THE MUNHUMUTAPA CANDIDATE - A Novel by Mbonisi P. Ncube
FACT:
1. Despite the name's uncanny resemblance to the USA's CIA; the CIO (Central Intelligence Organisation) described in this novel is not a work of fiction. It is a real and living organisation, omnipresent, and operating in Zimbabwe as the country’s intelligence organisation, and conducts intelligence operations, counter-intelligence missions and information gathering and analysis for the republic. Founded in the then called Rhodesia in 1963, under instructions from the then Prime Minister Winston Field, the CIO is considered to be one the finest in Africa, in terms of its fine tooth-comb intelligence gathering, and the way it manages its cells all around the world. However, in recent years, the CIO has been widely criticised for allegedly trampling on human rights and being partisan to the ruling party, ZANU PF. The CIO's initial head, when the organisation was founded in 1963, was a man called Ken Flower, who has been described as having an 'exceptionally professional' relationship with Dick Francis, the head of England’s MI6 at that same time.
The CIO has been linked, on countless occasions, to Mossad (the Israeli Intelligence organisation), with which it has always had a hate-love relationship. The recent spat was Mossad being accused of co-inspiring with the CIO to rig the country’s 2013 elections.
2. The Gukurahundi Massacre (the word Gukurahundi means 'the rain that washes away the chaff') occurred between 1983 and 1987 in which around 20 000 of the ethnic Ndebele people (mostly pro ZAPU supporters) of Zimbabwe were systematically murdered and buried in mass graves by a specially trained armed forces squad. This squad, called The Fifth Brigade, was trained by North Koreans, allegedly under orders of President Mugabe and his close counterparts. At the time of publishing this novel, President Robert Mugabe has never apologised for this tribal genocide, only referring to the period as 'a moment of madness' when asked about it.
3. MDC, ZAPU and ZANU PF are existing political organisations in Zimbabwe. Some of the history and time frames presented in this novel are not necessarily accurate.
4. The Munhumutapa Building (State House) is the name given to the Government building which houses the office of the President of The Republic of Zimbabwe. It is situated in Zimbabwe’s capital city, Harare.
5. All building names and sites, street names, timelines, political persons and periodical information mentioned in this novel is accurate.
***
Prologue
In acute darkness, a man camouflaged by dark green army fatigues slouched against a concrete parapet wall, and then checked his watch with a sense of tangible urgency. Seconds later, the hooded man raised a walkie-talkie to his face and whispered lightly to it.
"I have a clear position. We're good to go. I repeat, we're good-to-go."
About twenty-five metres away from him, on a quiet street below, a shadow of a man ran swiftly across on the cobblestone pavement, the rubber soles on his feet rendering his footsteps invisible. Hidden by the late blooming pink shrubbery of the Jacaranda trees lining Samora Machel Street, the man stood silently for a few seconds, his ear trained on the walkie-talkie.
"We’re good-to-go!" the man on the parapet wall repeated with a matter of urgency, his night-vision binoculars stuck onto his sweaty face. He took out a pack of ball gums, and popped them in his mouth, chewing nervously. His nerves were on hot steel.
"Affirmative, on my way!" came the staggered whisper from the man on the ground after a few seconds. "Status update… in two minutes, sharp…"
Satisfied, the man in fatigues kneeled over and positioned the telescopic sight of the gleaming black rifle on the edge of the wall column. The M24 was his favourite, and he had always relied on the kill perfection of the weapon since his training days as a sharpshooter. Although that had been a long time ago, he could still vividly remember his first encounter with the weapon, and how cold it had felt to his touch, and how powerful it had made him feel when he had cracked his first shot. That same day he had lost his virginity to the machine as well, discharging a pack of angry shots in the firing range, and missing all the moving targets. But he had learnt one clear message that same day, all those many years ago;
The sharpshooter's creed…It was all that mattered:
One Shot. One Kill…
The M24E1, Sniper Weapon System was a brilliant killing machine. And it was not just any other sniper rifle, but consisted of the telescopic sights and numerous other accessories, a sound suppressor and muzzle brakes, and consequently the name Sniper Weapon System. Its power lay in the re-chambered SWS which accommodated the .300 Winchester Magnum ammunition. The weapon had remained his true friend since. It had no soul. It had no emotions and moods. And best of all, it only obeyed two things in life – him, and those goddamn laws of Newton.
