“Well, well. I hope now I can have my wages.”
“He will tell you… I want to meet you exactly at 1830Hrs at the chapel.”
“Okay. Do I come with his résumé and the sort?”
“I’m not in mood to joke, Arnold… just get going before I …”
I knew he was angry. He could not conceal the fire in his eyes.
“You lied to me. You fucking lied to me,” I said to Arnold when we were alone.
“I did not lie to you… you needed a job…”
“You knew?”
“I could not watch you living like that.”
“I can’t believe you just lied to me. I trusted you…”
“Come on, Ken. You already know, you can’t just walk away.”
“Give me a break, Arnold. How could you… I am out of this now.”
“Think of what might happen, Ken. You do not understand…”
“The hell I don’t understand… the only thing that I understand is that you are a bunch of nincompoops and hypocrites. And don’t you threaten me.”
“Careful, Ken… just calm down, think it over and over. Furthermore I never threaten…”
“It’s against all odds and my principles.”
“Fuck odds and principles. You need to live, you need a life man.”
I could not say anything more to him. I could not believe what I had heard with my own ears from the SANU leader. I was seething with resentment, turmoil, an immix of something inexplicable.
“Get a life, Arnold,” I told my friend.
CHAPTER 23
“Give him some time? Are you outta ya’ mind? You well know that we don’t have time.”
“Okay then, I’ve got no better replacement for him.”
“You know what, James? Sometimes you are a pain in the ass.”
“That’s why I live. I must tell you the truth. He’s our guy… I know those to stay when I see them.”
“See?”
“You know better than that. Don’t make me feel like a fool to myself.”
“You don’t understand, James.”
“The only thing that I understand is that you blabbed and now you want to kill him.”
“I can’t have him talking about me, about us, about anything.”
“Don’t do anything stupid, Urbanas. You are an idol.”
“We’ve to find somebody else. Business is booming we can’t afford not to have this one.”
“And that’s why I called you and you must listen to me. The guy will come. I see him coming…”
Whoever made you clairvoyant? Urbanas thought.
“You very well know what happens. It’s barely a week to the obsequies…”
“Do not be so pessimistic. Hoping and waiting may be difficult, but it’s the only thing we have. Willy was good, and we need somebody like him. Ken is our guy.”
“That idiot insulted me… I don’t see him…”
“Like Nicodemus he will come to you in the wee hours of the night.”
“Have you got everything else in place?” Urbanas changed the topic.
“Yes, but there might be some problem… John was fired. The other guy is a decency-filled-fool with a tag of morals and religion. Damn, he’s uncooperative.”
“We can’t afford to lose this.”
“I’ll look into it… just don’t fret yourself.”
Urbanas slowly hit the disconnect button on his phone. Kennedy Maina insulted him. The bastard will blab. He had to take care of him. It was necessary – damage control. A single word from Ken and the whole hell will break loose and fall on Urbanas like tons of a million bricks. He could not afford such fiasco. SANU Leader a Coffin Robber, or something like Student Robbing the Dead. The newspapers will carry the headlines on the front pages; all television networks will be broadcasting him as breaking news of the day. No, he could, and would not, allow that.
Urbanas checked his Omega wrist watch. It was about time he had an outing. Today he had a mission to accomplish. And he was going naked. A clean lightning job and he would be hundreds of thousands richer by morning.
Garbed in tar black clothes, Urbanas slid into his sedan and drove into the streets of Nairobi.
CHAPTER 24
Edna applied more mascara on her eyelashes. They looked strangely darker than they were naturally. Though she was not used to wearing makeup and her skin appeared wonderfully clear, this time round she did.
Edna always put on makeup whenever she was flying. Her employer had sent her to deliver some cargo to a friend of his in Pakistan.
She was still putting on her makeup when the car that was to take her to the airport arrived. The driver hooted to alert her. She did not have much luggage. For austerity, she travelled light.
To her astonishment her employer was in the back seat. She had not expected this development. She already had other plans. She was to tell the driver to pass by her boyfriend’s home and pick (surprise) him to see her off at the airport. Her employer’s presence was an unexpected development, and an inescapable impedimenta.
“I didn’t know we were going together,” Edna said as she slid in beside her boss.
“Change of plans. We are a couple.”
“Oh… really?”
“Not in the sense you think,” he said. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
“I am all ears.”
“I’m having this strange feeling that something will go wrong. Not that I don’t trust you, but I feel that something is wrong somewhere with this trip. I have to be with you, feign husband and wife.”
Samson’s voice echoed inside Edna’s boss’s mind. Break your principles, trust somebody. He could not trust anybody with his business. Not after Grace. Trust was a problem for him albeit Edna had proved worth trusting. Furthermore, Samson had insisted that he take care of everything himself. Samson did not tell him what it was, but he had said it was worth millions of money. Last minute change of plans.
“This is ridiculous. I am engaged,” Edna said.
