by Alex MacBeth
Strange noises soon eroded the Comandante’s confidence. He had walked through these same bushes with a gun and a helmet thirty years before, but then he had walked with a squadron and comrades, hope and belief. Now he was hunted, ragged and alone, accompanied only by the squadrons of mosquitoes around his face. He pulled out the disc. It looked scratched, perhaps unusable. He cursed himself for not having listened to it before. He had thrown away the only chance he would have of solving the Stokes case and taking down Palma. He could have listened to the disc in Tete, anywhere in fact, and it wouldn’t matter that later he had fallen into a lake with it. Now the disc was destroyed and the case could never be solved. Palma had been right about one thing, at least. He, Felisberto, was a moron.
The sun rose high in the sky and Felisberto walked on through vast banana and tea plantations, still cursing himself for his procrastinations. He sheltered beneath the large green leaves of the bananas, eating any that he could find that were not rotten. The harvest was over and flies, ants, birds, monkeys, bugs and bacteria had eaten most of what was left. The Comandante asked a farmer for water, topped up his bottle and walked the opposite way from where the sun was setting. As the sun went west, Felisberto emerged from a large ruined tea plantation onto an asphalted road. A passenger minivan came after an hour but the conductor pushed the Comandante off upon seeing his empty pockets. At least two-dozen cars drove past without stopping until a motorbike driver pulled up to check his oil a few hundred yards in front of the Comandante. Felisberto introduced himself and helped the young driver clean his spark plug. He sucked the petrol out of the bike’s tank and made sure the carburettor hadn’t flooded.
“It is all ready to go,” announced the Comandante.
“My name is Ezekiel, and I’m going to Mutuali if you want a lift,” said the grateful young driver. The two sped off, arriving in the village of Mutuali just before dark. Felisberto thanked Ezekiel and declined an offer of somewhere to stay, saying he had to visit an old uncle nearby. Ezekiel offered to drive him there but the Comandante said he’d rather walk. He didn’t want to attract any more attention to himself. He would wait until it was dark and sleep in the compound of the local school until morning before boarding the first available train heading either west to Cuamba, or, if he was lucky, east all the way to Nampula. He would sell the machete and bag Thomas had given him and drum up enough money for a ticket. If he could reach Nampula he would get Samora or Naiss to collect him. He would save the explanations for later.
The Comandante arrived at the train station – an old warehouse beside a track –and lay down behind a wall out of sight. It was warm and he needed no cover. There was no train in sight and the Comandante had no idea exactly when one would come but he knew that one passenger train went each way three times a week. There was no timetable on the platform, but then there wasn’t really a platform either. Surrounded by familiar nightjars, geckos and cicadas, he felt he’d restored a bloodline to his old self, his life in waiting. If he could hustle a ticket or avoid being caught, he could be in Nampula within forty-eight hours. The thought sent him into a deep sleep and for once he managed to rest without either Palma or the Michelin Man perverting his dreams.
Chapter Fifteen
Felisberto found a buyer for his machete and the bag that Thomas had given him. He bought a pile of stale puto pastries and stuffed them in his mouth two-at-a-time. He had slept in the open-air beside the train station and awoken hungry and thirsty at dawn. A young gang had troubled him at around midnight the night before but the Comandante had merely shown his machete to alter their course. A routine patrol unit had passed by around 10pm but the Comandante had hidden out of view. Nobody knew when any train would come. The next Nampula-bound train should have arrived yesterday, said one old lady.
The sun rose high in the sky. Felisberto filled his bottle of water and waited under the shade of a tree by the station. After six or so hours an old lady took pity on him and brought him a chapati and some rice. The Comandante thanked her and devoured the food, which sustained him for a while longer.
The train finally arrived the following morning and departed again after an hour or so parked at Mutuali station. The Comandante had managed to scrape enough money for a ticket to Nampula but he would have no water or food for the trip, which should last eight hours. But it could last up to two or three days, if the train broke down or the driver randomly disappeared at a station to revisit an old fling for a few hours. Felisberto didn’t care how long it would take, for he was finally homeward bound.
