On Leopard Rock: A Life of Adventures

by Wilbur Smith

  By now, Levasseur was blind in one eye and wore a patch. After establishing an alliance with two British pirates, Edward England and John Taylor, he embarked on a campaign of robbery unmatched in the annals of piracy. With the help of England and Taylor, he captured one of the Great Mughal’s richly laden pilgrim ships to Mecca, attacked the Laccadive Islands deep in the Indian Ocean, and sold the loot to Dutch traders. As his fortunes grew, so did Levasseur’s confidence as a pirate captain. Edward England was accused of being too humane by the barbaric Levasseur and Taylor so they marooned England on Mauritius and went on to carry out what was heralded as the greatest act of piracy in history: the capture of the Portuguese galleon The Virgin of the Cape. The galleon had been carrying the Bishop of Goa and the Viceroy of Portugal to Lisbon, and was laden with gold and silver bars, priceless works of art, pearls, diamonds, and silk, as well as the seven-foot-high “Flaming Cross of Goa,” a spectacular piece of gold work set with emeralds, diamonds and rubies, so heavy it needed three of Levasseur’s crew to carry it. The Virgin’s men surrendered without a fight, their cannons already lost overboard in a storm, and the value of the treasure has been estimated at one billion pounds sterling in today’s money. The haul was so huge that the pirates could afford an act of magnanimity: they left the passengers unharmed, and sailed off into the sunset, the richest pirates in all the Seven Seas.

  The plunder of the Virgin sent shock waves around the nautical world. So feared had Levasseur become that the governor of Reunion Island, east of Madagascar, tried to broker an amnesty to all the pirates of the Indian Ocean. For Levasseur the price was too high—he skipped the parlay and settled down, in secret, right where I now stood, in the heart of the Seychelles. There he buried his treasure and tried to live a peaceful life, but the past caught up with him. Levasseur met his end, an unrepentant pirate, on July 7, 1730, but, as the noose was put around his neck, he made a declaration that would echo down the centuries, ensuring his legend continued. “Find my treasure, the one who may understand it!” he exclaimed and cast a necklace containing a cryptogram of seventeen lines out into the crowd.

  In that moment, Levasseur inspired generations of treasure hunters like the ones who had come to dig up the beaches of Cerf Island. He captured the imaginations of writers too, his story leaving a lasting impression on Robert Louis Stevenson, whose novel Treasure Island is a classic of the genre. Basil Rathbone played Levasseur in the 1935 Errol Flynn film Captain Blood. He had inspired me to turn back to the Courtneys and imagine what the lives of their ancestors must have been like, sailing the same seas as Levasseur in piracy’s Golden Age.

  This beautiful, unspoiled island was a place to seclude myself. Its history was ravishing and ebullient and from sunlit cove to jungle headland, you could feel its vitality all around. A place like this had already given birth to legends. Now, it would give birth to fables of my own.

  •••

  In typical Smith fashion, Cap Colibri started small, but grew as the years went by. We began with a main house built in the traditional Seychellois style, with deep, shadowy verandas wrapped around the entire building. It had a large open-plan living area, four bedrooms and three bathrooms, a kitchen and a scullery. Then we built a two-bedroom home for the night watchman and a three-bedroom home for the housekeeper and other staff. We kept the original trees, from redwoods and mango to monkey puzzles and banana, giving the setting an exotic character, and, in the grounds, we built a separate air-conditioned building that would house my study. Geckoes, tree frogs and chameleons were in abundance alongside the brilliant colored birds, making our fantasy island paradise a reality.

  Cap Colibri was a unique place to rest and read. It seemed to encourage contemplation. Facing out onto the sea, there were few distractions. When I sat at my desk to write River God, I could lose myself in the deserts of ancient Egypt; when I worked on Birds of Prey, I was smelling and breathing the same air as Hal and Francis Courtney. People could have built rows of high rise condominiums and I would never have seen them as my view was uninterrupted. The estate was kept in a state of constant readiness, and I could go there with only a brief case and a zip disk containing my work, whenever the need took me.

  The fish off Cerf Island were plentiful. I would go out fishing for a medium-sized tuna, only to end up with a black marlin on my line. My part-time boatman, Jean Claude, described himself as un pêcheur dangereux, a fisherman of danger, and every trip he would take me to a secret location where we would catch beautiful red snapper or grouper. I would go diving whenever I could. The reefs of the Seychelles are rich in life, vast edifices of coral, and I would also explore the numerous wrecks such as the RFA Ennerdale, a World War II tanker that ran aground off Port Victoria in July 1970 after delivering oil to Royal Navy ships patrolling the Suez Canal. The tanker sank in just the right depth of water so you could reach it quite easily, but usually I was the only one swimming through the wreckage, exploring my own private realm.

  Cerf Island quickly became a place of unforgettable memories: Christmas at Cap Colibri, then my birthday in January, surrounded by family and friends; long days at sea, fishing and diving, or lazy days in the sun, followed by braais on the beach, or wine around a bonfire. I’ll never forget sitting under my own palm tree, whisky in hand, watching a burnished gold Indian Ocean sunset over the lagoon. Those days were priceless and, sometimes, I pinch myself to believe that I lived them and they weren’t all a dream.