The man adjusted the sights again, blurring and re-blurring the cream-white walls of the old stone buildings that came to his vision. The heaped red roof at the end of the long walls gleamed in the calm midnight sky, and the watchtower column, red roofed as well, seemed to jut out and pierce the blank stark night, splitting it into two. He shifted, taking time to read the time on the clock on one of the faces of the watchtower column.
02:47hrs…
It would be time soon.
The walkie-talkie crackled again, "Primary target reached."
"Affirmative." The man in the fatigues confirmed, and continued with his weapon check.
The M24’s telescopic sight, the Leupold fixed-power scope, was its killer organ. It was the brain of the weapon, the sharpshooter’s third eye; the precision ligament that made sure the sharpshooter delivered a perfect kill. The weapon, and the sharpshooter were a symbiotic arrangement. Without the other, none could function. It was a perfect match made in heaven. A thin line of sweat broke from his brow, and streaked down the side of his face. He let it go down, tasting the saltiness as it trailed down to the side of his mouth and down to the tip of his chin. Carefully, and for no reason, he took out the spent chewing gum from his mouth, and glued it to the Harris-S swivel of the M24 pod stationed on the concrete column, his gloved hands very steady.
One shot. One Kill…
Satisfied, he switched to night-vision mode, and gazed at the crosshairs again. The empty street came into view, full of life and yet devoid of it. Mostly appearing to be shades of green, Samora Machel street was dead calm at this time on Friday night, save for a few empty meter taxis that occasionally passed along, routing for customers. He knew that the city was not really clear of people. He knew that a silhouette down below was encroaching closer and closer to its target at that precise moment. This silhouette, still running along Samora Street, was a highly professional assassin, trained in Israel and considered one of the best that Mossad had ever got its hands on. In his more than 20 missions, this man, The Silhouette, had never failed in delivering results. He was not called The Delivery Man for nothing.
"Any update?" the man on the roof of the building whispered to the walkie-talkie, breaking his thoughts.
The reply was simple. The Silhouette had reached the position and did not require any more assistance. The man in the fatigues knew that The Silhouette worked independently, and he had needed cover, and now that it had been given to him, he wasn’t keen on continuing this dance with anyone else.
"Proceeding alone from this point forward." The man in the fatigues received the order from The Silhouette. "You move to our secondary meeting position as previously agreed."
The man hurriedly packed rifle back into its case, feeling an air of military disappointment. The M24 would not taste blood yet again. But nights like this were inevitable. He swiftly folded the long grey polyethylene case of the M24 SWS and ran down to the other end of the tall building that lay two streets across the stone building where his partner was now stationed. Quickly, he threw a rope down into the looming darkness, clipped the abseiling harness and disappeared into the street down below.
The Silhouette was as good as his word.
Ten minutes later, the man in fatigues watched from a safe distance as the west wing of the Victorian stone building exploded into orange flames.
One shot. One Kill…
***
Chapter One
Alpha7 agent, Michael Mabasa recovered from the stupor, his ears still reeling from the aftermath of the sudden explosion. The shock wave that had followed had thrown him flat on the floor, and his hands had automatically clasped on both his ears. Now recovered, the agent began to crawl, on the glass covered floor, adrenalin kicking in. Besides his thumping heart, the only other sound he could hear was the ringing in his ears. He could have sworn that an M84 stun grenade had initially been detonated, but when he recovered, had quickly realised that this was something worse. And all the more sinister.
The blast on the west wing of the building had shaken him and knocked him out cold for more than five minutes, he figured. And now, as he crawled towards the door painfully, shoulder bleeding, he collapsed on the tiled floor for the second time, his muscles giving in. He awoke again at the sound of cracking glass behind him. Startled, he turned and faced his attacker.
