by Alex MacBeth
Podolski loosened his tie as a drop of sweat dripped from his neck. He retreated to the company smoking room to think through his next move. “Are you okay?” asked one of his colleagues.
“Hungover,” replied Podolski, “I’ll just pop a couple of these,” he added, grabbing some pills from his jacket pocket. He couldn’t afford for any of his colleagues to know something was up. They would soon suspect it was the ‘Eldorado’ account, as they had nicknamed it.
No, everything would continue as planned in Maputo with Bizu The Fixer. Podolski had been reluctant to work with this self-penned ‘Fixer’ after a private investigation had implicated him in a number of ugly crimes. The offer on the table however was far too good to turn down, regardless of the co-signatory’s background.
Nothing about the investment could be made public. Everything related to Eldorado had to be treated as File A, the company’s internal codeword for “extremely sensitive and highly classified information.” Podolski had been given the file by some of the biggest heads in senior management and he knew his handling of the project would make or break his career. Tough but ideal, Eldorado: just how Podolski liked it.
He read through the rest of his emails, still stuck on what to do about Mozambique. He found nothing out of the ordinary in his daily news feeds on the Southern African country, except Minister Frangopelo had once again come under fire from an armed convoy. Good news as far as Podolski was concerned.
The smallest leak about the Eldorado account could end up destroying the company. Mason and Stock’s operations would crash like dominoes across their African portfolio, and most senior management would be jailed. Fortunately, that would never happen. Podolski had built layers of deception, multiple companies and financial trails leading to the moon and back. Dozens of offshore accounts had been opened to ensure that not even the most diligent of observers could track a single transaction. Nothing was going to stop him doubling the company’s profits and earning promotion after promotion. In five years he could be CEO. The thought made him hungry.
As Podolski stepped out onto Leadenhall Street, the heart of the City of London was abuzz with the usual throng: secretaries, PAs, traders, security guards and taxi drivers grabbing their lunch. Podolski liked stepping out of the office. He used the brief moments away from his desk to flirt with pretty bankers, lawyers, fitness coaches and cafe staff. There was sex in the air everywhere in the city and it was all about money. Men slept with men to get promotions. Women slept with their bosses for perks. Everybody was sleeping with everybody, it seemed to Podolski. As he smiled at a young Polish girl behind the sales counter, Podolski thought that a large percentage of the world’s economies could not function without sex and alcohol sustaining the facilitation of commerce.
Back at his desk with a Pret-a-Manger Cheddar Ploughman, a mixed berry smoothie and two slices of carrot cake, Podolski began to devise a strategy for his prickly issues in Mozambique. He would personally call The Fixer.
A new email with the subject ‘Eldorado’ caught Podolski’s attention. It was from his source at the Foreign Office again.
“We have received an alarming report from Mozambique,” began The Source’s email. “The report touches on things way too close to home and is attracting unnecessary attention to the situation from other desk operators. Request we meet urgently.” Podolski texted The Source to meet him in thirty minutes at their usual choice of rendezvous, grabbed his jacket and hailed a black taxi outside his office. When he walked into the members only club, filled with upholstered regency chairs and infused with the smell of port and roast meals, he found The Source waiting for him.
“So what was so important that we had to meet personally?” began Podolski, avoiding any pleasantries.
“We have received an alarming report from Mozambique.”
“You said that. Since when do you take alarming reports from anywhere seriously?” retorted Podolski, sipping his Guinness.
“The report was written by a British national. He has contacts and is making a lot of noise about the site.”
Podolski shrugged and The Source looked blankly at him. He was a lean man, not a day older than twenty-five, Sorbonne graduate, with fiercely intelligent eyes countered by a naïvety in his body language. The Source hated Podolski. At first he had thought they were friends.
Podolski had been careful to ensure the young civil servant was regularly invited to parties on Mason and Stock’s yacht in the south of France, where the foreign office worker had shown a pointed preference for naked women and illegal substances. Podolski had arranged a souvenir set of photos of the event, and The Source, compromised, was now on Mason and Stock’s payroll, earning twice as much tax-free with the company than in his job at the Foreign Office.
