Tarasha - Chapter 62

Tarasha walked into the house without taking another look at Henry. No one was in the living room when she stepped in, she knew that they were all peeping before and had all run into their rooms when they saw her coming. She saw the widow curtain which was slightly opened. She walked closer to the window and peeped from it. Henry was still standing and bfacing the house, he saw her peeping. She rolled down curtains immediately after their eyes met and turned back to lock the entrance door carefully. She began to proceeded to the rooms section. ‘Cole, Benny, Aisha’ she called in a loud but gentle voice as she stopped in front of Aisha’s room. One after the other, they all came out to meet her. ‘Start packing everything that’s important, we are leaving here in the next one hour’ ‘Cole’ she called and turned to him. ‘Hack into the security cameras system and stop all transmissions from this area and several kilometres surrounding it. I believe we are being monitored, so we have to be careful’ she said and began to proceed into her own room. She stopped at the entrance and turned back. Cole, Aisha and Benny were still standing on the same spots they were, staring at her in awe. They wondered if what you said about them being monitored was true. Then that means that their Waterloo was near. She walked past them to the living room again and went to the window to check. Henry had just opened the gate and was returning to his car. He stopped before entering the driver’s seat and glanced around the house again. Tarasha quickly closed the curtain to hide herself. He fixed his gaze on the window for a second, he knew someone was looking at him through the window but he couldn’t tell who it was. He opened the door and entered into the car. He kicked off the engine and reversed out of the compound. He came out of his car again to close back the gate before driving off. Tarasha left the window and walked back to her room. Benny and the others had already entered their rooms. She got inside her room and locked the door. She sat on the bed, buried her face on her palms and let out a deep breath. She had underestimated the Nigerian police, she began to think. She thought that all her tracks had been covered, not knowing that someone, Henry was on her trail. She was sure in her heart that he was an undercover cop sent to bring her down. That was the reason for all he had been doing. She thought of how he bumped into her at the computer shop when she first came into Abuja, it all began to make sense to her now. She had been too careless to note that his constant running into her was not by mistake but was planned. She was being monitored. Ahe now understood his romance tactics with her, it was very common for undercover cops to have a romantic relationship with their targets, it always worked for them. Now the common saying “Feelings are for fools” taught to them by the Nefary clan was making complete sense. The day an assassin begins to have affections is the day the assassin’s death warrant is signed. How did Henry find out all he did about her? Her real name, the name of her brother and what she did. Of course, he hadn’t seen her brother Jeffrey, he died a long time ago. Or how could her brother even have recognised her after so many years? Henry was an expert agent, she was very sure. She came up with a clue of how her bloodline was traced and how Henry found out that the name of her brother, Jeffrey. Henry must have taken something from her during their time of staying together, likely a strand of her hair when she foolishly agreed to stay in the cameras commission house with him. They must have gotten the strand from her comb when she went out. With that they would have been able to trace her background and find out all about her origin in Nigeria. She got up from the bed and flung open the wardrobe. She began to take out her guns and ammunitions first, she arranged them into their bags neatly. ~~ Henry had driven for thirty minutes before he remembered to check his phone. He had just left the village where he went to visit Tarasha and had gotten into town. He pulled up close to the area where commercial cabs were parked. He took out his phone and drew the security pattern, he clicked on the call logs icon. He dialed Sylvester’s number first. ‘Hello sir’ he spoke immediately the call was answered. ‘Hello, Mr Henry. We’ve been trying to reach you for a long time. What happened? Were you in church?’ Sylvester’s voice came through impatiently. ‘Yes, I was in church today and my phone was on silence mode’ Henry gave the expected excuse. ‘Oh! I never knew you were a religious type’ Sylvester exclaimed. ‘I’m not religious, I’m a Christian’ Henry corrected. ‘Anyways, have you spoken with Agent Dakolo? He’s the one who urgently needs to reach you.’ ‘No, but I’ll call him right away’ ‘Please do’ ‘Okay’ Henry ended the call and dialed Dakolo immediately. ‘Good afternoon sir’ Henry greeted first. ‘Good afternoon Henry, how are you doing?’ ‘Fine sir, what about you?’ ‘I’m good. We need to see urgently’ ‘Where do you want us to meet sir?’ Henry asked. ‘We can meet in your house or any place of your choice’ Dakolo said. ‘In my house?’ Henry sounded uncomfortable with the idea. ‘Anywhere you want. In a restaurant or wherever but not in the office’ ‘I think I should come and meet you in Elymax, we can discuss in the restaurant there’ ‘Okay, I’ll be expecting you in the next thirty minutes’ ‘Yeah sure’ Henry ended the call. He threw his phone to the backseat and let out a deep breath as rested his head. He closed his eyes and his thoughts once again drifted back to Omotara. He wondered what the best way to help her was. Now that she wasn’t acting like someone who was going to easily cooperate with him. The picture of the bullet which he saw with her flashed back into his mind, he also remembered the knife which cut her hand. He wasn’t surprised because he expected that her work as a fraudster would also require her to keep weapons and guns. A thought flashed through his mind, scaring him to death. Could Omotara be Samantha Osman, the mastermind of the assassinations? He shook his head in disagreement with himself, the thought of the possibility alone frightened him extremely. He chose to believe otherwise, Omotara was just an unlucky girl who had found her way to be a fraudster. She couldn’t be the dangerous assassin. He kicked off the engine and drove away to meet Dakolo. **35 minutes later** Henry had no issues spotting Dakolo where he was seated immediately he walked into the restaurant. Dakolo was seated close to the entrance. Several other customers were eating and discussing in the restaurant. ‘Good afternoon sir’ Henry greeted as he approached the table. ‘Good afternoon’ Dakolo stood up to shake hands with him before sitting down. There were soft drinks on the table already which had been ordered by Dakolo. ‘You can change your drink if you don’t like it’ Dakolo said on seeing the way Henry stared at the table. ‘No, it’s okay’ Henry smiled. ‘I was just wondering what the reason could be for the urgent meeting’ ‘Nothing new’ Dakolo adjusted his seating position. ‘Still the same case, just that we’ve been mandated to take more drastic steps. We need to make an headway on the case this week. I’ll be having a meeting with the president this week and also some of the top security ministers and we need substantial progress reports’ ‘Okay’ Henry fixed his gaze on Dakolo, listening attentively. ‘You told me yesterday when we discussed that we can’t trace the source of the past cameras disruption, we can only wait till there’s another attempt on it’ ‘Yes, I did. Any attempt to trace it now may lead us to a trap’ Henry reconfirmed. ‘Okay, but what happens if Chief Jubril’s assassination was the last of the attacks?’ Henry narrowed his eyes thoughtfully without saying any word. ‘Does it mean that they go scot-free with what they’ve done already?’ Dakolo continued. ‘The way it looks now, we are helpless and with little or no clue to lead us to this assassin group. Only the picture of the suspected lady Samantha Osman is what we have’ Henry’s heart skipped a beat as he remembered his suspicion of Omotara being the Samantha again. ‘Can I see the picture please?’ ‘Of course sure, you may have seen the person somewhere before’ Dakolo bent to pick a small briefcase which was in between the legs of his chair. He placed it on his lap and opened it. He brought out an iPad, closed back the briefcase and returned it to the former position. He turned on the iPad and waited patiently for it to boot. After some seconds of searching, he handed the iPad to Henry. ‘That’s her passport, it’s not recent one though. According to our investigations, her real name is Aisha Bello. We believe she’s the one who disguises herself as Samantha Osman. All our efforts to trace her has proved futile’ Henry stared at the passport keenly. His mind was greatly relieved as the person in it did not in anyway look like Omotara. He heaved a sigh of relief and handed the iPad back to Dakolo. ‘I’ve not seen that face anywhere before’ ‘Do you want to see more of her recent pictures?’ Dakolo asked as he took back the iPad, opening a picture which showed the grown Aisha. ‘No’ Henry refused politely. ‘I don’t know that person, I’ve never seen her before’ ‘Okay’ Dakolo switched off the iPad and returned it into the briefcase. ‘So, we need to work. We can’t wait and hope until there’s another attempt made’ ‘Sir, I think the NSCC has done what needs to be done already. The footages which were never stored with us cannot be recovered in any way. We’ve done what we can do to prevent a reoccurrence’ Dakolo bent forward and stared into Henry’s eyes. ‘I know, but the police needs your help now more than ever before. We need you to work with us’ ‘How?’ Henry asked, he frowned slightly. Dakolo rested back into his chair again, he folded his arms. ‘First, you were here when the last attack happened and it even happened in this same state’ ‘Yes sir’ Henry answered. A thought came into his mind. He hope that Dakolo would not ask him questions that would reveal that he was also an attendee at the party. ‘Is there any group or individual to suspect personally?’ ‘Huh?’ Henry was visibly shaken by the question. ‘Do you have anyone you suspect?’ Dakolo asked again, this time in a calmer tone. He stared into Henry’s eyes as he waited for an answer. ~~~~ Cole was seated on the three seater sofa, already dressed up in a black top and black Jean trouser while the others were still in the rooms, gathering their loads. He opened his bag which was on the sofa and brought out his laptop. He placed it on his lap and opened it up to boot. After a minute, the computer was on. He began the assignment given to him to hack the cameras system. After some minutes of following normal procedure, strange commands and notifications began to pop up on the laptop screen. The one which got him more worried was a pop-up window which displayed, “Real Address to be revealed, continue? Yes/No” He closed the whole process and started from the scratch again, taking extra care in following each step. At the end of the whole process, he received the same pop- up window. He clicked on No and the process was aborted. He frowned and thought for a while, something was definitely wrong. He cleared the software cache and history and even restored it back to the default settings. He now had to log in again and make some settings which would require a longer time to complete. ‘Have you stopped the transmission?’ Tarasha asked as she appeared behind him, trying to wear a bag to her back. She was dressed in the same manner as Cole, the same color of clothes but she had black gloves on which Cole didn’t. She was dragging a traveling box along. ‘No’ Cole looked up as Tarasha got to his front. ‘What’s delaying it?’ She asked and sat on the one seater sofa by the Cole’s left. ‘There’s a strange pop-up showing at the end of the process’ Cole answered with a frown. ‘What pop-up?’ ‘I’m almost there. I’ll show you if it comes up again’ Cole replied. After two minutes of continuous typing and clicking, Cole heaved a sigh of frustration. ‘It’s here again’ he said and sank back into the sofa like he had given up. Tarasha got up and sat beside him. She squinted on seeing the message of the pop-up window. ‘Should I click yes?’ Cole asked, looking into Tarasha’s face. She replied him with a warning look and he kept mute. ‘If you click yes, they won’t only be able to find this location but would also be able to recover the stream’ she said as she got up, she bit her lips and stared into the air for some seconds. ~~~ ‘Yesss’ Henry replied, stressing the word. He knew better than to say no because he was sure that Dakolo would catch him easily especially when he had not been able to hide his shock at the question. ‘ I’m thinking that we could have an in-house member of the gang in the NSCC, I’m suspecting those working in the headquarters especially’ Henry quickly added a well thought up lie. ‘Does this include Mr Sylvester?’ Dakolo asked. ‘Hum… Not really. Mr Sylvester seems to naive to be involved in that. But still, everyone is a suspect’ ‘Including you?’ Dakolo suggested with a smile. ‘Yes, including me’ Henry replied with a brief laugh. ‘Then, how do we go about this? How do we investigate your office?’ Dakolo asked, putting back on his serious look. Henry’s phone beeped. A warning notification alarm rang out. His call ringing tone began to sound at the same time. He brought out the phone and checked the caller. ‘Mr Sylvester’ he whispered to Dakolo. ‘Go ahead, answer, hear what he has to say’ Henry answered the call. ‘Mr Henry, the whole office is ringing with the alarms, someone is trying to hack our systems again’ ‘Huh?’ ‘Yes, I can see it on my computer here’ ‘Okay, just wait for me. I’ll be in the office in few minutes. Make sure you keep an eye on it , record every change in direction that occurs’ Henry said and ended the call. He confirmed the Sylvester’s report by the alarm on his phone. From the look on Henry’s face, Dakolo could perceive that something bad was happening. ‘The gang is trying to disrupt our system again’ Henry said to Dakolo’s waiting ears. ‘Wow’ Henry got up quickly and picked his car keys from the table. ‘I have to go now’ ‘Yes sure’ Dakolo permitted. He got up also and took out his phone. He dialed the headquarters as Henry left him and walked away. ‘Send enough men to every entry and exit to the major roads in town. There seem to be another security breach right now, something dangerous may happen’ he said into the phone.