A Web of Mystery

By K. W. Wamitila

An explosion occurs at a stadium during an annual general meeting of a blue-chip company. The government through its spokesman, The Ever-Smiling Polyglot, is convinced that this is an act of terrorism. The Homeland Security Personnel is tasked to carry out a thorough search and investigation in every part of Rambo, an area suspected of harbouring the culprits.

At the same time, an investigative journalist, Pedro, recently retrenched, is prompted to investigate the same by a mysterious caller. The result is a twist that not only shocks the characters but also the readers of this enthralling novel.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: K. W. Wamitila
• Release date: Jul 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201495213

Book preview

1.

Discordant Voices

The stadium was a teeming sea of humanity. A tapestry of people and attires adorned the huge, modern Japanese-built structure giving it an appearance of a human rainbow. The six wide, aging, metallic-green gates that opened into the stadium had throngs of people—late bloomers—who were now streaming hurriedly into the stadium; large beads of shiny sweat streaming down their glistening faces, and, in the case of a few of them, into their open mouths.  Others gesturing, maybe silently cursing whatever it was that had caused them to come this late.

Outside the stadium, the multiple, rusty metal rails marking the different entrance points were festooned with red and green ribbons and millions of multi-coloured balloons some of which, tired of the waiting or protesting against the scorching sun, had already burst—scattering tiny strips of rubber all over. Here and there, ice-cream hawkers (mostly men) would be seen pushing their carts, skirting here and there in their yellow and white overcoats, rivulets of sweat flowing down their faces, ringing their cart bells repeatedly to cajole the few people who were milling out there to buy their wares and maybe cool the hot sun and in the process enable them to eke out a living.

Inside the stadium, a carnival mood had taken over.

A Babel of discordant voices reigned supreme. Musicians—mostly young ones, some clad in chameleon apparels and others donning minimalist vestiges of dress that left large parts of their bodies in the open—who had been hired to entertain those who were inside, were doing their thing the best way they knew how on the makeshift stage that had been mounted at the very centre of the pitch that on other times was used for football games. The stage was at the very place that on a soccer match day would be the site of a game kick off. It must have been the organisers’ way of kicking off the meeting.

Those who had been swept away by the loud, incomprehensible lyrics of the musicians and risen up from their seats, half-smiling, with their mouths agape, were shaking and gyrating rhythmically (others not so rhythmically), turning here and there as if seeking approvals before continuing their suggestive, bodily wriggles. The shy and the reticent ones, turning from the comfort of their red plastic seats, eyes askance; one or two sneering—others even cursing, looked at their colleagues who chose to join in the groove. Some of them, especially the slightly-aged ones—and who made up the largest number of the audience—looking, with rather bemused (some even disdainful) stares, maybe wondering what it was that had descended on the young generation. Wondering what demons of time had been visited upon them. A few of their aged-colleagues, shook their heads in slow motions as if responding to a mute song; moved their bodies, once in a while turning their eyes here and there, as if afraid they would be found out, as they chose to join what looked like a wave that took them to their bygone days.

How they wished they would turn back the clock; unwind the folds of their aging skins and rejuvenate the vitality of the youth, reconnect with the exuberance of young age and lose themselves in the reckless abandon of adolescence. However, one or two of the elder members had opted not to wallow in the memories or in the discarded cloak of past years and joined in the dance—dancing with exuberance.

Others simply sat by passively; completely immobile; waiting quietly like obedient students waiting for their teacher to walk in and start the daily lesson. These were the majority who waited anxiously for what had brought them here to commence. Once in a while, they would be seen throwing glances at their watches or at the gigantic clock on the left inside the stadium maybe wondering why people had bought into the idea of having watches and clocks but care least about the culture of keeping time.

They all wanted to hear the annual report on their investments. They wanted to hear more about their company’s (Global Mobitel) performance. It was one of the most profitable ones in the land—or as the media people called it—a blue chip company. They wanted to know how much dividends they would get this time round. And, maybe more importantly, hear the direction the new team they would elect shortly would steer their company. They wanted to hear the words that would re-assure them that they had made the right choices in buying the shares when the company was listed in the national stock market.

The suspense was palpable.

Once in a while, the master of ceremony, a man of a huge frame dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and donning an almost comical Mexican sombrero, would pick up the microphone, tap on it repeatedly with the sound echoing all over, clear his throat in a boyish manner, mumble some inaudible words that were swallowed by the many voices or even be muddled up by electric power games. Creaking sounds. Sudden burst of sound before some people, maybe unamused by his antics, would gesture at him derisively and make him put the microphone down and disappear. It would then be followed by some delirious, school-like cheering. Even sarcastic claps.

