BLACK FATHERS, WHITE FATHERS

Mukalu got out of the car and walked towards the building, onto the gravel of the driveway that led up to the entrance of Dick's mansion. Dick was going to pay for being Dick, was all Mukalu could think as his shoes scrunched on the gravel driveway. The way it was going to be done was too dangerous, for Mukalu, who had volunteered for the task more out of necessity and responsibility - he knew that he was the best man for the task - than out of knowledge that this was the end of the road for his posting in Utopia; for Dick's family who would all be exposed to the danger, but the agency had insisted on this method. There had been other, more humane or civilized options; getting the man when he was away from home and avoiding doing it in the eyes of other people, especially not in front of his own children, or kidnapping the man, then sending him abroad in a package, back to his land of birth where he would be brought before a judge to stand trial for treason against the United States of Africa. There was enough evidence to convict the man, and lock him away for eternity. But these options had all been too risky. This was the only chance they would get to control the situation. If they let this chance slip by then it might get too late. The web was quickly tightening around them.

Dick had made many enemies. Nobody would have been surprised if he had either just disappeared or been shot by the roadside. This is why the man couldn't afford to move around without bodyguards. His movements were calculated, and the agency had found no loopholes. The execution was possible, but there were too many risks that something could go wrong. The people behind these traitors had valuable interests these men helped protect or attain. They valued their interests as much as the men who helped secure them.

It was not so long ago that this high security had not been the norm. Men like Dick had not been valued as much as the interests they helped protect. This was because people like that had existed in numbers too numerous to worry about replacements, or that the using party had taken care of the threats to these people's security. But then at the time, unlike was the case now, the majority of Mukalu's people had been in constant, or perpetual need. The system had been such that bare survival had not always been assured. This, together with the apathy that develops in such climes, the brainwashed state of people misinformed for too long, the ignorance, had made them easy prey to recruiting parties.

Mukalu heard the gay voices of children as he walked up to the building. Innocents, he thought. They will be witnesses to an evil today. Their father would get killed right in front of their eyes by a friend of the family. Maybe even the children would lose their lives if things came to that. Mukalu was trained in such situations. He couldn't make such a mistake, but there were the guards, or his people. With so many people the amount of the dangerous activity was increased, and so was the chance that innocents would get caught up in life threatening situations. This was however a risk Mukalu was prepared to take. He would have it on his conscious, but he had convinced himself of the greater good.

The offspring of the man were innocents it was true. But theirs was a fate of bastards. By dealing wrongly with the other side their own father had shown his lack of care for their welfare. Conscious or unconscious the man had actively engaged in the selling of their future, their independence, their sanity, their decency. He, like so many others, had actively engaged in the sealing of his progeny's doom, which was also his own doom. He had acted to foster their bastard status. The misery and tragedies they and their kind had and might experience again was being fortified; by their own blood.

Consciously or unconsciously done, the man had to pay. His kind had to be eliminated from his ranks. The harm they caused had to be limited when and if they were noticed, or else no progress would be made in the never-ending fight for redemption, self determination, advancement and security.

In the not too distant past when his people had been struck with exigent times, they had always had a chance to turn the tables, always; they were smart people, had it not been for betrayals by men like this man in the house he was walking up to. His people always moved towards victory, but they were always betrayed by petty, range of the moment ambitions. Yes! Such men were unfit for life because they avoided physical dangers; they hired bodyguards to protect them from the unknown assailant, they drove their cars with the utmost of care lest they lose their lives to careless driving, they ate healthy foods, they exercised, they saved on their energy costs lest this be cut off, they saved money for their future, they sent their children to school, but they shut the doors to independence and doomed many more in their wake. They did all this self preservation, followed the good path to health and security, but failed to be consistent when the issue became abstract; when the almighty reason they were living a good life was at stake.

At some time in the past their legacy was to be seen everywhere. It was no accident that people in this region had lived below the poverty line where bare survival wasn't assured, that every new kind of death had hit them hardest first. Yes they were unfit for life because they destroyed their own futures and those of people who were much more careful. They were suicide machines, and they dragged everyone else to the grave with them.

