MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE
The final clue was tucked away in the top right hand corner of page seven of the newspaper.
It was what in the news paper industry they call a brief, under the innocuous headline "Global handwashing day in Kapan"
On the surface of it was a run of the mill story about a public function in a remote village in the deep north east of the country, at which the visiting dignitary extolled the virtues of hand washing as way to ward of many preventable diseases
The third sentence was totally out of place. "The cows will come home after the dry season."
Apart from being misplaced in the story it wasn't an unusual statement in the context of region the main story was referring. A semi-arid area known from its roaming nomads, whose herds were the end all and be all of their lives.
However three weeks to the day previously another brief had run in the exact same sport, on the exact same page and an even more mundane headline, "Court bailiffs finally open CAO's office"
As the headline suggested it was about reopening an adminstrator's office who had been frustrating service delivery in the district. This time the sentence, "Sugar cane transporters got the greenlight" was the sentence that was out of line.
Unknown to the general public these two sentences bracketed a similar kind of sentences in the same newspaper, on the exact same page and in the same corner, on the same day over the previous five weeks.
The signals were intended for specific people, specific men in various corners of the country. They were supposed to set in motion a diabolical plan to overthrow the government of the day.
Ousting the aging patriarch, who had risen to power 39 years prior and hung on like grim death ever since, would be felt not only in the country, whose politics he had straddled like a colossus for half his life, but across the region and even further afield.
He had leveraged his numerous connections, that stretch back to his days at the university, the only one in the region then, which schooled most of the ruling elite in the region, to build a sphere of influence that gave him more influence over the continent's affairs.
There was envy of him inside and outside his country.
Within his country a small group of people, mostly his loyalists had earned a lot of influence and amassed unimaginable wealth in a country where a fifth of the population lived on less than a dollar a day.
Abroad he had stepped on powerful interests' toes, frustrating their schemes to exploit the regions natural resources and forego huge paydays.
Somehow these forces had coalesced over a long period of time, unseen and unheard, not even in rumour or in loose barroom talk.
And now the time was nigh to activate the plot.
For a week the flow of fuel to the small landlocked nation was stopped, quickly triggering fuel ques at petrol stations.
During the same period, the country started experiencing inexplicable power outages like the country had not know n in more than a decade.
The fuel shortages soon triggered food shortages to the main cities and the power outages unleashed a reign of terror in the surburbs by masked assailants.
In protest the shopkeepers went on strike. Was it coincidence that this action came on the third Tuesday? The story that day, a brief as usual, had the misplaced sentence "The closures are long overdue and necessary." The story was headlined, "High HIV rates worry Agagi district"
The combination of these and the drying taps, shortage of sugar and kindergarten teachers strike conspired to shorten tempers all around and turn the population's ire at the country's strong man.
His security chiefs were locked in meetings more often than they were out and about. It was baffling these coincidence of events. But for the life of them they could not place a finger on the thread that held them together, if at all.
Their desperation was felt by a few hapless criminals who had previously served as informants but were now turned into scapegoats, rounded up and locked. But the coincidences of "bad" luck continued.
Jonah had an uneventful career. Straight out of university he had joined the national newspaper company. He had started out as a freelance writer, before being taken on as a news reporter.
His progression had come in three year progressions and the superstitious John thought it was about time for another change in his life. Tomorrow would mark the third anniversary of his being employed as a reporter.
The previous day he had arrived at office early. He wasn't feeling too well. His tummy was rumbling. Must have been the pork he had last night. It must have been bad and even the six, or were they eight beers he had had along with it had not helped.
Within minutes of getting to office he was seating on the toilet heaving out his guts. Even when he thought he had flushed it all out he didn't dare get off the king's throne.
There was suddenly a loud banging on the toilet door. The door was secured. Jonah did not respond to the banging or the frenetic turning of the door handle.
"Clearly I am not the only one," Jonah thought with a pained smile.
When he thought it was safe he reached for the toilet paper. A small tightly wound piece of paper fell out. And just then he got another attack -- hopefully the last one.
In his discomfort he unrolled the piece of paper, a fluorescent yellow stick it. Scrolled across the top in capital letters "Orilak teachers abandon classes for boda boda" and then in precise handwriting below it the sentence, "At 2pm the rain started to fall."
Just then another bout of diarrohea struck and John crumpled the paper in pain as his bowels emptied his tummy of its last contents.
The next day, a Tuesday, the speaker of parliament rifled through the newspaper once and then a second time and more frantically, a third time.
There was no brief on page seven that day with the final signal of the plot. He dropped the newspaper on his massive mahogany desk, walked out through the back door to his office into a tunnel that deposited him four streets away from parliament.
It was at least 40 minutes before his aide realised he was not in his office.
He was not the only one. Several high ranking bureaucrats, security officers, businessmen and John's new editor disappeared into the wind that day.
Just as suddenly the fuel supplies were restored, the power fluctuations subsided, shop owners opened their shops, kindergarten teachers returned to work ....
In the state house on the hill over looking the capital the patriarch prepared for a scheduled meeting of the dean of the diplomatic corps. He never made the appointment. He had been recalled at short notice to his parent ministry and was on the way to the airport.
Jonah became news editor, a progression helped to no end by his in depth reporting on the inexplicable, high profile disappearances of the speaker, the secretary to the treasury, the commander of the mechanised division and the airforce's commander of the helicopter squadron.
In his investigations it had been hazarded that the four had been part of a planned coup but he could not verify the plot independently, so he dropped his enquiries into the matter.
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