“I’m sure I don’t have to inform you what will happen if the media gets hold of this, Podolski.”
“Who sent the report?”
The Source smiled for the first time. “That is priceless information, isn’t it?” he teased. “Images of your holiday habits might also be priceless to your superiors,” retorted Podolski.
“Don’t worry about those anyway. We are going to have to neutralise this report somehow,” continued Podolski, loosening the top button of his shirt and taking another swig from his pint of Guinness. “The only way to do that is to neutralise the person who is filing it.”
The Source looked around anxiously to see if anyone was listening. He leaned in closer to Podolski.
“What do you mean by neutralise the person?”
“I mean we have to neutralise his motives. Why is he filing this report anyway?”
“Patriotism, a sense of moral responsibility, or money, who knows,” pondered The Source.
“Can he be bought?”
“Wasn’t it you who said anyone has their price?”
“You had yours. Find out his. Make contact.”
“Under what guise?”
“Probably by means of the telephone,” said Podolski, downing the last of his drink. He stood up and left.
Chapter Fourteen
It felt like giant fans were spitting air in his face. Bullets whizzed past his legs and arms as he fell further away from the plane. Felisberto tried to cover his head as he plummeted but he struggled to see anything as he pirouetted in the air. His head was enslaved to the air pressure and the speed at which he was falling. He slipped through a cloud, emerging with a clearer view of the landscape below, and his mind began to function again. The Comandante had barely had time to untangle the rope and ensure the slider and container on his parachute were in working shape to release the D-bag. He was praying that his Russian-made kit, twenty-five years old and untested for two decades, would be ready to save his life again.
The bridle on the parachute was stuck.
He tried again to release the parachute out of its holding container but nothing happened. He took a brief look down and saw nothing but blue racing towards him. He tried again. This time the holding pin switched and the D-bag slowly squirmed into shape. Felisberto felt a sharp tug backwards and felt a huge sigh of relief. As he floated through the last remaining layer of clouds, all he could see was water below. Water everywhere, like a fly’s landing view of a pond. The Comandante guessed it must be Lake Malawi.
He remembered the disc. It was still in his pocket, in its container. Would it be as waterproof as it claimed to be? He tried to turn his head as much as he could to look for land. He found a mountain to his right, probably Mt Mulanje on the Malawi border.
He continued to fall towards the lake until he crashed onto the surface of the water. He landed feet first and began to sink under the weight of the parachute tied to his ankle and round his frame. He began to untie the strings that were wrapped round him like wet algae in the brown waters of the lake. Unclipping the bolt from the parachute at his ankle, he managed to wriggle out of the container frame.
Felisberto surfaced and took a sharp breath of air. A bird flew over the lake towards the West. M
t. Mulanje looked much greater than it had done from the air, it occurred to the Comandante. He estimated that it must be at least twenty kilometres to the shore. The lake probably wasn’t Lake Malawi but a smaller still water deposit like Lake Chilwa, because the water was brown and dirty. Crocodiles or exhaustion would surely take him before he would make it to the shore. He hadn’t eaten anything since the night before and he had sharp pains in his legs and upper body. The Comandante found his mobile and held it above the water. No signal. Water had entered the phone’s body and the screen was displaying gibberish.
Felisberto tried to keep moving. He conjured up thoughts of Sofia and Germano. An image of his former wife, Adija, appeared and urged him not to abandon their children. “Don’t drown, Felis” He could hear her voice coming from somewhere in the water. She had drowned six years earlier.
The lone survivor said that the mast had snapped and the boat had capsized. Adija had been hit by the mast and hurled out to sea, he said. Back in her hometown of Matola, they buried some of her clothes and threw clods of earth and flowers onto her empty coffin. Her body was never recovered. Felisberto had wondered through the cashew plantations like a madman for months. Nothing had prepared him for the grief.
