The golden rule of diving is: dive alone, die alone. Beneath the surface, with the waves crashing above, it was a rule I had broken too often.
Thirty feet below the sparkling waters of the Indian Ocean, I checked the gauge on my oxygen tank and watched it tick over, every breath an increment closer to empty. It was 1995 and I had been waiting here, trapped beneath a coral ledge, for too long, and time, as it always does, was running out. Somewhere up there, dimly perceivable as a rippling shadow, Judith—the manageress of my Seychelles estate—waited patiently on our yacht, with no way of knowing what was happening below. In recent months, she had skippered the boat for me on many occasions, keeping a watchful eye as I explored the depths of the sea with not another diver in sight. I loved diving, the weightlessness felt like the ultimate freedom, the graceful agility the medium allowed was a release from surly earthly bonds, and I’m convinced man evolved from the sea as we are drawn instinctively to open water; to me it’s like coming home. The solo diving experience appealed to me even more profoundly; there’s a purity about the isolation, the raw solitude of having nothing else to rely on but your own ingenuity and instinct. This was my domain, no other human for miles in every direction. But this time I was not alone. Between me and the safety of the boat hung three gray reef sharks, six feet long from their broad, menacing snouts to the tips of their tails. Black points ran along each of their dorsals, but most unnerving of all were the black holes of their eyes, like coals set in a mask of gray stone.
The gray reef shark is the first shark species discovered to display threat behavior. It adopts a “hunched” posture, dropping its pectoral fins and swimming from side-to-side in an exaggerated motion when it’s threatened and is preparing to attack. It has been known to attack divers and it is astonishingly fast, launching itself like a harpoon by covering twenty feet in a third of a second.
So far, the sharks circling above me were luxuriating in the warm waters, placidly indifferent.
I had not noticed them arrive. I knew these stretches of coral as intimately as the gullies and scrubland of Leopard Rock, and came here often to watch the magical sea life: the angelfish and parrotfish, the peacock groupers and black and white snapper. One fish, the five-hundred-pound Napoleon wrasse, had become my first underwater fan when, upon dropping a bit of my picnic lunch one day, I discovered he was partial to hardboiled eggs. After that, he would find me whenever I dived and come begging for food like a faithful hound. The Napoleon wrasse, also known as the humphead wrasse, has almost comically thick lips, two black lines behind its eyes and a hump on its forehead. Added to its strange appearance, its coloring is like something out of Disneyworld, or an animation by Pixar. It varies from blue green to vibrant green and purplish blue, and is stunningly iridescent, a confection of color.
I knew reef sharks patrolled these waters, but they had never bothered me before and I had never bothered them. This seemed like a good arrangement, and one I was keen to maintain. But now they were in danger of breaking our unspoken contract, nosing around with what looked to me like increasing curiosity and, when I checked my tank again, I had only a few minutes left.
I was no novice under the water but, as the sharks’ gray hulks obscured the light from the surface, I began to feel like one. I’d broken the golden rule one too many times, and it crossed my mind that I was about to become a headline story: reckless novelist meets his grisly end in island paradise . . .
I learned to dive in Rhodesia, long before When the Lion Feeds had transformed my life. My first forays under the water were in the dazzlingly blue waters of the Chinhoyi Caves, north of what was then Salisbury. The caves are a vast, beautiful complex of interconnected caverns, and beneath the surface lies a network of submerged tunnels that challenge even the most adept divers. In those caves, divers can plunge up to one hundred meters into the water, exploring places the sunlight has never reached. Later, driven by my fascination for coral and underwater life, groups of friends and I would head for the Mozambique Channel to camp, dive, spear fish and host braais on the beach. Over the years, I’d gained more and more experience. Spurred on by my friendship with South Africa’s champion diver David Cohen, I had dived the battleship wrecks that litter the ocean floor around the remote Pacific islands, and the ruins of even older ships on the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. The underwater world is a rich and miraculous domain. It is the only place that can never be mapped by satellite; it’s a geography as uncharted as in the days of my father and grandfather before him. Down here, you could still be a pioneer, but this world also has its dangers.
I crouched beneath the coral, trying to conserve my breath, and to appear as small as possible to hungry mouths and sharp teeth. Up above, the sharks dropped their pectoral fins. Seemingly hunched over, they began to dance from side to side, a motion that could only mean one thing.
