CHAPTER 27

Comoros Islands, 1993–94

The run of luck that had been with Jimfish and Zoran promptly deserted them soon after they set sail from Dar es Salaam. Their idea had been to cruise in easy stages down the east African coast to Cape Town, but wild storms pushed their small craft much further east. When they ran out of fuel, they drifted helplessly for many days, their water almost gone.

So it was with enormous relief, early one morning, that they spotted, rising from the water, the lush forests and sugary sands of an island.

Evidently, their boat had been spotted, perhaps even expected, because a flotilla of dugout canoes paddled out to greet them and took them in tow. When their craft was brought safely through the breakers and on to the beach, crowds of islanders were waiting and broke into applause.

A man stepped forward. He identified himself as the Mayor and read a prepared speech.

‘Welcome, friends, to the Comoros, our constellation of islands. We are thrilled to have American soldiers amongst us. Even if there are just two of you for now — no doubt whole brigades will follow soon.’

The crowd broke into song and welcomed them with several verses of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’.

Zoran the Serb whispered to Jimfish: ‘They have seen the Stars and Stripes painted on our boat.’

‘We must correct the impression,’ said Jimfish.

‘I don’t think it will help,’ said Zoran the Serb.

But Jimfish felt duty-bound to clear up the misunderstanding.

‘I am sorry to say, friends, that we are not Americans.’

‘I am devastated,’ said the Mayor. ‘Everyone was happy to know that the legendary US marines were invading us. We’ve heard that they stormed ashore on the beaches of Somalia to give hope back to the Somali people and we prayed that we were next on their list, for the restoration of that precious quality. But with your help, all is not lost. The markings on your landing craft mean you must be in close touch with American fighting forces and we beg you to put in a good word for us.’

‘But why would you want the Americans to invade?’ Zoran asked. ‘Their intervention in Somalia was a disaster. The United States lost more men in a single firefight in the streets of Mogadishu than at any time since their invasion of Vietnam. Their helicopters were shot out of the sky and the naked bodies of their soldiers were dragged through the streets by jeering mobs.’

‘Look at it from our point of view,’ said the Mayor. ‘Over the centuries these Comoros Islands have been invaded by Arab slavers, Dutch privateers, German adventurers, Portuguese explorers and French imperialists — not to mention any number of pirates, from Davy Jones to Edward England — and I can’t imagine why the Americans would be worse than any of the others. Ours are very lovely islands, where you will find dhows and dugongs, vanilla trees and volcanoes, spices and a rich array of marine life. But what we’re really famous for are military coups. In the last decade or so, since independence from France, we have averaged one army rebellion every year. The ruling regime is overthrown, only for the next one to go the same way itself a short while later. And this trend shows no signs of stopping. On the map the official name for our scattering of islands may be the Comoros, but to lots of people we are simply the “Coup-Coup” Islands. How can an American invasion be any worse than all the others?

‘Right now we are just recovering from our latest coup attempt. A group of morris dancers arrived on a regular commercial flight from South Africa, come to share with Comorans the delights of English country pursuits. But when a customs official asked one of the dancers to open his case, we found, not the usual flummery-mummery of morris dancers — bell pads, handkerchiefs, sticks and swords — but automatic weapons, grenade launchers and mortars. These so-called morris dancers packed more firepower in their rucksacks than our entire defence force. We tried to arrest them, there was a firefight, they hijacked their passenger plane, still on the tarmac, and flew back to South Africa, where, no doubt, they will be welcomed as heroes. Happily for us, we captured two of the mercenary morris men and we were about to shoot them this very morning when your craft was spotted and we postponed their execution, which we will return to right now. You are very welcome to come along and watch the proceedings.’

Jimfish and Zoran had no great wish to watch an execution, but, having disappointed the Comorans once already, it seemed impolite to refuse the invitation.

The two captured mercenaries were being held in the small jail in the middle of town, and when the condemned men were led out into the yard to be shot, Jimfish could not believe his eyes, for there — thinner, older, but still with a fierce glint in his eye — was none other than his old teacher Soviet Malala, whom he knew to have been shot in faraway Ukraine. And, manacled to him, his beard now regrown to its old bushy bulk, was Deon Arlow, brother to Lunamiel and Commandant of Superior Solutions, whom Jimfish himself had shot through the heart. Two men he had known to be dead were being led before a firing squad to be killed all over again.

‘Stop! Stop!’ Jimfish cried, pulling out his bag of rough diamonds just as the Mayor was about to give the order to fire. ‘I will pay you whatever ransom you name for these prisoners!’ and he poured a heap of jewels into the outstretched palm of the Mayor, who was only too happy to accept his offer, the Comoros Islanders being amongst the poorest people in the world.

Jimfish rushed over to the prisoners, released them and hugged his old teacher Soviet Malala.

‘How can this be? You died at Chernobyl. I saw it with my own eyes when you fell to the firing squad in distant Pripyat.’

‘That is what happened, yes,’ said Soviet Malala, ‘but the soldiers in the firing squad, you’ll remember, were very drunk and made several botched attempts before they even hit me. Then I was taken to the city morgue, where a local doctor found me and — never having seen a black man before in the Ukraine, and thinking, as many people in the Soviet Union did, that you should never pass up a windfall that might be saleable to someone, some day, somehow — he decided he would take me to a taxidermist, have me stuffed and put on display at travelling shows; or, otherwise, he might perhaps save my hide and sell it as shoe leather, which, like soap, toilet paper, oranges, grain and bath plugs, was in very short supply across the Soviet Union. Imagine his surprise as he was examining me to see what damage the bullets of the firing squad had done, when he found I was still breathing. He was very happy, knowing I was almost certainly worth more alive than dead, and so he tended my wounds and nursed me back to health.

‘I lived with this good man when the Soviet Union was in a terrible state, after the Chernobyl disaster. The Communist Party was looking desperately for ways to salvage its reputation and, since I was a more committed believer than anyone else, I found myself a speaker at Party rallies to celebrate the Marxist cause, the Bolshevik Revolution, the triumph of the masses and the victory of the lumpenproletariat. But my efforts were doomed. The Communist Party collapsed and was officially dissolved by Gorbachev, and the Soviet Union ceased to exist.

‘I found myself a solitary African in the new Russia, where skinheads assaulted me for being black, and pusillanimous politicians were too embarrassed to even mention the names of Marx and Lenin and Stalin, the heroes of the lumpenproletariat. Luckily, I knew that one of the few places left on earth where original Communist beliefs had not altered since Stalin’s time, and where the Party had taken a decision to ignore the collapse of Communism around the world, was my own country of South Africa, and I decided to go home. I won’t bore you with the story of my travels across Eastern Europe, but I had got as far as Sierra Leone when I met this man here’ — he pointed at the Commandant — ‘who was recruiting strategic contractors for Superior Solutions.’