It is the way of life. One man's security needs will be very extensive indeed: simple problems are by reflection connected back to the men using Dick. The eradication of the relationship poses the solution. Another man will see the solutions to his problems in people around him. Usually, this type's security needs don't go beyond his front door, sometimes his work, the street, the bus he is on. Faults and lacks in those around him are punished, but not, as in the case of the former type, seen as effects of some other connected issue, the real cause.

Mukalu took the surroundings in as he walked up the steps to the front door. Everybody in the picture today was in their predicted positions. The guards here stood more or less in the positions they had studied. In fact, the go-ahead for the mission hadn't been given until all the man's guards had been spotted.

The guard by the door greeted him by his first name. His was a known face. Mukalu was as a result not scanned for a weapon.

The first error had been made by the opponents. Then again only a man in Mukalu's position could make this judgment.

The guard of a man as sought after as his appointment today need never take any chances. But then there were those things in life that people did, or people never did because it just didn't belong. Today, what just didn't seem right to do was actually the thing that could cause the demise of a man.

Frisking people at the entrance to a home may sound strange, but it goes with the territory. But then again it was not appropriate to frisk one's boss. This too goes with the other territory. Mukalu had come armed to the teeth because he knew he wouldn't get scanned. He was the man's boss. Bosses never go to assassinate employees, except in extreme instances, and there had been no question of these in the past. This was also not the first time he had come to the house of his business associate, his fellow intelligence officer, and best friend; had been until he had heard the news of treachery, until it had all been proven to him.

The door swung open and a light skinned, short, fat woman appeared. The man's wife. Another fatal error in the making.

'Good morning,' she greeted leaning forward for the kiss on the cheek. 'We have been expecting you. Come in. My husband is in the living room, this way.'

They sat for some time talking trivia, while the wife busied herself around them, and the kids played.

Mukalu had been in this house before but had seldom studied the surroundings the way he was now. The house made more sense to him now. Dick lived exactly as men of his persuasion did, and Mukalu knew that this wasn't a prejudice caused by what he had come to know of the man. He had seen it all before, but had failed to recognize it when his best friend had worn the garb. This kind always surrounded themselves with all the visible signs of the higher status they sought, and had destroyed for to make their own. The setting was less utilitarian and comfortable than aesthetic and ostentatious. Mukalu remembered the expensively furnished rooms upstairs where nobody except guided tours went, expensive electrical equipment that was never used, which no member of the household knew how to use, nor were let near to; the Jacuzzi and champagne, the game courts and oversized swimming pool outside, the garish decorations on the walls. There was a purpose to it all, but none that fulfilled the end as well as it should. Mukalu knew this truth better than anybody else who knew the man, but then the agency had also erred here. They should have seen this trait that disqualified an applicant to such a post.

The man asked to show him his newly furnished office upstairs. He declined. The man insisted. He finally agreed. Everything was a repeat. They all behaved the same, he thought as he raised himself from the sofa. He looked at his watch and knew it was time to be near the escape route. His men would go into action if they didn't get the signal after an agreed amount of time had elapsed.

They were in the man's office when Mukalu took a gun out of his pocket and shoved it in the direction of the man.

'I want you to use it on yourself.' He pointed to his temple, 'Bang!' he said, his voice echoing through the whole house, down to where the children and the wife sat. They had heard this kind of noisy speech between the two before, so they remained unconcerned.

'I know everything about you. I knew it before, but thought it was mild, innocuous. I learnt recently the extent of your involvement. Disgusting!'

'What are you talking about? It's a lie. I know who is feeding you the wrong information.'

'I spied on you, buddy. I listened. I saw the evidence. Nobody had to lie to me, nobody!'

'Look. We can work something out here, no need to be hasty. We can shame the people involved. Look, they allow me to do the very things they are sending out arrest warrants to you for when you go to their lands. We can bring this news to the world. Double standards, see. It's you, your likes, that they want. They don't care what you are doing. It's the person they are interested in. The nuisance potential...' He paused. He had said the wrong thing. The fear in his eyes intensified. 'They don't care.'

