Father Confessor - For the Motherland

Chapter 29

Lynnette chugged down the entire 500 millilitres of Red Bull and shook herself like a wet dog in an attempt to stay awake. The screen of her laptop helped in this regard, the blue light chasing away all the sleep from her eyes. The ride was mostly smooth, thanks to the new city council's efforts to re-beautify Harare. For this clandestine and covert trip, she had ditched her attention-calling Zil limousine in favour of the more practical Landcruiser V8, which she shared with five other men, plus the driver. Behind them a similarly darker SUV followed them at a hundred and twenty kilometres per hour.

These eleven men were her most trusted, thoroughly vetted assets who were part of the country's special backup division, known in national security parlance as Protocol 13. In simple terms, Protocol 13 was Zimbabwe's security sector's internal affairs, which could be brought only by two people, the director of NISA and the president. It was its own entity, regarded by many intelligence staffers as a dreaded external auditor, one only necessary if an organisation's internal affairs division was under suspicion. That she had activated them tonight spoke volumes about the direness of the situation.

As the two vehicle convoy sped northeast, Lynnette alternated between working on her Mac and contemplating the fleeting scenery outside the SUV's tinted and armoured window. At this moment, a few minutes after midnight, the city that never slept was dozing, though not completely slumbering. The kombis that ferried commuters to and from their homes and workplaces during the day had long since cleared the streets. In most cases, they were now safely parked in their respective garages in the Southerton industrial area, their drivers catching a few hours of much needed sleep while the vehicles had their engines looked over by overqualified mechanics. The absence of the kombis in the streets also meant the welcome scarcity of hwindis - touts - who seemed to straddle the thin line between aggressive marketing and outright hooliganism with nary a care. At this hour the touts would be found in the bars and shebeens that dotted the capital city, drinking themselves into the demented highs they perpetually inhabited. During nighttime, their places were taken by the mushika-shikas or pirate taxis, who still managed to get some business despite the fact that many of them had been accused of robbing and raping their customers. Welcome to Harare.

Lynnette's phone buzzed. It was Garikai, apparently calling her from inside a closet. The update he gave her was both comically fun and seriously disturbing. It gelled with the information she had managed to get in the past few hours. She ordered him to get out of there and keep the vice president safe. When she left the State House and returned to Muzinda, she activated Protocol 13 and gave short, clear and precise instructions to her trusted agents and officers.

The outcome of it was that she received confirmation that her organisation was involved in the treason plot. Senior agents and officers were proved to have received and made unauthorised phone calls, sent classified information to members of the administration, met with said persons and received suspicious amounts of money via intermediaries. The irony of it was that, barely two weeks earlier, most of these officers had worked hard to limit the damage to national security after the former director had sold out to a Botswana based cabal. Now they were a danger to the same nation's security.

This emergency journey to Belvedere was born out a frantic call from Max, who had been following through some leads. Lynnette had just finished changing into a casual outfit of black jeans and loose top when the call came.

"I found something!" Max's voice was hushed and urgent. "A house, Belvedere, BD998. You have to see this, it's Mrs Merikas...oh, crap..."

There was the sound of a gunshot, and on that suspenseful note, the call ended.

They were now driving along Bonga Drive, in Belvedere. It was cheerfully lit by the solar powered street lamps, and Lynnette could see the modern and almost uniformly designed houses inside their walled and gated five hundred square metre stands.  The walls were nearly always topped by razor or electric wire, while the gates were the metal sliding kind, protecting the single storey houses with red roof tiles. A quiet and peaceful neighbourhood, said to house more mixed race citizen than any other suburb in the country.