[African Diamonds 01.0] The Angolan Clan

by Christopher Lowery

  SIXTEEN

  Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

  Marbella, Spain

  Charlie’s computer was a slim, shiny laptop, plugged into a kind of cradle on his office desk, which was connected to a printer, a keyboard and a flat screen. At the side was a fax machine and a complicated looking telephone base station. It was now four thirty and they had brought a couple of mugs of tea along to sip while Jenny worked on the computer.

  The laptop warmed up and the usual Control, Alt, Delete message appeared, then the password request. Jenny entered Emilio_1975 and the desk top page came up. She scrolled across the screen and opened up My Computer and saw, under Hard Disc Drives: VAIO (C). Opening this up revealed several folder names, including Documents and Settings. She typed Middlesbrough and the screen displayed another list of folders. Scrolling down through the dozen or so names, she came to CB Private. She entered Ellen_1969 and the folder opened up. Angolan Clan was the first file in the listing. The machine asked for another password and she typed in cascais. She had to do it twice because she put a capital letter in the first time. The second time it worked and she saw a Word file with the heading Angolan Clan. It was dated July 2007 and typed in Times New Roman, size 10 font, with single spacing. Charlie was obviously not a man to waste space for the sake of presentation. At the bottom of the screen it told her that this was page 1 of 72 pages.

  Leticia looked over her shoulder. “It’s difficult for me to read, on the computer like that.”

  “Right then. I’ll print it out and we’ll read it together so we can find out why Charlie took so much trouble to hide it. I’ve never seen such a well hidden document in my life, although I haven’t looked into anyone else’s computer before. Maybe they’re all like that.”

  She went to Select All, changed the font size to 12 so they could read it more easily, switched on the printer and hit print. Sheets of paper piled up onto the desk and slid down to the floor. The pages were numbered and while they were sorting them out, Jenny tried to estimate how long it would take them to read it all with Leticia’s less than perfect English.

  “Listen,” she said. “Why don’t you get your family to come up here for the night. It’s going to take us hours to read this document and I don’t want you to leave Emilio all that time. We can make something for supper here for everyone. It’ll cheer us both up. Besides, it’s about time I met my new family, especially my two year old brother-in-law!”

  Leticia’s mother, Encarni, was happy to comply when she called, and agreed to drive up as soon as her husband returned home from work.

  They took the by now 94 sheets of paper into the kitchen and sat with the pages on the table between them. Leticia looked at the close-packed paragraphs and shook her head. “You better read it for me,” she said, “I think it will take less time. If there is some things I don’t understand, I’ll tell you.”

  Jenny started to read aloud. “Thursday, April 25th, 1974, Cascais.”

  BOOK ONE

  PART TWO: 1974

  SEVENTEEN

  April, 1974

  Cascais, Portugal

  When Nick Martinez got back to the Tivoli Hotel, he found an envelope on the desk. It was a telephone message from Charlie Bishop. “Call me before leaving the hotel. Cheers, CB.”

  Charlie was International Director of APA, Aliança Portuguesa e Africana, the large Portuguese finance, investment and banking company, and although only two years older, he was Nick’s immediate boss. He had met the South African three months previously at a friend’s drinks party, just after he’d arrived from Johannesburg. Nick was a diamond expert and a mining engineer. Charlie couldn’t believe his luck. He immediately hired him as a consultant for his new Angolan project which needed both kinds of expertise.

  Charlie answered the phone immediately. “You’ve probably heard about what’s happening, so you’d better be careful in Lisbon.”

  Nick didn’t let on that he’d already made a fool of himself that morning.

  “We’ve told everyone to stay at home today, so can you hop on the train and come over here? I don’t think there’ll be many taxis around, but there should be some trains running.”

  By nine o’clock, the two men were sitting on Charlie’s terrace, drinking coffee.

  “So, what have you heard?”

  Nick shrugged. “Afonso, the assessor, told me there was a revolution. Go figure!”

  “Was there much happening in Lisbon?”

