He allowed the phone to ring for a while before he picked it.
“Chairman Kruger here, sir,” he said.
“Kruger! Have you gotten him?” a calm voice asked. Kruger is not a person to deceive by the calmness of the voice. He knew behind that calm voice was a soul whose heartlessness was beyond human comprehension. Even the devil will cringe at his heartlessness.
“Not yet, sir” Kruger replied.
“You have lost him,” the voice said.
“Not yet sir, we are still looking for him,” he replied. All the saliva in Kruger’s mouth had gone dry. No one, not even he, would like to cross the path of a man as deadly as the Chairman is.
“Find him. If you do not, it means you have failed me. I will have no need for you again,” the voice said.
Kruger understood exactly what his boss was saying; if he does not get whoever had been eavesdropping on them and do so very quickly, he, Kruger, will be in danger and his life will be wasted by the chairman’s kill squad.
“Thank you, Chairman,” he responded, trying to sound as calm as possible. As soon as he switched off his phone, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a roll of marijuana, lit it and began to puff on it.
“We have to find the person. Guys, search that canoe and see if we can find something that will help us locate him,” he said. The other two moved quickly to the canoe and began to search it. After about ten minutes, they called off the search. They found nothing.
Far out on the sea, the helicopter was still searching for Nii Kotey who was very far away from where the helicopter was. He had put a distance of about six hundred metres between himself and the helicopter and then swam ashore. Though the weather was cold, he did not feel cold; he was used to it. There was nobody at the beach. Darkness was all over the place with the moon being the only source of light that made it possible for him to make his way around.
He walked about, looking for the road that leads out of the beach. After a few minutes, he found it and quickly made his way to the main road. Then he began to walk, heading in the direction of James Town. When he got there, he stopped a taxi and told the driver to take him home. He had decided on what to do. He was going to report the matter to the police. The driver set off. Nii began to think of his narrow escape at the beach when he suddenly heard the sound of a helicopter.
His first impulse was to get out and run. However, he decided it was impossible for his pursuers to know where he was and thus swoop on him.
The helicopter was returning to base after a fruitless search for Nii Kotey.
Even Kruger had to concede that they had lost the person who had eavesdropped on them; he was sure the person had long swam out of the sea and dashed back home. The thing to do was to find out very quickly the home of that person.
Therefore, Nii Kotey stayed put in the taxi though he was tense. A few seconds later, the helicopter flew pass the taxi and soon, vanished out of sight.
He sighed. What he had gone through the last thirty minutes would have been unthinkable a few hours earlier. Now, it was real and he realized if the Vice-President of the country were going to be safe from assassination, it would depend a lot on him. He was the only one who knew of the plot to assassinate her.
He tried to analyse all that he had heard at the beach. If there was one thing that was clear to him, it was that somebody at the Presidency, somebody who would be the last person to suspect, was part of a plot to assassinate the Vice-President. That person was also close to the Vice-President and was going to be the one to assassinate her.
Nii Kotey did not know who the Vice-President of the country was. However, he knew that person was important and next to only the President.
The conspirators had also talked about one of their colleagues being a senior member of the National Security Secretariat. However, Nii did not know what National Security was. As an angler, he is concern about catching fish, selling it to make money, mending nets and any other things that have to do with the sea. He has never cared about who was President of the country or who the Vice-President was. He has never cared about which political party was in power or which was in opposition.
“Who is the Vice-President of Ghana?” he suddenly asked the taxi driver.
“Vice-President, eh…eh…I don’t know. I mean I don’t know her name” the driver replied, scratching his head.
“Her? She is a woman?” Nii Kotey asked again.
“Yes! Do you not know this? Even school children know” the taxi driver said sarcastically. Nii Kotey was surprised. He did not know who the Vice-President of the country was but it never occurred to him that the Vice-President was a woman.