The Silhouette!
The bastards had finally managed to nail him.
***
"The name, Mabasa." The Silhouette’s sentence came in slow and sharp.
"Fuck you!" Mabasa yelled, gasping under his breath, blood tricking from the side of his parched mouth. "You’re not getting anything from me!"
"They all say that. In the beginning, that is.” The Silhouette hissed, his gun traced on the agent's head. "Now, be reasonable; you give me that name. And give me that memory drive."
Mabasa grimaced, feeling a chunk of bile rise up in his throat. He cursed slowly, tracing the trajectory of the faded drops of blood on the floor right up to his nemesis.
The Silhouette did not move an inch. He waited, and watched.
“The name... All I need is the name.” Mabasa heard the man’s chilling voice again.
The voice reminded him of the force of the bullet, how it had struck him, throwing him senselessly like a rag doll. He had just dived to the ground when the explosion kicked in, and moments later, he had seen the looming figure of the man ahead of him, rising from the smoke, weapon traced on his head. Seconds later, he had tasted the sting of bullet on his shoulder and air had been knocked out of his lungs and he had hit the floor, flat-line unconscious.
“You give me that name, agent… you give me that name…and that memory drive.” The Silhouette hissed even more threateningly.
Mabasa felt his blood suddenly coagulate. Seventeen years in the job, he knew what succumbing to an opponent could literally spell for him. Life or death. And this was not just any other opponent. This was a man whose name he had always heard about since joining the Alpha7 splinter cell those many years ago. This man’s name hung in the air of every known agent like a rabid disease. Unclean-able. Unshakeable. The Silhouette, as he was legendary called, was like a shadow in the darkness; a beast of the night, an eagle perched up too high to reach. Unknown. Undocumented; he was virtually non-existent to the national registry, and to according to all intelligence info. His file brought up nothing but dust on his whereabouts or connections or family. The trail of breadcrumbs simply vanished. Other agents believed there was no trail at all. The Silhouette had covered his ass well. Covered up all his tracks. He had infiltrated almost every government operation, and had managed to expose security loopholes, and had leaked information, naming and shaming top government officials in document after document of dirty files. And then he would vanish like a spark in the sky. Mabasa knew why The Silhouette was called a rogue, a dark agent – one who had turned, and disregarded all the rules in the handbook. He knew how the same agent had been used previously by the CIO for highly covert operations, and how he had succeeded in all those missions, and how overzealous and bold the man had become, bending all the rules, becoming a super-agent. When that had happened, the CIO had quickly ex-communicated him. Deleted him from their hard drives and labeled him a shadow – The Silhouette. A shadow that needed to be rid of. The hunter had suddenly become the hunted, and the CIO had amassed agents to hunt him and burn him down. But all had proved fruitless. The Frankenstein monster they had created had come back to haunt them in their afternoon dreams. The Silhouette never left any footprints. He came in, and disappeared, ‘like a fart in the air’, Mabasa recalled how they had described The Silhouette’s CV in the office.
Mabasa stared at the floor. The explosion would have the whole city wide awake by now, and this place would be swarming with cops and CIO agents any minute. He just had to play with the attacker.
Buy some time
***
The Silhouette moved slowly.
“I don’t have what you want…” Mabasa said, forcing a calm voice with great difficulty.
The Silhouette stared. His eyes remained cold.
“I will not repeat myself again. The name of the man. The memory drive…”
Mabasa pointed to a drawer.
The Silhouette smiled at him. "Good decision, my friend.” he nodded. “Very good decision you just made.”
“You have the wrong man. Whoever sent you here sent you to the wrong person. I’m not who you think I am.” Mabasa shouted at the man's shadow. “You have the wrong guy.”
“We will see.” replied The Silhouette. You see, I know who you are. What you are now. You’re now a liability.”
He laughed slowly, “You’ve been compromised. The big boys up there; they want you out of the picture.” The Silhouette said without emotion.