Mukalu knew these were the words the men would use. These were the terms used for people like him. His was not the kind who had entered a room and seen too much, or someone who had joined an illegitimate or legitimate organization and known too much to be allowed to leave the organization until the others were sure he wouldn't reveal vital information. He was the kind who would pose a threat to their system's aspirations, like it or not, because of his construction, because of who he was whether he did anything or not. This fear was inbuilt in the particular system. Sooner or later he would be a threat to the greater whole. His kind had to be eliminated before they had seen too much. They had to be charged before they knew the crime, before they had committed the crime.

They had it in them to see the evil at one time or another. They had it in them to commit the crime come desperation or the need. Theirs was a death sentence for being whom they were. They were condemned men by virtue of their nature. Sadly, though, the particular system was bent on eradicating intellectual endowment. It strives to put out the light, the very thing it sought to illuminate in its own ranks. This had been the pattern since time immemorial. He knew they didn't care. They never had nor ever will, as long as that mentality prospered.

'I am a witness. You destroy me, and you destroy a chance to right the tables. This is what you want, isn't it? This is what our organization is aiming to achieve, isn't it? Look at it this way... Interpol, I mean Amnesty International, abuse of human rights, some other independent world body, the media, I have the proof. We can put them in their place for once.'

It had been done before, but it had all turned out to be window dressing for the bad guys. Justice could be done and the people involved punished. There was no disputing this fact, but the follow-up was negative for those who needed to remain vigilant, to keep their guard raised. Bad guys never cease to exist once some have been caught. They flourish in the aftermath of such revelations because the potential victims lower their guard.

'Shut up! Put the gun to your head and pull the trigger, scum! Your type, you slime, the weak link; the cause of our suffering! Put the gun to your head and pull the trigger, or do you want me to do it for you, which you've never done. You destroy yourself, so put the gun to your head and be over with what you are good at doing.'

Mukalu moved towards the man, grabbed the gun and forced it into the man's hands.

'You are nothing, Mukalu.' the man said losing some of the yellow. 'There is nothing you can do. You are powerless! Powerless! Do you hear me? You know what you remind me of?' he said starting to smile.

'You don't know it, but you are just this disillusioned slave who has this dream to one day be able to run away, cross the seas, walk the villages, and reach his people, see his loved ones once more. There is no chance for any of this. If he were to make it to the sea, he will find that all the ships are manned by the slave traders, who will most probably kill him, or resale him. If he mastered a ship then he will find that he cannot steer the thing in the right direction. If he did this then he will find that the kingdom is no more, that his village was burnt down long ago, his relatives are all dead, murdered. His surviving loved ones, if any, have all migrated to safer climes. You are just like that slave but don't know it yet. You are marooned on the devil's island and there is no salvation. The project, the organization. What do you think these will do for you? It is just time for people like me. We have seen the light. Join us. It is over for your type... for now. Time has been, but no more... not now, for those ideas. Maybe later. Be smart!'

'Shut up!' Mukalu shouted, more out of anger than need. He clasped the man's head, getting surprised in the instant at the size of it. His hand cupped the head and got a grip. It was much smaller than it looked. He slammed the gun into the man's temple. His eyes tightened. 'Don't you see?! That kind of disillusionment exists in its aggravated state thanks to your mental capacities, thanks to your kind who do not prepare for their future. Why didn't you just stick with the small things? Did it have to be this? You do not belong here!'

Then the bother came again: due process. Mukalu wondered again whether the agency had indeed done its homework. Due process was very important, especially in this case. There was more to gain with such a process. The man would be an example. That could be a deterrent, a warning for those many others who were like this man, those who could stumble down his path.

But then the decision had been made. The possibilities had been checked, and rechecked. There was no need looking back now.

'Don't be a fool, Mukalu. They will know. Everyone knows you are here. You will cause problems for yourself. What's the real problem anyway? I haven't done harm to you directly. I never gave them information that would destroy you. Look at you. You are still free, still rich. I have caused many to suffer, I know, but that's life. Survival of the fittest.'

'Self annihilation, fool. That's what you are all about. That's what you are good at doing.'