They had met at a New Year’s Eve party in Maputo. Adija had accompanied a cousin who had joined Felisberto’s department as an aspiring detective. Felisberto was not the only policeman to be swept off his feet by Adija, but he was the lucky one her cousin clung to.
The Comandante, usually rather taciturn around young women, found himself regaling the cousins with anecdotes, which ushered them out of 2003 and into 2004. As they stood in the warm tropical rain afterwards, Felisberto knew he had fallen in love. He proposed six weeks later. Sofia, their first child, was born eight months after they married at the Catholic Church in Matola.
It was Adija who persuaded him to swallow his pride and accept the deal he had been offered as a commander in Mossuril. She had made banishment seem bearable. They took walks in the old cashew plantations and spent Sundays on the beach with the children. She had made a cheerful home of the awful mud hut, with its stinking outdoor latrine, its leaky roof and damp rooms.
“Swim, Felis, swim,” he heard whispered in the tide. What would his dog Rambo do in this situation, Felisberto wondered? He knew the answer. So he swam. He swam for as long as his arms would oblige. As the sun disappeared behind the lake, the Comandante felt as though his arms were filled with lead. He lay on his back and closed his eyes.
The sun continued its exodus to night, in the process saving Felisberto’s life. Two fishermen returning to the shore saw a body moving in the water. The Comandante awoke on the bottom of a cedar wood canoe, his face in a puddle of dirty water. He was drenched from head to toe and shaking. The sky was now black and two strangers were sitting either side of him rowing hard. Very slowly, it dawned on Felisberto how he had come to be in water and he realised that the fishermen must have saved him.
“Thank you,” said Felisberto in Portuguese, still lying on the ground. The men looked at each other and rowed on. Must be Malawi, thought Felisberto, for the fishermen didn’t seem to understand Portuguese. “Where is here?” said the Comandante, using one of the few English phrases he had learned while stationed in border units during the war. “This is Malawi,” said one of the fishermen. “You come from where to die in Lake Malawi, Mister?” added the other. His friend chuckled.
Felisberto passed out. The fishermen lifted him onto a plank on the small boat and minutes later Felisberto awoke looking at the stars. Only a few hours before he had been so much closer to them. Now here he was in a foreign country, with no documents, no money and, he inferred from the stabbing pains in his side, at least three broken ribs.
“Where you from, mister?” asked one of the fishermen in English as they neared the flickering red glow from the lighthouse on shore. “Mozambique,” replied the Comandante. “My boat, under,” he lied. Both fishermen stared at him for an extended period but didn’t say anything. “You are bleeding,” said one of the men breaking the silence. “I fall,” said the Comandante. The fishermen rowed on in silence, their catch, small silvery lake fish, glinting beneath the star-studded sky.
When they arrived ashore the fishermen helped Felisberto onto land. One of them sat him on the back of a motorbike and drove him to his home. Felisberto had never been to Malawi. He was shocked at how little there was; hardly any light, very few homes, not much street life. When they arrived at the fisherman’s, the latter asked his wife to prepare a mat on the floor and they laid the Comandante on the ground. “I’m Thomas,” said the fisherman. “Felis,” replied the Comandante, slowly closing his eyes. When he awoke his foot was bandaged and he was wrapped in a shawl. His clothes were drying by a fire.
Six children glowed in the light of the flames, all with their eyes on the Comandante. Felisberto waved at them and the bravest of the pack waved back. The Comandante could see one of the children had Stokes’ disc. He signalled to the girl to give it to him. She stared back resolutely. “Please,” said the Comandante and the girl handed it over and ran out with the other children. “Eat,” said Thomas, handing Felisberto a bowl of rice with fish. The Comandante finished the plate and went straight back to sleep, holding the disc like a house pet to his aching chest. His dreams did not help him to rest. He had visions of Palma hunting him with his thugs and the Michelin Man. He would turn on his TV and Palma would be there. Everywhere he went, Palma was there: waiting for him in the shower, behind the driver seat of his car, at the fish market.
