5. HOW DID WE GET HERE

  The country's distinguished gentlemen were all now gathered in the conference room including the president together with his wife. If you wanted to cripple a nation instantly, just bomb statehouse and target mainly the conference room at the moment. Tony's heart was really racing since everything was escalating at a pace he had not anticipated. His wife held his hands underneath the table to calm him down. They had been together for so long that they had learned each other quite well. She could sense when her husband was getting tensed up. Her warm hands calmed his nerves. A national security threat was never good news and deep inside he needed her.

 

"Since we are here, we shall commence”, Fredrick begun, “ Mr president, Edgar is on call with some vital information. We tried to have him inform us so we could relay it to you since you were with the press. He declined and his instruction was that you have to be present. Shall we proceed?” This time he was addressing Tony.

  “Sure”, Tony answered calmly, “put him through.” Fredrick nodded to Kisinya who pressed a button on the table close to his title tag. “ Tom, put Edgar through, we have the president here.” After a few second, the large monitor came on with Edgars face appearing from his camera. He was just staring back at them not knowing he was back on until some voice in the background informed him he was live and everyone was waiting for him at statehouse.

  "What!!!” His surprised face exhibited how unaware he was and the embarrassment. Since he was used to such during his work tenure, he recollected himself. “Gentlemen, I hope you are all great but we have a more pressing issue that concerns national security.”

 

 “We are great Edgar, please enlighten the us”, Tony retorted.

 

“Six minutes  ago we intercepted an auction that was happening in dark web. It was a secretive operation that we only got to discover it through our informants. It lasted for two hours and we were one hour fifty minutes late.” He kept quite for a while to let his audience digest every piece of intel he was relaying to them. “Sir, the item being auctioned, as per our research if rumours confirmed true, we believe it could be as worse as a bomb.”

 Nearly three quarter of the people in attendance inside that conference room gasped. The last thing they could expect was a bomb threat while they were still searching for an assassin. The atmosphere in the room got heavier. With a bomb in the equation meant that causalities and death projections definitely spiked.

  “Are you sure Edgar? About this bomb...” Munyao, the only person more relaxed than everyone else asked.

 

“ Yes sir, the threat is real. The auction ended before time since a secret buyer won the auction by activating the buy now clause. The amount was Kenya shillings three hundred million as per the clause.”

“Ooh my God,” Lavender could not fathom all these was real.

 

“Is TMU aware of this?” Tony asked. His face was already turning pale. He had to emit that confident presidential charisma to maintain his authority. Laws of nature depict that no one will follow a coward leader.

“Not yet, we had to inform you first.”

“Any leads to the bomb ?” Nderitu asked. He had not uttered a word since the president entered the room. Everyone respected him including the president since he was the oldest and had spent a great chunk of his life serving statehouse. All this portrayed the amount of experience he had a garnered as a government employee.

“No leads but we found that the auction was hosted by Maina.”

“Shit”, Tony rose from his seat with more anger than regret.

“You know him sir?” Patrick asked.

“That’s the most wanted terrorist Kenya has ever experienced.” Munyao answered him, “he is very elusive and has a high level of paranoia. If his instincts tell him something or there is a slight feeling of insecurity, he is off to the wind. Its been hard to track him down and he always stays lowkey. For him to turn up now and even risk his digital signature be discovered by PIC, then there is something big going on.”

“Edgar, I want TMU notified of these and liaise with them. We need to find that bomb before it gets to a new buyer. Have your team dig deep to find whatever we need for its whereabouts. You need anything you call here, okay?” Tony addressed Edgar.

“Yes Mr President”, he replied and went offline.

 Back to his sitting position, “I don’t want any of this to the public now. There is a lot of unrest about Myra already, lets not add a bomb threat to it”, Tony was now looking generally at everyone, “Likami, kindly inform our esteemed journalist that we are done for today. In case they ask any questions, just give them a pleasant excuse.” Likami nodded and left the office.

“About my earlier point”, Fredrick broke the brief quietness that had ensued the room after Likami’s departure. Likami was the statehouse spokesperson. Sometimes the job was difficult due to the questions directed to him by his audience especially at such moments when he had to hide something from them.  However, to do these job you had to be brilliant and confident to make your audience not to be able to sieve between lies and truth. “We should increase funds and pump them into these project that now threaten national security.”