'Look... I am talking about you. I have been sincere to you. You are my only friend. We could work something out.'

Mukalu thrust the man away from him, grabbed one of the up thrown arms and put the weapon in the palm of his hand. 'Put it to your head and pull the trigger!' The man's palms were open. Mukalu forced the fingers shut on the weapon and guided the man's trembling hands to his temple. The man didn't hold. The weapon fell to the floor when Mukalu took a step back. He retraced his step and pulled the man close by the collar, eyes burning, breathing hard. He saw in the corner of his eye the figure of the man's child walk in, then ran out at the sight of the violence in the room.

The time had come to act. The next person in the room would be the man's hysterical wife.

The man woke up to the reality of the room. Mukalu was settling for nothing other than his brains on the walls. There was no talking him out of that state of mind. His eyes started dashing around. He was looking for an escape.

'Hey! Calm down. What is the problem? Why are you doing this? What did I do to you?'

'More than you will ever know!' Mukalu said reaching for the other gun in his inner pocket.

They both crouched as they heard the shots outside. Mukalu was back to his senses in the instant. The other was still stunned. Mukalu instinctively let go of the butt of his weapon, reached for the shoulder of the man, turned him around and cupped his head. A good yank to the left and it was all over. He spat, was in the corridor and running down the stairs, other gun already drawn, and could still hear the tumble of the body in the room he had left.

'That's for my brothers and sisters in miserable times, the harm you could have done my project included,' he whispered as he ran to the entrance, crouching and checking for danger, filtering out the innocuous screams and sudden frantic dashes of the woman and children. He saw his car by the entrance.

Jeff, one of his men, ran out from the side of the house and upon sight of him gestured to the car. 'Hurry! They've all been neutralized.'

They ran towards the car checking right and left. The mission had been successfully accomplished. It was now time for faze two.

'Well Mr. Mukalu. Thank yourself for having ruined your life. Now you are a fugitive,' Jeff said.

'It was going to happen anyway. They were closing the net on me. Besides, they would have found out it was our organization and not me if I had done it the other way. Many more people would have paid for that dirt.'

'Hardly possible. Our men are professionals. They wouldn't have left a single trail.'

'You really think you are the genius of geniuses, don't you? Before they bust that genius ass of yours you should know that people like you and me have lived before and done this kind of thing too. They too thought they couldn't leave a trace. They were wrong. You can never be that sure.'

'The risk? The risk was that dead guy with a broken neck. Hardly worth the loss if it came to that. No, I was going already.'

'You are beginning to make me doubt a lot here. What do you propose we should have done to our friend there? See him off to the presidency of a banana republic? You think!'

'I know, I know. I guess I am cracking up at the seams. It's tough. It's "tough gong".'

'What took you so long? You know how dangerous this last resort was going to be. You always have to do things the hard way.'

'He went on window dressing downstairs. I didn't want to do it in front of his family.'

'They had seen you anyway, one of those fatal errors that shall cost you dearly in future.'

'Do you think it will? Why are you so pessimistic? I need... anyone in my position needs to take it out sometimes. It would otherwise be impossible to go on.'

'He's a bastard and you know he doesn't deserve risking your life for. Neither does his family deserve to be spared the horror. Soon they will know why this was inevitable.'

'That's not the point. It just doesn't fit to do these things in front of innocents, especially when it's their own father. A father is a father is a father. And also, a murder is a murder is a traumatic thing for fresh eyes.'

'He crossed the line. There was no way we could have safely taken him out of this country to our land to stand trial, not with the value of the information he was preparing to give. He had become their man. They were going to protect him to their last man. There are lots of Jim and Jacks like him, but they are okay as long as they don't cross the line as he did.'

'When does it become dangerous then? One thing leads up to the next. It's all connected. It is always such a person or some poor bastard's violent or gradual demise. Associations of this kind always have the potential to lead to self-annihilation.'

'You are right. We are in danger. Not only from the "power that be" here, but also from those who profit from self-destructive deeds.'

