By Chris Emejuru

Overview of the novel

The story of how military coups are made, and the motives behind such especially when instigated by foreign powers, which ultimately is tied down to the economic interests of a few faceless individuals. It begins with a scene reminiscent of the end of the Nigerian Civil War: Respectable shaggy bearded general boarding an aircraft in the bush to take him to exile; white mercenaries, diseased babies being taken to an orphanage in Gabon.

Zangaro is the (fictitious) African nation that is the object of the coup in this story. An accidental geological survey of one of its mountains turned up solid gold—the mountain contains precious and expensive platinum with economic value of about ten billion dollars. Sir James Manson is the British head of the conglomerate whose employee did the survey. Rather than reveal the truth to Zangaro’s dictator, he decides it would be more profitable for him to have the man overthrown and then install a puppet leader who would sign away mining rights to his company for peanuts. He is a ruthless sort of fellow—nice public face but ugly private dealings—whose wealth began in questionable circumstances, who believes all men have a price, if not in money then in the level of fear they would bear. Through his hatchet man Simon Endean, he hires a reputable Anglo-Irish mercenary in the person of C.A.T. Shannon.

But unknown to Manson and Endean, Shannon is not just a stupid soldier for hire. He is a man of his own mind, who has asked himself why millions of kids had to die in war, and had gotten to the answer that ultimately it was to massage the economic egos of men like Manson. So while he accepts the job from Endean, first to go to Zangaro and assess their military strengths, then to plan and wage the coup proper, he decides on his own agenda, after finding out the identity of Endean’s boss and his business. While screwing Manson’s only daughter without his knowledge, he contacts some black African friends to provide some backup force for the coup. He also learns about the platinum, and swears that Manson would not have it cheap.

Most of the story is taken over by the planning stages of the coup on one hand; procuring hardware and other logistics including the vessel to take the team to West Africa, with some crew, and the technicalities involved in this: “end user certificates” for procuring arms between governments, the politics of arms export and the black market dealings, the bribery and corruption that has to be done. On the other hand Manson and Endean plotted on secretly acquiring one of the vehicles they would use to enrich themselves from the coup, a public company with lowly-priced shares. They calculated on making at least 80 million pounds from the rise in share price of this company after it becomes public that the company has discovered platinum in Zangaro after the coup.

The coup is executed successfully. Shannon and his team of mercenaries and their African backups attacked the dictator’s presidential palace, killing him and most of his guards, and also the nearby military barracks, killing or scattering the soldiers there. And Shannon imposes his own agenda over that of Manson. When Endean turns up with the illiterate man that Manson had wanted to install as president, Shannon shoots him dead. In self-defense, he also shoots the notorious bodyguard Endean was banking on. Shannon tells Endean to tell his boss that if he wanted the platinum he should be ready to pay a fair price for it, as the country would now be run by a more representative and responsive government. Endean is forced to leave the country in defeat. His vow that they would deal with Shannon back in the UK is useless as Shannon had no intention of returning.

Selected Quotes

I sometimes think it was a mistake to introduce the Africans to God. Half their leaders now seem to be on first name terms with him. So said the British mining tycoon Sir James Manson, before he paid for mercenaries to carry out a bloody coup in a small West African republic.Chapter 2, page 56

… The juju dies with the man. The hero Cat Shannon noted. He further explained to his listener, Walter Harris aka Simon Endean: The man has a juju, or at least the people believe he has. … Once they see his corpse, the man who killed him becomes the leader. He has the stronger juju. To Endean’s asking ‘It’s really that backward?’ Shannon said It’s not so backward. We do the same with lucky charms, holy relics, the assumption of divine protection for our own particular cause. But we call it religion in us, savage superstition in them.Chapter 7, page 148

He had learned to stalk birds and shoot in the valley with Pieter, his klonkie, the coloured playmate white boys are allowed to play with until they grow too old and learn what skin colour is all about. Talking about Janni Dupree in South Africa, one of the mercenaries.Chapter 8, page 174

…Cat Shannon wondered idly how much havoc would be wreaked when he let slip this group of dogs on Kimba’s palace. Silently he raised his own glass and drank to the dogs of war. The mercenaries were having dinner in London, right after agreeing to their new job. The title of the novel is thus a reference to the hired mercenaries that waged war for a fee.Chapter 9, page 198

