Lost But Satisfied - Episode 15

 

Chief opened his eyes, stared at the ceiling and smiled at himself. Even a fierce lion like himself couldn’t overcome sleep when it came. His head was pounding. He rose from the bed and rested his back on the wall. He enjoyed the sleep. Chief yawned as he stretched his body, and checked the time. The wall clock had stopped working. How would it say 11.35? He checked his phone and saw that the time on his phone correlated with his wall clock.

‘Ki lode…What happens?’ He shouted and felt the noise run through the house . The voice rebounded into his room. That was unlikely. He rose from the bed hurriedly and went to the wardrobe. The house had never been so deserted before-no music, no chatting, and no smell of alcohol.

The moment he opened the wardrobe, he unlatched a part of it. The wardrobe was full of Agbadas and some other traditional clothes, but Chief grabbed his Dane gun. He walked out of his room like a hunter, his eyes scanning the whole place to be sure he could proceed. When he got to the parlour, he met some of the assassins and thugs sleeping as if they were drugged. He went to other rooms. And he discovered that they had all slept. How would everyone in the house sleep? Something was wrong.

 Chief spun around in the room until he sighted the megaphone he got for such purpose, and screamed into it.‘Stand up… Wake up everybody’.

People scrabbled into the parlour. Many of them still looked drowsy

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. He looked at the room and knew something was amiss.

‘Shadiat…’ He said as he pointed to his secretary.

  ‘It’s Chioma’.

‘Ehn…. Whatever your name is?’ He screamed at his secretary, who shifted back as he moved his head forward. She eyed him. He knew she hated him and he wasn't concerned. In fact, he loved to strangle her, to kill her but he didn’t have a better person to replace her. She was good at what she did and he had even mistakenly commended her in the public before, to his chagrin.

‘Count everyone in the room, and make sure nobody is missing’.

She brought a book from a folder and began to call out names, and the owner of the names replied with either noise or by raising his or her hand.

 Chief sat and watched as the secretary reeled out the names of everybody until she got to Sparrow.

‘Where is Sparrow?’ He asked. No reply, ‘did your mothers use their head to hit the floor?’

 No response. He turned from one part of the room to the other, expecting one of them to talk, to give him a reasonable reply. He stumped the Dane gun on the tile, and the tile broke. The tiles had been replaced after a piece of advice from his beloved daughter that he should do so, and now these new ones had started facing the same fate the former set faced.

 His secretary moved to him. He smirked.

‘Yes…’ he said, maintaining a stoic expression, ’talk what you want to talk’. He bit himself, he hated making mistake in front of this girl, whom he had let know that he didn’t like.

‘He had travelled for more than three weeks now’, his secretary said, ‘and had not reported to me’.

The feeling was still lingering on his mind, and he knew he must be thorough. He smelt danger. Something was definitely amiss and he must get to the root of it.‘Who has seen Sparrow?’

No one talked. He felt like becoming many and rushing to every one of these boys and girls he trained, and give them resounding slaps for staring at him like a dullard, for staring at him with no one to give him a good reply.

‘Check the log’, the chief ordered the secretary. Her body, twinning like a snake as she scurried out of the parlour, made his heart warm-up as he watched her go. God! If only he could lay his hand on this lady, and…

'Run, my friend’, he shouted at her.

 She rushed off, out of the parlour, to her room, returned with her laptop and switched it on. Chief watched her. He looked around to make sure nobody was watching him so that they wouldn’t see the lust he had for the lady. They were all watching him. He hissed.

‘Be fast…’

She plugged a modem into the laptop and worked on the laptop.

‘The last place he was seen was… Agric’.

 ‘That’s still good…’

‘But he is dead…’

‘Dead…?' Voices from the others said.

‘How do you know?’, one of the others in the room asked, making his secretary look at the person with disdain, her long eyelashes making chief’s heart melt. Chief unconsciously licked his tongue and caught himself doing so. He stopped.

‘If she says that he is dead, he is dead. Continue, my friend’, Chief ordered.

 She continued calling names.

‘Jeremy….’

No response.

‘Where Jeremy…’

‘I wake am’.

‘Talk like a professional, madman. Talk like a professional’, Chief said and was happy to see his secretary smile.

‘I woke him when you made the call but he didn’t stand up’.

‘Go to his room and tell him that if he does not come around now, I will come up there and send him to heaven quicker than he had ever wished’, Chief shouted and rejoiced within that his sentence was correct. Through the corner of his eyes, he looked at her and saw her face brightened. He hated her.

They waited as one of the assassins went to call Jeremy, who came into the room, looking tired, grumpy, and in need of more sleep.

‘It seems you want the god of thunder to visit your parents', Chief fumed,’ come down here foolish son of many fathers’.

Chief quickly looked around to do a mental count of everyone in the room, and saw everyone or was he not seeing well?

‘Erm… Rachael…’ the secretary called as if she had said it before but the chief didn’t hear her.

‘Rachael…Racheal’ Chief said,’ she would be with my daughter in the other quarters,’ she would come around when the time for meeting start. Call… Call the others’.

‘Um, sir…’

‘What…?’ Chief said as he turned to her, he had been trying to avoid looking at her. The moment he looked at her, the tingling feeling came under his skin again. He hated that feeling. He hated her for causing that feeling in him, ‘What?’.

