Tarasha: Chapter 8 Pt 2

The next day after the Governor’s death, a curfew that lasted for three days was declared by the acting government. John Obiano recuperated quickly and was able to speak with Officer Dakolo the next morning. He told the police of how Desert Reporters’ representative, Samantha Osman had interviewed him about two weeks before the assassination and also promised to be at the airdrome on the event day.

Other questions were also thrown to John which he gave clear and precise answers to, not withholding any important point from the police.

‘What did the attacker look like?’ Was one of the questions Dakolo asked

‘I can’t really picture her face anymore but she was nothing less of a monster’ John didn’t hesitate to give answers. ‘I think she painted her face with some substances to make her unrecognizable’

The answer of the Assassin’s look he gave was no different from what the other surviving victims gave; the surviving air attendant had also described the assailant as a monster with different skin colours, the minister of aviation also gave a similar description. Only Jude had a different description; but it was an obvious fact that the description given by Jude was only a detail of the disguised form of the criminal.

Dakolo was also able to fathom how she escaped; the criminal must have switched her uniform with the second air attendant’s own. Then she tied the dead body of the Governor and the attendant together after which she released their bodies from the plane and allowed them to freely fall.

Another visit to Onne revealed more details; one of the village’s young girls was found by some policemen after the Dakolo left on the fateful day of the assassination. She was tied half naked to a tree in the bush, an air attendant’s uniform was also found on the floor beside her. The victim was confused as to how she got there when asked, that was after she had been given medical attention. The medical personnel that treated her confirmed this; he said that there was a sign of a tiny piercing on the lady’s neck, meaning that she was injected with an unknown substance, most likely a sedative.

Dakolo proceeded at once to visit the Desert Reporters’ Rivers head office with some of his men, in a bid to arrest Samantha Osman but the management of the news media vehemently denied having any journalist in Rivers state who bore the name Samantha Osman. They also denied having any interview with John, they said he didn’t honour their invitation and even showed the police their twitter messages as a proof.

‘You mean you invite people for interview using twitter?’ Dakolo had asked.

‘No,we requested for his number but he refused to share it’ The manager replied him.

‘But how then do you explain this ID card that was found in the plane?’ Dakolo demanded, bringing out the card from his pocket.

The manager seemed speechless for a while as he stared at the ID card, he looked at his own card and all the features present on his were present on the strange ID card also. There was also no difference in the materials that were used to make it, the ink used on each line were of the same colour, the dimensions of the fonts of each word and the card as a whole were the same.

‘We don’t have any one here who bears this name?’ The manager mumbled to himself, giving Dakolo difficulty in hearing. ‘Where’s the passport photograph on it?’ He asked the  officer.

‘We found it like this, the picture had been broken’ Dakolo replied.

‘I believe this is fake’ the man said bluntly.

‘Fake? But there’s no difference between it and the one you’re putting on’ Dakolo retorted.

‘The culprit must have produced it’ the man bounced back. ‘I told you that John did not accept our invitation, so how could we have sent someone to interview him?’

Dakolo got up from the seat, he bent over as he looked at the man sternly. ‘If we ever find out that you’re helping a criminal, your organization would be brought down’ he threatened before walking out with his assistant.

They returned to John Obiano to get more answers from him but the answers they got only spurred more questions. John had also presented a proof of the twitter messages. He showed them how he sent them his mobile number but they decided to continue communicating with him on Twitter. He also showed them how they fixed the interview for a specific and at a particular cafeteria.

This situation made the police invite the both parties for questioning at the same time and that is how they found out that they had been both played by an internet trickster; their messages had been interjected and changed before it got to the receiver.

All efforts made to get help from the twitter administration proved abortive as they insisted that nothing of such happened on their platform. They stood on the ground that the users of the accounts must have sent it themselves or revealed the passwords to the culprit unknowingly.

Dakolo’s loud ringtone interrupted his thoughts, he took a quick glance at the vibrating phone, the caller was the Chief superintendent of police.

‘Good morning sir’ Dakolo saluted

‘Good morning Inspector Dakolo’ the man replied, ‘how far have you gone with this Governor’s murder case?’

‘Nothing new sir’ Dakolo replied, he wondered what the man was expecting him to say since they met the day before and spoke extensively on the matter.

‘Okay, I just received information that Robin Kahn is coming to assist in Nigeria before these cases become rampant’

‘Robin Kahn?’ Dakolo was surprised, ‘is that really necessary?’

‘The United Nations think it is’ the superintendent continued, ‘they believe it’s better to attack these murderers quick and with full force before it grows out of hand’

‘It’s just something tha…’

‘Cases of the same nature has been reported in seventeen other countries’ the superintendent put in. ‘We need to attack it fast’

‘Well, its okay sir’

‘Yea, that means you have to prepare a report on how far you’ve gone with the case; your successes and the challenges. The man would be here before the end of the year. That’ll be all for now’ the superintendent concluded and cut the call.

Agent Robin Kahn was a special antiterrorism agent who had helped his country in solving several top rated assassinations and also in preventing these attacks. He also led a delegation to a help a certain African country solve the murder case of their President and they nabbed the criminals in just two weeks.

Dakolo wondered if it was really necessary for Robin Kahn to come help in Nigeria, the Nigerian officers were on the top of their games already. He believed that the US did not send the man for their love for Nigeria but they sent the man because they also had the same cases in their country. Or why wouldn’t you remove the dirt in your eyes first before you help another person do it? Dakolo was sure that the man was only coming to study the correlation between the cases in his country and Nigeria so that it could help his own country overcome.

