MAN IN THE MIDDLE

“Listen to me Benji, this…I really don’t even have the words to describe it. You just have to see for yourself. I’m sending the location.”

“Okaaa...” His voice lulls off.

“Benji! Don’t tell me you’re fucking sleeping while I’m trying to tell you something important.” His voice is firm but bereft of any malice. Like a lightning bolt, it spurs Benji’s seemingly drugged mind to life.

“No no, I’m not sleeping.” He quickly rebuts, rubbing his face effusively and letting out a deep yawn. He could hear the shower running. Marianne’s mellifluous voice sifts into the bedroom. It makes him smile. Smiling had become a rarity for him nowadays.

“Go on. I’m all ears.” He sits up against the headboard and reaches for the MacBook on the night stand. He had dozed off while drafting the resignation letter.

“This is unlike any nightmare you have ever had. Think of the scariest horror movies you’ve ever seen…like the Conjuring or the one about the creepy doll. It’s something pulled straight out of one of those films. Better yet, imagine Hannibal Lecter. If the devil himself were to write a script, this would be it. Prepare yourself for what you are going to see. I doubt you ever seen anything like it.”

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Mukuru is an informal low income settlement district established in the early 70s. A twenty kilometre drive from the capital’s CBD along the A2 highway. Among many others things, it’s an epitome of poverty, neglect and government incompetency that has razed the country for decades since it’s independence from British rule in 1963.

Benjamin takes off his joggers cap, scratches an itchy patch on his head before putting it back on. All done swiftly so that no one in the large crowd could have time to recognize him. Getting recognized was the last thing he wanted. He whispers something in Ayub’s ear then turns and walks through the milling crowd, keeping his head as low as possible.

He walks through the cordon, nods at the officers keeping guard and makes his way to the back of the complex. He spots a blue metallic barrel stationed below a rain gutter. With both arms, he tightly hugs its thick slimy edges like a leopard holding onto its game and pukes inside the half-filled barrel. Just when he thinks he’s done contaminating the water, the gory images he had witnessed of exposed human entrails sticking out of their natural abode accosts his mind again. The malodorous decomposed flesh lingers on his nostrils. He hurls a second barrage of Marianne’s chicken curry into the water. He vaguely watches his supper float around before finally collapsing onto the soily ground without a care for his grey sweatpants. He felt disoriented. Perhaps it was the sweltering mid-day sun.

He had never seen so many bodies in one place. All of them chopped up into pieces like they do at the butchers, carefully packaged into canvases just like a butcher would have done then finally discarded in the abandoned quarry pit. There must have been at least fifty bags inside the pit if not more consider how deep it is. The Directorate’s forensics team was still retrieving the bodies. So much horror. Mangled human bodies with flesh disintegrating from the bones upon retrieval. Severed limbs…particularly the severed female head with one eye missing and the other eye peering into Benjamin’s soul. He had seen what appeared to be a mother and a child packaged into one canvas. In some, the heads had been crushed into unidentifiable paste.

He fishes inside his pocket for a handkerchief and wipes off the trail of puke that had found its way onto his sketchers.

The quarry pit itself was a dumping site for garbage transported out of the city by waste management companies. It had been declared an illegal site and the county government had been issued a court order fifteen years ago not only to fill up the depression but also to compensate the area residents fifty million shillings because of the diseases and multiple deaths it had resulted from. But as with everything involving kakistocratic governments, they had failed to comply.

He knew all this because he had worked for the law firm that had filed the case on behalf of the aggrieved residents. A pro bono job. Mukuru V Nairobi city council. It had mentioned two other parties: Tedco Mining — the company responsible for the dangerous depression and Kenan waste management, the company that had been recklessly dumping tonnes of waste near the residential area.

Ironically, the police station was about three hundred metres away from the quarry pit. He already had his suspicion on what had happened with the bodies and so did Ayub. He wouldn’t have bothered to phone him if this was a classic serial killer case.

His heart races wildly as all these details speed across his mind. A sharp pain hits the right side of his chest and almost instantly as if on cue, two loud explosions erupt simultaneously. Tear gas cannisters exploding. Another one of the miscellaneous sounds that had ceaselessly taken hold of Nairobi’s ambiance in the past month. He could never acclimatize to the robustness of the detonation. It got him jumpier than a Kangaroo every damn time.

“Mosetti Must Go! Mosetti Must Go…!” Came the vehement anti-government chant that sends a frightful chill down Benji’s spine.

“Hey! I’ve been looking for you.” Ayub runs towards him. “We should leave right now. It’s about to get really bad around here.” His voice is panicked.

“Why? What’s happening?”

“The station is going to get overrun. These officers are recklessly lobbing tear gas and you know what that always mean.” He quickly fills him in as they slip into the building via the backdoor. They rush through a semi-dark corridor that reeks of aged urine.