“I did not ask you to sleep with me… feign is the word…”
“Even if…”
“Not what you think, Edna. If I do anything sappy sue me.”
“You bet…”
At the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport all was well until when they were pulled from the checking-in queue.
“Is there anything wrong?”
“No, it’s just procedure. Your luggage has been delayed a bit. Just be patient with us… everything is going to be alright.”
Up ahead Edna and her boss saw one of the airport security agents unhook the stanchion belt, motioning for someone to step out of the line just as they had been removed. It was a young woman.
The young woman was escorted away just as three airport police officers appeared from the entrance of the hallway they were being led to. That’s when something registered in his mind. “But no, it can’t be,” he said a loud.
Before Edna asked her boss what couldn’t be realization hit on her like a volcano. She reached for and grasped her boss’s hand tighter. His own hand was wet with sweat.
The police officers made a bee-line for Edna and her boss.
CHAPTER 25
It was in the news – television, radio, and newspapers. The President sent condolences immediately he got the news of the untimely demise of his finance minister. The Prime Minister was yet to, but the media was speculating that he was overwhelmed by the grief – the deceased was one of the premier’s own.
Family, friends and relatives mourned with great sorrow the death of their beloved. It was said that the slain minister was a good husband; father, brother, and friend.
The minister’s death sent shivers in the veins of many in the Parliament. Why were the members of Parliament dying suspiciously of late? That made it a total of five in a period of six months.
Journalists with a mass of cameras and notebooks stomped up and down everywhere, asking their never ending questions to every big man and woman wh
o came their way. They said he was a victim of robbery. There was no sign of break in. The slain minister had met his death just outside his gate. He was found slumped against the driver’s seat, crimson of blood splattered on the floor. No spent cartridges. Just his dead body with a single bullet hole in his forehead.
The guards were already in police custody and assisting the police with investigations. The minister’s chauffeur said that he was at home when the incidence occurred – the minister had told him that he will drive himself home. The minister did that sometimes. The chauffeur’s alibi was checked and it held.
The President declared a one-week mourning period with all flags flying half-mast. Plans for the obsequies were underway.
It was the death of a hero, so they said.
CHAPTER 26
The air was acrid at this part of Nairobi. Catherine, aka Kate, aka Cathy, could feel eyes on her. She always felt so. Catherine hated her butt being stared at.
Catherine was not sure whether she was going to do what her legs were taking her to do. Morals dictated otherwise or so she knew. She even knew that she was committing a mortal sin, a premeditated and well-orchestrated crime. But what could she do? She could not stand to lose everything in life.
The weather was relatively warm, that and her body made her feel as though she was going to explode. She knew that the consequences could be overwhelming, intense. She hated everything she had done. But she could not afford to be a mother at this time. Her parents would practically kill her. She had nowhere to run to. And marriage was out of question…
What the hell was I thinking?
Catherine touched her gradually growing tummy. She pitied the child she was carrying, but there was no other way out.
Something inside Kate told her that something might go wrong. But… it was a risk worth taking instead of having a brat she never wanted squirming at her now and then, howling at the slightest scratch and screaming at her whenever it was dissatisfied with anything. Furthermore, teen hominess is not a crime, God can forgive that.
Her boyfriend knew nothing of it. It was better that way. Some secrets are better taken to grave if need be. She was sure he will fight her if he knew. But it was her life. Her had nothing to do with her personal life. It had to remain secret forever.
The nondescript building had nothing to mark it for what it was. The entrance was at the back. No one even knew it existed apart from the slum dwellers, prostitutes and the ‘patients’ who went there and the quacks who treated them.
The nurse who welcomed Catherine was probably in her late teens or early twenties. She was garbed in a fade blue dress and a cap on her plaited head.
“Welcome, so you’ve finally decided to come?” she said in Sheng.
Catherine did not say anything. She just followed the nurse down a raw-cement encrusted and potholed corridor.
“The doctor will see you soon. The queue isn’t that long.” The nurse showed Kate where to sit as she waited. “I am going to get you a card,” she told Catherine in Swahili and shimmered away.
God, I don’t know why I am here.
Five minutes later the nurse returned with a yellowish card and gave it to Catherine to fill.
Catherine did as she was told and when she was done the nurse told her to follow her.
The room they entered scared the hell out of Catherine. It was redolent, the kind of stingy smell found in public hospitals back at the villages, full of paraphernalia she was well sure would be used on her.
But she did not feel anything, except segueing into fuzziness and a thousand hands groping for her and the distant suck and tug of instruments.
When she came to the same nurse was standing next to her on the steel gurney.
CHAPTER 27
Diplomats, ministers, members of Parliament and the whole riffraff of who’s who attended the obsequies. The President was in the US thus the Vice President represented him, but the Prime Minister could not fail to attend the funeral ceremony.
