The Patriot

by Samuel Cobby Grant

Episode 12

Corporal Adu was very satisfied with himself.

The perks he got from being the President’s driver were enormous. It was a Saturday and it happened to be his day off too, and being a bachelor, had gone to the supermarket nearby to get some necessities. He was going through the shelves, picking whatever caught his fancy when he saw Otubea, the Vice Presidential Aide, picking up some pastries from the confectionery section.

He sauntered over to her and greeted. She looked up at him, startled as if she had been jerked out of her reverie.

She responded to his greetings and smiled. She recognized him as the man who drove the President on his trips. He was a bit of a legend in the fact that if he were the President’s driver, then he must be a very good and exceptional driver indeed.

They clicked and chatted as they went through the shelves as if they were old friends. They were done in no time and walked together to the cash register to settle their bills. She, walking ahead of him, presented a visa card and paid for his items as well. He only realised that when he attempted to pay for his and the cashier told him it had already been paid for. He thanked her profusely but she waved it off as it was nothing

“Don’t worry, my dear,” she said “The card belongs to the Vice President and he has more money than sense.”

He gaped at her and laughed at that and she joined him in the laughter.

They walked together to the car park to her Cherokee Jeep which he saw was the latest model. They spent about twenty minutes in conversation as if they were old friends. He found her upbeat and amusing but he tried not to overstep his boundaries as he knew that she was the Veep’s lady. She reminded him of a lady he had met in Liberia when he went there with Squadron Leader Kofi Frimpong for an operation.

She gave him all the pastries she had bought, saying she really didn’t need them but had gone to the supermarket on impulse.

He laughed softly at that.

“I have never heard anything like this before,” he had said with a look of incredulity on his face.

Otubea laughed too and bade him goodbye.

He stared after her till her car rounded the corner and vanished from view.

He went home and found a note had been slipped under his door.

“Let’s meet at 12:00 noon,” it said.

It actually meant they should meet at 11:00. He looked at the time and saw that it was 10:30 already.

He quickly sorted out the purchases, putting them in their rightful places and found a complementary card from Otubea. He turned it over and saw a note that said  “Dinner at 7:00 pm sharp. My place, don’t be late. I hate eating alone,” his breath caught in his throat and shook his head in perplexity. He had no intention of going at all. The Veep was not an easy man to cross, he told himself.

He had a wash down and left for his meeting with his Controller. He stepped on the pedal a bit as the man doesn’t like to be kept waiting. He got to the location at exactly 11:00 am.

His instructions were given to him, crisply. It was short and to the point.

“Anything else, Boss?” he asked as they had spoken for just five minutes.

“I would have told you had there been anything else, wouldn’t I have?” he asked impatiently, eager to go and attend to another issue at another place.

“Sorry, sir,” he said, feeling ashamed.

“You can go now. And keep an eye on the Veep,” he said tiredly. He wasn’t having enough sleep and it was making him irritable.

“Yes, Sir. Will do,” Corporal Abu said and departed.

He noticed an ash-coloured Honda Accord on his tail. He thought he had seen that same car at the Supermarket earlier on in the day but had thought nothing about it.

He drove around aimlessly, stopping to make purchases along the way and they still stuck to his tail. He called the officer he had just met and told him about the car following him.

“Lead them to the traffic light at Osu Re GCB,” Kofi Frimpong instructed him grimly.

He did so and stopped when the light turned ‘Red’. He smiled with amusement at the shocked expressions on the men’s faces as two Policemen clicked handcuffs on them smoothly as they waited for the light to turn ‘Green’. He drove away with a wide smile when the light eventually turned ‘Green’.

Kofi Frimpong went to the Police Headquarters to be briefed on the detained men. He was told, as per his earlier instructions that they had been freed after being apologized to for being mistaken for escaped convicts. But they had been detained long enough for the car to be bugged. Their watches, when returned to them had already been bugged and a DF (Directional Finder) fixed into it. They now could be located anywhere in the world.

They had left, finding it hilarious that they hadn’t been arrested for tailing Otubea and anyone else she came into contact with.

Kofi Frimpong, seemingly untiring, went to the next place on his itinerary of the day and that was the residence of Bruno Schnell whose real name was Jan Volks.

He pressed the doorbell of his Nyaniba Estates house. The door was opened for him and he went to the living room to find the brown-haired man sitting in a chair, glaring at three men who were holding guns in their hands.

He pulled a similar chair towards him and sat down, facing the German. He looked at him for a while and waved away the gunmen who went out to stand guard behind the door, their guns still drawn.

“You gave a note to a guest at your Consulate,” he asked but it was more of a statement than a question.

He nodded, terrified.

“Why,” he asked calmly.

“Because I was asked to do so,” Bruno said and glanced furtively at the door.

“Don’t worry about them. Your door is soundproof, isn’t it?”

Bruno nodded in the affirmative, uneasily.

“Now!. Tell me. I have no time to waste here,” Kofi Frimpong snapped at him his voice a whiplash.

“There are German patriots who are not happy with what some Germans are doing in Ghana. They want to help because we’ll all suffer from a war with Ghana,” Bruno said, mincing no words.

“OK, but I’ll like to have the coordinates of the location of Issah Musah ASAP.”

“That would be a tough one but I’ll relay the information to the team soonest.”

“OK. I’ll keep in touch,” he said and left, sending his men away from the Estate.

“I wonder how Ataa Adjoa is feeling now,” he said to himself as he got home to a well-needed rest.

The IRS was concerned with what the Bank of Ghana referred to as the ‘windfall’. Massive inflows of funds had found its way into the country from no known source. Further checks by their investigative desk had led to the doorsteps of several prominent personalities. Notable amongst them were the Vice President and the Chairman of the party in government and many more others in the political realm. Investigations had been ordered into the inflows that seemed to emanate from unnumbered Swiss Bank accounts. The Financial Fraud Office (FFO) had been involved to fully unearth everyone involved, both the source and the beneficiaries.

 The Swiss had always thought it prudent to assist Ghana in its enquiries as they viewed Ghana and rightly so, as a heavyweight in the fiscal world. It took just a little time to unravel what was going on. Even the President was concerned and was ready to add his clout to the pressures on the Swiss if shove comes to push.

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