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SEGUN
Everyday is a day to look forward to. When I was much younger mum told me that the only way to be successful and great in life is to think of everyday as your last day and act like it, that’s the principle that has been guiding me.
My name is Segun and I’ll hunt whoever shortens it and calls me Shegz, I’m in no way related to the comic character who plays football. As if reality football wasn’t enough, they had to add the video games and even comics. About 22 fully grown men would be kept busy for 90 minutes chasing a ball round a field and they call it sport, I call that plain stupidity.
Anyway, to the regular civilians and a large portion of men on uniform, I work for Martex Insurance but to others who “know” I’m a level 4 secret agent of the Cells.
The Cells as you may have already figured out is a secret agency. Unlike the CIA, MI6 and other really popular secret agency which I don’t really understand how its possible to be popular and still claim to be a secret agency, we do not exist.
There are six Cells all over the world, all strategically placed in such a way that we covered the whole world. Cell 6 is the only cell in located in Nigeria and even Africa at large.
Our agents, myself included, are highly trained in such a way that we make all those things they do at the Nigerian Army seem a lot like child’s play. What we do is simple. We protect you. We go on missions that regular secret agents won’t dear involve himself with. Forget about the United Nations and all those crap, we are the main reason there hasn’t been a third world war yet, we maintain the balance of the world.
I know you are probably waiting for me to tell you who owns the organisation, if its profit orientated and all of that but even I don’t know, all I know is that Cell 6, which I work for has a man which we all call Director as our leader. I could go ahead and tell you how mysterious and complicated Director is but let me not bore you with that.
Anyway, I woke up at exactly 3am as I have always done for years, and by 3:30am I was fully clad in a black suit and tie. I would have preferred to go to work dressed in jeans and polo but it was part of the rules in other not to blow our cover.
I wasn’t expected to be at work until 7am so I did what I had always done for years, I simply sneaked back into my bed and decided take a short nap which I knew would never come, sadly I was wrong this time as I slept off almost immediately.
As I slept, I had a dream where my late mum – God bless her soul, and I were both at the dinning table of our family house talking about a matter which she had always bugged me with.
“Segun, how old do you think I am?” She asked out of the blues as we ate.
“Mama, I don’t know.” I said in a calculated tone after pondering on what that question entails. I knew where she was headed so I put on my defences.
“I am going to be 65 in a few weeks time and do you know what the life span of an average Nigerian is?”
I kept quite at first thinking it was a rhetorical question but after noticing the silence that followed her question, I replied, “No, I don’t.”
“Its 52 or if you are lucky, 53.” She replied and a short silence followed, I knew where she was heading and it wasn’t one of my favourite topics. “Segun don’t you want me to see my grand kids before I move on to the other side of life?” She finally voiced out in a tone that I had gotten used but still hit my soft spot, she’s my mother after all.
“Mama,” I started, “I want you to see you grand child and believe me you will but these things take time.”
“Segun, this thing take time you say, but you haven’t even thought about bringing a woman home for marriage.”
“Mama I have told you I have not find the one, when I do, you would be the first person to know.” I rolled my eyes as I replied.
“If you have a problem getting a wife, I can help you out. Iya Tosin has a daughter that has come of age and I’m sure that…”
I had had enough, “mama stop all this things you are saying!” I interrupted in a rather harsh tone and stormed out of the dinning area in total anger. I headed out of the house and it was only then that it occurred to me that I was dreaming all along as I started falling down through an empty space filled with darkness, in reflex action I woke up immediately and wiped the beads of sweat that were already building up on my face.
I sat up and almost immediately noticed a shadow like figure of a human standing at the edge of my bed. I live alone so it was obvious that this wasn’t a friend. My reflexes came alive and I did a quick back flip to the edge of the bed where my gun was supposed to be but it wasn’t.
“Looking for this?” She said in a rather mocking tone. I knew she was female because of her voice.
I had no weapon, she had a gun pointed at me and I had absolutely no idea on what to do. Reality dawned on me. I was dead.
SUSAN
Traffic in Lagos has always been horrible, but today’s traffic was particularly the queen of . I had been at home around 8AM when I received a call from Wale, telling me that Director needed me at work right away so after grumbling for a few minutes, I reluctantly stood up from bed and headed straight to the bathroom to bath and after dressing up, I picked up my car keys from the dining table and drove out.
