As I watched him moving around my bed, I concurred with the journalist who had come up with the phrase. There was something of Othello about Colonel Chukwuemeka Odu megwu Ojukwu: a measure of dignified hurt, and an aura of self-importance. He was taller and broader than I would have expected; the photographs didn’t get across how much space he took up. But he had a kind of lumbering elegance, a studied stillness, that seemed familiar from what I had read of him. Pritchard’s briefing notes had referred to him as a ‘power- hungry menace’. That, too, seemed a well-chosen phrase.

But this was all by the by. What the hell was the leader of the Biafran army doing here? And why did he want to talk to me?

After he had fidgeted with his coat a little, he sat himself on the chair vacated by the doctor, squeezing his frame into it as though it were a makeshift throne. Apart from a gloss of sweat on his forehead, he looked calm, well rested, relaxed. With one hand he stroked his massive beard. I’d read about that, too: he had grown it as a symbolic gesture after the pogroms against his tribe three years earlier, and many Biafran men had since grown their own in deference to him.

‘I am sorry about your mishap,’ he said. He made it sound as though I’d stubbed my toe in his swimming pool. ‘My men are superstitious, you know. They had strict orders to bring you straight to me, but they didn’t want to miss their rendezvous with their witch-doctor.’ He smiled tolerantly at his charges’ roguish ways. He struggled with his coat some more, eventually bringing out a pack of cigarettes: Three Fives. He slid one out and lit it with a worn gold lighter. ‘The men responsible have been reprimanded.’

He took a puff of the cigarette. It looked like heaven from where I was sitting. He exhaled, and looked up at the low ceiling. I could sense him thinking, preparing his words.

‘Do you have the message?’

I waited for him to continue, then realized that he had finished.

‘What message?’ I asked.

He laughed, a deep, hearty and utterly insincere bellow. It faded, and he closed his eyes and rubbed them with the palms of his hands.

‘Please do not play games with me,’ he said, letting out a sigh. ‘Let’s not go through the rigmarole of passwords. We are not children.’

‘I don’t have any message for you,’ I said. ‘I’m a journalist with The Times.’

His eyes snapped open and he looked at me as if for the first time. ‘Is there a reason you cannot convey your message?’

‘You’ve made a mistake,’ I said. ‘I have no message to give you or anyone else. Colonel Alebayo . . .’