The tank was near zero. The sharks were ready to attack, to inflict the kind of damage on me I’d only read about in books and newspapers. But if I knew anything, then, I knew this: I was not going to die under the water, not without a fight. It was only thirty feet to the surface. If I was lucky, I could get up quickly without suffering the horrors of decompression sickness, but first, I had to get there in one piece.
There was only one route to the surface from here: I was going to rise straight through the middle of the sharks.
Drawing my last breath, I threw myself from beneath the coral, fixed my sights on the light above, and began to rise. Slowly at first, as I didn’t want to unnecessarily startle the predators, and after about four meters I was level with the reef sharks and still rising. Refusing to be mesmerized by the pitch black of their eyes, I averted my gaze, but they had seen me. The kicking of my fins had drawn their attention, the frenzy of bubbles and churning water I left in my wake.
Ten meters from the surface, bright light began to play all around me. Somehow, I fought my way and broke the surface, and, tearing the mask from my face, gulped greedily at the fresh air. The boat was only meters away. I swam for it with every ounce of energy I could muster, saw Judith coming into focus above, and reached out my hand. Moments later, I heaved myself over the side. Lying spread-eagled on the deck, I noticed that Judith was staring into the depths from which I had come.
When I dragged myself to my feet, she pointed into the water. Just under the surface hung the gray shapes of the reef sharks. They had swum behind me, she said, following me and cresting the waves just as I had scrambled into the boat.
“Judith,” I said, in as steady a voice as I could manage, “it’s time to go.”
It was the last time I dived alone.
•••
Cap Colibri: my former exotic island home. It appeared out of the ocean, a stripe of golden sand, capped by deep, lush vegetation.
I had been going to the Seychelles for many years. I had known the cut diamond expanses of the Indian Ocean ever since I was a boy, fishing with my father in the same Mozambique Channel where I would one day set my maritime thriller The Eye of the Tiger, but the idea of owning my own island in the Indian Ocean had always been a hopeless dream. However, I kept coming back. First I did so to indulge my passion for game fishing, for the Indian Ocean has some of the most spectacular fishing grounds in the world, with black marlin, sailfish and queen mackerel in abundance. Later, it was to dive in its crystal-clear waters, and witness firsthand the phantasmagoria of coral lurking under the surface. As my writing career took off, the Seychelles became a getaway, somewhere I came to wrench myself out of whatever novel I was working on, to recuperate before I went back to battle with the story once again.
In 1989 I became the proud owner of a twenty-seven-acre plot at the southern end of Cerf Island in the Seychelles, part of the Sainte Anne Marine National Park, a string of islands surrounded by reefs due west of Mahe. I will never forget my first sight of Cap Colibri. The pristine beach was ringed by impenetrable jungle and, as I approached our new home, I felt like Robinson Crusoe, hacking my way through the bush with a panga in hand. This was a corner of the world that, like Leopard Rock, would be my retreat from the mayhem of everyday life. But more than that, it was an island steeped in mystery and had a thrilling story of its own.
When we arrived at Cap Colibri, the beach and land around our estate were pocked with holes, small craters dug in the earth. The more we explored the island the more cavities we’d find, some hidden by vegetation, others lying in plain sight. They were not the work of island rodents, but of shovels and spades. A fisherman from further up Cerf Island told us the island’s secret. Cerf Island had once been a haunt for pirates. Rumors persisted that great treasures had been buried here and travelers would turn up determined to find it. What we had found was the evidence of the human hunger for buried gold.
Nobody had ever found the treasure of Cerf Island, but the previous owner of our estate had discovered the extent desperate men will go in their lust for riches. Word had gone around that he had found the treasure, hoarded it away and not told a soul. Local fishermen claimed he was sitting on a fortune and, across the islands, covetous eyes began to turn his way.
The rumor was unfounded, but one of the neighboring islands housed a penal facility and, on a moonlit night, a plan was hatched. Stealing a boat, the convicts sailed to Cerf Island and forced their way into the house that was now ours. They tied up the owner, threatened and tortured him; but he could not tell them where the treasure was hidden because he did not know. The truth was, the treasure was a fable that had developed a life of its own. The convicts murdered him in his house and fled without a single gold coin.
It was not the only story of piracy and legendary treasure that haunted these waters, and it was another local myth that would inspire the third Courtney sequence, planting the seeds of the novel that would one day become Birds of Prey.