The Babel would resume thereafter.

Up in the sky, a white, black-stripped helicopter, most likely owned by the police, would fly past then return after a spate of several minutes. Its retour would be greeted by animated cheers and whistling here and there. It was a calm feeling and all those people inside the stadium must have felt pretty safe and secure inside this stadium—an architectural marvel when it was built— that had been erected by Japanese over ten years ago. Here and there arcane inscriptions in Japanese were visible although maybe none of those in attendance had any idea what they meant. But well, maybe inscriptions do not have meaning unless there is one to decipher the meaning. For now, they were just some undecipherable reminders to those who would come later about its history.

So when a sudden, riveting blast of sound was heard inside the stadium, some of the people who were dancing laughed it off while others jeered in hoarse voices. But in a split second, it dawned on all what that could have been.

It the next few seconds, people were screaming and running in droves towards the multiple gates of the stadium. Helter skelter. This was no longer some failing sound of the public address system nor was it the master of ceremony making another grand re-appearance. Neither was it the youthful musicians trying all kinds of tricks with their gadgets. It sounded life-threatening. It was the sound of death.

They had to think of saving their lives. The story that was their dividends could wait. Terrified screams rent the air. Within less than five minutes, the stadium was empty. Chairs–most of them broken–myriad shoes of all colours, hundreds of women’s shawls and other personal things littered the whole place. An eerie silence took pride of place.

The Annual General Meeting was over...

What followed was one of the most tragic and sad happenings that had ever happened in the capital city of the country in a very long, long time. Within a very short time, ambulances were flying to the scene, their sirens renting the air and their red lights flashing, horns blaring in order to attend to the injured. The gathering that had largely been ignored by the media, apart from a short segment in the previous nights’ business news, was now the centre of attention. An army of journalists, with their heavy equipment and machines in tow camped outside the stadium.

Politicians appeared subdued and in sombre mood in front of television cameras, expressing their virulent anger and disappointment, and condemning in, as they said, ‘the strongest terms possible’. Some of them furrowing their faces, opening their eyes wide and making their lips as taut as they possibly could, to give their message the necessary semiotic force it needed. Others reminding their listeners of the need to be together at a time like this when in their words, ‘we face these evil brewers.’

For the umpteenth time, we have been victims of this global scourge! We have been attacked yet again by these fellows: terrorists...We are asking our friends, our development partners–long-time and trusted friends of our country like United States of America, Great Britain, Germany and France as well as others–to come to our aid, as we face this new global villain and expunge the same from our midst...

The media took up the issue, splashing all kinds of images. Pundits and experts who had hibernated since the last general elections when they seemed to be perpetually present in television screens resurfaced like toads at the smell of rain and flooded the television stations where they tried to outdo one another in analysing what had happened. Talking about the history, sociology and the psychology of crime. It was something that was bound to happen. Soon or later. Their country had not been strict about its immigration policies. The national borders, as everyone certainly knew, were as porous as a dove nest. The homeland security was to blame for sleeping on the job. Who did not know that corruption was so endemic that some officers would betray their motherland for thirty pieces of shekel? Some of them claimed that they had, in earlier sessions—and the evidence was there, opined about this impending disaster. Now it was here with people. They needed to act, and do so fast.

Columns of renowned researchers on criminality and terrorism, with years of experience, inundated the national newspapers with their articles and commentaries quoting other more famed and revered researchers and writers. It was a trend, they said. This was a globalised world, and you don’t just globalise cultural practices like eating burgers, hippie culture and communicating in strange lingoes, you also globalise crime. The current world was actually borderless. Technology had made sure that that was achieved. Not just that. Terrorism was so protean; it could squeeze itself through the tiniest of spaces like a squid would in a sea bed full of rocks; even through the interstices–spaces–that Homi Bhabha talked about. So as it were, it comes as no surprise, in a country that did not take its borders seriously, for something like this to happen. A country with a documented history of security faux pas.

Politicians took the cue.

Their belligerent tongues wagged. Their siren mouths shrieked. Their fiery lips barked.

For the nearly moribund opposition, this must have been the cud they had long hoped or waited for to resuscitate their dwindling fortunes. And they chewed it repeatedly and loudly.