  “It was quiet earlier. Now it looks like the whole city’s out celebrating. The Avenida’s full of tanks and soldiers and there’s crowds marching around, shouting and cheering, traffic all over the place, hooting horns and stuff. It looks more like a carnival then a revolution.”

  Charlie’s wife, Ellen, was at the house with their son Ronnie. Not surprisingly, their maid, Maria, hadn’t turned up, so Ellen was making a list of provisions and foodstuffs, ready to stock up as soon as the stores opened again. She was not as sanguine as Nick. “I got a call from Agnes and she said that Jorge has told everyone not to go into the office ‘til next week.” Jorge Gomez was the general manager of APA.

  “Don’t pay attention to him, Ellen. He’s a spineless little twerp. I don’t know why Olivier keeps him around.”

  Olivier Bettencourt was the Chief Executive, and his family the majority shareholder of APA. However, the Angolan project was Charlie’s brainwave. Several months before, he had signed a joint-venture with one of their clients, Sociedade Mineira de Angola, the Angolan Mining Company, a diamond producer in the north-west province of the country. The new venture would mine, process and trade Angolan diamonds on a global scale, bypassing the major exporters and gem houses who dominated the industry. Their plan was to launch an IPO, a share float of the joint-venture company, on the London Stock Exchange.

  Charlie had hired Nick to set up the structure for the business. They were looking to sell off a quarter of the new company for ten million pounds, giving it a total value of forty million. It was a great opportunity, Charlie’s baby, and now Nick’s too.

  Because of its sensitive nature the project was treated with complete confidentiality. Only Olivier, Charlie and Nick were fully informed and in direct contact with the Angolan diamond company. Nick had a suite at the Tivoli which he used as his office and he came into APA rarely, where he was introduced only as a business development consultant.

  “So what’s this all about, Charlie?” Nick asked.

  “OK, I’ll explain the background to what’s happening.” He lit up a cigarette and took a deep drag. “Portugal is almost the only remaining European country with African colonies. They all had them once, Germany, Belgium, France, Italy and of course England. They’ve been pumping resources out of Africa for over five hundred years. First, slaves, then minerals, precious stones, agricultural produce and now oil. Then they either left or got kicked out, all except the Portuguese. They’ve got Angola, Mozambique and Guinea and a couple of small possessions. The big one is Angola. Over the last ten years it’s become an absolute goldmine for Portugal.

  “The problem is that, behind the scenes, there’s only a few hundred wealthy Portuguese families benefitting from these colonies. This is all courtesy of Salazar, the previous Prime Minister, who died back in 1969. He was a real dictator and under him the rich stayed rich and the poor stayed poor. And if a few thousand Portuguese soldiers got shot by rebels in the process, well that was a price he decided they could afford.”

  “You mean the independence guerrillas in Africa?”

  “That’s right. As far as I can recall, there are three separate movements in Angola and another two in Mozambique and Guinea and they are all trying to grab independence, for their own benefit and for their sponsors. They are funded by just about everybody and his brother. The Cubans and the Russians are on one side, the Americans, Chinese and Brits on another, and so forth. South Africa is also becoming very agitated about developments down there.”

  “I didn’t know we were involved in A
ngola.” The South African looked slighted that his government was acting without his knowledge.

  “Think back, Nick. Verwoerd, Vorster and Botha were all paranoid about communism. They outlawed the Communist Party in 1960, but even Mandela was suspected of being linked to the Russians. Portugal is just as paranoid, and it’s easy to understand why. In Angola you’ve got Agostinho Neto, who runs the MPLA. He practically lives in Cuba, he’s on first name terms with Fidel Castro and used to lunch with Che Guevara. In Mozambique there’s Machel’s FRELIMO, same story there. And last year I heard the Portuguese assassinated Amílcar Cabral, the boss of the freedom fighters in Guinea. No prizes for guessing who funds those guys.

  “The communists have been waiting for years for a breakthrough in Africa and maybe now they’ve finally got one. It seems from what I’ve heard that the soldiers are fed up getting shot to pieces to keep fat Portuguese families driving Mercedes limousines.”