As soon as they appear through the precinct’s facade, it dawns on Benji that there’s a mightily good chance he might not be getting home to Marianne’s ebullient countenance. He realizes he might never again talk to Daniel and Oti, his two boys.

A mammoth mob twice as large as it had been when he first got here had beleaguered the station on all fronts. Dear Lord, there could possibly be over five thousand people. He despondently mulled. The men on the front lines were engaging the police in a ferocious battle for ground supremacy.

They were trying to push past the cordon set up about two hundred metres from the compound’s gate. They scoffed at the smoke and made mocking gestures whenever the cops got overwhelmed and forced to retreat and cede ground. Who needs Baghdad when there’s Mukuru. The tear gas was practically ineffectual against them which wasn’t surprising consider a few weeks ago two protesters in Nyeri county were smoking directly from a cannister while sarcastically yelling at the police: “Bring us a strawberry flavoured one next time!”

"We are running out of cannisters!” One of the uniformed cops shouts as he scurries back into the building to shelter from the trailing projectiles. Closely behind him was another officer with his palm wrapped firmly around his profusely bleeding temple.

“They hit me with a rock.” He winces as he places his gun down. An orange cannister was corked onto the barrel.

“Use some rounds! Do you think we keep them around for decoration?”

“Are you insane? You want to murder them.” Benjamin counters, shocked by the brazenness of the asinine call.

“Do you want them to murder us!” The officer shouts back, the vein on his temple throbbing out. “How else are we supposed to control them…the stupid tear gas clearly isn’t working.” From the lone silver star sitting above his name tag, Benji gathers that he's the commander of the post. Bungei is his name. He glares at Benjamin, his nose bulging out imperiously like a chimney to let out the hot smoke within him. He then shifts an admonishing glare to Ayub as if to tell him to keep his unceremonious friend in check. Ayub doesn’t twitch a muscle. He wasn’t going to be the one to tell Benjamin— the A.G, to shut his mouth.

“The only reason they are here in the first place is because of your ineptitude. All they want is for you to answer for your incompetency! Tell me commander, why are there more than fifty dismembered bodies stashed in sealed canvases and sacks getting pulled out of the quarry that is directly opposite your station?” Benjamin is only a couple of inches away from the commander’s hardened face. “Can you provide either me or those irate residents out there with a credible answer that will allay their anger? Is it that you and your officers are just awful at your job or is it that your officers perpetrated those mur—”

Before he can finish saying what was on his mind, Ayub grabs him by the elbow and gives him a strong jerk backwards.

“What are you trying to say wakili? Don’t be a coward, come out and say it in front of everyone if you have the balls.”

“There’s distrust and suspicion all over the country of the police’s modus operandi, commander. You know what I’m talking about so don’t try and act clueless with me. We are going to get lynched inside this tin can of a station all because of your hubris. March out there and give the people the answers they want!”

They had retreated further inside the building for more cover from the pelting rocks. A few of the white non-incendiary cannisters had been intercepted and flung back into the precinct. A method they referred to as ‘Return to sender’.

One of the officer who had retreated into the inner chambers hurriedly brushes past Benji, runs out to the open court and takes aim at the mob. What follows the anticipated explosion is a clamorous wail brimmed with intense agony.

“Oh wow!” Ayub exclaims with his hand over his mouth. A vociferous cheer erupts from the mob. The inspector’s hands lay on the ground. Both of them crudely detached from their sockets at the upper forearm.

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Benjamin and the commander were on either end of the tiny room that had fissured into two different factions. On one side was Bungei and his officers (nursing the handicapped colleague) while on the other end was a fuming Benjamin with Ayub next to him. Separating the two sides were four Recce squad servicemen with SCARS on alert.

“There’s no need to further agitate the situation. It’s already bad enough. Just calm down, okay.” Ayub pleads with Benjamin. He was aware of the amount of strain and duress that Benji had been going through. On the few occasions he had seen him in the past month, he had gotten the sense that he was shouldering the weight of the nation. Clawing and scratching to keep the country from descending into a punitive dictatorial regime. Albeit with very little success, his bold efforts were still admirable.

It was only a week ago that his sons were getting kidnapped by masked rogues outside the gates of Nairobi University. It had been a huge spectacle recorded on hundreds of on-lookers’ phones and on the school’s surveillance cameras. A silver unmarked double cab Hilux pulled up beside the boys and their friends. Two men with balaclavas exited the vehicle, put a bag over them before bundling them into the backseat.

If he didn’t know any better, he’d say they were rehearsing for a Jason Bourne role. But as the Directorate’s spokesperson, Ayub knew a lot better. Two hours after the abduction, he had received credible intel that it had all happened on Farouk’s orders. The ‘masked goons’, as the media had branded them, had in actuality been special unit officers from the directorate’s Special Operations division.

