by Alex MacBeth
In his time off The Giant led ground offences to attack enemy camps. He had been wounded in almost every part of his body but still he danced as if he’d never been in a war. That’s what Felis liked most about The Giant, or the ‘GM Bomb’, as he was also known. His infectious devotion to any cause, however ephemeral, appealed to the Comandante.
“Shall we go?” Julio urged. Felisberto patted his pocket. The disc. He wanted to stop by a store and ask a young whizz-kid what the disc was. He would buy a machine that could play it and listen to it then and there. He chided himself for his technophobia, realising that Samora would have listened to the disc within minutes of finding it. He was determined to master the technical hurdle on his own and show Samora and everyone else who doubted him, once and for all, that he was not the ‘old dinosaur’ they all thought him to be.
They said their goodbyes and negotiated a tchopela ride home. The old comrades sat and drank two last scotches on the terrace overlooking the river at Julio’s. Felisberto couldn’t help but feel a little bit envious of his friend’s settled family life.
They talked of the past and their adventures together. “Felis, I have something for you. I’ve been saving it all these years’!” said Julio and ran back into the house. He returned a few seconds later with a Russian parachute wrapped in plastic. “You asked me to keep it for you. You said the war might be over but it could come back anytime. Maybe you need to keep it to remind yourself that the war is still over twenty-two years after it ended,” said Julio, handing the parachute to the Comandante. Felisberto took it in his hands. It meant nothing to him. But he did his best to make his friend feel like the exchange was an important moment for him too. The parachute had saved Felisberto’s life several times but it wasn’t something he would dwell on now. The war was over, as Julio had said.
They sat in silence listening to the flow of the river. “Thank you,” said Julio.
“For what?”
“For saving my life in Chimoio.”
In the spring of 1987 Julio had driven into Chimoio from a nearby camp he was stationed at to buy cigarettes for his battalion. The abandoned villages around the military barracks had been dry for months and the men had been promised a bonus of cigarettes after a brutal and devastating winter campaign. Julio, as the battalion’s assistant commander, had driven to the volatile town, smashing through a rebel-held roadblock on the outskirts to avoid gunfire. As he was walking out of one of the only open stores still stocking basic goods, a young Renamo fighter put a gun to his head asking for the cigarettes. Life had become cheap and Julio could feel his was in the balance.
Felisberto happened to be guarding the street in front of the city’s premier hotel that day, where a secret meeting of military forces was under way. Crouched between the parapet and a grubby roof top swimming pool, he found Julio’s assailant in his line of fire. Felisberto killed the teenage Renamo fighter with one shot. That is how he and Julio had met.
Julio stood up abruptly and walked inside again, returning this time with a broad grin and an empty pack of Camel cigarettes. “This is one of the packs I bought that day. Keep it,” he said.
Felisberto admired how his friend dealt with the past, compressing all the grief into memorabilia. Felisberto couldn’t. Every man he had killed walked, ate, drank and slept with him. His ghosts followed him. The teenage Renamo fighter he had killed to safeguard Julio and the cigarettes still appeared in his nightmares. He had killed somebody’s son, like so many others. Now, a quarter of a century later, when it came to talking of plans for the future, Felisberto didn’t know what to tell his old comrade. All that occurred to him was that it was time to go home.
Chapter Eleven
Felisberto awoke before dawn. His head ached from the whisky. He rounded up his things and wrote a note:
Dear Julio,
I am sorry to leave like this but I must urgently return to my post. It was a pleasure to meet your beautiful family, but something has come up.
I hope it won’t be ten years before we meet again. My apologies and congratulations to Claudia.
Abraços (on one leg)
Felis
Felisberto placed the letter in an open envelope he found on the mantelpiece and sealed it closed. He grabbed his bag, puffed out by the parachute, and left. Outside it was simmering and getting hotter by the minute. The light pierced the Comandante’s eyes and threw him off balance. If there is a breeze in Tete, he thought, it’s ineffective. He wondered if the temperature was still in the late 30s or if it had tipped over into the 40s and then he wondered what difference it would make to know. He accepted that he liked facts; they were like stepping stones connecting paths, guiding him blindly forwards.