  “Have you ever gone past the military hospital behind your hotel, Nick? Young boys with legs and arms missing, just come back from Africa. It’s horrible. If that’s the reason for this revolution, then I agree with the army.” Ellen shuddered at the memory.

  “Well, it seems that the army agrees with you too, Ellen, and has taken over and kicked out the government.”

  “So you’re saying that this revolution is all about the wars in the African colonies?”

  “That’s my take on it, Nick. But we’ll just have to wait to find out the full story. Right now, I’m going to call Mario, ask him how things are down there.” Mario Ferro was the local director of the APA office in Luanda. A third generation Angolan, he had been trained at APA in Lisbon by Olivier and Charlie and had turned out to be a born trader. Using his inbred talent and local relations, allied to the commercial knowledge he’d acquired from his two mentors, he had helped APA become one of Angola’s main trading partners.

  The international call came through. “Mario, it’s Charlie Bishop.”

  “Welcome to the revolution, Charlie. Have you been liberated yet?”

  “No, I’m still married to Ellen and to APA. But I’m working on it.”

  “I have exactly the same problems. Maybe we should organise our own revolution.” Mario had a highly developed English sense of humour and the two men got on well.

  Charlie continued. “How are things with the staff?” APA Angola employed over a hundred hard working local people, who were well looked after and loved both their boss and the Bettencourt family. Olivier’s father had set up the company thirty years before and he was a local hero. The Bettencourt Comprehensive School, in the courtyard behind the office, had educated hundreds of children from all over the province and many of them, including Mario, had ended up working for the company, either in Luanda, or in Lisbon.

  After ten minutes chat, Charlie rang off and said to Nick. “It seems the streets are full of gossiping crowds and there’s a thousand different rumours, including that the Americans have invaded. Anyway, things are fairly quiet, but he doesn’t recommend any flights down there for the moment. He’ll look after the shop and we can maintain contact by telephone and telex.”

  “But where the hell does that leave us? Is this going to blow my business out of the water? God, I don’t believe it!” Nick was suddenly scared to death, and for good reason. A few months ago he’d been at a drinks party, acting like a millionaire, with only two hundred dollars left to his name, not knowing how long he could survive without finding a job. He was missing South Africa, missing Rachel. He was so depressed he was almost suicidal.

  Then, by an incredible stroke of luck, he was offered a well paid job and the opportunity to make a fortune, doing what he liked best. And now it looked like it was all going to slip from his grasp. He would be back on the street in a country that was going down the drain, with the same few hundred dollars to his name. He felt sick at the thought.

  “Bloody hell, Nick. This is not just your business, it’s our business, so calm yourself down. I already spoke to Olivier, he’s in Paris this week. He thinks things will settle down. We’ll proceed with the plan and review the situation as and when we get a clearer picture.”

  “But should I go down to see Henriques or not?” Nick wasn’t good at surprises, he just wanted a clear plan of action.

  “Mario’s advice is to wait and see. Besides, we don’t even know if the airport will be open. We’ll call Henriques, but he’s sure to know what’s going on. Bad news travels fast.”

  Henriques Jesus Melo d’Almeida was the owner of Sociedade Mineira de Angola. A big, smiling black man, he was one of the cleverest people that Charlie had met on the African continent. He also smoked two packs of cigarettes and drank a half bottle of whisky a day and was surprisingly foul mouthed, employing a large vocabulary of English swear words.

  In business however, nothing escaped him. He ruled his mining operation fairly and humanely, but with a rod of iron. In the last ten years, Henriques had carved out a healthy market share of Angolan diamonds, amongst the finest in the world. His mine in north-west Angola produced about thirty thousand carats of rough alluvial diamonds per year, worth twelve million dollars in uncut form and several times more after cutting and polishing. APA had been the company’s banking partner since the inception of the business by Henriques’s father.

  The proposed joint-venture would be producing fifteen thousand carats of top quality finished stones per annum, with a market value of over fifty million dollars. Henriques estimated that the alluvial deposits on his property contained enough stones for more than twenty-five years supply. Those were the stakes they were playing for.

