Ghost in the Shell

Chapter 4

   Fred had asked to use the restroom, on the excuse that he had taken too much wine and needed to empty his bowels lest his bladder blew up.
  He took out a red flash drive from his left breast pocket and made a detour for a room by the left on the wing part of the mansion, he had made quite a number of video calls with Julia and he always asked her to walk around the house on the excuse he was either losing signal or wasn’t hearing her clearly because the line was breaking…these obviously tricks to make her show him most parts of the mansion, he had been lucky to find this place as it had earlier been described at the mission briefing and here he was…making a beeline for that door.
  ‘click’ it was 7:30pm, time for the evening shift for the guards at the door, Fred had timed this perfectly and knew the precise time to ask to leave for the restroom…there was usually a thirty minute interval before the night guards arrived.
   Opening the door, Fred was left speechless… ‘There were people here?’ he mentally struck himself in the head ‘o shoot! It’s a surveillance room, its normal to have people watched things that were being ‘surveyed’ and these weren’t just people, they were soldiers…where was he at, it was a colonel’s house, there was bound to be soldiers but wasn’t this too much? Were the maids, gardeners and gateman undercover soldiers as well?
   “Time to act” Fred switched perfectly to a confident and legal member of the house.
   “Hey!” with a look of anger and query he slammed the door shut…”why is the entrance empty?!” without waiting for a reply he continued “is every mufucker in th…shut the hell up!”that was aimed at someone who was about to speak up, obviously to state the thirty minute interval “I asked you nothing, therefore you’ll say nothing” turning back to the others in a ferocious manner, he asked while snapping his fingers “who is the captain here?”
A tall scrawny figure looked at Fred with a cruel look in his eyes “na me” he stated in a thick voice that seemed to be an improper fraction for his appearance
Fred had to change his game plan “do you know who I am, you don’t even know me yet you dare---you dare talk to me with that look on your face?” Fred was angry, distributing spittle in everyone’s faces
“Open your ears wide enough…be careful not to miss a thing, I am the colonel’s son-in-law” Fred said with a proud and aloof look on his face…he was close enough now, he secretly inserted the flash in the core operating system and clicked on ‘enter’
“ well actually I was searching for the restroom and as I couldn’t find it, I decided to come take one guard from the door to show me the way” with a face that showed he was really pressed he continued “I didn’t know I was going to meet people with lukewarm attitude towards their duties”
“Hey you” pointing at the innocent middle aged man he had asked to keep shut before, he said “come show the way, and be fast about it…else I’ll empty my bowels in your large basket like mouth” the man immediately rushed forward and as he was led away by ‘the son-in-law’ the others could hear Fred start an interrogation of the man “you must be an Ibadan man, with your tribal marks like black stretch marks on …” his voice faded down the long corridor.

    “Julia I have to go now” he said, now back to the normal everyday Fred, the one Julia was familiar with. A driver was asked to drop Fred off as it was late already.
  Such a day’s work
   Switching on his laptop, Fred took out a red flash drive, the same one he had used back at the surveillance room and inserted it in his laptop; it had to take a few minutes to upload.
‘Beep’ a sound from his laptop and a notice which read ‘upload successfully’ stared right at him. Clicking on the file, like magic, he could see everything that the security in the surveillance room could see.

It was 2:15am and Julia was still wide awake, no signs of her being asleep before…her beddings still looked the same way they had looked when her personal maid had laid it.
She was on a chat with chioma
Julia: I wish he would just ask me out, I want to hear him tell me he loves me
Chioma: Hey girlfriend, remember Joshua?
Julia seemed to open pages in her mind in search of that name; chioma seemed to know more guys than the history of her own life.
Julia: Wasn’t Joshua the one who took your virginity at the club house? Julia seemed to type with a bit of uncertainty
Chioma: C’mon baby girl, are you an amnesic patient? Joshua was the shy guy I dated for two months! Chioma typed with obvious displeasure---you don’t treat my virginity like a church sermon---
Julia: oh I’m sorry, yeah I remember now, how is he? Julia seemed to like Joshua a lot; he was the nicest of chioma’s exes.
Chioma: The point is not how he is, like I care…the point is I asked him out, although don’t even know what I saw in him back then…I’ve been a fool for the better part of my life…the point is you should do same, let this Fred know he’s taking too long with you.
   Julia gave it a thought ‘should I really do that, won’t he see me as cheap?’
‘What if all he has ever thought of me as was just as a friend?’ she was in a dilemma.
……………………………………………………………
   Fred had been called by his mother to inform him about his elder sister getting married…’how old was she again, wasn’t she still too young to be married? What’s the rush?
   His sister was his best friend, he had stood to protect her from many mean boys when they were younger, even getting beaten up in the process but he always stood strong. He remembered one time his sister had reported her boyfriend to him, then he was just a little above fifteen. He had gone to the guy’s house and laid waste to his bike in the dead of the night.
But now, his sister was all grown and ready to be wedded.
   Wouldn’t the journey be boring, shouldn’t he invite someone along with him? What about Seyi, that man-bitch, he was fun to be with but Fred was sure the bitch in him would surface at some point…was like he heard Seyi now preferred older women…he wasn’t ready to get beaten up in the slums of Lagos.
What about Andrew, he was a pretty nice guy too, fun to be with also, the only side effect was Andrew was so stingy and besides he was married and the synonym for ‘married men’ is ‘busy men’…at least that’s what Fred believed. He didn’t want to take a female along either, didn’t want his mother to get wrong ideas…that old woman had been pestering him over getting married and keeps repeating something about carrying her grand-children on her back, for God’s sake, he was just twenty three…and then Julia came to mind, the thought of her beauty, her impeccable smile, seductive figure…he liked her company a lot.
    He was going to take her with him.