Felisberto walked to a small tchopela stand and found the next driver in line asleep. He knocked on the window and lit a Gran Turismo.
“Where to, chefe?” said the half-conscious driver, rubbing his eyes.
The Comandante opted for the airport. Something inside him wanted to return to the phantom Bia’s home. Enough already, he chastised himself. He had let his imagination run wild.
“That’ll be 400MT,” said the driver. Felisberto looked for his wallet in his pocket and realised he had forgotten the camel packet souvenir Julio had given him. Would his friend be offended?
“You were quick, brother,” Felisberto complimented, pulling himself out of the rickshaw. “But I happen to know the price is three hundred.” The terminal was practically empty, except for a few employees of Brazilian mining companies boarding their own private planes. Felisberto took his ‘ticket’ to the counter and hoped he wouldn’t have to relive the same check-in experience as on the outbound. Waes, the Comandante’s well-proportioned friend at customs in Nampula, had ensured that the staff at Areas de Nampula had issued the Comandante an open one-year return. But the alterations were written in pen on an expired limited edition lottery offer. “Thank you, sir,” said a tall, well-rounded girl in her twenties behind the airline’s desk when Felisberto presented the ticket. “Do you have any luggage to check in today, sir?”
The check-in official simply handed the Comandante his boarding pass and wished him a nice flight. Felisberto bought a map of the region and put it in his bag thinking it would be a nice souvenir to put in the comando in Mossuril. Then he remembered that the comando had been blown up and was probably still in a state of dereliction, certainly not fit to host a newly-bought map of his friend Julio’s province.
The Comandante took a seat in the departure lounge and flicked through his phone. Samora would normally have done this tedious task. Felisberto struggled with the fiddly keys himself under the circumstances and was eventually rewarded. Samora wanted to know where he was and when he would come back. He said he’d had a breakthrough in the Stokes case. Felisberto laboriously texted to say he’d call him as soon as he landed in Nampula. A message from somebody called AIRPORTWIFI kept popping up on his screen as he tried to write his message. Felisberto tried to make it disappear by hammering various keys. Eventually he succeeded. There was another message:
The kids are okay, they miss their father. Come home soon, mum.
He dozed in his seat, imagining his children eating lunch alone. They were losing their father because of a stupid British journalist. The last call for his flight finally awoke him. He was the only passenger left.
He looked through his pockets for his boarding card and gave it to the same tall, curvaceous girl he had met at the check-in desk. The tarmac was so hot it was sweating from the contact with the wheels of the planes. Petrol wafted through the air in chains like a prisoner of the heat. The Comandante carried his bag and stepped onto the small twelve-seat Cessna Caravan aircraft. The front two rows were taken by a group of men wearing shades, possibly sportsmen or a convention of some kind, for they were all wearing the same colour suits. He took a seat at the back. The pilot arrived, closed the door and made a vague announcement about safety cards being somewhere in the plane. He typed some coordinates into t
he satellite navigation system and turned the aircraft towards the runway.
The plane reached a cruising altitude and the Comandante drifted off to sleep again. He awoke to the sound of someone calling out his name. “Felisberto!” he heard again. He must be dreaming again, he thought.
He wasn’t, he realised; it was one of the men at the front of the plane who had called out his name. How did he know his name? “Who is it?”
A small fat man turned round and looked Felisberto in the eye. “It is I, old friend. It is I. And I am glad you are now able to join us, at last,” said a familiar voice from the front of the plane.
Felisberto looked first at the door and then at the pilot.
“There is no point in assessing your options. You have none. The less you struggle, the easier it will be,” continued the voice.
“What do you want, Palma?”
“All in good time, Comandante, all in good time. After all, we haven’t seen each other for eighteen years, although you were intrusive enough to come to my house last night.” The Comandante held eye contact, neither confirming nor denying Palma’s accusation. “I know you were there. I know you were at the party too. And if you haven’t figured it out yet, we’ve been following you for some time.”
