers who would be participating in the research effort. Like all paid mercenaries, the assembled soldiers received this information with stoic indifference. They did not particularly like, and certainly did not trust, Renaud, and they had no illusion that this venture was legal. But then they always worked in the shadows, with or without host government sanction. All they wanted to do was to collect the balance of their fee, which in this case was more than a standard wage, and live to spend it. All else was secondary.

For six weeks Renaud put his men through their paces. The blacks didn’t need the conditioning work, but most of the whites did, including himself. Renaud understood that for an integrated unit to function, there had to be some shared effort and pain. This was as true among the ranks of soldiers for hire as for national military units. Even pros need time in the field to bond. And at his core, Renaud was nothing if not a professional soldier. He knew what it was to get down to business; now for the first time he was the drover, not part of the herd. He was their paymaster, and that made him their leader. For all his leadership inexperience and bravado, he was determined not to squander this opportunity. So he positioned himself at the head of the column on the conditioning runs, and he stayed there. He led them in calisthenics, and took his turn on the ranges during shooting drills. When it came to tactics, he divided his force into ten six-man teams. In charge of each team was one of Renaud’s handpicked white mercs. They were all good men, experienced in tribal warfare. The blacks, while often more capable and more experienced, were content to follow their white team captains, up to a point.

Renaud drove them hard, perhaps harder than necessary, but this was his long-awaited opportunity to lead a band of mercenaries. He wanted to make the best of it. In the calculus that now drove him, he truly believed that this could be the beginning of his own PMC, the Renaud Scouts. And word would get around the tight-knit mercenary community that there was something of the Selous Scouts still in Claude Renaud. At the end of their training period, he presented each man with a crimson beret with a silver pin that bore more than a token resemblance to the osprey emblem of the Selous Scouts. If some in the assembly on the makeshift parade ground thought this odd or frivolous, they kept it to themselves. Renaud was, after all, their paymaster.

As Helmut Klan approached the makeshift bar in the improvised tavern, the men at the bar melted away to join the dozen or so soldiers playing cards or at the billiard table. Klan thought about asking Renaud to step outside to make his request, but he was anxious to be done with it and get back to his quarters.

“Good evening, Herr Doktor. May I get you something to drink?”

This meant a glass of that god-awful beer, as Renaud permitted nothing stronger in the garrison. “No, thank you, Claude. I have some late work to finish, and it will only make me sleepy.”

“Perhaps another time,” Renaud replied amiably. He was in a good mood, as he usually was when he drank with his men, but as Klan had again observed with much relief, Renaud drank often but was never drunk. “I’ve just spoken with the head of my medical team, and things are going well. They anticipate that their research experiments will be concluded soon, perhaps within the next few weeks. But we will need more test subjects.”

“How many more?” Renaud inquired.

A few weeks after the clinical team had begun their work, there was a need for a steady stream of “volunteers” for test purposes. To ask for these volunteers in Kariba or the smaller outlying communities would announce their purpose. So Renaud and his men were instructed to make the disappearances appear random, trying not to take too many from one locale. They often traveled a hundred miles or more on one of these sweeps, hiding during the day and making their abductions at night. For these procurements, Renaud was paid 2,000 rand per head, half of which he shared with the team leader responsible for the body snatch. Jerking people from their huts at night was almost second nature to the veterans of the bush wars and, to some extent, to the civilian population, who had known little but war for the better part of three decades. At first they had released those who were sick or showed no symptoms of the testing. They were blindfolded coming and going, so they had no knowledge of where they had been, and they were too scared to talk. When the testing had moved into a phase where the subjects became contagious, the test subjects never left the complex alive.

“We will need a dozen.”

“A dozen,” Renaud replied. “And how soon do you need them?”

Klan did not like to tell him how to do his work, but said, “As soon as you can deliver them, but we need them all by the end of the week. If it makes the task any easier, these should be the last.”

Renaud considered this for a long moment. “What would make it easier would be a 3,000-rand bounty for each we bring in. This is merely a request, but for this number I will have to scatter three teams over a large area to take care of it that quickly. Word is getting out, and it is only a matter of time before we are met with clubs and spears on entering some remote village hut.”

“I see,” Klan said. He knew he was being extorted, but then this was the last of the test hosts, and it was, after all, not his money. “Agreed. Bring them in and handle them in the same manner as you did the others.”