"I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Mabasa whispered, blood droplets mingling with his sentence. “Take whatever you want... whatever you think you need… it’s all yours. Please.”
The attacker studied his weapon slowly, his back turned away from his victim. “Who are you, Michael Mabasa? Do you even know who you are, right now? Where you are? Who you work for?" the man paused. “I never have the wrong man. I would never make that mistake. I cannot afford to make that mistake in my line of job. God knows how I’d feel if I killed a man who didn’t deserve to nibble that piece of lead. We do it the easy way, or the hard way. Bearing in mind that the easy way is your way out of this mess, the hard way is my way of doing things, and I must assure you, my way will have violent repercussions, on your part.”
"I know nothing!" Mabasa shouted. "I do not have what you want!"
"We will see." repeated The Silhouette.
***
Five minutes away, outside a huge towering building, a Jeep parked on the dark street waited, its engine humming slowly. Hidden by the umbrella of the Jacaranda trees of Africa Unity Square, a park within the heart of Harare city modeled on the flag of the Union Jack, the Jeep was hard to spot. Inside the vehicle, the man in the fatigues, Joseph Mangwiro, checked his Swatch again and waited impatiently, his hands on the silent walkie-talkie. The Silhouette was taking more time than expected. Joseph knew he would have to abandon the primary meeting point soon. His Blackberry vibrated, and he answered it using the wireless ear-piece. The voice on the other end was distinct and clear. Mangwiro dropped the call and stared grimly at the dark trees lining up the darkness of the street. The call had lasted for exactly ten seconds.
Phase Two was being initiated, the order had said.
***
Chapter Two
Thirty-five year old Sector 7 field agent Jairos Dube stared at the flickering LED screen in front of him. He had expected to have received a message by now, but nothing had come through. Worried, he pushed the swivel chair backwards, stood up, stretched himself and then grabbed a cup of coffee on the makeshift desk and sipped quietly. He checked his phone again.
Nothing
All seemed well, and yet he could not shake the uncanny feeling that something was not right. But all he could do now was wait. He had no other choice. Jairos was an avid athlete and being locked down in a surveillance minivan like a sitting duck was not going well with him. He wanted to go out for a jog, do anything that could unwind the nerves of steel he was experiencing right now. A jog, maybe a run on the treadmill would untwist his nerves. He was a dedicated Virgin Active member and he missed those good workouts. And the beautiful women trainers there. It certainly would have done him good to pop up and attack the treadmills, he figured. But that had to wait.
Not now
Sector 7 was on the brink of solving a mystery that it had been fumbling with for the past years. A mystery that would ruffle not a few feathers, but the whole country itself. The information they had unraveled would shake the foundations of politics in the country. And Jairos knew how far they had trudged on that thin sheet of ice. There was no going back now. Sector 7 was now in too deep.
Once you strike that iceberg, you got two options; you go for that goddamn kill, or you go for the sink… 'cause for sure if you scream for the rope or for the emergency raft to come get you, then that iceberg will get your ass down under, and it will remain bobbing happily on that ice rink as you sink into oblivion…
The words of his commander echoed inside his head.