Legend has it that the Seychelles is home to untold buried treasure, if only someone knew where to look. Once upon a time, this had been pirate country, a group of islands far from the authority of the British or any other empire, where men could do as they pleased and the rule of a captain was the rule of law. The treasure of the Seychelles had grown out of the real-life exploits of Olivier Levasseur, a French pirate more commonly known as the Buzzard, or La Buse, in French. Levasseur was born to a French bourgeois family in 1688 and became a naval officer before obtaining a Letter of Marque from King Louis XIV during the War of the Spanish Succession. The letter was effectively royal permission to wage war on Spanish ships as a “privateer”—a mercenary of the seas. When the war ended and he was ordered to return home with his ship and crew, Levasseur had other ideas. He had developed a taste for the life of a privateer and had no intention of changing his ways. The riches he had pillaged from Spanish ships were too tempting to ignore, so he crossed the line, becoming an outlaw and pirate. He sailed and plundered down the west coast of Africa, before moving east, into the Indian Ocean.
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 Soviet 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 more 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.
In Those in Peril, Somali pirates kidnap the spoiled, beautiful daughter of a rich oil baroness, demanding a twenty-billion-dollar ransom for her return. With time running out, and her daughter’s life held in the balance, Hazel Bannock must turn to the man at the head of her private security for help. Between them, they take the law into their own hands.
This was also a book about the relationship between a tough man and an equally formidable woman. I named Hector Cross after the great hero of the Iliad, and like many of my heroes, he is a professional soldier, now in charge of a global private security company. I built him, and the lesser characters in his employ, from the profiles of men I had known who carried out their deadly business in Afghanistan, in the Gulf, in South America and Central Africa. I had spoken to these men and heard their tales of the dark business of war, and, though I will never be able to publicly acknowledge their input, nor pass on the stories they have told me, they have found voice in the steely, capable character of Hector Cross.
I had been writing about strong men all my life, but in Those in Peril another character entered my imagination who would be a powerful counter-balance to Hector Cross. I decided there were enough tough guys out there, and I was beginning to think that nowadays, as Norman Mailer entitled his 1984 novel, Tough Guys Don’t Dance. It was time to put together some new steps on the dance floor, get my guys jumping and singing a little louder to a different tune. I had always respected the power of women, and I relished the challenge of writing a strong, believable female character. Centaine Courtney had been the first of those, but in Those in Peril I needed something more, a heroine as clever and competent as the hero, as ruthless in her quest for victory, as adept at facing off against the villains.
I find strong women fascinating, I enjoy their independence, their self-containment and self-belief. My mother, Elfreda, was as resilient, in her own way, as my father, and, I think, much more unbreakable. The mother will hold the family together—and the same can go for countries, for nations themselves. From Queen Boadicea of ancient Britain, to Indira Gandhi, to Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel, Queen Elizabeth: these are the kinds of women from whom I would find the inspiration to build Hazel Bannock.
Margaret Thatcher, who everyone knows as the Iron Lady, was determined to always be number one, to be the best at whatever she turned her hand to. I remember the time I went to a stock signing at my publisher Macmillan’s Basingstoke warehouse to sign copies of my latest novel before they were sent out to the bookstores. I sat down at a table and signed three thousand books in their stockroom. Ten days later, Maggie Thatcher went to the same warehouse to sign her book, the first volume of her autobiography I believe it was. The staff said to her, “Oh, Wilbur Smith was here last week.” Maggie frowned and asked, “How many books did he sign?” and they said, “Three thousand, which is a lot!” She looked at them and said, “Give me four thousand!” That’s the kind of spirit I loved and wanted to capture in my character Hazel Bannock, somebody who could stand their ground with Hector Cross. That indomitable resolve would be the heart of the novel.
The gambit paid off. Those in Peril was a Sunday Times hardback number one bestseller for several weeks, with yet another strong opening week’s sale. Its success was taken as proof that hardback book sales could yet survive in an era of ebooks and the threat to traditional high street bookselling, and what was particularly heartening for someone like me, who had started his career fifty years before with pen and paper, in an age before computers and instant communication, was that it topped Apple’s iBook chart.