The press formed a good part of the mourners with a sea of cameras, microphones and notebooks. Every media house wanted to have first-hand information on the entombment of the slain minister.
The bereaved praised the deceased for his magnanimity, faith and industry. They had lost a friend, father, husband, brother, and relative. The country had lost a leader and a great politician.
Security chiefs vowed not to rest until they nabbed and put to justice the killers of the Late Hon. James Oking’ Adoyo, Minister for Finance. Internal Security minister promised to make sure that cases of insecurity were dealt with stringently.
The Prime Minister pledged to see the family of the deceased minister was protected by the government since it had become a target. He even hinted that the government will nominate the widow to the august house so as to keep her husband’s legacy.
It was such a tragic end for a man who was lauded to take the mantle of the country one day.
Amongst the mourners was a man on a mission. The man was here to do close reconnaissance for the J-O-B to be done later that night. He smirked as the grand imported casket that had cost the government quite a fortune was lowered electrically in to the grave. What a waste of taxpayers’ money.
The man focused on the woman in barrister-black funeral robes, dark Ray-Bans and a black veil swathed from head to toe. She was absolutely the widow. People die daily and nobody gives them all this pomp, the man thought.
The widow and the kids were placing their wreaths on the grave. They too would get the same pomp when they died. That was the legacy that the Prime Minister meant, the man concluded.
CHAPTER 28
It is much harder for a poor coward fool to enter the kingdom of money and riches than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Urbanas’s words reverberated in my head over and over. The kid had a way with words. He had almost convinced me. All what he had said was all coming back to me. It was hard to forget; each and every single word he had said.
I could not believe I was doing what I was doing. First, I hated the rush hour procrastination. Every time I glanced at my wrist watch it was as though time was on a rush to hit the 24-hour mark. I could not wait any longer.
I got out of the matatu and decided to cover the remaining distance on foot… moreover it was just ten minutes’ walk to the public rest place at the Co-operative Bank grounds near the 1998 bomb blast memorial park on Haile Selassie Avenue.
“I knew you would come,” he said even without looking at me as I sat next to him on the concrete bench under a cool shade of an exotic tree at the far end of the park. He didn’t even look up from his Robert Ludlum’s Bourne Supremacy novel.
“What makes you think I came for what you are thinking?” I asked him.
“For nothing else would you have told me to meet you.”
“So you say.” I shifted my well exercised figure on the hard bench. He marked where he was reading and closed the novel. It was an indication that I could say it all; he was ready for me. “Let’s get this straight with. What am I supposed to do?”
I listened keenly as he told me of my role in the whole business. By the time he was done, everything was a hodgepodge, thoughts juggling each other in my head. I had just given in to profanity, immorality – and to put it blatantly, to crime; succumbed to the temptations I had fought so hard. I had just let the devil win.
Reminiscences of my encounter with Urbanas the previous week kept on coming and going as though they were competing with lightning.
“I have got a proposition for you…” That’s how he begun. “Lots and lots of money.”
I listened attentively to each and every single word that came out of his golden mouth. When he was done I blurted out that I couldn’t.
“What do you think I am…? Lara Croft the tomb raider?”
“See through what I’ve just told you.”
“You do not even have moral guilty robbing such places?”
“Man has to overcome the inherent human fears so as t
o venture in anything termed impossible by people.”
“Are you trying to come up with another definition of the word impossible?” I said and continued, “Because you don’t appeal to me.”
He said nothing.
I continued. “They all admire you… we all do. Why do you…”
“Shhh! Do you know the best place to hide in this world? It’s in people’s hearts. Let them trust you, build and fortify that trust, speak against human fears and tragedies, promise a plausible paradise knowing that hell is real. Even Satan was party to heaven before God feared He might lose His power to Satan…”
“Why are you telling me all this? To have me in your camp? I already told you it’s NO, and I mean it.”
“You are just feigning to be naïve. Your eyes are open but you just close them. Just for once look at the human rights activists, environmentalists, and philanthropists or whatever they call themselves, and all of the make-believe good guys we’ve idolized. They are just hiding; no one will ever know what they are, but we adore them for what they really are not. The best place to hide is where the trail of one’s activities lead to the path trailed by saints…”
At that very minute I thought of all the glory the media had given Urbanas. It had been in the news, all the media houses carried his face to the screens, and millions of Kenyans saw the face of the kid who had won the SANU elections, as though it mattered outside the walls of the University of Nashville. The best place to hide? In the hearts of people.
It all dawned on me now.
I did not want to be party to something that was morally wrong, especially if it was crime. It was against what I believed in. I just told him to forget it and that I was inexorably disappointed in him. “What would they think if they knew what you really are?”
“Sometimes secrets are not what people don’t tell… many a time it’s the difference between the mask we put on for the world to see and what we really are. No one would ever know me. Never. I shall go with it to the grave.”
Twisted Times: Son of Man (Twisted Times Trilogy Book 1) Page 5