THE PATRIOT: AREWAH CONTEST ENTRY : EPISODE 14 :

The Patriot

Samuel Cobby Grant

Episode 14

Of late David Muller had been making some demands of Ataa Adjoa she didn’t quite understand; like wanting to know where she had been all day and the like. Her explanations that as the secretary to the Secretary of the President, she most times worked at odd hours had held no water for him. Not that it was anything to worry about but his irritating habit of holding her hand while asking those questions always unsettled her. It sometimes seemed as if he was testing her pulse to determine whether she was telling the truth or not.

Just like that day when she had caught him looking at her with shrewd eyes when she lied to him about why she had stopped him from going for lunch on the day she found the bugs in her home.

Apart from those minor misgivings, she had an almost perfect relationship with him. She was the dominant figure in the relationship and so she felt that she had no cause to complain. She couldn’t even say that it was a real relationship. It was more like an affair with no strings attached. Not like the one she had had with KF.

She frowned, wondering how she was thinking about Kofi Frimpong when it was David she was brooding about. She sighed heavily and her mind drifted to that magical night she had shared in Kofi’s bed. She had lain in his arms fantasising about how he was going to ask her to marry him. She had even believed there could be a beautiful ring hidden somewhere in his room which he was going to use to propose to her in the morning. She had fallen into a contented sleep only to wake up in the morning to find him gone. It was much later that he had told her of the impossibility of them having a relationship. She had been devastated but had accepted her fate bravely until David Muller drifted into her life. But she constantly found herself comparing them.

She missed her parents too but she had no way of seeing them as according to Kofi, it was unsafe for them to come out of hiding, but she had been receiving letters from them occasionally, but there was no way she could trace their address and as they kept saying in the letters that were always hand-delivered, that it was for her own good.

David had at one time asked her about them and she had told him everything except the part Kofi Frimpong had played in saving them. That was classified information. He comforted her and wrapped his arm around her, rocking her in his arms till she had calmed down.

Thinking about the letters made her want to read them so she went to fetch them from the metal container she kept them in. She read all the twenty letters again but found one missing. It was a letter she had received barely a week ago in which they assured him that they were going to get out of hiding in a couple of months when everything was over. She was almost sure that she had placed it in the box along with the rest of it. She searched everywhere but it was nowhere to be found. She was at her wit’s end on what to do and found herself getting agitated. She searched and searched but the letter seemed to have vanished. She called Kofi and informed him about it. It felt as if a vital part of her was gone.

***

The President had already been informed about the container that was on its way and he nodded with satisfaction.

“They are lucky they are having a comfortable journey,” he said to himself as he thought about the long-forgotten experiences of his forebears who were chained in holds of ships to be sold into slavery. He was preparing for a programme at the National Academy of Arts and Sciences where he had been invited to deliver the Keynote Address as the Guest of Honour.

An hour later, he was seated as speaker after speaker spoke about the activities of various departments of the academy during the year in review. It was getting boring.

He was soon announced and he stood up to resounding applause.

He got up from his seat and majestically made his way to the podium. He was a wonderful orator and hardly ever let the chance to address an audience go by.

He faced the audience and drew the microphone closer to his face.

He knew he had a discerning audience. Amongst them were top scientists, academicians and deep thinkers.

He spoke in a way that made them really want to hear every single word he spoke. Some leaned forward in their seats. His voice was low, well-modulated.

“It’s indeed a great honour for me to stand here to talk to you about things you already are experts in. My illustrious father was once one of you so it feels as if I have come home. But I am a mere politician. You are the movers and shakers of our world,” he said and his voice went on at a higher decibel. “You found all the cures to the viruses and the illnesses that have ravaged us,” he continued, at an even higher decibel, “You found a complete cure for AIDS, you found a complete cure for Malaria, and you found a complete cure for Corona Virus.”

They cheered. On and on. He paused and took a sip of water.

“I, when coming, received a word that the University of Ghana has found an antidote for the Video Virus!”

There was a collective gasp, and then thunderous applause that reverberated from every nook and cranny of the auditorium.

He couldn’t go on as they approached en masse to congratulate him.

“They didn’t even allow me to tell them that all it took was for one to chew adwe known in English as palm kernel before sex to prevent Video Virus. But they’ll find out soon enough,” he said and smiled to himself as his motorcade took him away.

The news went viral. It was on everyone’s lips. The world had looked up to Ghana for help and Ghana hadn’t disappointed the world.

The following days were hectic. Feverish preparations were made to develop vaccines with adwengo, it’s oil extract.

He had already issued executive orders for a mass mobilization of palm kernel. People now resorted to always cooking palm nut soup to ensure a sustainable supply of adwe in their homes.

All the news outlets covered it. It was aired as breaking news. Nothing else was making news except the adwe and adwengo.

Heads of State everywhere were suddenly seeking audiences with leaders of Ghana for the chance to have either the adwe or adwengo. The Video Virus pandemic had left no nation untouched, and it was a great relief that an antidote had been found. There was some that thought that it was a hoax. They saw it as a desperate attempt by the Ghanaian President to silence his critics.

Unfolding events proved to all and sundry that he had said the truth. Just chewing two adwe was enough to prevent one from contracting the Video Virus.

The story broke the all-time record as the most circulated ever. It was everywhere. On radio, in the newspapers and on all social media handles.

Almost everyone in Ghana had a bottle of adwe with them wherever they went. No one knew when one was going to have sex so they went everywhere prepared for any eventuality. Some people have even been known to smear their bodies with adwengo in addition to chewing adwe whenever they were about to have sex.