Once, the Courtneys had changed my life, offering me a career of which I could only have dreamt. Then, along came Ben Kazin and Taita, to show me that heroes did not always have to be Herculean men of action. Now, with Those in Peril, I had given voice to my lifelong faith in and admiration for women who took center stage. That novel was evidence that my days of conjuring up new characters and new stories were not over yet. As one chapter of life closes, another always opens.
I might have left the Indian Ocean behind, but with Hector Cross it would follow me wherever I roamed.
•••
For a while Niso and I spent some time in Switzerland. We both loved skiing after I introduced her to the sport, so we bought an apartment in the Swiss village of Davos in 2001. I had skied in Davos every year for twenty-five years. Switzerland is beautiful, the winters are a fairyland of delights and the skiing is exhilarating. I stopped skiing in 2007, however, listening to the voice in my head: “Wilbur,” it said, “if you’re over seventy-five and you’re skiing then you’re a fool, because you’re going to break something and over seventy-five it doesn’t mend so easily.” Niso is something else altogether. She’s like a rubber ball—falls, bounces up and is off down the slope again.
Niso only knows one speed and that’s flat out, straight down the slope, no turns, no slowing down. Only one thing is capable of distracting her: her love of children. Once when I was still skiing and she had just started, I told her to follow me down the mountain, and we set off. I was about halfway down when I looked back and there she was, far, far behind me. She’d been distracted by a whole bunch of kids, about twenty of them on a school outing. And while they’re talking away, she’s picking up speed. Eventually I call “Niso, Niso,” and she calls back, “I’m coming, I’m coming.” And she did. Straight into me, knocking me off my feet and out of my bindings.
When we got up and dusted ourselves off, I said, “Look, you’d better ski down on your own, my bindings are broken, I’ll walk.” But she’d have none of it. “No,” she said, “If you walk, I’ll walk too.” She’s such a selfless person, and it’s at moments like these you realize why you love someone unconditionally. And it’s also when you find out why people ski down mountains. It’s no fun trudging down-hill through knee deep snow, carrying your skis—you feel about as dignified as a prehistoric mammoth.
Switzerland is not far from Paris, which I have always loved. The chalet in Davos allowed us to pop across the border to eastern France to stock up on excellent wines, cheese and other local produce. I have always found the French, outside of the big cosmopolitan cities, to be extremely warm and friendly. Niso and I used to cycle a lot on the quiet roads in France and often when we stopped for a breather, Madame would come out of her home to offer us water or just to pass the time. Nothing, though, beats the culture in Paris, and both of us love visiting the Musée d’Orsay, topped off with duck and raw seafood at La Coupole, where Hemingway used to eat. Alternatively, the mussel dishes and bouillabaisse at La Méditerranée, on the Left Bank, are delicious—all rounded off with excellent French wine and Cognac, of course.
•••
London is where we now make our base for a large part of the year, but during the summer of 2002, we lived in Ireland, in a village called Midleton, near Cork. The Irish are very positive toward writers and artists, but neither Niso nor I could handle the weather, and found Irish humor a bit puzzling. Niso was bored to tears one day, so I said, “Go and see the Blarney Stone,” and she said, “What’s that?” I explained what it was and off she went, but she got a bit lost, so she turned into a side road and, seeing a sign above a building that said “gas pump and general store,” she pulled up and went inside to ask for directions.
There was a woman behind the counter. Niso asked her: “Do you know where Blarney Castle is?” The woman answered, “Yes,” followed by a long silence. So Niso said, “Well, can you tell me where it is?” The woman responded: “Oh, I thought you were asking if I knew where it was.” There was another long silence, so Niso tried again: “I want you, if you know where it is, to tell me. Can you tell me how to get there?”
The woman said: “Where is your car?” Niso pointed to her car and said: “There it is, outside your shop.” The woman said: “Well you can’t get there then.” “Why not?” said Niso. “Because it’s facing in the wrong direction,” the woman replied. So Niso said: “If I turn the car around can I get there?” And the woman said: “Yes.”
All this of course was played out in music hall Irish brogue.
Then there was the time Niso went to buy Brussels sprouts. She went into a grocer’s and asked, “Do you have any Brussels sprouts?”
The man behind the counter replied: “Is it Christmas?”
Niso said: “No, not for another six months?”
“Well then,” said the man, “you don’t get Brussels sprouts. They only come at Christmas.”
It wasn’t long before the allure of the emerald green countryside, usually obscured by rain, wore off entirely and we went looking to make our home in London.