  Nick pulled himself together. “OK. I’ll call Henriques and make sure he knows what’s going on. If I can get the samples and the report back from the assessor I can at least get some work done on the prospectus. I just hope it’ll be worth the effort.”

  Henriques told him that things were still quiet in his neighbourhood. But he added, “It’s probably the calm before the storm. It’ll be pissing communists before you know it.” The Angolan had a talent for inventing colourful phrases spiced up with swearwords, but today he sounded worried. Nick agreed to call again the following week.

  Rather than have a confrontation with Jorge Gomez, Charlie decided to leave the offices closed until Monday. It was safer to let a few days pass for tempers to calm down.

  Ellen persuaded Nick to stay with them in Cascais over the weekend. “Just until things get more settled. I’m not keen on you being stuck in a hotel in Lisbon in the middle of a revolution. If anything happened, I wouldn’t like it on my conscience.”

  Over the next few days the atmosphere in Lisbon was tense with suspense and apprehension. Rumours abounded about the recent events but it seemed that a group of army officers had organised the coup d’état. The story was that the housewives of Lisbon, when they saw the armed soldiers marching along their streets, had cut carnations and stuck them into their rifle barrels. In any event, hardly a shot was fired and the coup became forever known as the Revolução dos Cravos, the Revolution of the Carnations. Both the current President, Américo Tomaz and the Prime Minister, Marcelo Caetano, were immediately exiled to Brazil.

  Charlie told Nick and Ellen what he’d gleaned from TV, newspapers and friends on the local grapevine. “It’s almost impossible to know what the hell’s going on. It’s changing every minute. But we know that the MFA, that’s the Armed Forces Movement, is the top layer of power. They’re the officers who organised the revolution. They’ve set up a military Junta to replace the government. So, although we’re now living in a bloody military dictatorship, we can stop worrying, we’ll be saved by the Junta of National Salvation. We’ve also got a new President, General António Spinola. The problem is, he’s a right-wing moderate and the rest of the Junta members are left-wing activists or even more dubious characters.”

  He opened up that morning’s newspaper and indicated a photograph of a prematurely balding, lugubrious looking man in his early
thirties. “That’s Vasco dos Santos Gonçalves. He’s one of the officers who pushed this revolution through. He’s an out and out communist.”

  The ‘strong man’ of the MFA was indeed a left-wing activist. He seemed to exert more power than António Spinola, the titular President. Under his influence, the new military regime began to undo the very fabric of the government structure put in place and maintained by Salazar and then Caetano for over forty years.

  The Gestapo-inspired Secret Political Police, set up by Salazar, was immediately disbanded. Thousands of them tried to flee the country and many were caught and thrown into prison, to suffer the same fate as their victims – beatings and torture, and sometimes death.

  Wealthy businessmen and landowners saw their assets confiscated and bank accounts frozen by the Junta. They also started to run to the borders.

  Left-wing, self appointed vigilantes set up road blocks and manned the border posts, to trap and imprison the capitalists and other right-wing loyalists. Riots broke out all over the country. The newly liberated left-wing was determined to depose the fascist heirarchy.

  The Junta immediately took control of the Bank of Portugal and its hundreds of millions of dollars of gold reserves.

  Workers’ committees and groups of employees kicked out the legitimate owners and seized their businesses. They took over huge tracts of agricultural and development land in the Alentejo and the Algarve from absentee owners, together with their homes and belongings.

  The PCP, the previously banned Portuguese Communist Party, was legitimised and thousands of new members rushed to join the small number who had been waiting for over twenty years for this moment.

  From one day to the next, Portugal was transformed from a right-wing capitalist society to a left-wing military dictatorship.

  After the APA staff started coming into the office on Monday, Charlie somehow managed to maintain order in the business. He spent most of his day hearing reclamations from executives and employees, but he held things together pending Olivier’s return. Nick was working back at the hotel, occupied with the material he’d recuperated from Afonso, the assessor.