“Since when?”
“Since you showed up in Pemba with an interest in Xin and Hua.”
“You blew up the comando.”
“I didn’t,” said Palma, bursting into laughter. “What do you take me for? I had somebody else do it.”
“Colonel Li?”
“Colonel who? You know I wouldn’t opt for Chinese labour if I could work with Africans,” said Palma. “But let’s just say that in this specific case, yes, I think we did go for Colonel Li in the end.”
“So you planted the capulana with the note in my car. You sent Bia. You… shot Bia. But I saw her… You tried to kill me. Wait, you’re Xin and Hua?” Felisberto’s mind was like a child in a toy store. He couldn’t focus on anything. How long had Palma and his network been watching him?
“Don’t be silly, Felis. You are still a detective, aren’t you? We worked with Xin and Hua but our relationship grew slightly… colder in recent times. No, what we are into this time is much bigger than Xin and Hua. Much bigger than anything you can imagine, Felis.”
“Is Bia dead?” asked Felisberto.
“Didn’t you see her yesterday?”
Felisberto realised he had never actually seen Bia die. She had been shot, yes. Yet she was alive. He lambasted himself for not having trusted his instinct to return to the house.
“I hear you enjoyed Bia,” said Palma raising his eyebrows. The other men laughed. “A whore. You know that. Don’t confuse having your dick sucked well with humanitarian affection. You know people come and go, Felis, don’t play cadet with me,” said Palma as his subordinates laughed like a chorus of ‘yes men‘.
Felisberto stood up and took a step towards the front of the plane. Three of the giants blocked the aisle and revealed their weapons. The Comandante put his hands in the air in mock surrender and sat down again. “As I said, your only option is to listen and then die quietly,” resumed Palma. “If you behave like a good boy we might just shoot you in the head before we throw you out of the plane.” Felisberto didn’t flinch; he was resigned. Palma continued.
“What happened eighteen years ago was unfortunate, I admit. You were a good cop, honest but hard. You and your other friend, what was he called?”
“Naiss.”
“Naiss!” laughed Palma. “Of course, how could I forget? Good men they were,” said Palma, waving his finger at his bodyguards. “But stupid too. Oh, so stupid. Just like now. Running around like a headless chicken trying to investigate matters way beyond your jurisdiction. What are you even doing here, Felis?”
“Screw you, Palma.”
Palma’s men moved as if to inflict retribution for the slur on their boss. Palma waved them back to their seats.
“It’s natural for a man to go through an elevated stage of pride when he accepts that death is the only future.”
“Where does John Stokes fit in?” Felisberto asked.
“Don’t you know?” teased Palma. “You did go looking in Stokes’ flat, didn’t you?” Palma continued, moving one row closer to the Comandante and shuffling his largish frame into an aisle seat. “I’ve put on a pound or two,” he said faux-blushing.
“Who was Stokes to you?”
“Stokes was one of those journalists who at first liked the free wine and the parties and was happy to file tales of animals and AIDS victims. Then suddenly he decided he needed to tell everyone the truth. You see the truth needs to be well-packaged for it to be met with the right response, Felis. Stokes’ version wouldn’t have washed,” said Palma, lighting a cigarette.
“The truth about what, Palma?”
“To be honest with you Comandante, I leave the details to my men. They’ve all done fancy degrees in engineering and they enjoy the numbers of it all. The only numbers I enjoy are the zeros added to the figures in my bank account.”
“You always were a mercenary disguised as a socialist,” retorted Felisberto. One of the men shot him with his fingers and the Comandante raised his middle finger to greet him back. “What are you up to this time, Palma?”
“The nation has found its prodigal child. Wheat fed mouths but never made anyone rich. It moved hearts and adorned party logos. All those tomatoes and potatoes are yesterday’s gold.” Palma leant in closer to Felisberto and whispered. “The gold today is power, Felis. We are not selling calamidades anymore,” said Palma, hardly able to contain a chuckle. The ‘yes men’ broke into laughter on cue.