  •••

  Time and again, chance and good fortune have changed the direction of my life, but sometimes, when the stars align, a person you encounter can eclipse every story ever told. So it was for me, on the eve of the millennium, when Mokhiniso Rakhimova stepped, by accident, into my world.

  London was gray on the day my life changed forever. It was that time of year when the seasons change, and I was soon to embark to Spain for several days for the annual partridge shoot which always drew me to that part of the world. For the time being, I was alone, and wandering. It was January 18, 2000, and I found myself outside the WHSmith bookshop in Sloane Square (now a Hugo Boss Store). There, also peering through the window at the books on display, was perhaps the loveliest woman I had ever seen. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

  Something compelled me to follow her when she entered the bookshop. As she browsed the shelves, I picked up a book from a table and tried to read it, but I kept looking her way. Who was she? I thought, where did she come from? What was her story? She had been drawn to the shelves of a rival author, was thumbing through the pages to decide which novel to buy and it was then that I seized my chance. I said hello and apologized for disturbing her. She looked at me coolly, weighing me up, and then she smiled. As I started talking, she said that she was a student and that her tutor had recommended she buy a long book to read aloud, something to help improve her English. “I’ve just the thing,” I said, took her hand and led her to another part of the shop where the authors with names beginning with “S” were displayed. “Here,” I said, “this is what you should read.” There, in front of us, stood a wall of my novels with my photograph staring back from a publicity poster. I don’t think she recognized me, it was an early photo, for she seemed unimpressed. I selected a book—to this day I can’t remember which one—bought her the copy, and insisted on signing it. As I scrawled my name and thought of a suitable inscription, words like “you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met” and “please can I see you again” tumbled through my mind. I didn’t know what to write. And a voice was whispering to me: Smith, you can’t let this moment go. For the first time in my life, words were failing me, and I had to resort to an age-old line: “Aren’t you hungry?” I asked.

  Soon, we were settling down for lunch at Caviar Kaspia in Mayfair (now closed). I had known she wouldn’t say no—she was, after all, a student—and she devoured a large portion of excellent caviar. I found out her name meant “Moonfish” in Persian, and that she had been born in Tajikistan, a former state of the old Sov
iet Union. She had a law degree from Moscow University and had come to England on a working vacation, hoping to improve her command of the English language.

  When I told her I was a full-time author she was sorry to hear that I was almost penniless, as in the former USSR, writers were broke. She had never heard of Wilbur Smith, and for that I was thankful. It was the beginning of a whirlwind romance. At a single stroke, she transformed my life. What experience had taught me is that love is all. There is simply nothing that can compare with the bonding of a man and a woman—as one, they have the strength of an army. It did not matter that she was much younger than me and, so it seemed, it did not matter to her. Love breaches all time, it unifies difference, it is the essence of our being, and when it draws two people together, all boundaries melt away. In Tajikistan’s tradition of arranged marriages, there was no slur about being with an older man; in fact, they tended to choose an older man as a provider, a protector, a devoted and loyal companion. But none of that mattered.

  The next morning, when I woke up, I realized that I had fallen in love.

  Hear my soul speak:

  The very instant that I saw you, did

  My heart fly to your service

  William Shakespeare, The Tempest

  Five months later, in May 2000, we were married in Cape Town, at the magistrate’s court with my lawyer as a witness.

  I had taken a flyer, I had gambled on love, but it has paid off handsomely. I have not regretted it for a single moment. I have been rejuvenated in every possible way and in a manner I never thought possible. It’s so exciting to see life through the eyes of a modern girl, an intelligent, sensitive, generous woman who is so deeply committed to me and to what the world has to offer. I was at a point in my life when I seriously considered giving up writing.

  Niso put an end to that immediately: “OK, my darling, who are you now?”

  I said, “A writer.”

  She said, “Who will you be when you retire?” and ever since then, for the last eighteen years, the word “retirement” has been banned from our vocabulary.

  A new chapter in the story of my life was about to begin.

  •••

  When you are a young man, you want to conquer the world. You want to own everything, to be the lord of all you survey. But, when you are older, and life has taught you its lessons, you want to get rid of inessentials, to shed as many material possessions as you can, for your life to become more compact and settled again.

  So it was that, after Niso came into my life, we looked forward to our future together by shedding the past.

  Since my run-in with the reef sharks, I’d lost my appetite for diving. It was like the feeling I’d had when flying into the Ysterplaat aerodrome in Cape Town all those years ago. If I didn’t stop sometime, I knew I would die. I stopped diving in July 2003. Another reason was that Niso was allergic to coral. Every time we went diving, she came out in a rash, looking like a pink leopard. It was time to sail away from Cerf Island for the last time.

  Leopard Rock was already a memory of the past. I sold the estate to a Cape Town businessman for a fraction of the money I had poured into it, but I secured lifelong visitation rights to a little cottage on the property and, besides, I was happy to see it go, knowing that all the species I had reintroduced to the reserve would flourish for generations to come. Life was changing for me—and new excitements were ahead of me with Niso.

