Love and War at BITNATION

 "I could probably write the Michelin guide to warzone watering holes"  

I grew up in rural England to the sound of bleating sheep, my mother threatening to walk out the door and back to the city pretty much every evening. My father got through a lot of whisky, and I holed up in my room with a Sinclair ZX81, learned BASIC and ran away to sea as soon as I possibly could. After the navy I ended up wandering around the ‘garden spots’ of Africa, the Balkans, Middle East and Asia as an itinerant gun for hire: fuck, I’ve been doing it for nearly four decades now. Sometimes a humanitarian aid worker, sometimes a security contractor, mine clearance expert and once - for my sins - a UK government adviser; but always lovingly nurturing the most interesting bars in town (I will post recommendations – I could probably write the Michelin guide to warzone watering holes). These days I’m “consulting” (I know, I know, the last bastion of charlatans), and recently got married to that most remarkable Chief Ocelot of the Blockchain and creator of BITNATON, Susanne Tarkowski Templehof, who shares my love of AK47 fire before breakfast.  I posted this on Facebook for her on the day after our wedding and it sums up how I feel about my most rare and beautiful wife.    

I first met Susanne Tarkowski Tempelhof on the rooftop of the Tebesti hotel in Benghazi back in 2011, as the NATO jets circled lazily over the blackened carcass of Qadafi's regime. The militias we were both investigating had taken a break from the spectacle to sharpen their knives for the coming bloodbath. Susanne is an extraordinary and gorgeous force of nature, who everyone who had been in Kabul in 2008 seemed to know except for me. Through those twinkling 'bad girl' eyes she told the brutal unalloyed truth and I was hooked. It was Ramadan and the beer was non alcoholic, but we had greedily swallowed it down in the faint hope that the taste alone might give us a trick. As the empties heaped up a bored militiaman tossed his last Molotov cocktail into the back of a pick-up in the hotel car park - and maybe, just maybe, as the car burst into an orange fireball, it was then that earth first trembled on its tottering Libyan axis. Enough for me to arrive years later in Amsterdam for a couple of days with Her Royal Highness the matchless Sovereign of Bitnation. 18 sleepless, anarchic hours later we decided with both whimsy and fierce conviction, to get married. Right there, right then in the teeth of the storm of convention. Like poker aces refusing to fold we became only the third couple to marry on the blockchain - which until very recently I was certain was an ailment suffered by reluctant lumberjacks. We are here now - leaning into the first glimmers of dawn. Wish us luck and make sure the spare ammunition is loaded. This will be some ride.   

Obviously I'm only posting this picture of my hot wife, puppy and jag so you will click on my post :-)

That's enough schmaltz, I thought I’d begin my Steemit adventure with a fairly mild war story.   

Sometime around the millennium, I found myself running a security company in the Congo in the middle of a forgotten war. One of my friends in Kinshasa was Wolfgang, a businessman who made plastics, or so he said. Well his wife was my friend really, if you know what I mean. Late one night as I partied in a local bar she called me. Wolf had been kidnapped, and she wanted me to take the ransom to the hoods, do the exchange and get him back – right there and then. Those were incident packed years and some similar craziness occurred pretty much every week. It turned out that Wolf owed money to some military hoods (I didn't ask why he owed money - it was better not to in Kinshasa). Wolf was not a client, just a friend who I drank beer with in Les Cyganes – a bar which I should probably say little else about, but in which I was drinking at the time his wife called. He was always immaculately dressed and told tall stories about finding vast diamonds that somehow always ended up in someone else’s safe.   

"Arses and elbows were indistinguishable at that moment and throughout this operation"   

I called Charlie, my oppo, who was a proper soldier (and whose stories were in contrast to Wolf's, all too true). Charlie thought this was a very bad idea (I’d woken him up a 2:00 am, so this was forgivable). But eventually I persuaded him to give it a go. I have to add here that none of us had done a kidnap exchange in Kinshasa and that arses and elbows were indistinguishable at that moment and throughout this 'operation'. The planned exchange was at a factory that Wolf owned on the edge of town (where he was being held – this was more like a heavily armed business transaction than a kidnapping. No black hoods or Alah Akbars, just loads of US dollars).   

The Chief Hood answered my call on his third cellphone number. Heavy Congolese ass-wiggling music pumped in the background. For a moment it crossed my mind that he was also in Les Cyganes and we would do the exchange in the men’s room. I tried to get the exchange moved to a public place, but with no luck. It was now or never. Although I had a team of 1,500 security guards we rather pathetically had only three firearms (the rest had been confiscated by a paranoid government): a .38 snub-nosed police special and two 9mm automatics (a Beretta and a Sig Sauer). We did have a very bad Congolese police ‘armed response team’ on the payroll, although they were more likely to run away or shoot us than be of any visible support. In contrast our own carefully trained Quick Response Force was excellent, but only armed with expandable batons and tasers.   

