Con 56

‘What are you thinking about?’ Cole asked.
Henry took another deep breath and licked his lower lip briefly, ‘I just hope after recovering now, Omotara would make the decision to stop this assassination job.’

Cole chuckled mockingly, ‘Why should she make such a stupid decision?’ he asked, staring at Henry like he was looking at a kid.
‘What’s stupid about it?’ Henry countered with a serious look on his face. ‘I think it’s the wise thing to do, she almost got killed by those evil men, don’t you think it’s better for her, for all of us to just seek a peaceful life henceforth.’
Cole glanced at his face and then laughed. ‘Do you think we can ever live a peaceful life? Those men, do you think they’ll ever stop trying to kill the boss?’
‘I don’t know about them or what they’ll do but we could just run off to somewhere they can’t find us and start a new life there,’ Henry said.

A phone on the table rang and distracted them. Both stared at the phone for a while and then glanced at each other. It was Tarasha’s phone ringing. It stopped ringing and Cole picked it up to check the caller’s ID. The phone began to ring again, the caller was Chief Gab. Cole answered the call and placed it on his ear without speaking.
‘What’s the matter with you Tarasha?’ I’ve been waiting here for you since, you refused to answer my several calls or even send a message to explain yourself.’ the man complained.

Cole took the phone off his ear, he minimized the dialer and rolled down the notification bar to confirm the man’s claim to have called severally. He placed the phone back to his ear after he saw seven missed calls in the notification, the calls must have been when they left the control room to check on Tarasha.
‘Tarasha…’ the man was saying as he didn’t get any response.
‘I’m sorry Chief, the boss is not in position to speak with you now.’ Cole spoke.
‘Who… who are you?’ Chief Gab stammered.
‘She’s my boss, I’ll tell her about your call as soon as she’s able to attend to it.’
‘Hey! Tell her I’m expecting her here right now,’ the man said angrily.
‘I will do that when I’m able to…’
‘Please get to her wherever she is right away and deliver my message,’ the man slammed.

‘I’m sorry she can’t get your message right now, but I’ll deliver it as soon as possible.’

‘You must be joking right, you don’t know who I am.’ Chief Gab said in a threatening tone.

‘I know who you are but there’s nothing I can do right now,’ Cole replied.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, just tell her I give her thirty minutes to get here.’ he said and ended the call.
Cole shrugged and hissed as he dropped the phone on the table. He turned back to the system and continued with his work but Henry who was eager to get the details of the call grabbed his hand on the mouse.
‘Who was that?’ he asked in soft tones.
‘That’s Chief, the man who Tarasha works for.’ Cole replied without stopping his work.
‘What does he want?’
‘He wants to speak with her right away, I think she scheduled a meeting with him today.’
‘Oh! Why can’t you tell him what has happened, maybe he could help us to get somewhere safer.’
‘No, I can’t…’ Cole began but stopped briefly to think. ‘I can’t, not right now.’ he said, shaking his head.

_____
Dave typed in the address of the house again into the dialog box, he clicked ‘SEND’ and waited as it began to process. He looked out through the window to the gate again and the buildings nearby. He had been there for close to two hours and had not seen anyone going in or coming out of the place. He made enquires from the neighbors around and learnt that the place was occupied by a group of young people whom no one in the street knew anything about, they only see their cars drive in and out of the place. The people also told Dave that a car had entered into the place that day and left again but had not been seen entering there again after that. He also learnt that a man and a lady was seen hours ago walking into the place. All his efforts to confirm what the neighbours said proved abortive as he couldn’t retrieve from the NSCC Database any footage recorded at the time he calculated. The footages available were the ones recorded the last night and fifteen minutes before he got there. It only meant two things; either the cameras were made to stop work between that time or someone who had access to the database deleted the footages. The latter had a higher possibility of occuring.
He tapped the power button of his tablet device and the screen came on again. The processing had ended and the details he requested for were gradually loading. On the first page of the tab that popped up showed the picture of the gate of the building he was staring at, just the same way it was in real life. He scrolled to the next page and a half view of the gate and fence was shown together with the neighboring building at the left, he scrolled to the third and the other half of the gate was shown. On the fourth to the ninth page were shown different views of the top plan and roof of the building behind the fence. Dave paused to check the loading progress of the window and saw it as ninety seven percent, the displayed tab already had a hundred and twenty one pages. Dave knew at one that there was something fishy about the facility. There was no way a hundred and twenty one pages of a private owned facility would be documented in the Ministry of Housing database from which he was checking. Even government owned facilities do not occupy more than thirty pages in their documentation. He knew someone must have hacked into the system and made a dummy documentation or tampered with the original.
He scrolled back to the top and searched for the ‘find’ icon at the top bar of the app. He clicked on the icon and the keyboard popped up, he typed in the word ‘owner’ and searched. Only one result was found in the document, he clicked the result to navigate to the page where it was. It was the second to the last page of the document. The details he needed read below;
‘ Owner Of Facility : Unknown
Type of Facility : Residential
Description : Unknown
Signed by: Amodu Shehu
Minister of Housing ‘
The details confirmed to him that the documentation was not done by the Ministry of Housing, there was no way they would document a facility with an unknown owner.
He was sure Samantha Osman was the owner of the facility but how to get inside the place was his challenge. He needed to find a way to get in without raising suspicion. It wasn’t something he could rush into, it needed more planning. He pushed the start button on his car and drove off, he was going to return after planning well.



