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Af-Laawe—meaning “the one with no mouth”—was also an assumed name, which, to a Dante scholar, might allude to the Inferno . He asked, “How well do you know him?”
    The driver answered in a burst of impassioned speech, “How does one know anyone in a land where people are constantly reinventing themselves? How well can anyone know an Af-Laawe who does his damnedest not to be known?”
    â€œMy impression is that you’ve known him a long time.”
    â€œTrue, I’ve known him for long, since his student days, when he was doing his doctorate in Rome. Then, I was the head of the chancellery at the Somali embassy there. I remember him coming to see me, when he learned that the National Security had put his name on a blacklist and issued a directive instructing us to discontinue his government-sponsored scholarship. Knowing I couldn’t help him, I asked a junior officer to deal with him. He left the chancellery, angry and abusive. A few days later he visited me at home. This time, he pleaded that I extend his passport. I told him that there was no point in extending his passport if he no longer had a scholarship allowing him to live in Italy, but my son assured me that Af-Laawe, who was his friend, had received another grant to help him continue his studies and all he needed was a valid passport, with a valid residence. I renewed the passport, at some risk to myself, I must add, and heard no more about him until I met him several years later in France, with an Italian woman, his fiancée. By then he had set himself up somewhere in Alsace, in a town called Colmar, and he eventually married the woman.”
    â€œAnd when did he get here?”
    â€œSoon after the U.S. troops flew into Mogadiscio. I’m told he carries French papers now, and speaks several languages. It’s said that he was hired by the European Union at a very high salary, with the vague job description ‘facilitator for all things European.’ He was sent out on some sort of troubleshooting mission, and had a driver, a cook, a bodyguard. He lived in a huge three-story house by himself, testimony to his high-rolling lifestyle.”
    â€œWhat happened?”
    â€œIt’s rumored that together with two other Europeans, a Frenchman and a Norwegian, he effected the disappearance of some four million U.S. dollars from the United Nations coffers. Nobody knows how it was done.”
    â€œFour million dollars?”
    â€œDidn’t you read about it in the American press?”
    â€œI don’t recall anything about this!”
    â€œRumor has it too,” the driver went on, “that he lost his job with the EU because they suspect him but can’t prove anything. And he doesn’t dare return to Colmar, where his two teenage children and wife live, because the Frenchman and the Norwegian will ask him to hand over their share of the heist. Those in the know think that he was the brain behind it all, and many Mogadiscians assume that the money is buried somewhere in Somalia, and he is the only person who knows where.”
    â€œIf the money is here, how come the two Strongmen, or their minions, haven’t forced him to show them where he buried the cash? It seems so incredibly far-fetched, no?”
    â€œMaybe the two Strongmen know things we don’t.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” asked Jeebleh.
    â€œMaybe they know the money is already in Europe, deposited in a Swiss bank, and waiting to be signed for, on submission of a coded number,” the driver speculated. “Or maybe they’re waiting until our man joins the Frenchman and the Norwegian who helped him spirit away the UN funds, and then Marabou will collect his cut, and share it out. Maybe an associate of one of the Strongmen is Marabou’s principal protector.”
    â€œLike who?”
    â€œDo you know of Caloosha? His name is often mentioned,” the driver said. “I hear too that