Halfway across the planet in Tanzania – on the very same day Professor Breville O’Singh was attending the interview at Lancaster – sheet lightning flashed above the western rim of the Ngorongoro Crater. A figure, enigmatic under a straw boater, mysterious behind mirrored shades, peered across the great, grassy terrestrial indent from the veranda of a well-appointed Maasai-chic hotel complex. Outside, rather than inside his mud-and-thatch-look hut, enjoying as a consequence what the hotel brochure might dress up as a ‘semi-nomadic’ Masaai experience.

‘Good evening, sir,’ boomed an immaculately liveried waiter, arriving on the decking with a hospitality smile that stretched as far as was required. He gently clunked a long cool drink on the marble-top table in front of the guest, acknowledged a negative on further requirements and retired, affording the impassive recipient an unspoilt panorama of the Crater.

Unbeknown to the planet at large, the Crater, the cradle of humanity – the location from which early man set out to begin the first of endless journeys of discovery – was destined also to become its grave.

Upon the table, the enigmatic figure flipped up the lid of a small, sleek laptop computer. An email message awoke and filled the laptop screen, demanding his attention. He clamped a mobile phone to his ear and peered over the lid instead, beyond to where the sun had slipped below the horizon and the last of the light was seeping with it. Down below in the bowl of the ancient meteor crater, animals were beginning, others finishing their shifts. The zebra, the wildebeest, the lion, were all knocking off. The cicadas were clocking on, flashmobbing, building to a manic tropical screech.

‘I am sending the instructions now,’ uttered the figure, slowly, impassively. Ominously. ‘We must of course ensure the operation name’s anonymity. Be watchful thus, for an untitled message.’

He began to backspace, to delete ‘OPERATION GREEN SHOOTS’ – the title that was showing in the subject line of the email.

‘Instead I shall speak the name this one time only.’

Slowly, a smile rippled across his face – a sneering, triumphant kind of smile. He made to deliver a key stroke, then paused. The finger of a mortal man remained poised tantalisingly above the laptop keyboard. He turned his head robotically and watched until the waiter had negotiated some distant decked half-levels of the hotel complex and disappeared from view.

The mysterious figure returned to the task at hand. He lowered his digit to half-depress the key. Then paused and held the pose. The moment was too delicious not to relish.

‘Remember, as from this conversation we will no longer communicate by phone. Understood?’ he murmured into his mobile.

With his free hand, he blindly groped for his drink in readiness to toast the initiation of his masterplan. He secured a cack-handed grip and jerkily raised the glass to his mouth.

‘Hereby, I launch Operation…’ the figure began. And pressed the key at the same time that he stuffed a straw up his right nostril all the way to the bendy knuckle.

That was how Operation Green Shoots was almost launched. And how, instead, Operation Green Sher-HEY! – one of the most significant operations in the history of mankind – was sneezed into existence.

Next Chapter: Malukayi