Ghana’s clout in geo politics went further up as the testing of the potency and safety of the adwengo vaccines went through the final phases. But it was a foregone conclusion that it was good.

He refused to allow politics and the love of profits influence him.

“This is the time to heal the world,” he said more than once, giving assurances to foreign leaders of his resolve to give poorer nations equal chances to get the vaccines when they finally rolled off the production line.

Vice President Sosa and Chairman Siriboe were in a club house being entertained and fawned over by skimpily-attired ladies when the TV aired another manifestation of how noble President Awuku was.

“He’s taking all the credit as if he was the one who found the antidote,” the Veep said with a sneer.

“Don’t mind him. He’s behaving as if the rest of us don’t do anything at all,” Siriboe said, munching on the pork chops.

“He’s just an attention seeker,” the Veep said and fondled the breast of a sexy looking waitress who was bent over forward pouring a wine into a glass for him.

“Oh stop, Your Excellency,” she said and batted her eyelashes at him.

He leaned closer and shoved a two hundred cedi note into her bra. She smiled naughtily at him and rubbed her middle finger against his nose. Encouraged, he slipped a card into her skimpy shorts, allowing his fingers to go much lower than normal.

Chairman Siriboe was at this stage, in a world of his own. He was engaged in a kissing combat with a fair-complexioned lady and from the heavy grunts emanating from his mouth, it was obvious that he was in danger of having premature ejaculation. The lady must have sensed it because she pushed him away gently, giggled and pulled him up by the hand and led him to one of the many bedrooms decorated for the comfort of patrons.

“Do you have any adwe with you,” he asked as she closed the door behind them.

They returned in about thirty minutes to meet the absence of the Veep.

***

Kofi Frimpong was satisfied with the pace of the investigations.

He had established that Issah Musah was being kept in a submarine. Maybe in an underwater cave.

He had also established that his abductors were or could be Germans, the French and the English collaborating on this. What he now wanted was the exact coordinates of the Fischjager. Already, several runs had been made by military aircrafts over Ghana’s territorial areas with heat-seeking devices, searching for the presence of subs but it was a large expanse of area and they had had no luck so far. Maybe they were even out in the open sea, out of Ghana’s boundaries but the general view was that they could still be in Ghana’s waters since it couldn’t have possibly gone far before his disappearance was noticed, but then, another school of thought was that they could have escaped to the open sea since it was much later that the search was concentrated on the sea.

He wondered how the man was faring. He wasn’t a young man anymore and no one knew of the condition under which he was being held, or whether he was even still alive. But he knew from his analysis of events happening after his abduction that he was still alive. If they had wanted to kill him, they could have done so right at where he was captured.

He resolved to put pressure on Bruno to speed up things but he knew in his heart that the man was hindered in how far he could go to obtain any credible information but he wasn’t a very patient man at that point in time. He was even prepared to blow the man’s cover to get the needed info.

***

In the early hours of the day, a Container Ship docked at the new ultra modern sea port at James Town. It docked without going through any red tape bottlenecks put in place to ensure probity and accountability. It docked without any Bill of Laden, offloaded a single container and left for Angola, its original destination. Its turnaround time was just thirty minutes. As far as it was concerned, it didn’t go anywhere near Ghana’s territorial waters. As for the discharged cargo, it found its way to a very big house in the heart of Accra where the five men were kept to be interrogated later.

All these went on when Kofi Frimpong was deeply asleep. It was only when he received a simple message that read ‘ekome egbee wonuɛ mli’ (one has fallen into the soup) that he woke up. He knew at once what it meant, and he went to have a leisurely bath. After a heavy breakfast, he wore a 3-piece suit, whistling a melody as he dressed up. He then wore a well-polished shoe and put on a fedora.

“I really am a handsome man,” he said with satisfaction after a cursory look in the mirror.

He had learned a lot from Issah Musah. He used to say that to catch a thief, one ought to think like a thief.

“So now, to catch a businessman, one has to dress and think like a businessman,” he said to himself and opened the door of his sleek black Mercedes to drive to meet the businessmen.

He drove sedately, his slow pace an exact opposite of the urgency of the mission.

He soon reached the heavily fortified building and tooted the horn and the gate was opened for him. He drove in and parked, and walked in without saying a word to the gun welding men who had had strict instructions not to talk to any of the Germans. They were to guard them and not talk to them. It was as simple as that.

“How are they doing?” he asked the senior most among them.

“They are coping,” was the curt reply.

He went in briskly and sat in a large living room that had a large wall to wall series of TVs that made it possible for him to see whatever the five men were doing in their part of the house courtesy of CCTVs. The cameras were even in the toilets and the bathrooms. He sat behind a console from where he could enlarge images and also communicate with them.

He sat for some time observing their mannerisms and it was clearly obvious that the men were petrified. They constantly visited the toilets as they seemed to be suffering from diarrhoea. He chewed on carrots as he watched them, his face showing no emotions.

“Gentlemen, I have a business proposal for you,” he addressed them from the microphone in front of him.

The five men were startled and looked around fearfully.

“Who are you, please?” Herr Ziglah said in a guttural voice tinged with fear.

“Who or what I am is none of your business. Your business is to listen to me if you want to see your homeland again,” he said ominously.

“Can we at least see your face?” one of them said in a quavering voice.

“If only you want me to kill you after that,” he shot back at him.

“Please what is it you want from us,” Tomas Ziglah asked, trying to gain control of his voice.

“Good. I have two questions. Why are you trying to destabilize Ghana and where is the man you have abducted!”

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

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