The opposition reminded those who had memories that they had talked about the ineptitude of the government for donkey years. It had simply abdicated its basic responsibility of ensuring the safety and security of its citizens, and with it its raison d’être, of being in power. They vilified the government for sleeping on the job as, in their words, ‘suspicious foreigners from-God-knows-where’, flowed in droves right into the very centre of the country—the seat of the government— and attacked them with gleeful ease. Where was Homeland Security—the minister and his team that he had once praised as having had the best training possible?  Hadn’t some of them, as he had claimed, benefitted from the skills of the dreaded Mossad? Didn’t they pride themselves in having rubbed shoulders with the FBI? And, by the way, what had happened to the much hyped security reconnaissance? What had happened to the much vaunted security apparatus of unmatched German technology?

The government needed to wake up.

And it did. 

2.

The Ever-Smiling Polyglot

Two days after the attack at the stadium during the Annual General Meeting of Global Mobitel, which left no less than twenty people dead and several hundred maimed, the government—through the ruling party’s spokesman—a tall, athletic, ever-smiling polyglot with a thick, caterpillar moustache, claimed that the attackers—whom he identified as ‘senseless and heartless terrorists’—had crossed the red line. He paused for a moment, his eyes wide open and his nose visibly dilating, then went on to explain what he meant.

They had not just killed, harmed and maimed innocent people by their heinous attack. They had dared to attack one of the country’s leading companies. A beacon of progress. One of the companies that was marketed all over the world as an example of the success of free enterprise and the free market economy—the very core of the modern world. In other words, they had attacked modernity and all that it represented. Consequently, he said, the government would not just sit by. No, it wouldn’t, can’t and won’t. It intended to act, and to do so decisively and painfully, he warned. It had to do everything that was humanly possible to defend free enterprise from the demented demagogues who espoused the doctrine of long dead communism and a flawed religious ideology.

And as he was always wont to when addressing what he perceived as international issues, although once in a while he also did so with domestic matters, he exhibited his ease and dexterity with multiple languages. It must have been his way of leaving no doubt that he had communicated to all those who would be listening to him.  It was a way of making sure the communication was as inclusive as it possibly could be and that his message had an international ring to it. He said loudly and firmly:

"This is simply Ungeheuerlich–monstrous! I cannot believe it! We have always lived quietly in our peaceful and serene country or Le Pays then suddenly some misguided desperados, espousing a diabolical kafir ideology, completely unprovoked, I might add, attack us...Kwa kweli, to be frank, this verdammte, accursed, terror thing is despicable in toto!"

He paused, possibly to give his listeners time to decipher, and maybe grapple with that linguistic mumbo-jumbo, before continuing with his fiery tirades. The narrator will spare you, dear reader, the direct discourse of The Ever-Smiling Polyglot by just reporting in summary his message.

The government intended to send a very strong message to those of the terrorists’ ilk. It needed to remind them, in a very emphatic and non-ambiguous manner, that it would not allow free rein of such wanton destruction by demented characters or miscreants. It would not allow (and here The Ever-Smiling Polyglot somehow managed to make the eternal smile disappear) a flawed ideology that they represented and one which was certainly alien to this part of the world hold sway in the country, and more so in a country that took matters faith very seriously. It, by not doing what it ought to (and indeed what it must) do, would be setting a bad example to other young, developing countries that considered this country a beacon of progress. A country that had now entered a new echelon of the fastest rising economies.

As he concluded, The Ever-Smiling Polyglot appealed to as the leaders of ‘The Free World’—’the masters of democracy and free enterprise’ he added—to come to the government’s assistance. They needed to come and support the government in dealing with this abominable menace. And to also re-affirm that the policies that the country espoused were the right policies in the world. The Free World needed to understand this was no longer a domestic issue; and therefore would not be solved by travel advisories that some of them had already issued. It was a global issue. Any threat to a developing country would surely affect them.  Would the First World, he posed, sit by and let the foul smell of evil waft all over the world? And, he continued his line of thought, where would the First World go in this interconnected, borderless world?

The Ever-Smiling Polyglot paused for a moment. Thereafter, he continued,

They needed to get more assistance especially in areas that the government was somewhat challenged (which he did not disclose). However, he hastened to note that such areas were few but very crucial in this fight that they must engage in. In the meantime, the government would summon all the means and with its sinews, set the necessary tone. As he had said once more, the miscreants had crossed the red light.

To most of the people who had watched the live broadcast, there was nothing out of the ordinary. It was not the first time that this had happened.