The Patriot

by Samuel Cobby Grant

EPISODE 4

The President was in his office pondering on issues of politics. He had, on assuming office, refused to allow himself to be coerced into making political appointments to only party loyalists. Neither did he make appointments that could be construed as practising any form of nepotism.

He formed an all-inclusive government that included people from the political divide. Even then, he had had to deal with a lot of idiosyncrasies but he being a great leader and a statesman, had taken it all in his stride and wasn’t found wanting.

But what was bothering him at that material moment was the issue of the Vice President. He seemed to be sleeping on the job. Aside from that, he had been fornicating like it was no one’s business.

He sighed.

The Veep was hardly at the office, choosing to spend time with different women all the time.

And Issah Musah was nowhere to be found and that was so unlike him. He said to himself and sighed again.

“Am I the only dedicated person here?” he asked himself with exasperation, even though he knew that wasn’t true.

Ghana hadn’t achieved its greatness from incompetency. Its greatness wasn’t by accident but by having great and dedicated leaders who were proactive and had foresight.

He had read of those days when government officials did as they pleased but accountability was the watchword now. And corruption rarely reared its ugly head.

Abeiku Sosa, the Veep, meanwhile after leaving his mistress’s bedroom, went to an elite Club House to have a meeting with the Party Chairman. They met in a private room.

“What would you take,” a waiter asked.

“Black Label. On the rocks,” he said.

They waited till they had been served and the waiter had left before they sat down to business.

“What the hell is the President trying to do. Is he trying to render me bankrupt?” Chairman Siriboe demanded, his face ashen with anger and misery.

“The man is an idiot. He doesn’t know how politics works,” the Veep said angrily.

“What is he trying to achieve by refusing to get us lucrative contracts?”

“He thinks party contributions grow on trees.”

“Yeah. He has even rejected the list of party faithfuls I submitted to him for appointments into key positions.”

“He dared to refuse even you,” the Veep asked with feigned disbelief.

“If I am to have my way, I’ll remove him and put you there as President,” the Chairman said, highly agitated.

“He doesn’t belong to the High Office of the Land,” the Veep happily said.

“I am watching him closely. One wrong move from him and he’s gone. Kaput,” he wheezed “Talking about the fool stresses me up. I need a massage.”

“I know the exact place to send you,” he said sweetly and promptly made a call to Abena Dompey, his mistress who promised to let one of her girls attend to him.

“Go and release your stress. The girls there have magical hands,” he assured the Chairman.

“Good. Thanks. But we would need a plan of action to put the President in his place.”

“Okay. Let’s meet again in a week to brainstorm,” the Veep said before they parted.

Abena Dompey dialled a number and said to the listener at the other end of the coming of Chairman Siriboe.

“Another boyfriend of yours?” the man at the other end said.

“No. Party Chairman. He’s a friend of the Vice President.”

“Good. The recording equipment is still in place, right?” he said, breathing in quickly as if sensing the presence of a prey.

“Yes. It still is.”

“Good, give him the VIP treatment and let me know when you are done with him.”

The President hadn’t left the office in 24 hours. The absence of Issah Musah baffled him and everyone who knew him. It was a mystery that was proving to be eluding all of them. He had gone missing for close to 36 hours and not even the fact that he had a microchip under the skin at the back of his neck had made it possible for him to the traced. It was baffling indeed that the most powerful directional finder that could trace anyone from everywhere in the world has not been able to locate him.

Without wasting much time, he had placed all the intelligence agencies on red alert but so far, he had not been found.

***

Both the Veep and the ruling Party’s Chairman got the same type of package almost at the same time, none of them knew of the other getting it. They each got a video recording of what they had done with Abena Dompey at her massage parlour on a certain afternoon. And in each of the videos was enough evidence that if made public, could end their political lives forever.

Chairman Siriboe, when viewing the video, began to sweat. His gaze was fixed on the computer screen in his office as he watched the disgusting things he had done with the woman; of how he had licked her feet, her armpits and her anus. Even the large amount of cash he had given to her was captured on video.

“Did I really do these?” he asked himself in misery. He knew that him getting the package could only mean one thing. That he was going to be blackmailed.

“This is one blackmail I am going to pay at all cost,” he said to himself.

He picked up the envelope again looking for any kind of message to determine the identity or otherwise of the sender. He was at his wit’s end on what to do.

“Oh my God,” he cried in anguish as the video played in slow motion as he parted her buttocks and licked her anus on her bidden.

He watched as if in a trance as the video rolled on repeating the same images but from different camera angles.

“How am I going to explain this to my wife, my children. my grandchildren?”

Now breathing heavily with a throbbing pain in his chest, he placed a call to the number the Veep had given him for the parlour but it went on and on with no one answering.

He sat back with a strong feeling of trepidation and decided that he wasn’t going to sit still and fold his arms.

He drove to the parlour but hadn’t thought of how he was going to confront her when he got there.

He soon got there and as he slowed down to find a parking spot, he saw a lot of policemen around. He also saw an ambulance parked with its doors opened. He drove past the area and parked about a hundred metres away to observe what was going on. He saw a body, obviously, a woman, being carried out on a stretcher by medics and put in the ambulance. It zoomed off with its siren blaring. He stayed for a while, long enough to see the police set up a caution tape across the entrance and left. He drove home later, feeling jittery and confused.

As for the Veep, he was steaming in his own cup of tea. He had received and watched a playback on his assignations with Abena Dompey. His face turned ashen with shock as he watched in Technicolor, his bed play with his mistress. His feeble attempts to go more rounds than he was capable of, her using a dildo on him as he moaned and even her futile attempts to stimulate him into hardness was captured. He watched the video, aghast as it played and played but he lacked the courage to stop it. The almost one hour clip of his sexual escapades with Abena Dompey finally came to an end and he began to cry knowing immediately that it could only be the work of a political detractor. He quickly swallowed one of his BP drugs as sweat engulfed his body. His mind was in overdrive as he thought about the situation.

“Is this the work of an enemy or Abena Dompey,” he said, feeling trapped, “I can see the hand of the President in this.”

His breathing became laboured and had taken a bottle of Fresh Apio from his drawer and taken a long pull at it straight from the bottle. He hardly felt the bite from the fiery drink and took another long drink. Before long, he had quaffed a quarter of the drink.

This story is an AREWAH WRITING CONTEST 2022 entry. Remember to drop your comments and share the links widely.

 [stextbox id=”info” caption=”LIKE MY FACEBOOK PAGE“]

https://www.facebook.com/Aaron.Ansah.A/

 AREWAH WRITING CONTEST 2022

https://aaron-ansah-agyeman.com/2022/02/15/arewah-writing-contest-2022/