There had been one golden moment. It came in 1974, the year he started driving a taxi. Congo, then called Zaire, won the African Soccer Cup and hosted the Rumble in the Jungle, the heavyweight boxing match between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali. Kin-shasa was suddenly swarming with Americans, hands full of dollars, needing a cab. Even better, one evening Ali himself, his hero, came out of the hotel. One of the younger drivers tried to spar with him, and he, Pierre, stepped between them like a referee to shout "Break! Dégage-toi!"

He wanted to display Congo's best side—the really impressive side, not the overweening official villas on the hill in Binza towards which the little Fiat would trundle, then expire, and need to be jump-started while the sharp suits stood and stared. Some of those officials, the grosses legumes, he knew, and they gave him a certain respect, both because he kept turning up with Western journalists and because, clearly, he was fearless.

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