Foremost in his thoughts was the Stokes case and how Palma fitted into the equation. The plane Felisberto had jumped out of must have crashed. Had Palma survived? Palma had said he’d found power. He had mentioned the ministry. Had he been planning a coup? If Xin and Hua weren’t working for Palma, then who were they working for? What was Frangopelo’s role in everything? And how would the disc connect the fleet of suspects?
Felisberto hoped that Samora’s technical skills would be able to salvage the contents of the disc and tie everything together. The Comandante had always resented his deputy’s obsession with technology. Now he realised how much he needed Samora’s skills to compensate for the mistakes he personally had made. If only he had listened to the disc, somehow. If only he could give it a name less pathetic than disco pequeño. Could it be Frangopelo talking to Palma? Stokes must have been there. What was so damaging that Stokes had to be killed? The Comandante needed answers to all these questions and the train’s snail pace began to annoy him. He was anxious to return to his command station. He had been away nearly two weeks.
The Comandante awoke from his self-pity with a man staring at him through the blackness of the night. The diesel train was roaring through the dark countryside and most passengers were sleeping on the hard wooden benches. Some even slept on the aisles between rows of seats and even high up on luggage racks. The compartment was packed. A child was crying somewhere in the distance and Felisberto could hear a goat slamming against a luggage rack. The man opposite Felisberto kept staring at him until the Comandante broke the deadlock.
“Is there a problem?” asked Felisberto, lacing his question with aggression. The man showed the Comandante a knife, which glinted from time to time as the train went past the sporadic lights outside. The man rubbed his fingers together and suggested Felisberto empty his pockets. He’s within striking distance, thought the Comandante, as he adjusted his position and kicked the thief in the face without moving out of his chair.
The thief cracked his head on the edge of the chair and fell back. Nobody moved or seemed to notice. The Comandante wrestled the knife from the thief’s grasp and knocked him out. He took a few coins which had fallen out of the concussed thief’s pocket, put the knife in his own pocket and walked to the restaurant cart at the other end of the train. He ordered a beer and an egg sandwich as it was all he could afford with the thief’s money. He sat down and read the newspaper. It was a week old but felt like breaking news to Felisberto.
A lot had happened while he had been away. A reporter had been kidnapped near Nacala Port after trying to gain access at night to film the arrival of a large shipment. The police denied being involved, but the newspaper implicated corrupt local officers. That is precisely why I hate journalists, thought Felisberto. They make too many assumptions. Felisberto couldn’t help making one of his own. Could Colonel Li be involved in the kidnapping?
The Comandante finished the hard news and settled on the ‘Green’ page near the sports section. The minister of the environment was protesting that too many wildlife reserve licenses were being granted to foreign nationals. This had led, he argued, to the depletion of wildlife stock in the country’s parks because of an increase in poaching. The minister called on South Africa and Zimbabwe to collaborate to catch smugglers and for the establishment of a transborder commission to encourage trilateral collaboration. In a separate environmental feature, an emotionally charged piece told of the death of a young elephant p
oisoned by the water at a nature reserve in Nampula. An elephant gets cholera and it makes the news, thought the Comandante.
He flicked back to the first pages and saw Minister Frangopelo was also in the news again; although here the focus was on his role in government and not another attempt on his life. A young MP was questioning Frangopelo’s policies as oil and gas minister and calling for his resignation. He should be tried for “mismanagement of the nation’s mineral assets,” said the young MP. The revelation that twenty-three separate oil and gas plans had been devised in different ministries, each contradicting the official plan put forward by Frangopelo’s ministry, had ignited much discussion in the National Assembly, the country’s Parliament. Frangopelo had caused a stir by suggesting all oil and gas exploration licenses granted in the last ten years be reviewed because of the possibility of “corruption having played a key part in some.”