  •••

  Before I departed Cap Colibri, however, the Indian Ocean gave me one last gift. His name was Hector Cross.

  The legend of Olivier Levasseur had provided the inspiration for Birds of Prey, but it was piracy of a very different sort that would bring Hector Cross to life.

  It was the end of a long day’s fishing, and the sun was setting over Port Victoria on Mahe’s northeastern shore. The port was alive with yachts and fishing boats returning from their day’s trade but, as Jean-Claude—my dangerous fisherman—brought us closer, a small boat was going the other way, working against the tide to leave the port. It was an inflatable dinghy with a guttering outboard motor, and it was not until it drew near that I saw the men on board.

  The boat was laden with jerry cans of fuel and other supplies were piled high and roped securely. Between the supplies stood a group of men with eyes as cold as ice. At first, it struck me as odd that these men should be setting out to sea as darkness was falling, but I raised my hand in the protocol of greeting all the same. None of the men moved a muscle. No one returned my greeting—a breach of sailing etiquette that caught me off-guard. Then, slowly, the man at the rear of the boat returned my stare. He was impassive, his eyes lifeless, deadened and glassy like those of a long-landed fish. I had only seen eyes as cold and menacing once before when, as a boy, I had come face to face with the black mamba at the water tank outside my father’s ranch house.

  The inflatable passed, disappearing into the dusk over the sea. I looked over at Jean-Claude; he seemed to know what I was thinking.

  “Somalis,” he said. “Pirates, Wilbur. They were in port to resupply. Their ship’s out at sea . . . somewhere.”

  I turned back to the ocean from where we had come. Not once, as I cast my line out, had I thought about the other type of men plying these waters. But Jean-Claude was adamant. Had we been in a slightly different place, or run across them at another time, our day might have turned nasty. Pirates, he said, don’t plunder ports like Victoria anymore. They earn their living by hostage and ransom, acts of terror played out for all the world to see.

  I would never forget the way that man looked at me. His eyes boring into mine, assessing my worth, calculating what profit to him I might possess. It chilled me to the core. One night, some years later, I started thinking about the plot of my next novel. I began to envisage the heir to one of the world’s most powerful oil corporations, falling into the hands of men like those. I imagined the intense interaction of ransom demands and hostage negotiation. I thought of an ex-SAS operative, now turned private contractor, who finds himself given one last mission: to go against the pirates and take the law into his own hands. His name, I decided, would be Hector Cross, and he would be my newest hero.

  I knew Somalia well. It remains a fascinating place, not because of its warlords running rampage in what is an epically failed state, nor the fact that their ragtag soldiers once downed a US attack helicopter in Mogadishu, a story famously captured in the movie Black Hawk Down, but because of its tantalizing ancient history. Apart from having the longest coastline in Africa, Somalia was also the first place in Africa with an Islamic influence, established by some of Mohammed’s original followers who fled from persecution in today’s Saudi Arabia. Somalia was once an important conflux for commerce, and the location of the fabled Land of Punt, ancient Egypt’s close ally in trade, and a place I had written about as far back as The Sunbird. During the Middle Ages, Somali kingdoms dominated the region, only to be pushed back by the British and Italians, who arrived to colonize along the coast. Muhammad Abdullah Hassan—forever remembered by the British as the “Mad Mullah”—fought a two-decade guerrilla campaign against the British, forcing them to erect blockhouses and commit to the same kind of counter-insurgency warfare they had pioneered in South Africa during the Boer War. When the country became independent in the 1960s, it quickly transitioned into a military dictatorship and, from 1991, was engulfed in a civil war that raged for ten years. Today, it is a country in the throes of rebuilding, but still held back by unrepentant warlords who run their own fiefdoms, and constantly give succor to pirates like the ones whose path I had crossed.

  Those in Peril was to be my attempt at understanding modern day piracy and getting under the skin of those dead-eyed men who had considered me from their inflatable that day. Modern piracy is an organized big business. In 2011, the year Those in Peril was published, almost $160,000,000 was paid in ransom to Somali pirates, including £13,500,000 for the release of the Greek tanker Irene SL. In all, 1,118 hostages were held, most for mor
e than six months at a time. And though there is a massive international effort to patrol the Indian Ocean, Western hostages are still being taken, including South African sailors. The seas are as they ever were: a nation to themselves, beyond the laws of civilization.

  The pirates patrolling these seas are developing new tactics, changing the rules of engagement. They’re using sophisticated radar equipment and off-shore bank accounts—instead of desert islands—to hold their booty. A popular view is that the Golden Age of piracy is a romantic lost era, but in Somalia, a country where the young grow up with few economic opportunities, modern day pirates are held in high regard. They are seen as glamorous, heroic rebels bucking the system, by young boys who aspire to their lifestyle. In Those in Peril I wanted to undermine those ideas, to reveal the Somali pirates for what they are: ruthless criminals; men with no humanity. As I was to learn, poring through the records of encounters with these pirates as I brought the story of Hector Cross to life, these men are professionals. If you are kidnapped off the African Horn, it’s simple: stay put. Either you will be released or you will be killed, and as a captive you don’t have any control over it. Escape attempts are always met with quick, merciless executions.