“We don’t have money to toss around like that sir”, Patrick flared back at him. Some anger could be noticed in his tone. Fredrick was really getting into his nerves.

“For your information, its not your money am asking for, its the government's funds”, Fredrick blared back furiously.

“Who said so, you are talking about exploiting government funds that are expected to help fund the growth of our country.”

“With all due respect, if a bomb goes off at any building in this country, will that be development?” Everyone else was silent in the room while listening to these two giants squabbling.

“If am right, Edgar’s team haven’t affirmed that its a bomb, they specifically expressed it as a belief.”

“Alright gentlemen, we have an assassin we need to find and the narrative is that she is a rogue agent since she was working for us”, Jerry messed up the heated argument that had seemed like it would have last even longer if not for his intervention. “I suggest we contact TMU and get updates of the current status.”

“Kisinya, put us through to Abubakar”, Tony obliged. He trusted his advisor than either of the men in the room. Some staff felt like Jerry had a certain hold on the president but on the other hand, his advices always produced positive results. “He is on the line sir.”

“Mr Abubakar”, Tony called out. The mouthpiece was in the middle of the table attached to the speaker. They were of the best quality to enable anyone sitting in any position of the quarter to converse without appearing to shout and still be clear from the recipients end. Kisinya had the rest of the operations board close to his sitting position. This maybe because he was the minister of ICT. 

“Mr President”, Abubakar’s voice filled the air in the room through the speaker on the table.

“How are we ongoing on Myra. I need updates Abu,” Tony sounded like his patience was really running on a thin scale. 

“I have an asset on route to Mombasa currently.”

“Is she there!”

“No but we have a lead sir. It will bring her close to us.”

“What’s the new lead?”

“Sir, its better if I hold on to it for now since its not solid yet.”

“Do you mean you are basing on luck here?” Munyao asked.

“No sir, we hope it will bring us to Myra’s whereabouts. She has been quite good at evading us considering she worked for us.”

“Mr. Abubakar, we don’t have time for hopes here”, Fredrick with his usual attitude chipped in.

“I am trying the best I can here and we are working full scale. We also got intel from PIC about a bomb threat. So we are going to be quite busy”, Abubakar defended himself.

“You do what whatever you have to Abubakar and I will need updates every one hour. Is that clear?” Tony dismissed Abubakar with this remarks. 

“crystal”, after these reply, the line went dead.

“Mr. Munyao, prepare our military personnel to be on the ready. We need to contain this issue as quickly as possible”, Tony discorded to Munyao.

“Yes Mr. President”, Munyao replied and had no questions whatsoever. 

“I think that’s it for now, all of you know what you should be doing so lets get to work. And there is no going home until we are done here”, addressing them, changing his gaze from one of them to another and mostly he would switch it in opposite sides. Finally settling on Kisinya, “team up with statehouse tech team in the basement. I need you to oversee these operations from here. If these bomb threat happen to be true then we need to make it a level one priority and we need to know the target promptly. With my authority, create a black ops team to hunt down Lucas. We need to finish this guy once and for all.” His face had shifted from that soft happy mood to a stern look that almost terrified Kisinya. He had been taking down brief notes of what was being allotted to him. He preferred it too since it helped him break away from the Tony’s gaze. 

“Yes”,  he answered after scribbling down the last few words on his note book. He would have preferred  the phone notepad but it would seem disrespectful. 

“Gentlemen”, Tony now went back to his earlier pattern of changing his eyesight from one of them to the other, “A polite reminder.. I understand you all know that none of these should get out of these room. We don’t need any public unrest for the moment.”

“I was about to say that too”, Nderitu supported him with a grin on his face. Tony was already laughing but not that loud to attract that much of an attention. He preferred Nderitu having his moments whenever he wanted. “I got to admit, its like you read my mind.”

“Off course I did”, Tony accepted the remarks while raising his hand slightly in the air. Everyone burst out laughing now. At least it eased up the serious atmosphere that was all over the room. “With that said, gentlemen, I will be in my office”, he finished his earlier statement while standing up. Everyone stood up after him including Nderitu. Tony disliked it coming from him but Nderitu insisted to show his respect as the rest.