Epilogue

THE DENOUEMENT

If the attempted coup in St. Kitts by sixteen men from Anguilla on June 10, 1967 were a commercial enterprise, then the balance sheet at the end of it would have read something along these lines: out of sixteen men traveling aboard The Rambler that night, as many as six of them never ventured out of the boat; only two made it back to The Rambler; five men drifted to the relative safety of a jailhouse in St. Eustatius the following day; and three were caught and kept in prison for over three months without charge, under the provisions of the state of emergency declared in the tri-island state of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla. A homemade recipe for bankruptcy. Luckily for Anguilla and for the men in question, the accountancy of life tends to draw figures in more shades than just black and red.

Hence, although it might not have been immediately obvious to Alwyn Cooke and the rest of the Anguillians who, sitting by the generator, listened to the news on ZIZ Radio St. Kitts at eight in the evening on June 10, 1967, the troubles through which the ten deluded, ill-equipped, and thoroughly unprofessional freedom fighters had gone the night before had placed Anguilla in a far better position to seek that which it wanted most: secession. Naturally, this was not the general consensus that night—not among the population at large, nor among the fifteen men who, just twelve days earlier, following the departure of the Piper Aztec that carried the last remnants of the police task force, including Inspector Edmonton himself, had come together to form a temporary committee of sorts that would be in charge of ensuring that all Anguillians could still lead their lives in peace.

Among the members of this peacekeeping committee and, indeed, among the public at large, the fear that Robert Bradshaw would take the opportunity and use brute force to punish Anguilla for its indiscretion was only exacerbated when they heard the news on ZIZ Radio St. Kitts that the police station in Basseterre, as well as the Defence Force camp, had been attacked. Dey makin’ de whole t’ing up. Is jus’ an excuse to come shoot us all.

Alwyn Cooke was perfectly aware there was more to the story than simply scaremongering and manipulation, but he had resolved to play his cards close to his chest, and he was not about to declare himself the leader of a criminal operation which, had it been successful, would have claimed the lives of dozens, maybe hundreds, of his own people’s cousins, so Alwyn went with the flow and shared everyone’s concern, and reaffirmed the fear he had voiced ever since he’d returned from St. Thomas, roughly ten days earlier—that an invasion from St. Kitts was imminent.

If there had been any skeptics on the issue before June 10, 1967, every single doubter on the island had been convinced by the newsreel that night. No one in Anguilla would even dare to question the fact that their condition was, presently, critical. Precisely such certainty was the catalyst that led to Anguillians acting, for once, in unison and with urgency during what they assumed would be the final days of their standoff against St. Kitts. The peacekeeping committee continued to seek support from abroad, but in light of the total disregard the world insisted to pay to Anguilla and its affairs, the committee also turned inward and, with uncharacteristic haste, foresight, and prudence, sought to build the institutional edifice needed to rule a country.

It might have been that, every step of the way, Anguillians expected their efforts to crumble, their hopes to be shattered by the silhouette of one, or two, or three frigates anchored off their coasts, and that, therefore, they just carried on trying, without giving much thought to what might happen next. Or maybe it was sheer desperation that drove the Anguillian temperament to display an ounce of Teutonic efficiency amidst the Caribbean waters. Whatever the case, the peacekeeping committee contacted prominent émigrés, and it sought advice from private individuals, and it researched the requirements to play the part of an independent nation, and suddenly there was a red drape with a shell and two sirens, and that became the first unofficial flag of a republic that was yet to be declared; and then there was a noble, soft-spoken Anguillian-American, a war veteran, a successful entrepreneur who had moved to the States in search of that fabled dream, and this man visited the offices of the UN one day, but was asked to return the following day, so he did, but he was again asked to return the following day, so he did, but he was then asked to return the day after that, and every day he came back and knocked on the same door, and he raised the same issue, and he asked to speak to the chairman of the Decolonization Committee about the island of Anguilla. Which island? Anguilla, that little island that absolutely refused to be associated with the despots from St. Kitts. From where? And so it was that through patience and resilience and obstinacy and determination, the man was finally allowed to speak, not to the chairman of the Decolonization Committee, but rather to the undersecretary of a secretary—and yet, the process had been put in motion and the wheels of bureaucracy had begun to turn, and eventually the world would find out about Anguilla and its utterly reasonable claim.