“There is a lot of this power, but there are a lot of us, you see. And I wasn’t invited to the launch party. So should I share my pot? Share it with the all the other vultures that betrayed me earlier? While I was in a coma there was an uprising at my ministry and by the time I returned I was no longer a player. I was not even invited to sit on the bench!” Palma said with a whine in his voice. The ‘yes men’ made sad cat eyes and Felisberto had to stifle a smile at the strange sight.
A quick assessment of the situation left the Comandante feeling ironically low. He was in a tight spot. The lack of manoeuvring space was confirmed as he tried to reposition himself in his seat. As he did so, his right foot hit the side of his carpetbag containing the parachute Julio had given him. He sighed and thought that it probably wouldn’t work but it was surely still worth a try. Worst case scenario, it meant a different kind of death.
The door could be opened from the inside but he would need a distraction if he was going to buy the time he’d need to get to the handle, put on the parachute and jump. It would never work, he thought. On the up side, Palma’s right arm was slow so he would not be able to grab a gun and stop him. On the downside, the heavies sitting either side of him would.
“Could I have a last wish cigar?” Felisberto asked of Palma.
Palma grabbed a Montecristo from his pocket and passed it to Felisberto. One of the heavies passed him a lighter and Felisberto savoured his distant memories of Cuba. He remembered Monica, a nurse from Cienfuegos he had met at a Silvio Rodriguez concert in Havana on the ten-year anniversary of Che Guevara’s death. It was October 9, 1977. The capitalist world order was the enemy and on every beach, bar and street corner there was revolution in the air. Now he was in the air, about to die.
“Resignation, the most sensible approach to certain death. Forget about all this business, Felis,” said Palma. “Stick to football in heaven.”
Felisberto smoked and hooked one foot into the parachute. He dropped his cigar on his lap and leaned down to fetch it, clipping the parachute to his ankle. “What are you doing?” asked one of the heavies. “Smoking,” said the Comandante resurfacing. He broke the lighter he had in his hand. “You are middle-aged and you still don’t know how to smoke a cigar? Did Castro not teach you anything in Cuba?” teased Palma. “We really are killing a moron, boys.�
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“Tell me about Xin and Hua,” Felisberto asked, piqued at being called ‘middle-aged’ when he was still quite young, frankly.
Everyone on the plane settled down as Palma began to recount how he first met Colonel ‘Zzzzz’ Li. Felisberto slipped the disc, now sealed in a small plastic bag, into his pocket. He nodded his head and pretended to listen, all the while pouring lighter fuel on the chair and carpet.
He burned the bottom of his seat with his cigar. Then the seat in front. Then the carpet.
He poured the lighter fuel on the chair, which caught fire, spreading to the aisle. Smoke drifted through the back two rows of the small plane. Felisberto made a leap for the door, grabbing his parachute. His hand instinctively went for the safety valve then the handle. One of Palma’s men jumped through the flames onto the end of a kick from Felisberto, who fiddled with the door. Another punched him in the ribs but Felisberto managed to crack the assailant’s head on a piece of iron below the back row. Finally the door opened and Felisberto fell with it to the floor.
The outside air burst into the cabin like a hoard of conquering Barbarians, throwing everything out of place. One of Palma’s men fired and then threw himself at Felisberto, knocking his parachute to the floor. The man was stronger than the Comandante. As they struggled, Felisberto pulled a small blade from his pocket. He slashed the thug and broke free of his headlock.
Felisberto grabbed the parachute and put it on. He threw the door at an oncoming assailant who lost his balance and fell overboard. A shot whizzed past Felisberto’s head and he threw his shoe at Palma’s face to buy himself some time. The old minister slipped and smashed his head on the edge of a seat.
The last time the Comandante had jumped out of a plane was in the Gorongosa Mountains during his days in the military. Back then he knew he would probably land in enemy territory. This time all he had to do was ensure his parachute opened and land anywhere on planet earth. There would be no fixed battleground after that.
