FREDERICK FORSYTH, the bestselling author, has admitted being involved in a plot to overthrow an African government in a coup almost identical to the storyline of his novel The Dogs Of War.

The writer gave money to mercenaries in an aborted attempt to topple the leader of Equatorial Guinea more than 30 years before Sir Mark Thatcher, son of the former prime minister, was accused of backing a similar plot.

Forsyth, 67, said last week: “I don’t know whether I thought of it first and the mercenaries thought, ‘Wow, what a great idea’, or we were sitting around a table and they mentioned it first.”

The novelist, who also wrote The Day Of The Jackal, posed as a South African arms dealer to attend a meeting of gunrunners in Germany. He fled when his cover was blown.

Forsyth’s role in the aborted coup was first uncovered by The Sunday Times Insight team in 1978 from the diaries of a mercenary who had committed suicide during a siege in east London after he had shot a policeman. But the author denied it.

In The Dogs of War, a British tycoon hires a band of mercenaries to seize control of the fictitious African country of Zangora after the discovery of a £10 billion mountain of platinum. They land from a former naval attack craft called the Albatross and storm the dictator’s palace.

In real life, a soldier of fortune named Alexander Gay, who had fought in Congo and Biafra, chartered the Albatross in 1973 and loaded it with mercenaries to sail to the island of Fernando Po from which Francisco Macias ran Equatorial Guinea as president for life.

The plot was foiled by a Special Branch informant in Gibraltar. The boat and its invasion force were seized by Spanish police in the Canary Islands after a tip-off from the British embassy in Madrid.

“I took part in the plot in as much as I was chewing the fat and shooting the breeze with the others involved,” Forsyth said. “But as far as I was concerned any money I gave was for information and I pulled out before the plan was put into practice.

“Aerial photos of Fernando Po were brought to my flat. But I was not on the boat and did not know it had set sail. Luckily they never reached the island or they would have been slaughtered.”

Forsyth’s role is confirmed in a new book, The Wonga Coup, by Adam Roberts, former Southern Africa correspondent of The Economist, which focuses on the 2004 attempt by mercenaries to seize control of Equatorial Guinea.

While researching his book, Roberts found a previously classified Foreign Office cable in the National Archives that described the 1973 coup attempt.

Recognising the similarity with The Dogs of War, Roberts challenged Forsyth, who told him: “I originally postulated a question to myself. Would it be possible for a group of paid and bought-for mercenaries to topple a republic? I looked around and saw Fernando Po, and every story about the country was gruesome . . . I decided it could be done. If you stormed the palace . . . probably by sunrise you could take over, provided you have a substitute African president and announced it was an internal coup d’état.

“I began to explore the world of black market arms . . . I penetrated under subterfuge, using a South African name, and developed my theme.”

He said last week: “My true identity became known when one of the arms dealers, sitting in the back of his limousine at traffic lights, saw my photograph in a bookstore window in Hamburg promoting the German version of The Jackal.

“Someone called me and advised me to get out of town. I was half-dressed but grabbed my passport, left everything else and jumped on a moving train which dumped me in Amsterdam.”

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