The final piece of the puzzle was an internal referendum organized by the fifteen-member peacekeeping committee to decide upon the question of secession from the state of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla. According to the census, there were 2,554 registered voters in Anguilla in 1967. Of those, 1,813 voted on July 11, 1967, in favor of secession, while five voted against it, during a process that was duly monitored by members of the Canadian and US media. By then, one month and one day after the shambolic attack on St. Kitts, Anguilla already had a small “army” of fifty servicemen who patrolled the twenty-odd bays where the landing of forces from St. Kitts might be possible; it had enlisted an important foreign advisor, who would draft the island’s first constitution, a simple document with precious few provisos; it had an ambassador to the UN, a revolutionary leader, and an autonomous government in place; and, most importantly, it had caught the eye of the world through a transparent and peaceful referendum that had vindicated the island’s cause with an absolute and undisputable majority.

And all this time, Robert Bradshaw was too busy settling the score at home, turning St. Kitts into a 100 percent safe, absolutely invasion-resistant bunker. Thus, the foundations were put in place for the people of Anguilla to enjoy that which they had been craving, officially, since 1825. The road ahead was still uncertain, and the battle that ensued—legal, diplomatic, at times even military—would not be resolved until well into the 1980s, but The Rambler had already played its part by then, and its claim to glory would forever remain the events that took place on June 9 and 10, 1967, between the islands of Anguilla and St. Kitts.

* * *

And what of Sol Carter, the most reasonable man in this whole tale?

It’s well past my bedtime, but we cannot allow the words that were left untyped back on page 20 to hang in literary limbo, because this tale must end with a heroic feat, performed by a man who’d already had his share of adventures in life, and who’d sought to lead a more sedentary lifestyle by embarking on a real estate operation on the island of St. Barths. Jan van Hoeppel was a great friend of the five-island cluster in the northeast Caribbean, and when Anguilla found itself in need of a bold and capable pilot to carry out the most intrepid of rescue missions, Jan van Hoeppel felt the blood in his veins rise to his cheeks, and he sensed the simmering of his spirit cloud the power of his reasoning, and soon enough he was flying over St. Kitts’s airspace, weighing his options, getting familiar with the layout of the airport to the north of Basseterre, sketching his plan in a tiny notebook he would then show to Alwyn Cooke.

Because after spending more than three months in prison without charge, Solomon Carter and the O’Farrell cousins were finally accused of conspiracy, of disturbing the public order, of profanity, and, in the case of Dwight O’Farrell, of illegal possession of a firearm. But with the charges also came the formalities of an official trial, which included the right to bail for the duration of the process. The court set the bail at an unreasonable sum, in the hundreds of US dollars, enough to buy a small parcel of land, but Alwyn Cooke had more than enough parcels to spare from Lover’s Leap, and he was likely being eaten up inside for having forsaken his comrades in a hostile land with no obvious means of escape, so he approached Dr. Crispin Reynolds one day and handed the politician two envelopes, and he explained there was enough money in the first to pay the bail of the three men, and he didn’t need to explain what was in the second, but he did pause for a moment to grab a pen from the man’s desk, and he pulled a crumpled piece of white paper from the right pocket of his neatly pressed gray trousers, and he scribbled in red, East End. Airport. One foot on tarmac, one foot on grass, and he folded up the small piece of paper into a tiny cube which he placed in Dr. Reynolds’s hand and explained, Dey life in you hands, nuh: you give dis to Solomon Carter an’ tell he T’ursday, five thirty p.m., okay? and Crispin Reynolds was affected by the severity in Alwyn Cooke’s tone, by the general sense of gloom in his demeanor, and, as he gently nodded yes, Alwyn reiterated, Don’ forget, nuh: T’ursday. Five thirty.