______
‘I saw this car at that gate where you came out carrying her on your shoulder,’ Henry said with his voice full of conviction as he and Cole both stared at the screen of the computer. Agent Dave’s car was seen in the video driving down the road away from their building, Cole switched the cameras in view to keep monitoring the car as it sped off.
‘I didn’t notice anything then,’ Cole replied him. ‘But we have to see where he’s heading for.’
‘Do you think it can be Rex?’ Henry asked in a shaky voice.
Cole smiled as he could sense the fear in Henry’s voice, ‘I don’t think so, if the car was really staying there for us, it must be that guy that helped me and later shot the tracker into my back.’

‘But don’t you think that unknown helper could be Rex?’

‘No, he can’t be Rex. The Inspector General was waiting for him to come and pick Tarasha and he couldn’t have gone against them after working so hard to make things work for them.’
‘So then who can that guy be and why did he help us?’
‘I can’t say,’ Cole said. He turned to look at the other computer systems on the table, ‘I think you should boot another computer and let’s check with that how long that car has been outside.’
‘Okay,’ Henry got up and searched around with his eyes for the computer that would be convenient for him to use.

_______
–Thirty five minutes later–
** The NIS Underground Office**
Dave hurried down the stairs into the corridor, the walls by the side and the doors were made of transparent glasses, that made it possible for him to see the other NIS officials as they worked in their offices which was usually shared by four to six people. He waved at some people and greeted some verbally as he walked to the exit, the place was now busy with activities unlike earlier in the day when he was there with Dan and Lizzy.
He almost collided into Lizzy as he exited the corridor into another block. ‘Hey… Easy!’ Lizzy cautioned, staring at him like he had just fallen from the sky.
‘Lizzy,’ Dave tried to put on a smile. ‘I was coming to meet you.’
‘I know, I was waiting for you.’
‘Then let’s go straight away,’ Dave said and Lizzy turned with him. Both of them began to walk to the dressing room.
‘What happened to all I did this morning?’ Lizzy asked as they walked on.

‘What’s that?’ Dave asked, pretending not to know what she was talking about. He stared at her for a while and noticed that she had changed into something different from what she had on that morning. She was now properly dressed in a corporate outfit since it was time for the office job unlike the cleavage and thighs revealing outfit she wore before.
‘I dressed you up with a bandage on your head and one on your hand, what happened to them?’

‘Well, it’s a long story.’ Dave said and paused as they got to the door of the dressing room. She slid in a card and the door gave way. ‘I’ don’t have much time to explain right now.’

‘So you mean you have a long story to tell already, it’s not up to ten hours yet.’ she said as she locked the door.
‘Let’s just forget that now, I want you to fix something different for me now.’ David said.
‘And what difference do you want?’ she asked as she took off the line the piece of cloth to be hung down his neck to cover his chest.

‘I want something removable and durable,’ he replied.
‘You must be joking if you believe you’re going to get that within the same period of period we did the morning dress.’
‘When can I get it then?’
‘You can’t even get it today, it can only be tomorrow evening or the day after tomorrow.’ she said, facing the mirror and rubbing a spot on her face.
‘What?’ David shone his eyes. His eyes met with Lizzy’s in the mirror.
‘Yea, you can however order for a ready made one if you need it urgently.’
‘Come on Lizzy, just help me do this.’ he pleaded.
‘I’m trying to help you, you know I also have my work to do. It can only be ready by that time, I’m telling the truth.’
‘Okay then, let’s have you repeat something quick like the one you did this morning but it should be totally different. Maybe I have to take off my shirt, so you’ll fix the wound around my belly instead.’
‘Yes of course, you dare not put the bandage on your head anymore,’ Lizzy began, she turned and rested her bum on the drawer, she folded her arms and looked directly into his eyes. ‘The whole country is already on the lookout for the man with the bandage on his head who attacked and killed several officers this morning and also left the Inspector General seriously wounded.’
Lizzy’s word hit Dave hard. It meant that the news of what happened that morning was all over the city already and he was seen by somebody who reported. Lizzy was sure he was the one.