+++++++++++++++++

22/12/2030

‘Come open the gate’ Tarasha’s voice sounded as he picked the call. He got up from his bed immediately, he took a yellow shirt and hurried out at once.

The gate was opened by Cole and Tarasha drove in with a mini van, she stepped out of the car after parking and waited for Cole to join her before proceeding into the house, or office as she called it.

‘Where’s Benny and Aisha?’ She asked, but needed no answer as the duo appeared from the partition before she sat down on one of the sofas.

‘Good morning Boss’ Benny and Aisha greeted in unison. They stood some distance before her anticipating her answer and order for them to seat.

‘Good morning’ she gave a smile. ‘You can have you seats’

Benny and Aisha took the seats opposite hers while Cole sat on the sofa perpendicular to Tarasha’s seat.

‘We are having a visitor soon and we need to make preparations to welcome him’ Tarasha began, ‘in fact, we’ll be having two set of visitors; one from this country and one from the US’

There was an awkward silence in the house as they listened to her. It was he first time of coming there after their last operation. When they saw her enter unannounced, they knew she had come for some serious business.

‘I don’t know if the visitors would come at the same time but time would reveal more to us’ she continued, turning her gaze to Cole. ‘I told you about the Nigerian visitors already’

She paused and looked at Cole for confirmation, he gave her a perplexed stare. ‘I told you that the Nigerian police would be coming after us soon’ she continued when Cole seemed unable to recollect. ‘Cole is going to be incharge of the Nigerian visitors’

Cole heaved a sigh of frustration as he remembered their conversation that night in Orogbum; his partying after the whole operation had almost wiped it off his memory.

‘Benny would take care of our foreign visitors’ she siad, staring straight at Benny.

‘Who’s it?’ Benny asked calmly. Unlike Cole, he was less scared of dealing with the police, he had always been in the operation front while Cole was most times at the background. He was also prepared for any task since the day Cole had told him about the discussion with Tarasha that night.

‘Robin Kahn’ she announced, ‘Robin Kahn is coming to Nigeria with his team’

Fear gripped Benny’s heart at the moment the name was pronounced, it was not what he had envisaged.  How on earth did Tarasha expect him to deal with Robin Kahn who was trained to tame Assassins?

Cole and Benny began to have the same thoughts, they wondered why Tarasha had left something on the operation field that the police could trace them with. When they worked with Don who carried out jess sophisticated jobs, they made sure everything that could implicate was erased. Even if it had to do with them secretly eliminating one or two of their team  members that was involved in the job.

‘We always have to leave something for them to trace us’ Tarasha said as if she read their minds, distributing her stares between the two. ‘Except you don’t have intelligent officers in your country. Any officer intelligent enough to locate our trace and use it properly would be intelligent enough to make a trace if we don’t leave one. So we leave the trace to lure them into our trap’

Benny and Cole heaved a sigh at the same time, it looked as if they previously rehearsed it. Tarasha was making a mistake, Benny thought. Nigeria does not have intelligent officers that could trace her. Maybe she war likening it to Russia where she came from. The trace she had left would only make things easy for Robin Kahn.

Tarasha stared at them for some few seconds to see their reactions before turning to Aisha.

‘Aisha’ Tarasha called. Aisha looked up in fear; scared to hear that there was a task for her also. ‘You’re not supposed to be involved in this but you invited some people here already, you have to take care of them’

Tarasha said and removed a gun from her jacket, a Beretta pistol. She stood up and placed it in Aisha’s hand and return to her seat.

‘But I didn’t invite anyone here’ Aisha argued, looking bewildered with the revolver in her hand.

‘You did’ Tarasha insisted, ‘they’ve been here since 7am’

Cole and Benny forgot their worries for a moment and stared at Aisha. Tarasha got up from the seat and headed towards the computer room. ‘Follow me’ she ordered Aisha. Aisha followed immediately while Cole and Benny walked after them slowly.

The master computer was already booted when Cole and Benny got to the room. Tarasha clicked open the security camera application, the gate of the house was shown and the surrounding. She selected another icon which showed another view of immediate surrounding of the house.  A blue corolla was seen parked at some distance to the gate. The video was zoomed and it showed three men in the car, doing nothing specifically but looking towards the gate.

Aisha recognised that car, it was one of the cars she saw at Don’s caban the last time she went there. Anger welled up in her heart against Don, it meant that he had been following her and located the house through her.

‘I believe you know what I’m talking about now’ Tarasha cut in through her thoughts.

She looked guilty and remained quiet. Tarasha stood up from the seat, turning to Benny and Cole. ‘Benny, we need to transfer all the ammunitions in the arsenal into that van I came with’

‘Why?’ Benny asked, taken aback by the request. Their boss was just too full of surprises. He looked at Tarasha’s face as he waited for her reply; it was then it came to his senses that he might have just pushed a button by questioning her authority. ‘I…’

‘You’ll know later’ she  cut in calmly, disappointing him. He had expected a harsh tone scolding him for questioning her but she knew his expectation and wasn’t ready to meet it, hence her calm response.

Benny turned out and proceeded to the store room without delay, Cole joined him and they transferred everything in the room without  delay. Tarasha also joined in moving the arms while Aisha returned to the kitchen, they were done in less than twenty minutes.

‘No one should assist Aisha, she must do it alone’ Tarasha warned before she drove out of the office in the van. Tarasha knew Aisha was no match for the guys lurking outside but they had been previously warned about bringing intruders in or around the place, so Aisha had to face whatever consequence that her action spurred.

… to be continued