‘I don’t make wars. The world we live in makes wars, led and governed by men who pretend they are creatures of morality and integrity, whereas most of them are self-seeking bastards. They make the wars, for increased profits or increased power.’ Shannon lecturing the girlfriend that asked why he was a mercenary that went around making wars on people. He was indirectly talking about her father, as she was Julie Manson, daughter of Sir James Manson.Chapter 10, page 220

‘But why do there have to be wars? Why can’t they all live in peace?’ Julie shortly asked him. His reply: ‘Because there are only two kinds of people in this world: the predators and the grazers. And the predators always get to the top, because they’re prepared to fight to get there and consume people and things that get in their way. The others haven’t the nerve, or the courage, or the hunger or the ruthlessness. So the world is governed by the predators, who become the potentates. And the potentates are never satisfied. They must go on and on seeking more of the currency they worship. … In the Communist world…the currency is power. Power, power and more power, no matter how many people have to die so they can get it. In the capitalist world the currency is money. More and more money. Oil, gold, stocks, and shares, more and more, are the goals, even if they have to lie, steal, bribe and cheat to get it. These make the money, and the money buys the power. So really it all comes back to the lust for power.’Page 221

To Julie’s ‘Some people fight for idealism.’ Shannon responded: ‘Yeah, some people fight for idealism, and ninety-nine out of a hundred of them are being conned. So are the ones back home who cheer for war. We’re always right and they’re always wrong. In Washington and Peking, London and Moscow. And you know what? They’re being conned. Those GIs in Vietnam, do you think they died for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? They died for the Dow Jones Index in Wall Street, and always have done. And the British soldiers who died in Kenya, Cyprus, Aden. You really think they rushed into battle shouting for God, King and Country? They were in those lands because their colonel ordered them there, and he was ordered by the War Office, and that was ordered by the Cabinet, to keep British control over the economies. So what? They went back to the people who owned them in the first place, and who cared about the bodies the British Army left behind? It’s a big con, Julie Mason, a big con. The difference with me is that no one tells me to go and fight, or where to fight, or which side to fight on. That’s why the politicians, the establishments, hate mercenaries. It’s not that we are more lethal than they are; in fact we are a damn sight less so. It’s because they can’t control us; we don’t take their orders. We don’t shoot the ones they tell us to shoot, and we don’t start when they say “start” or stop when they say “stop”. That’s why we’re outlaws; we fight on contract and we pick our own contracts.’Chapter 10, page 221

And the war with Hitler, wasn’t that right? Shannon replied: ‘Yes, that was right. He was a bastard all right. Except that they, the bigshots in the Western world, sold him steel up to the outbreak of war and then made more fortunes making more steel to crush Hitler’s steel. And the Communists were no better. Stalin signed a pact with him and waited for capitalism and Nazism to destroy each other so he could take over the rubble. Only when Hitler struck Russia did the world’s so-idealistic Communists decide Nazism was naughty. Besides, it cost thirty million lives to kill Hitler. A mercenary could have done it with one bullet costing less than a shilling.’Chapter 10, page 222

As for winning the war with Hitler: ‘We won … because the Russians, British and Americans had more guns, tanks, planes and ships than Adolf. That’s why, and that’s the only reason why. If he had had more, he’d have won, and you know what? History would have written that he was right and we were wrong. Victors are always right. There’s a nice little adage I heard once: ‘God is on the side of the big battalions.’ It’s the gospel of the rich and powerful, the cynical and the gullible. Politicians believe in it, the so-called quality newspapers preach it. The truth is, the Establishment is on the side of the big battalions, because it created and armed them in the first place. … The big battalions always win, and the “serious” Press always approves, and the grazers always believe it.’Chapter 10, page 222

The trade in lethal weapons is the world’s most lucrative after narcotics, and not surprisingly the governments of the world are deeply involved in it. Since 1945 it has become almost a point of national prestige to have one’s own native arms industry, and they have flourished and multiplied to the point where by the early seventies it was estimated there existed one military firearm for every man, woman and child on the face of the planet. Arms manufacture simply cannot be kept down to arms consumption except in case of war, and the logical response has to be either to export the surplus or encourage war or both. As few governments want to be involved in a war themselves, but also do not wish to run down their arms industry just in case, the accent has for years been on the exporting of arms. To this end, all the major powers operate highly paid teams of salesmen to trot the globe persuading any potentate with whom they can secure an interview that he does not have enough weapons, or that those he does possess are not modern enough and should be replaced.

