“On a strict reading of the law,” Simon Mann admits, weighing up the rights and wrongs of staging a coups d'état, “we were on the wrong side of it”.
In 2004 Mann tried to overthrow President Obiang of Equatorial Guinea. He failed and was sentenced to 34 years in prison.
Now free, having been pardoned by the very president he tried to depose, the former SAS officer has some scores to settle - as well as a book to sell.
The 59-year-old spent five years pacing dingy African jails, counting his steps, calculating whether he had walked the distance home. But his co-conspirators, including Mark Thatcher, son of the former British prime minister, did not join him in prison. And Mann has not forgiven them for failing to come to his aid.
Speaking to the Huffington Post UK, the Old Etonian admits it may sound “old fashioned” but insists “there is a code of conduct expected among brothers-in-arms”.
“While I was in prison I was reading Chaucer,” he explains. “And in those times if you were somebody’s brother-in-arms it was a legally-binding contract.
“In medieval Europe if people got captured on the battlefield then they were ransomed, and it was all done in quite a civilised way. If one of you was captured then the others looked after the family, it meant that he would try and get the money together to pay a ransom,” he explains.
“Clearly it’s not legally binding on Mark Thatcher.”
It is clear Thatcher is not Mann’s favourite person. He says the prime minister’s son wanted to get his hands dirty and be part of the operation, but was unwilling to help out when things got rough.
In Mann’s book, Cry Havoc, Thatcher is described as “gung-ho” but disparaged for bringing somewhat “Micky Mouse” plans to the table.
Speaking now in the safety of central London's Chatham House after delivering a speech, it is clear Mann can still not quite believe there was not much honour among this particular band of thieves.
“He wasn’t simply going to be a shareholder, no, no, no, he wants to have a seat on the board,” he says.
“The difference in my mind is very distinct. He could have been a passive investor. Paid his money and lost it. I don’t look to help from that person.
“But my friends, my co-conspirators, they were brothers-in-arms. I haven’t forgiven them really, for not helping. For not helping Amanda [Mann’s wife].”
But was it not a little naïve to believe a gang assembled to take down an African leader would come to his aid?
Mann says he is “pretty realistic” about the company he was keeping. And insists he did not expect them to come dashing to the rescue at the risk of their own lives or fortunes. But he did expect them to do “something”.
“We’re not dealing with ‘nice’ people,” he acknowledges. “So I can’t really say I was expecting them to be saints.”
“But they are people with money, with experience and with contacts in this world. They are the best possible people, because of their qualifications, to try and come and get me out.”
The cast of characters of the plot read like a Hollywood movie; a former SAS officer, the CIA, a major European power, the son of a British prime minister and a paymaster named only, for legal reasons, as ‘The Boss’.
But the adventure did not have the blockbuster ending Mann had hoped. The coup was rumbled on the ground in Zimbabwe, from where Mann and the rest of the plotters were due to fly into Equatorial Guinea.
Captured, he spent four years in a Zimbabwe jail before being extradited to Equatorial Guinea to begin a 34-year long sentence.
After being bundled over the border Mann expected to be tried and sentenced within three weeks. But in the event his interrogation went on for three months.
“I was absolutely certain I was going to be torture, interrogated, shot and quite possibly eaten,” he recalls.
But as it turned out he was not cannibalised. And he began working with his captors to help them pursue his former comrades that he felt had betrayed him.
“The authorities were very, very interested in pursuing justice against the other plotters,” Mann says. “By that stage those other plotters, my erstwhile brothers- in-arms, I regarded as traitors.”
“There was a commonality of interest. Which as my interrogation went on became well established. They were learning so much. We were working together. In a strange kind of way carried out an investigation from within my interrogation.”
Mann, who had previously set up his own private military contracting firm, Executive Outcomes, is unashamedly frank about why he got involved in the plot. Money.
As he notes in his book, much of the attraction of the job was potential to make “supertanker loads of petrodollars”.
But having already made millions from previous ventures, there was, he admits, another reason to get involved as he was hardly a “desperado in the last chance saloon”.
Mann is proud of the part he played in “putting out the fires” in Angola and Sierra Leone during the 1990s when he helped organise a private military response to rebellions against their governments.
And for him, high on those successes, it seems the Equatorial Guinea mission was too tempting to turn down.
“It was a chance to climb a mountain that needed climbing,” he says. He did it “Because it was there”.
Looking back he concedes it was one mission too far and suggests an alternative title for his adventures: “Two house fires and a cock up”.
"Cry Havoc" by Simon Mann is out now. Follow him on Twitter @CaptSFM