'We are the good guys. Our cause is that of those who want an end to the misery of their kind, a continuation of the prosperity it has taken ages and lots of blood to achieve. We exist in all climes and races, just like the other type does. On all the other sides the good guys have more or less control over the lives of their people. They wouldn't have it good otherwise. It was the other way around for us for a very long time; the bad guys ruled. The good guys on their side do not care about us. And why should they? We are not their responsibility.'

'If I were those uncreative souls, I would be running away every time I got approached by those who wish us failure because they profit from it. How come these guys do not see this. How come they don't measure the odds. It's so frighteningly obvious.'

'These guys do not see this.' Jeff was stuck with the question. 'They cannot think of the harm they are doing to their people, to themselves subsequently,' he continued.

'Don't bother your mind with that. Suffice to know that they cannot see it. They are idiots. That's restricted to these times of course. We have made advances but the lag is still there with us. Some day these individuals will not exist in our ranks, once our mandate is complete and total in our lands.'

'To be dumb and ignorant is a curse, but also a human condition. There is the problem! There has to be an answer.'

'Indoctrination. Patriotism is learnt. The fruits have to be obvious. Not everyone is like you and me. This is what everyone else is doing, the Caucasians, the Chinese, you name it.'

'It's all connected. We are doing the right thing,' Mukalu said patting Jeff on the thigh.

'I can't help thinking that we are doing the right thing the wrong way. We are simply attacking the effects of the greater evil, not the cause.'

'In the case of the man today it is also the cause. He was a danger to his own kind the way he was going on. He stood in the way of our goals. He knew too much about us. He has already destroyed so much. If not for that, we would have just gone on with our program.'

'I still say that we can't afford to do this the way we did it today in future. No matter how involved we are. No matter how personal it is. Let's protect ourselves in future. A paid assassin should always be the option if it comes to this.'

'We are beyond the stage now. Others should take over this level. You respect the project enough to destroy enemies that pose a threat to its survival, you should respect yourself as much too because the project is you.'

'Only the "either them or us" situations count in this case. The rest is a question of intellectual manipulation.'

'I can't help to think that all is connected. The "not either or" situations could soon escalate into the other type.'

'There are a lot of people around the world, from all of mankind who do sincerely wish our goals well. As long as you know this you will not think that. The bad guys must not be allowed to win.'

They passed the first convoy of police cars rushing to the scene. Shortly, they changed cars and were heading towards the harbour. The next destination was a holiday resort. From there, Mukalu would board a plane for his continent, for home.

The nondescript face that walked through the arrival bay to the waiting loved ones in Lubaland was the same that had entered the house in Utopia land and committed the heinous crime, the same face that had entered the land and made Contacts with the man a few years ago, the same face any cross checking would discover had run a very successful business in Europe for the past ten years. This was his real face, without any disguise. It had been useful to keep it like this for a man who lived the kind of life. Besides, a nondescript face fitted the job.

This image would change from now on. As soon as he was out of the public eye, he would go underground, and emerge a different man with a new face, and a new identity.

'I will drive,' his wife said as they came up to his car, surprising him. Under normal circumstances she would have given him the keys without asking if he wished this. He always drove. She couldn't let him drive because he looked haggard.

He turned the radio on. It was tuned in to the learning channel. The history course was on.

His eyes automatically started scanning the new developments outside as he turned the volume of the radio up. The scene outside and this program that had become the favourite program in the air were all connected. A lot was well managed these days, aimed towards making the whole better all the time.

He noticed again that a lot had changed since the last time he was here. Though this development had become obvious when the new leaders had taken power, and fought off the enemy who wanted to keep the land in misery, the rate of development had come unexpectedly. They were ahead of the rest of the world in many spheres already. It was now only twenty years ago that he had left Utopia a degenerate, a man half dead from a life of want and addiction, and had landed on a continent of poverty, a continent that was moving backwards while the rest of the world advanced ever faster forwards; a place that had offered him nothing, a place where his future was even less assured than it had been in Utopia.

The present leaders had saved him. They had arrived just in time for him. Another day, a week or a month and he would have been a dead man, much unlike would have been the outcome had he stayed on in Utopia, where, though he had lived on the fringes of bare survival, he would have survived almost till he was an old man, but alas still a man in constant need. Such conditions were now possible even here.