Because on Thursday, September 28, 1967, Jan van Hoeppel chose to wear the hat of Otto Skorzeny, and sometime around five p.m. he departed Wallblake Airport in his red four-seat Stinson Reliant, dubbed La Cucaracha, the last surviving member of the fleet of aircrafts that once belonged to Air Atlantique, and, with a wave of his left hand as he sharply turned south over the houses of Rey Hill, he was on his way to St. Kitts, where, at the eastern end of the runway, the three Anguillian men who, less than a week earlier, had been released from the jailhouse in Basseterre upon payment of a bail of three hundred US dollars each, awaited his arrival.

It was a damp, clear September afternoon, laden with the high humidity characteristic of that time of year, and little more was expected to happen at Basseterre that day, so few noticed the rumbling of the single Lycoming engine at the front of the Reliant as it approached St. Kitts, but the Anguillians heard it straight away and with great anticipation they searched the horizon for signs of the plane.

At five thirty-four p.m. the control tower at Golden Rock Airport tried to make contact with an unidentified flying object heading in the direction of the island; three minutes later the ground crew had established the object was an airplane, and the control tower requested the aircraft to identify itself and provide its provenance and destination, over, but nothing came from the other side, so the question now was whether the aircraft was in distress, whether it had radio communication at all, and This is Golden Rock control, do you read? Over, and nothing but the seething noise of static on the radio, and This is Golden Rock control, we do not read your signal, repeat, we do not read your signal; switch to frequency 121.5, repeat, one two one point five, over, and again the busy nothingness of white noise taking over the scene at the control tower, such that the one fire truck at the airport was instructed to get onto the runway and stand by, and preparations were made for an emergency landing to take place in the next few minutes.

At first, it looked as if van Hoeppel had overshot the runway and a great tragedy was about to unfold, but the modern-day Red Baron knew perfectly well what he was doing, and he knew his Cucaracha like the palm of his hand, and he could judge to an inch how much tarmac he would need to bring the airplane to a halt, and so, to the horror of the three Anguillians at the end of the runway, he used every single yard of the strip and then a few more of the emergency runoff area, where he turned without letting the tail of the Reliant fall. Only then did the authorities at Golden Rock Airport realize there were three men lying on the ground at the end of the runway, who now got to their feet and ran in the direction of the airplane, and as the red Stinson turned to face the tarmac the fire engine raced from the other end toward the Anguillians.

Despite his age, Sol Carter was still an agile man, and the O’Farrells were swift in their movements, and it was Dwight O’Farrell who opened the small door underneath the left wing of the airplane, and no sooner had he done so than Desmond jumped into the back, and La Cucaracha was already in motion again when Sol Carter made it inside, and his eyes almost bulged out of their sockets when he saw the Rover police car turn into the runway and drive toward the plane. Jan van Hoeppel did not so much as ask the men behind to hold on, because he could tell the fire engine would not be able to intercept them before they took off, and the police car was far quicker than the truck, but even with four men inside he knew he would be able to force La Cucaracha up within five hundred feet, and as he did the fixed wheels of the Stinson flew just a foot or so above the top of the police car, and then mere inches from the windshield of the fire truck. Yet none of that mattered anymore, because La Cucaracha was as good as home and dry, and as the silhouette of the red aircraft turned north, it became progressively smaller to the stunned men looking out from the control tower.

Boy—you almost kill me of heart attack, but Jan van Hoeppel heard the distinct tone of gratefulness in Solomon Carter’s words, and the adrenaline raced through his body and put him in a playful mood, and despite the fact that he was no younger than the Anguillian, Don’ die on me jus’ yet, ol’ man—they got a great little party goin’ for you right now, you know, and it was true, because hundreds of people had gathered at Wallblake Airport to greet the last contingent of the rebels who had risked their lives for the sake of their island, and as La Cucaracha emerged from the hazy distance, tainted with the intense pink and yellow hue of the sunset, van Hoeppel got on the radio and spoke the famous words that brought an end to the implausible plot of June 10, 1967 and its appendix: This man thin-thin like a stick, you know. You better get some goat from the pen to bulk him up.