My Friend the Mercenary: A Memoir by Brabazon James

Author:Brabazon, James [Brabazon, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781847679109
Publisher: Canongate Books
Published: 2010-06-02T22:00:00+00:00

It seemed I was finally getting a name for my work in West Africa. Back in London, I received an unexpected call.

‘Ah, yes, hello. Is that James?’

It was a male English voice that I didn’t recognise. I agreed it was me.

‘Hello, James,’ he continued. ‘My name is Mick. I’m calling from the Foreign Office.’

‘The Foreign Office? What is it?’

‘A mutual friend gave me your number. I wondered if we might meet for a chat.’

His inflection was flat and absolutely unreadable.

‘Friend?’ I repeated, like an imbecile. Must be Frank, I thought. The line remained silent. ‘Yeah, sure. When suits?’

He gave me a mobile number, a time, and the precise location of a wooden bench by a lake in St James’s Park. He didn’t give me a surname or an explanation. The line went dead.

Right, well, that was weird. I’ve just been approached by the Government.

I found him on the bench a week later, just as he’d said I would, wrapped up in a brown trench coat. I wondered if he’d been there the whole time.

‘Hello, James,’ he greeted me.

‘Hi, Mick,’ I replied.

‘It’s a cold day, isn’t it?’ he said as I sat down next to him. I agreed it was. ‘I hope you don’t mind meeting here. It seemed like a good idea. It’s fairly central.’

I nodded and tried to look over my shoulder without appearing either too obviously amused or paranoid. For several minutes we sat and talked like this about nothing in particular: the weather, the traffic. Then he wanted to know where I’d been in Liberia, whom I’d been working for, whether I was going back. I suspected he knew most of the answers, but I played along, answering in good faith, seeing where it would all lead.

He knew his stuff. He asked a specific question about former pro-Government militia from Sierra Leone fighting with the LURD rebels in Liberia. It was an interesting enquiry, and caught my imagination.

‘There are several dozen of them. Ex-Civil Defence Force, mainly,’ I confirmed. ‘On the other side, Taylor is using the RUF in Foya, re-supplying them by helicopter …’

At the mention of the word ‘helicopter’ we both looked at each other. I wondered if he knew about Nick’s plans. Could the British be monitoring his satellite phone calls from Freetown? I pressed on.

‘When I was last in Voinjama—’

‘In October?’ he interrupted.

That freaked me out. I’d not mentioned the second trip at all until then. I continued, cautiously.

‘Yes, a couple of months ago, they took an RUF prisoner – alive, for a change. He showed me Yugoslav currency – dinar – that the chopper pilot had given him, and told me that Benjamin Yeatin, Taylor’s main commander, was personally handing out the ammo. I’m pretty sure it’s coming from Eastern Europe.’

Other than the brief burst of shooting on the outskirts of town, it had been the only other exciting thing to film with the Americans.

‘And are the rebels using mercenaries?’

Hmm, I thought, is this what this is all about?

‘No, they’re not. Just the CDF.

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