The affluence and health, the order and fast building he saw outside was a sharp contrast that only a man who traveled a lot, and stayed for lengthy periods abroad could appreciate. They had done it. They had turned a supernumerary group of humans into "haves", with few if no "have-nots" at all. They were now almost self-sufficient, save for a few products they could not possibly produce themselves.

He opened the glove compartment of his car for the sake of it, admiring the smooth lines of an automobile made entirely in Lubaland, already a classic of its time, a forerunner of its type, tested out and proved superior, with all the innovative technology everybody was now trying to emulate; an automobile that made the futuristic designs of the rest of the world look like very heavy stones on clumsy wheels, and his attention was attracted at the same time by an object hovering above, a plane bigger than a jumbo, but designed very differently, that flew so low but caused no fearful sensations in those on or below it, that could fly so fast, and would never crash even if it lost its engines by falling to the ground like a flower dispersed by the wind released from a tree, unless its structure was completely distorted; that made the most modern fighters look like very clumsy machines indeed, like cruising rocks.

Yes they had done it, and had made such advances in a remarkably short period of time proving yet again that the spiritual wealth had been kept in check by barbaric brains; that this had been so because of the inability to see the senselessness of this course of action, of the richness of the entity held in check because of the very nature of the enforcing, paranoid force.

This state they had achieved had to be defended because in it they were themselves, with it they found their happiness, because there were forces out there that wanted to do to them what they had done to them for thousands of years now. What he saw out there made the murder he had committed before worthwhile. He could hug his child now and not feel dirty. He could look his wife in the eye and not feel a murderer reflected back at him. He was a saviour. He had saved this life for them, if only such scenes as had happened a day before could be avoided.

The day will surely come, he thought as the voice on the radio imposed itself on his thoughts.

'The tribal groups were split up into two or more parts, then each part was polarized, oriented politically towards the new republic it now belonged to. To have a stake in it they had to participate in the particular republic's politics. The tribes were later divided into provinces of the respective republics, but not allowed to choose their own leaders to prevent regional powers from developing, preventing people from redefining their identities, and subsequently wanting to take control of their destinies, the biggest threat to the master plan that could ever be, as is shown in the harsh reactions to secession movements of the time. This was the final part of the lullaby that sung a whole continent to sleep. To this end is imputed into the minds of the people the ostensive fear that ventures towards self-definition could lead to internecine wars between the people involved, obscuring the fact that, unlike the Balkans, Africa south of the Sahara had already known and practiced pluralism,' the radio presenter said.

'This was our story for this week. Next week we will be telling you of new revelations about some of the means used to keep thinking Africans from participating in politics, why these means worked for a time, and why they ultimately failed. Do not forget to tune in next week for this story, and the questions that will later be asked, the correct answer to which can win you great prizes.

'We have now arrived at the question and answer round! Big prizes to be one if you get the answer right, ladies and gentlemen. Keep your pens and papers ready for the questions, and, for those of you who have just tuned in, the questions are based on the story we have just read. If you didn't hear the story, then do not bother.

'Before I pose this week's questions, I would like to read to you the right answers to last week's two questions, and announce the winners of this week's big prize!

'The first question last week was: what did Chinguli's attitude to people from other African countries reveal about his state of mind? The correct answer was: he came to equate the sub-Saharan republics with race itself. To him a Zamugian was a race in its own right. People from other countries were different races. This was, and is however not the case. The new boarder divisions didn't create new races. They didn't even create common national mentalities. They however did create common problems, as each group was administered by a different group, and each ruling group made its own mistakes that became peculiar to each country.

'Chinguli's state of mind was not realistic. It was a result of brainwashing, ladies and gentlemen, brainwashing.

'The second question was: who wrote these words and when, and what did this highlight of the people he referred to two centuries later? "If beautiful and symmetrical parts, great size and strength... can promise anything for a stallion, the Nubian is... the most eligible in the world". The correct answer was: Bruce Trav. He wrote this in 1790. The people he referred to had markedly degenerated because two centuries later this could not be said about them.

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