“Benjamin, you need to make that call. I understand calling the guy is the last thing you want to do but if you don’t, we all know what will happen when this mob breaks through those barrier. We need an evacuation.”

No sooner had Ayub uttered those words than the window close to where he was standing shatters and a bottle is hurled inside. It erupts into a massive flame forcing them to flee the room.

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“What is it they want me to do!” He slams the ovular oak table with both hands as he gets up and paces the room. The white sheet of paper Benjamin had delivered lays forlornly on the desk. It was a letter Benjamin had found pinned onto a post in Githurai on his way to Mukuru. There were thousands of them littered across the suburb. Glued onto houses, shops, electric poles and vehicles.

From Benjamin’s position at the far end of the table, he spots something alien that he had perhaps never observed before in the three years he had corresponded with the office as A.G. The president was shaking. He was often a hard man to read so Benji couldn’t tell if it was from anger or fear. Maybe a bit of both. He appeared almost...pitiful.

“Have I not done what they have been asking? I withdrew the bill. I fired my entire cabinet. I fired the Inspector General. What more do they want from me?”

“No matter how many push-ups it does, a lizard will never turn into a crocodile.” Benji absently remarks.

“And exactly what is that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed this sir but they don’t trust you… no one does. You have multiple unpalatable reputations that greatly precede you.”

“They are blaming you for the incident at Mukuru.” Ndii coyly adds.

“That’s utter rubbish!” Farouk repudiates. “It’s hearsay which the president doesn’t want to hear about.”

“It doesn’t matter whether he wants to hear it or not, Farouk. That’s the reality of what is happening outside these walls. People are convinced that their president is a genocidal maniac on a rampage. Hence that fucking letter over there!” Benji points to the recall letter.

“I’ll advice you to watch your tone.”

“No you watch your tone. You are one of the reasons we are in this predicament.”

Farouk springs off his seat and ingurgitates two menacing strides towards Benjamin. David, privy to Farouk’s volatile temperament, manoeuvres his hefty body fastidiously ahead of him and effectively keeps him at bay. “I’m warning you. Keep your dirty mouth shut!” He wags a castigating finger at Benji.

“Or what? You already abducted my sons to intimidate me into signing off on the illegal military deployment on civilians. You want to kill me like you did with those innocent people in Githurai? Are you also going to chop my body into sizeable pieces like a tomato and dump my body in the quarry pit?”

“Farouk! Sit down.” The president barks. Like a good Rottweiler, the churlish aide retreats to his seat although he doesn’t once drop the loathsome glare from Benjamin.

The minute-long repose is interrupted by Sudi hurrying into the room. He yells to the secretary behind him to turn on the news. She nervously does so then like a mouse, scampers back to her desk. The presenter was in the middle of a monologue:

“Citizen tv was today contacted by a police officer who claimed to be part of a surreptitious killer squad commissioned by State House that reports directly to the president’s personal aide, Mr. Farouk Ganii. He claims that the killer squad has one purpose— to hunt down vocal anti-government critics and protesters. As you will see in the exclusive interview, he admits to our reporter that the dozens of bodies retrieved at Mukuru quarry pit earlier this morning was just a drop in the ocean of what was a spree of hundreds of extra-judicial murders committed between June and July.”

They transition to the whistleblower.

“Now, for full transparency, the whistleblower requested that he appears on live television without facial cover-up or any alteration in his voice.”

They watch for about five minutes before the president grabs the glass of water and catapults it at the screen. He stands by his desk, taking in breaths like a Spanish fighting bull.

Benjamin scans the room and quickly determines that that expose was the final nail in the coffin. The second bout of silence is longer and contemplative for all eight of the room’s occupants. Benjamin clears his throat.

“Is nobody going to say it?”

No response.

He gets up.

“It is quite clear to me in regards to that letter that the citizens have overwhelmingly activated Chapter one, article one of the constitution which gives them the mandate to directly oust you.” He takes a pause before continuing, undeterred by the murderous eyes fixed on him. “In the three years I’ve been serving as the Attorney General, I have tried to advice you to the best of my ability but not once did you heed my advice. Instead, you chose to listen to sycophants like Farouk, Ndii and Sudi who told you everything you wanted to hear while in reality things were very different. You sent officers to kill civilians who were peacefully demanding their rights. You illegally shut down the internet to facilitate a genocide in Githurai and in Rongai. All these moves done under the hospices of the unscrupulous charlatans that you surround yourself with. You froze out many people like me that had the nation’s best interests at heart. You are now illegitimate. My last advice to you is to resign immediately. If you do so, they might afford you the decency of a court trial. However, if you force them to storm this house, then they will string you up with dog chains from those grandiose chandeliers for the whole world to watch. Live by the sword…die by the sword. Goodbye, butcher of Sugoi.”

He walks out.