Piracy on the High Sea

I was on tenterhooks waiting for news from Mogadishu but had heard very little from the diplomat who was over there on the delicate mission to find out whether the young man who had been found dead on Avon beach, and whose birthplace had been ascertained to be a Somali village, was the boy reported missing from a local religious community, supposedly founded by my father many years earlier.

It had been rumoured that he was the son of a missionary. There was no doubt in my mind that the missionary was my father and I formed the fancy notion that the youth might have been my lost brother.

Uncle Jeremy poured cold water on that hypothesis. He said that my father was a puritan with strict views on morals. He would not have entertained any thoughts of fathering a child outside marriage.

He was right, of course, as it later transpired that although it was true that a religious community existed there was no male missionary there but an elderly nun, a Mother Teresa type, who looked after the poor and the infirm.

She had taken the veil late in life after becoming a widow.

The word 'holy nun' had been mistranslated as 'holy man' and that explained the incorrect information we had previously received about the leader of the mission. The fact that she had a son, who also lived and helped in the settlement, muddied the water even further.

He had left the camp to go in search of permanent employment and that was why he had been reported 'missing' and mistakenly assumed to be the drowned stranger found on our shore.

No one had found any evidence that the so-called 'holy man' was in fact my dad; it was only speculation on my part, wishful thinking perhaps, based on the fact that the dates of his disappearance and that of the establishment's foundation coincided plus the incontrovertible proof of my parent's dog tag found on the dead boy's person.

This was a conundrum that so far had not been solved.

All that we had learned so far had come in dribs and drabs and second-hand from my friend Willy, who in turn had heard it on the grapevine at the SIS headquarters so we were unsure how reliable it was and waited for an official report.

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Uncle Jeremy and I, being the interested parties, were called by Hilary Moneypound to attend an informal briefing on the result of the fact-finding mission at the office near Barbican in central London where I had my first interview when I had applied to become a spy.

Given the amount of time elapsed since the disappearance of Major Justin Mazziarello it had not been possible to conduct an exhaustive investigation, we were told, but sufficient facts had emerged to at least unravel the puzzle of the military tag.

The passenger list of a ship that was attacked by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden revealed that the British officer was aboard.

The assumption was that that the gang leader had found the military apparels – uniform and identification disk - in my father's metal chest that would have been stowed in the ship's hold and part of the cargo looted by the buccaneers.

He might have worn his 'trophy' in a show of bravado or that his son, who followed in his father's criminal footsteps, had used them in a fancy dress party and, having taken a fancy to the tags, kept them on a chain around his neck.

This confirmed that he was the dead youngster found on our beach.

Although at first not thought to be an illegal immigrant we now knew that he was involved in peoples' trafficking and had perished when the inflatable dinghy he was sailing capsized and sank.

As there had been no fatalities during the skirmish with the pirates, once they retreated the liner continued its journey and all the passengers disembarked and proceeded safely, but without any luggage, to their destinations. It was at this point that the trail to my dad, Major Justin Mazziarello, went cold

His whereabouts remain a mystery.

 
© Luigi Pagano 2020

Seee also previous episode https://www.abctales.com/story/luigipagano/son-holy-man