Despite Charlie's misgivings a plan was hatched at 5.00 am. Charlie in the car with a driver (foot on pedal) the Siggy, Berretta the med kit and a radio - keeping ‘eyes on’ me. “Don’t take your fucking eyes off me”, I think is precisely what I said. I had a crumpled plastic supermarket bag with $20,000 in cash and the police special concealed under my jacket. We would try and keep the exchange within twenty metres of the car. The police armed response team were hidden in a warehouse out back with a few AKs, the Quick Response Force behind them, to stop them running away or drinking all our beer. The plan went something like this - if it went to ratshit, Charlie would cover me while I legged it to the car, the quick response force would yell at the police armed response team and try to get them to make an appearance. If the hoods ran for it we would scram, hopefully (but not necessarily) with Wolfgang in tow. None of us had any confidence that it would work, but hey, a deal is a deal.   

In retrospect the whole thing was like a scene out of Breaking Bad, and about as stupid. It was a starless, hot and sweaty night, fragrant with that uniquely African mix of wet earth and fresh vegetation that rises imperceptibly after the evening rainstorms: the heavy din of bullfrogs and cicadas rising with it. Almost immediately the plan went pear shaped. The hoods were in the office and wanted me to take the cash to them there. Charlie could not see into the office from the car. He made one last appeal to forget it, and then I was walking towards the door. I remembered going into one of my finals exams, completely unprepared and hung over, and how I suddenly became very calm and said to myself, well fuck it - at least you can write three good answers, even if they are to the wrong questions.  

"Everything in my bones and Wolf’s face said lets get the fuck out of here"  

I immediately regretted taking the revolver, which if discovered was more likely to make them shoot me than serve any use. Four or five very big and colourfully uniformed guys were in the room. Wary - lots of rapid eye movement - scared themselves, and all armed with AKs. Wolf stood between two of them in ragged sweat pants and a dressing gown, as though he had been lifted on his way to the shower (which who knows, maybe he had?). Miraculously they didn't pat me down (Congolese military incompetence is to be praised), but they did insist on counting all the money. Wolf looked ghastly, his well manicured frame crumpled, his big Bavarian smile collapsed by fatigue and fear. I wasn't much better myself. I tried to puff myself up into a confident pose, but the gun lay heavily on my thigh and the sweat flowed freely between my shoulder blades. The AK 47s were on the table now - thank the good Lord - but the counting seemed to take forever.   

Eventually they were done, and in true Congolese style they began to smile and offer us drinks, Primus, the local brew, which came in 2 litre bottles we used to call ‘Family Size’. Everything in my bones and Wolf’s face said lets get the fuck out of here. But hospitality is hospitality, and you can't refuse a beer from three guys pointing AKs at your balls. We chatted politely with these weaponised gorillas while they showed us their fighting knives and laughed heartily at their own jokes. One of them asked me if I knew his brother in London ‘You must know him, he is very educated?’ I suggested I had heard about him, yes I really said that. I like beer, but this one took forever, and I dreaded the possibility of a second round for probably the first time in my then short but interesting life.   

Finally they let us leave. The walk to the car was almost as bad as waiting for the count to conclude, although I knew Charlie would at least be watching now and he was a very good shot. Wolf was silent on the way back. I understood – when your have just come back from what he thought was certain death you are not in the mood to party. Lazarus was probably a lot less grateful to Jesus than the Bible makes out. But we did drink our own beers in the car on the way back, and euphoria at still being alive kicked in shortly afterwards. I slept like a dog all through the next day. Kidnappings are a lot less fun these days, but this one was good enough for me. Well in fact it wasn't, I was carjacked six months later. But that's for another Steemit post.    

Susanne opened my eyes to the potential of the Blockchain and reminded me of my early days coding BASIC for my Master's thesis. I believe she can help us change a world persecuted by predatory governments, a world I have witnessed first hand. In the future I will write more serious posts about my experiences of nation states as killers. Ending up in the middle of the genocide in Rwanda, for example (also a guide to the best bars to experience genocide from). I have thought of calling that one ‘Chop Until You Drop’, but may have to change the working title. I am excited by the potential of pseudo-identities and virtual nations to provide the antidote to ethno-nationalism and its bastard child genocide. And that concept is what I will be working on in the coming months and years.   

 

James Fennell MBE has worked in warzones for 37 years across Africa, the Middle East, Central America, the Balkans and Asia. He has a weird interest in string theory and a less weird interest in making really, really good bloody marys. James has worked on using drones for humanitarian assistance and is an active supporter of BITNATION. He is currently working on BITNATION's security and refugee services. He has a wife, Susanne, and a puppy, General Patton, and lives and loves in Amsterdam.