23 October 2021
Tropical Betrayal Served with Filial Bitters
Lashiya and Najda were on their way to the Kohatu Isles, an overseas territory of the Oan Isles to get to figure out what was going on. Lashiya’s secretary Ayra had arranged flights, accommodation, a car and meetings with Abuyin’s lawyers and staff in a matter of hours. One thing about Lashiya’s staff, is that they were committed to their jobs and devoted to Lashiya personally. Her work ethic and lead-from-the-front mentality earned her their respect and admiration. The fact that she rescued each of them, gave them a life and a future, earned her their loyalty.
Ayra had been abused by her husband and was the victim of an acid attack that left her scarred on the face. When she collapsed in front of Lashiya’s house, fleeing the evil man who had once promised to love her, Lashiya took her in, mended her, and that man simply vanished. The last trace of him was a car found at the bottom of Khujhdameen River. Najda was an old boxer who was exploited by an unscrupulous manager who fed him performance enhancing substances that led to addiction, and mental health issues. Lashiya found him and hired him as her bodyguard, working with him to reconstruct his identity and wean him from the substances that defined him.
That is why when she called Ayra and Najda at 3 o’ clock in the morning asking them to help her on a case of this magnitude, she could trust them with her life and be confident that they would help her. Some might argue that Lashiya was manipulating them and exploiting her good deeds and their desperation to control them. That person may or may not be correct. But it begs the question how different their lives would be if she didn’t. In their minds, they had answered that question and were often asking themselves how best they could aid this woman who seemed to bear the weight of the political machinations of Bingol squarely on her slender shoulders.
They landed at the Mahakatepa International Airport where a driver waited with a sign saying “Lashiya and Najda”. He ran to them and helped them pack their bags in the car and drove them to Te Ukanui & Co., the law firm based in Tokapa but with a branch in Mahakatepa that oversaw Abuyin’s legal affairs. They received a status update on the application for the injunction which had been submitted before they landed. Nothing was surprising or different from the update that they had been provided by Prince Abuyin. These weren’t high end lawyers for nothing. They knew just as much as anyone that there were specialist services which were not available to regular paying customers. These were the services in which Lashiya was interested.
She wanted access to documents, places and personnel. While not expressly illegal, their maneuverings stood on dubious ethical grounds. They managed to get Lashiya a chat with the one of the police supervisors responsible for executing the search warrant. In a sun-lit cafe on the Mahakatepa waterfront promenade, he divulged that the police had been gathering information that pointed to the suspicion that the factory was potentially involved in corrupt practices. Nothing stuck until they got an anonymous tip off by an email belonging to an unknown server that when they traced the original IP address of the sender, kept changing.
After that she had arranged to meet The Mahua at his apartment in downtown Mahakatepa. She knocked on the apartment, but nothing came of it. A slightly pungent smell wafted through the door. Lashiya asked Najda to knock down. Using his power and strength, he rammed into the door, causing it to swing open. Te Mahua was like a chandelier. She ordered Najda to bring him down but it was too late, his light had gone out forever. There was no note, no letter. They search top to bottom for clues but found nothing. They closed the curtains and switched off the lights, sprayed every surface with a water based substanced and shined UV lights on everything. It revealed splatters of a substance that had been scrubbed away and footsteps of a boot walking towards the bathroom. The footsteps simply vanished.
Lashiya and Najda left things as they found them and left the apartment, with Najda quickly repairing and closing the door. Lashiya made a phone call using her burner phone to the police and quickly giving the address and suspected crime then threw the device into the street where the car they had arrived here in destroyed the device before the operator could ask who was calling. Lashiya and Najda often dealt with difficult situations such as these. However, this was a different brand of political intrigue.
Lashiya looked at Najda who was starring out of the window in silence and said, “We’ll let the local police handle it, there’s nothing for us to do here”.
Najda did not respond. He was a strong man, but he had experienced many difficult things that even the strongest man might find challenging to deal with. They returned to their apartment, gathering their wits and strength analysing the information before them and connecting the dots.
At 3 o’ clock, as scheduled, Lashiya was on the phone with Prince Abuyin, “Te Mahua is no longer with us. And it seems that the police received an anonymous tip off from a number that they could not even begin to trace. My guess is that there are powerful people who do not want you here”.
“Shukraan, Lashiya”, Abuyin said, “I am grateful for your help. If I have political enemies, willing to go to these extents, I need reenforcements”.
When the call ended, Abuyin asked his secretary to schedule a meeting with the Minister of State Security, Prince Lohadek.
”. It seemed so ironic now the supposed LOML (Love of My Life) had turned into such a horrible being unworthy of the epithet.