It is of no concern to the sellers that ninety-five per cent of all the hardware on the face of, for example, Africa is not used to protect the owner-country from external aggression but to keep the populace in subjection to the dictator. Arms sales have logically started as a product of the profits rivalry between competing Western nations, the entry of Russia and China into the arms manufacturing and exporting business has equally logically transferred the salesmanship into an extension of the power rivalry.Page 227

Talk of the European plunder of Africa, in particular of Simon Endean who was sent by James Manson to West Africa in search of a puppet leader-to-be: … It was of no consequence with what disastrous effects Bobi might rule Zangaro in succession to the equally disastrous Jean Kimba. What he had come to find was a man who would sign away the mineral rights of the Crystal Mountain range to Bormac Trading Company for a pittance and a hefty bribe to his personal account. He had found what he sought.Chapter 13, page 271

And the corruption of Africans, in this case the planned leader-to-be, Bobi: Shortly before sundown he scrawled what could pass for a signature on the bottom of the document. Not that a signature really mattered. Only later would Bobi be told that Bormac was putting him back into power in exchange for mining rights. Endean surmised that if the price was right, Bobi would not quibble.Page 272

Shannon on learning there was a hit contract out on him: The world’s secret services are known for revenge. … one never knew if one might, at some time, have angered a big organisation without meaning to. Perhaps one of the men he had gunned down had secretly been an agent of the CIA or the KGB. Both organisations bore long grudges, and being peopled by the world’s most savagely unprincipled men, insisted on settling scores even when there was no pragmatic motive, but simply revenge. He was aware the CIA still had an open-ended hit contract out on [a man] who had shot an American in a bar … because the man was staring at him. The American, it had later turned out, was one of the horde of local CIA men, though [the man] had not known this. It did not help him. The contract still went out, and [he] was still running.

The KGB were as bad. They sent assassins across the world to liquidate fugitives, foreign agents who had hurt them and been blown for all to see, and were thus unprotectable by their own former employers; and the Russians needed no practical motive, like the information in the man’s head that he had not yet spilled. They did it just for revenge.Chapter 16, page 322

After Endean told his boss he knew Shannon’s price: … Sir James Manson stared down at the City below him and wondered if any man had not got his price. Either in money, or in the inspiration of fear. He had never met one. ‘They can all be bought, and if they can’t, they can be broken,’ one of his mentors had once said to him. And after years as a tycoon, watching politicians, generals, journalists, editors, businessmen, ministers, entrepreneurs and aristocrats, workers and union leaders, blacks and whites, at work and play, he was still of that view.Chapter 19, page 384

After Shannon informed Endean he conducted the coup not for their chosen puppet to be installed as president, but for a certain general, Endean replied in horror that that man had been defeated, exiled. Then Shannon educated him: ‘For the moment, yes. Not necessarily for ever. Those immigrant workers are his people. They call them the Jews of Africa. There are one and a half million of them scattered over this continent. In many areas they do most of the work and have most of the brains.’ Now who do you think he was referring to? This was one of passages that struck me when I first read the novel, on 9108095.Chapter 21, page 432

And why did Shannon do what he did eventually: ‘I watched between half a million and a million small kids starved to death because of people like you and Manson. It was done basically so that you and your kind can make bigger profits through a vicious and totally corrupt dictatorship, and it was done in the name of law and order, of legality and constitutional justification. I may be a fighter, I may be a killer, but I am not a bloody sadist. I worked out for myself how it was done and why it was done, and who were the men behind it. Visible up front were a bunch of politicians and Foreign Office men, but they are just a cage full of posturing apes, neither seeing nor caring past their inter-departmental squabbles and their re-election. Invisible behind them were profiteers like your precious James Manson. That’s why I did it…’Page 433