If Palma had survived the flight, he would surely come after him. The Comandante worried for his children’s safety. He would contact his mother the next day and warn her to watch them more closely. And he had to listen to the disco pequeño – the disc. His mind raged like a busy call centre until he fell asleep.
When he awoke, his ribs ached to the point where he could hardly move. He reached to his left for a glass of water but spilt it. A child helped him to drink and the Comandante found his reasoning for a second. It was unlikely that Palma could have survived the flight, he reckoned. The loss of cabin pressure would have caused the plane to crash. Felisberto had heard Thomas mention that debris from a plane had been found the week before near the border. Thomas said it was roughly the same time they found him in the lake. But the Comandante did not have the strength to think about it all right now. When he had recovered he would check the records, although there was no guarantee Palma or the plane would have been found yet if they had crashed in the deep wilderness. Palma couldn’t have survived, he was sure of it.
Felisberto lay down, closed his eyes and lost himself again in his nightmares. Palma chased him again through bustling markets, malls and across busy roads. The Comandante hid in densely populated lanes in townships only for Palma’s ghost to find him everywhere he went. Felisberto tried to escape but Palma met him at the port, airport and railway station to bring him back.
The Comandante awoke as Thomas and his family were having their morning tea. Someone had placed a bible and a cross beside Felisberto on a cushion. “You were sweating all night. How do you feel?” asked Thomas. “Better,” said Felisberto. “Do you have a phone?”
Thomas sent one of his children to borrow the neighbour’s mobile phone. Felisberto took it off the child when he returned and texted his mother to say he was okay. He would tell Samora everything later. When the message to his mother failed to send, Thomas’ oldest son James helpfully suggested adding 00 258, the country code for Mozambique.
The Comandante spent a week recovering under the care of Thomas’ wife and children until he could walk again. He could offer them nothing other than his gratitude but made them all promise that they would visit him one day in Mozambique so that he could return the hospitality. Thomas packed some fried fish in a plastic bag and some water for the journey. The sun was setting, just like when Felisberto and Thomas had met out on the waters of the lake. The two men set out again on Thomas’
motorbike to the small boat docked a few miles away. They would cross the more remote Lake Chilwa in the dark and bring Felisberto to the Mozambican shore in the dead of night when there was less chance of him being caught by immigration officials.
Felisberto had lost all his documents in the fall. Although he would be able to tell the authorities that he was a police Comandante, it would be harder to explain to his superiors why he had been missing for two weeks if he was officially on record as having been in Malawi. Even the local police would have their suspicions if they couldn’t access the national police database, a common obstacle for law enforcement agents with limited Internet connectivity or computer hardware. Felisberto had no money for ‘presents of appreciation’ and therefore resolved to smuggle his way back into his own country.
They set sail with a tame wind and soon found themselves surrounded by the dark and the sound of the waves caressing the boat. Fireflies dancing on the water seemed like crocodile eyes to the Comandante. A red light shone from a lighthouse on the small Mozambican strip of the lake but Thomas planned to land by a secluded beach from where he had helped smuggle refugees during the war. From there, the Comandante would have to make his own way inland without meeting any wild animals, or – worse – wild officials, on his way.
As they neared the Mozambican shore, a patrol boat on a routine check was docking. Thomas veered extra wide of the pier and pulled into the small hidden bay. Felisberto jumped into the knee-deep water. “Zikomo”, said the Comandante using a word the children had taught him to thank Thomas in the Chichewa language. Thomas gave the Comandante a thumbs-up and sailed back into the lake.
It was quiet and there was nobody in sight. Felisberto had studied an old map before leaving and knew that spiky sisal plants with poisonous tips lined the border for miles. But people had been moving backwards and forwards across the lake and mountains for millennia, way before the modern delineations of Malawi or Mozambique existed. The Comandante knew the area well from his years in the war and he started walking without fear. He walked like he used to march in his army days, ignoring both pain and fatigue. He walked for hours through bush trails and paths, cutting through dense forest, clearing foliage with the machete that Thomas had insisted he take. When the sun rose, Felisberto walked in its direction, heading east towards Mossuril, over 600 kilometres away.