THE FULFILMENT OF A BOOK of this magnitude involves the pulling together of many minds. It started with Madelon, long before I laid the almost-complete manuscript before David Farnsworth, my publisher in Philadelphia. She followed the progress of the book from early on and, while rarely effusive about my scribblings, she declared after her first read that this was the one that would work. She reckoned it was my best book yet and I suspect she might be right. Farnsworth passed the manuscript to Stephen Smith, his chief copy-taster, and he loved it. After putting the project in the hands of my agent, Curtis Russell, in Toronto, Casemate was ready to go.
A lot of things still had to come together before we reached the stage at which we actually had something tangible. These included the illustrations and Bruce Gonneau in Durban played a critical role in scanning hundreds of slides and negatives and sending them abroad. More photos arrived from people like Charlie Cole of Newsweek; Dave McGrady who organised the bounty hunt in Rhodesia; Harry Claflin, with whom I shared a bunkhouse at the Ilopango air base in San Salvador; Louis de Waal and René Coulon, both of whom head Police Air Wings in South Africa; my old friend Richard Davis, with whom I went into the Balkans on that crazy adventure involving landmines; and the indomitable Jaco Ackerman who, with my old friend Brian Gaisford in New York, organised the Serengeti safari.
Without Walter Volker and Manie Troskie taking care of some of the groundwork for me from South Africa, I might have floundered.
One individual above all others stands out. That is Anita Baker, my editor, who took this work in hand and produced what you have before you. With a huge amount of detail, it was never an easy job, but Anita completed the job in half the time that it normally takes to cobble together 500 pages.
My lovely Marilyn put up with me through a good deal of it in Sault Sainte Marie in Canada and, certainly, that needed a lot of patience. Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t thank Susan Sizemore of Seaside, Oregon, for her efforts involving research when I most needed them.