There hadn’t been much action at work lately so I naturally assumed that if I was going to turn up at work at all, it would have been later in the day but after Wale who happened to be the Head of Operations called me in, I knew it had to be something important so as I drove to HQ in my red Toyota Venza thoughts of what could have gone wrong crossed my mind: I had totally completed all my recent missions and made sure they were not going to be an issue anytime soon so what was wrong really bothered me and the traffic was not really helping issues.
After about an hour drive which was supposed to be barely ten minutes, I finally cruised pass the big brown gate of HQ and parked my car at the first vacant spot I saw.
The first thing we were taught during training was to be observant, so as I stepped out of my car I took a mental picture of my surroundings. The building at my front which happened to be HQ was just a two storey building, painted blue and right above the highest window was a sign board with MARTEX INSURANCE PLC written boldly on it, the cameras which were hidden all over the building were still on, I smiled and walked into the building.
I was welcomed by a very huge reception with about seventy percent of the furniture made of pure glass, even the black tiles on the floor were so perfectly polished that you could see your reflection if you stared at the ground. At the extreme end of the southern wall was a table with a lady behind it. She was clad in a black suit with a white collared inner shirts, and her hair was styled in a pony tail, one look at her and anyone would know she was the receptionist. I walked straight to her.
She was obviously a new employee as I had been working for Martex Insurance for over seven years and today was the first day of me seeing her. On getting closer to her I saw her name tag had Mina written on it and I had to intentionally clear my throat to get her attention as she was fully engrossed in her Blackberry phone.
“He… Hello, how may I help you?” She stuttered.
In response to her question, I gave her my ID card which looked pretty normal at the front but had a signal panel at the back. Mina took it and swiped it into a machine which looked really similar to a POS machine, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t one. After a few few seconds, she probably saw something on her computer screen that made act a little too nervous, pulled out my card and returned it to me still acting nervous.
Usually I was meant to be worried about her nervousness but after being promoted to Level 6 since last year, I’ve gotten used to the sudden acts of nervousness people show when ever they are around me.
I took my ID card and walked straight towards the elevator right behind the receptionist counter, as I entered it, I swiped my ID once more across a sensor on the control switch and without pressing any button, the elevator suddenly came alive and started going down, instead of up but I expected that too.
After going down for almost a minute, the elevator came to a stand still and the doors slid open.
I walked out of the door and head straight to Director’s office, turns out I was right on time.
“Get strapped, you are going to Port Harcourt right away, you’ll be briefed on your way.” he said without even looking up from his computer to see my face. He only acted that way when there was a serious problem.
I knew it was time to work.
***
9:10PM
Rumu-Okoro, Port Harcourt
A man clad in a black Gieves & Hawkes suit and Raybans sunglasses stood still in the middle of a rickety warehouse as a white van approached him. He probably spent a full day polishing his shoes because the naked wires the ran the length of the ceiling reflected clearly on them. He indeed looked very smart.
The white van eventually came to a stop just few meters away from the man and the door slid open. Two lanky looking men on over flowing white lab coats both alighted from the van with one of them holding a rather large sized suitcase which was obviously not the regular everyday suitcase.
The two men walked closer to the smart looking man on Raybans and dropped their suitcase on the table which separated both parties.
After a short silence, the man on Raybans finally spoke, “our agreement was that you were supposed to come alone, who is this with you?”
“My friend here is my assistant, don’t worry about him, he is cool.” One of the men on lab coat replied in a well calculated tone.
“Very well then,” he replied after staring at the assistant for a few seconds with his highly trained eyes. “Did you bring the package?” He then asks.
“Yes.”
“Can I see it?”
“Can I see the money first?”
The man on Raybans smiles and then picks up a relatively smaller suitcase from the floor and drops it on the table. He opens it and shows the two men who nod in approval and then proceeds to input the combination lock code on the silver suitcase before showing the contents to the man on Raybans, he smiles once more and the give a nod of approval.
They all exchange suitcases and shake hands but just as the lanky men are about to turn and head to their van, the man on Raybans removes a SIG Pro semi-automatic pistol from its holster and in two quick inhumane moves, he shoots both men on the head. There is no way the could have survived the shots.
He then picks up the silver suitcase and heads out of the warehouse. He dials a number and in an excited tone says, “the package is on its way. Even the Cells won’t see this coming.”
“Good,” is the only reply he gets before the line goes dead.
TO BE CONTINUED
Chistar's Hive 