In other news, Ferroviário de Beira, the football club the Comandante had played for, were struggling. The club faced the humiliating prospect of dropping out of the Moçambola, Mozambique’s premier division. The team had lost its last six games and voices in the dressing room were saying wages hadn’t been paid and resources withheld or even stolen by members of the board.
Felisberto checked the paper from cover-to-cover and found no word of Palma’s fate. He put it down and watched the small mountains of rock float behind fields of lush green through the window. The train roared on past miles of such green fields with tall grass, cutting through vast swathes of land. No man’s land. The Comandante found a seat in a new cabin and fell asleep.
When he awoke the carriage was empty and the train was parked in a station. The Comandante recognised the scenery through the window and knew he had arrived in Nampula. He did his best to straighten out his ragged clothes and stepped out of the train and onto the platform, which doubled up as the market centre either side of the rails.
As he walked out of the station and into the afternoon traffic on one of Nampula’s busiest streets, the Comandante became aware of his own smell. It was a stagnant yet repugnant odour that had somehow been concealed until now, perhaps liberated by the Comandante’s return to his senses in his home territory. He needed to wash, urgently. His shoes had holes in the soles and his clothes reflected the various ordeals his body had been through in the last few weeks. He became anxious about meeting old friends or colleagues he hadn’t seen for years and stamping the image of his current self on them forever. He needed to clean up, and for that he needed some money. The only person he could go to was Naiss. He went to the Provincial Department of Immigration and asked a young street seller to deliver a hand-written message asking Naiss to meet him at the bakery on the corner. Five minutes later Naiss appeared.
“You look like shit,” said the immigration officer with evident concern.
“Don’t feel great.”
“What…”
“Don’t ask, I’ll tell you later. I need some money, Naiss, a quick loan to tide me over for the next couple of days.”
Naiss reached into his pocket and handed Felisberto the equivalent of a hundred US dollars in local currency, nearly 4,000 meticais.
“Will that do?” asked Naiss with his hand still in his pocket.
The Comandante smiled appreciatively.
“I’m not sure if I should give you these but I wouldn’t know what else to do with them,” said Naiss, handing over the Comandante’s gun and badge. Felisberto took them and drank the coffee Naiss had ordered for him. “And watch out, Matola, something is brewing down your way,” warned Naiss.
“Any idea what it could be?”
“These acuna will buy anything we are willing to sell, including our own children,” said Naiss. “Not to mention the Chinese,” Naiss added, launching into an extended ‘Zzzz’. He scribbled his number on a napkin and disappeared.
Felisberto went to the Hotel Monte Carlo, a low-profile pensão near the city’s main market. He hailed a taxi, stopping en route to buy a new set of cheap clothes from an old woman on a street corner. He took a room at the Monte Carlo, showered with a bucket of water and paid the receptionist to get him some eggs from the rooftop restaurant. He fell asleep before they arrived.
He was sitting in the plane with Palma again. The Michelin Man was piloting the aircraft but his head had smashed the roof and was feeding off the black clouds. Palma was leaning out of the window sucking oil from the exhaust as his men laughed hysterically – floating around the plane with Felisberto’s parachute.
The Comandante slept nearly nineteen hours before he was awoken by the sound of the call to prayer from a nearby mosque. He showered again and ate a mouthful of the eggs the hotel staff had left on his table. They tasted foul. He didn’t care, he needed to get in touch with Mossuril and his family. He bought a cheap mobile and a line and struggled to connect them. He dialled the comando.
“Sim, this is the comando of Mossuril, who is calling?”
It was Albertina. The Comandante hung up, waited five minutes and dialled again. This time Samora answered angrily.
“Samora, it’s me,” said Felisberto.
“Comandante, where the fuck have you been?” said Samora instinctively, later apologising for his outburst.
“I need you to collect me in Nampula.”
“But, Comandante—”
“Samora, there is a lot we need to talk about. And we will. How soon can you be here?”