“As you say, Herr Doktor. I will get two of the teams away this evening, and the third will leave after sundown tomorrow.”

Klan excused himself and headed back to the hotel bar for another schnapps. Renaud sat pondering whether to split the additional bounty with his team leaders or keep it all for himself. After another glass of beer, he settled on the latter.

Two nights later Matta Mimbosa had just got the last of her children to sleep and had set out the meager rations of corn and oatmeal for her husband’s and oldest son’s breakfasts. After they left for their work, she would prepare the morning meal for the other children. Matta and her family lived in a group of huts just east of the village of Karoi. There were five dwellings at the end of their road, but only three were occupied. One of their neighbors had gone to South Africa to look for better work, and the other had gone to Botswana for the same reason. There were few jobs in rural Zimbabwe. Unemployment in the nation was 50 percent, and higher in the countryside. Wages were low, and usually a worker’s first month’s pay had to be given over as a bribe to the foreman or overseer. With her oldest son now working with her husband in a cement factory, things had been better — not good, but considerably better, now that there were two wage earners in the family.

They were Ndebele, and with the older son now working, her husband was now thinking of taking a second wife. A man’s status and measure of respect was greatly enhanced by a second wife. Matta was indifferent to the matter. A new wife meant someone younger than herself — someone who would occupy a more favored position regarding her husband’s affection. So be it. After bearing ten children, six of whom were still alive, let him rut with someone younger and stronger. It was his home, and he could do as he pleased. And another pair of hands to help with the house chores and the garden would not be unwelcome. Matta had born eight sons and only two daughters. Neither girl had lived past her first year, and two of the boys died in their second, which meant she had six sons. This delighted her husband, for having many sons reflected well on him, even more than having many cattle. But Ndebele men did no work at home, so Matta was both mother and servant, and as the boys grew older, she became less the former and more the latter. They quickly learned that all the work around the house was women’s work. Men sat, drank, swatted flies, and talked. It was the way it had always been.

They had electricity — not all of the time, but this evening the power was on. Moving in the shadows cast by a single bare bulb, she tidied up the room and put away the dishes she had washed earlier from the evening meal. The men and boys had gone to bed, and there was a symphony of snoring from the sleeping rooms. Matta was accustomed to dragging her mat into the kitchen to sleep. She would be the last to go to bed and the first to rise. The house had plumbing and tap water when the electricity was on to run the pump, but the flush toilet had not worked for some time. She and the younger boys had dug a privy a short distance from the house, but they needed to fill the pit and dig a new one. Perhaps soon. Matta splashed water onto her face in the kitchen sink and blotted herself dry with a soiled dishtowel.

Stepping from the house, she paused a moment to take in the night sky. There was the Southern Cross, the Dove, and many other constellations she once knew but had long since forgotten. She walked past the outhouse, seeking the brush that edged the field that abutted their small plot of land. Often when it was late and quiet, she sought the bushes rather than the noxious smell and fly swarm of the privy. She had just hiked up her one-piece, ankle-length shift and squatted when an arm gripped her waist and a hand closed over her nose and mouth. She was jerked roughly to her feet, even as she lost her urine, wetting her thighs and dress.

“Listen closely, mother,” a harsh voice said in her ear. The man who held her spoke in her native Sendebele. “Because what you say and what you do will determine how many of your family will live to see the sun rise.”

Bound and gagged, Matta was marched back into her house, followed by four heavily armed men. They took her oldest son and blindfolded him, with his wrists bound and his elbows tied behind his back. It was between her husband and the son, and they elected to take the son. This was the decision of the black team sergeant; there were plenty of boys in this household.

Matta stood dazed in the middle of her kitchen, surrounded by prone black bodies, their faces down with their hands bound behind them with nylon snap-ties.

“Do not worry, mother,” the harsh voice said as he backed to the door, sweeping the room with the muzzle of his weapon, “you still have many sons.”

The door closed gently, and in the silence that followed, Matta Mimbosa lowered her head. Tears ran down her ebony cheeks. Another child lost. She thought of the boy who had been taken away and the boys bound on the floor of her home. Unconsciously, she rubbed her belly to feel the life that stirred there. She knew, as she always had before, that it was a boy.