Chapter 9: The Journalist

Unlike other occasions where the path was always cleared in advance, that day had to be different. The last thing Joe and his men needed at Judas’ sendoff was seeking special attention to themselves. Besides, the men in suits had to have a taste of what they were paid to do. As they squeezed their way to the car, Joe brushed his shoulders with a young lady. His guys were ready to take a toll on her but he stopped them. Indeed, they were willing to do what they were paid for, properly without doubt.

Joe saw no reason for them to add pain to an already painful day. After all, they had just reached Joe’s motorcade. Besides, she was too innocent to even harm a fly let alone a Credonia’s Cabinet Minister of Finance. Minutes later, Joe was cruising on the highway back to the capital city of Credonia. A place where dreams came true as they said. It was also the heart of Credonia. Though it was painful to loose Judas, it was in the past. They had to let go off it only retaining the memory and back to serving their Country and forging a bright future for all.

In this mood of relaxing and letting go off the past, Joe felt warm enough and decided to remove his outer coat. He had a habit of reaching to all his pockets for anything important before he could remove the coat. Sometimes he found something but other times none. That day was in the list of those that Joe found things in the pockets. From the feel of it, it felt like a piece of paper. The last time Joe checked, he had no use for papers in his pockets.

Funny enough, one had just made it inside and he could not remember putting it there. As if that day could not get any worse, that was very weird. He changed his mind from removing the coat to removing the note. It was not a piece of paper as he thought at first. It was a small envelope the size of which he had not seen before. I guess it came with the big jobs. It was small enough to fit in his outer left pocket.

Could it have been a couple of decades later and in another Country, he could not dare open the tiny envelope. In the future, he could be afraid of poisoning, infections or even worse. As technology advances, so does the good people and those doing evil as well. Since they were nowhere near that future, he had to take his chances and open the envelope.

Being a Credonia’s Cabinet Minister of Finance or any Cabinet Minister for that matter had its moments. Some were good but majority on the lower side. On the lower side in the sense that, one could hardly get some time alone. The privacy they lost physically they found elsewhere. They may have had no physical privacy but they kept the deepest and darkest of secrets within themselves. The little time Joe could ever be alone was in the toilet or at the back seat of his beloved Toyota Land cruiser V8.

Their country may not have been wealthy but they did drive huge and comfy. It was this opportunity for being alone that he took to open the envelope. He was careful enough not to let the men in black seated in front realize anything or even see the envelope. They may have been providing security to him but he could never trust them with more. At those attitudes, trust is the one thing served small.

Everyone had to use his or hers wisely. Joe could not risk sharing more with the men in black. They had enough share of it already. Inside that small envelope, he met nothing much but another smaller paper with a note. This paper was no ordinary paper, as you may think, no. It was a business card. On seeing this, his great question was, why would someone go through the trouble of sealing a business card in an envelope yet it had every information about them?

This was all there was on the top side of the card. Had he not read the name on it and recognized it, may be his son could have taken the blame for putting it there. The holder’s name was new to him though. What he got to recognize was the company the card owner worked for. It was Umoja News and the owner’s name was that of a woman. As he was trying to figure out how it got into his pocket, he twisted and turned it around in his fingers.

As he played with it thinking, it slipped and fell with the backside on top. What he saw changed everything since that day. It was a five-word sentence written by hand. He took a pick at his guys first before he could pick it up for a closer look. The sentence read; ‘The shell is the key.’ The first question he asked was what the hell was going on. He realized he could not answer the question first and went back to the card. Whose shell was this that was the key and the key to what?

After he chocked himself with questions and no answers, he decided to start from the beginning, or, at least, from what he had. In his one hand was the small envelope and in the other was the card. How did he get to have the envelope, he asked himself in search of an answer. At that instance, something came back to him. A while ago, just before he got into the car, he remembered brushing shoulders with a woman. Honestly, he had seen nothing beyond the woman herself.

She must have been the one that put the envelope into his pocket. But why would she do it? What did he have to do with a woman in the media? And there it was. Another clue to solving what had become a witch-hunt. He now knew the name and the media house. There were no contacts on the card for him to call. He was left with the option of knowing this woman first.

Since he had a name and the media house, Google was to help him out. He typed her name and the media house in the Google search box with a smile and waited. Someone was making a fool of him and he was after knowing him or her. Seconds later, the search results yielded nothing. Nothing in relation to the woman or the media house. He could not afford to stop at that. He searched the media house only. This way, he would match the names of the employees.

Still, he got nothing. The media house had no employee by the name on the card. Lastly, he typed in the woman’s name and waited. Finally, he had something to work with. He had a face put to the name. The problem was, the face he saw back at Judas’ compound was not the same one that Google gave him. Having realized that no one was making a fool of him except himself, he decided to read about this face with the name. The most stupid thing he did was to Google for answers yet someone had gone through all that trouble to conceal it all. Anyway, he did get an answer.

This woman had nothing special. She was not a criminal or any sort of public figure. She got people’s attention from sending small empty envelopes. Once again, he was too quick to judge. After reading the second paragraph, he realized she was something else. He could not have a good enough word to describe her. She was said to be responsible for the death of very many people among which, some of them were never found.

The envelopes had nothing to do with the deaths. In fact, there was no adequate evidence to tie her to the murders except for the fact that, every person that got an envelope from her ended up dead a few days later. After investigations, the envelopes were empty and did not have any message written on them. That is how she walked free for lack of sufficient evidence to tie her to the murders. Every time a murder could happen, she could be at a different location.

It was quite a story but it did not seem to help. He gave up and decided to get rid of the envelope and the card. Just as he was about to do so, he had one final thought he had to try. Someone had sent him an envelope with a name of someone who used to send them. Hers might not have had anything written on them but they surely had something to do with the deaths of the people.

His had a card in it and a riddle in the name of message written on it. After a while on this thought, he realized that, the only shell around him and that this sender would know about was the envelope. He had to chase this down the road. Having the card inside, the envelope was a very good shell. From here on was to look for the answer or the key in the shell.

Indeed, the shell had the key. There was nothing written on it for the naked eye to see but, he felt something as his fingers touched the envelope. And, there it was. The answer he was needing for all that while. At this point, he was curious enough to back off. This key on the envelope was still another puzzle. The first challenge was how to see it in order to read it. This is the point he had to utilize his primary school knowledge.

He remembered a time they used to shade a paper with a pencil to see what was traced on it. This is what he did to reveal the writings or as she called it, the key on that shell. Unalike the first one, this was not a sentence but just a single word. He had gone through all that trouble just for one word. After he read the word, he busted out in laughter and got the men in black’s attention. Well, he just told them he was happy to get them off his air.