Mossuril’s temporary commander said he could be at the Monte Carlo in three hours.
Felisberto typed Naiss’ number written on the napkin into his new phone. His hands were too big for the keys and he found himself typing 3s instead of 6s. He asked his friend for Comandante Antonio’s number, promised to behave, and then hung up. He rang the number Naiss had given him. “Good afternoon, district of Nacala, how can I help you?”
Felisberto asked to be put through to Comandante Antonio. The latter answered and excused himself while he finished eating what sounded like a piece of meat. Felisberto tried to smell it while he listened to Antonio chew. He was hungry. “What can I do for you, Mossuril?” said Antonio. Felisberto asked about the kidnapping of the journalist and the mysterious containers at the port. He did not disclose anything about Stokes, but mentioned Colonel Li.
“Mossuril,” said Comandante Antonio between chewing, “are you obsessed with the Chinese? If I was you I would stay at a safe distance from this Colonel Li.”
“So you do know him.”
“There’s a lot of Chinese here, as you know,” said Comandante Antonio, ripping with his teeth. “Some of them are peasants poorer than us, some of them are gentlemen like we’ll never be. Some of them are killers,” said Antonio, chewing his words.
“What is Colonel Li into? Organs, drugs?” Felisberto proffered.
“Diamonds, gold, albino limbs, ivory, lion cock, monkey brain, precious feathers. I wouldn’t be surprised if I open a container one day and find a load of virgins being smuggled to heaven,” said Antonio. “Anyway, you’ll never find Li,” he continued. “We tried for two years and never caught so much as a shadow of him. Every time we get near him he disappears. He’s protected from high on up, I’m telling you. Forget about Li, for your own sake.” Felisberto asked Antonio about the ivory smuggling story he had read in the newspaper. “Oh that,” said Antonio, “that was something I just made up for the media.” They laughed heartily and both hung up soon after. The more he enquired about Colonel Li, the more it seemed he had stepped into the path of a lethal killer. Was it time to report to his superiors?
Samora arrived two hours late. “Mora,” said the Comandante. Samora blushed and smiled. He had added an extra smartphone to his fleet and could hardly keep his eyes off it. As they drove the three hour journey back to Mossuril, the Comandante had to remind Samora several times to keep his eyes on the road, not the phone. Felisberto then proceeded to summarise to his deputy the series of events that had befallen him since he had so suddenly disappeared.
&
nbsp; He started by recounting Bia’s death and the disc at Stokes’ house, then Tete, the plane, the fall, the lake, Malawi, and finally his journey home, opting not to mention anything about Palma.
“One for the press that, Comandante,” said Samora, trying to digest what his commander was telling him. “So where is the disc anyway?”
Felisberto pulled the sealed plastic bag with the disc from his pocket and showed it to Samora. He analysed it with one eye, the other eye on the road. “This is a minidisc. Looks damaged,” said Samora and Felisberto’s heart sunk. He had prepared himself for the worst-case scenario but had hoped that Samora might have a solution. He had also hoped that Samora would not instantly know what the disco pequeño was. “Mini disc.” His deputy’s familiarity with the device unsettled Felisberto. “Can it be fixed?” asked Felisberto half-heartedly. “I’ll need to give it to a guy I know called Lourenço,” Samora told him. They drove the rest of the way in silence, each man in his thoughts. When they arrived in Mossuril it was dark. Felisberto walked home without even saying goodbye to Samora. He needed to see his children.
Sofia saw him first and hugged her arms round his legs screaming “Daddy! Daddy’s home!” Germano soon came running too and Felisberto tried to lift him into his arms but couldn’t on account of his broken ribs. Rambo leapt on the Comandante’s face and licked his wounds. Word soon got around that Mossuril’s absent Comandante had returned. A near hysterical neighbour ran through the local market screeching for Dona Paola to hurry home to her prodigal son. Thus Felisberto’s mother soon arrived with stocks for an evening meal and a neighbour to help her cook it.