 She scowled and kept quiet, looking at him and making him feel so uncomfortable.‘She is not with your daughter’.

‘Ehy… Where else would she be? I say she is with my daughter. Call other people’.

‘She is in Kasali’s room…’

‘Kasali… Racheal… Kasali… Is Kasali is mad?’

‘What is Rachael doing in Kasali's room? ‘Someone asked.

‘Eh… You… You and you follow me. I will teach this girl a lesson she will not forget. I will let her know’, Chief said and turned towards the door, with the others following him.

 He moved on to the gateman’s office, with such anger that if he ran into the wall, the wall would crumble. When they got to the gateman’s condo, Chief felt like rushing into the room and beating Kasali up. Kasali was a professional illiterate; Rachael was a professional killer, a professional Guard, a professional Cleaner of evidence, a professional runner, a professional… A professional brainy student, a professional everything and the first girl he would train into being an assassin, also the best of all the assassins he has ever trained, and their teacher. Was this what she would teach the others? How could Kasali be sleeping with the same girl as he? Kasali wanted to start dipping his filthy hand into the same pot as he?

When they got to Kasali’s doorstep, they heard the serious m*aning of a lady, presumably Rachael. Chief’s blood boiled, and he felt himself puffing invisible hot smoke. He would make Kasali beg for his life with what he had done. Even, that foolish Rachael- he would let her know one doesn’t use one's mouth to praise a king and use that same mouth to praise a slave- never.

‘Kasali, your life would be ruined today', Chief shouted as he banged the door, ‘I will destroy you, your family and I will…destroy you’.

 Kasali rushed to open the door.

‘Enter and bring her’, Chief ordered his men, ‘bring her for me’.

The men pushed Kasali aside and entered.

‘Leave me’ someone screamed. The voice was different from Racheal’s.

 They brought out a lady. The bulb in front of Kasali’s door reflected on the lady’s face, of course, she wasn't Rachael. Her face was laced with five Gombo (a type of tribal mark that runs from the head to the chin).

‘Is Chidinma mad? Go and call her for me’.

‘Who…?’

‘Secretary. Idiot. Be fast’, he shouted and watched as one of the men ran to call the secretary. He didn’t know what the fuss was all about but he still felt this same way. The last time he had that type of feeling, and didn’t do anything about it, he almost died. He wasn’t leaving any stone unturned.

 The secretary came towards him, her figure shifting to both sides rhythmically, with her laptop in her hand. Her slim but attractive body aroused that feeling in him.

‘Oh…’ Chief mouthed, ‘I hate this girl’.

‘Sir’, she said as she got near him, even in the night she smelt nice. He shook his head. She smelt bad.

‘Rachael is not here’, he scowled.

‘But this is her link blinking’, she said.

His secretary went forward and stopped in front of Kasali. She dropped her shoulder, faced one of the men, gave him her laptop, and ran off into the room.

‘Shola, where are you going’?

‘It’s Chioma… I’m going to pick the scanner’.

What is wrong with this girl?

‘You!’ He said to the lady Kasali was having a nice time with,’ enter the house…’

The lady, grateful, stood and ran into the room, closing the door behind her as she kept on saying ‘Thank you, sir’.

The secretary returned with alacrity, the scanner in her hand, and rushed to Kasali. She went to him, not minding Kasali’s look of disdain as she began to run the scanner over him. She stopped when she got to a part of Kasali’s hand. The secretary drew his hand nearer and hissed. The chip was at the back of his hand. Rachael had discovered the chip, removed it and had escaped.

 Chief waited patiently to hear the result of her search.

‘She has discovered the chip, Chief, and has escaped’

‘Escaped, why?’

‘Ogini, how will I know? Maybe you …’ she said, stopped, eyed him and turned towards the house.

 ‘Kasali, when Rachael pass?'

‘Chief, it's been long’.

‘How did that thing get to your hand?' Chief asked pointing to the back of Kasali’s hand.

 'Chief, I don't know’.

Chief shook his head and turned back towards the house. When they got to the house, people have changed their position, many of them were now sitting, but he wasn't concerned. Why did she run away?

‘My Money…’ he said faintly as he quickly held the chair to stabilize himself. Then, he screamed, 'go to the room. My money…’

His men ran to check the room.

‘The money is not there’, one of the men that left to check announced as they returned to the room, and from their stance, he understood that they were waiting for orders from him. They wanted to know if they were to start looking for the money, the thief or to kill someone.

Read " The Thorny Path to Europe " by the same author ( Akíntayo Akinjide )

. He felt bad and looked at the men.

‘Let her go. It's Rachael let her go. She has been here since she was a child. Let her go with it. And you people won't be able to handle her’, he said and faced his secretary, ‘Simbi, continue’.

‘It’s Chioma’.

‘Ehn. Continue’.

She called their names until she got to Once.

‘I’m here’, Once said, entering the house, his cloth draped with a bloodstain. He was clutching his stomach as he entered the room. Everyone’s eyes turned to him. A lady ran to him and supported him as he limped into the room.

‘Chief, Bennett Adeoti is still alive’, he said and faced everyone, and ‘Leech is still alive’.

 The secretary dropped the laptop she was holding and the laptop rattled on the tiles. Chief shifted back. Even the ceiling fan stopped having sound.