Jairos shifted uncontrollably on the swivel chair, the coffee mug stuck to his sweaty palms. Sector 7 had never failed him. And tonight was not going to be an exception. Jairos had joined Sector 7, a highly secretive CIO counter-intelligence element when he had been only twenty-five. Considered the youngest man to ever join The Sector, as it was usually called, Jairos had grown in the agency in leaps and bounds. Sector 7, the clandestine counter-intelligence branch of the Central Intelligence Organisation had only one mission to pursue. It had been born out of a need to root out corruption within government ranks and its inception, had been initially had been referred to as Joint Command Base; and had been run separately, with its own little nice healthy slice of the budget allocated to it. The Chief Director of the CIO never explained the reason for the weird name. He firmly said he did not have to explain the small things, but that, weird name or not, Joint Command Base was here to stay, and that people had to be on the lookout for it. However, Joint Command Base quickly grew some bigger balls. And as quickly as it had gained momentum and support from people who knew its mandate, its no-holds-barred approach of dealing with corrupt government officials on a public forum quickly led it to earn some very sour enemies on the side. These were enemies who ran the whole country, government officials, police commissioners, ministers, judges; all Jacks and Jills, rotten apples. These were men and women who were powerful. When they saw Joint Command Base growing bigger balls, they decided to cut them, and cut them they did. Joint Command Base, the whole shenanigan; they wanted it to be shut down. They were acting against the Constitution, the fat cats said. Suddenly, the covert branch, which had been created in good faith, was now seen as a nuisance, a hindrance, and a mighty threat to the daily lives of many government institutions, especially their budgets allocations, which the ministers had very much liked to cling to. Pot bellied ministers quickly called for impromptu meetings, drafted and amended a couple of bills against Joint Command Base. The hush-hush article, only whispered in small circles, was quickly passed in parliament, and just a mere two years into its existence, Joint Command Base’s life was cut short and it disappeared and became lost under the ministers’ egos and manual government filing systems.
‘Another Plan to Uproot Corruption is Foiled’, ran a few newspaper headlines a few days after the passing of the bill. But nobody seemed to care. As far as everyone was concerned, the country was still up and running and people continued with their daily business. The corrupt ministers and judges grew more pot bellies and laughed and joked about the now defunct branch of the CIO and how damaging it would have been for them had the whole thing continued to live. But soon, things would start to change. Someone began leaking damning reports and evidence against the corrupt officials. Video evidence of judges being bribed, police affidavits being ‘lost’ for no reason, began to surface. Shady business deals and high ranking fraud cases were unveiled, and even a plot to kill the president was unmasked. There was new force of men and women who were like a mist in the night out there. There was a new force of spies out there who were collecting information and leaking it to the police and the good judges. The CIO was quickly asked to intervene. Who were the new guys, and why had the CIO not briefed anyone about their new branch? But the CIO was as shocked as everyone else. Yes they knew that there was a counter intelligence team out there. They had long suspected that Join Command Base had never really fizzled out completely. They knew there was a force within its own ranks, running things from underground. It worked with them, this force, and it also worked against them. It was part of them and still not part of them. Questions came from left, right and centre.
Did the CIO have any idea of when this new branch had been incepted?
No, we did not know, came in the reply. We only suspect it has been running under our midst all along. We suspect its run by CIO, by us in essence, but only a much specialised unit. No one even knows the people in these units. We don’t even know how many they are and who is involved. It is very covert. Counter intelligence in counter intelligence.
The questions still came in.
Did you know who runs these covert operations? After all, you are the CIO and should know everything in the country.
No, we do not know, came in the reply.
Did you at least know the name of the unit?
Yes, we do know the name, the CIO said. We think it’s a reconfigured Joint Command Base. We think it never was completely disbanded. Someone out there still pulls the strings.
So the Joint Command Base still exists?
No, came in the reply. They are called by a new name now.
Sector 7.
***
Barely a year later after its crude disbanding, Joint Command Base suddenly resurfaced from the ashes in a new form. Like a phoenix, it had become brand new again, and very formidable within the few months of its new existence. And it came with a new polished name.
Sector 7
Reports that flew by from nest to nest said that the CIO was aware of the organisation's existence. Other reports insisted that the CIO was just as blind as everyone else. They did not have an idea of what was burning in their own kitchen. Sector 7 had not been officially incepted, and its budget came from a secret unnamed source. The Sector was still an unofficial branch of the intelligence organisation, the CIO, but with only a handful CIO guys in it. Not even the top guys knew about the running of Sector 7 – so aptly named because it ran from seven strategic operatives in the country. The Sector was just a reborn Joint Command Base unit, but with more resolve and more clandestine counter intelligence operations. The seven sections of Sector 7 were named in numerical order; Alpha1 up to Alpha7. Sector Alpha7, also known as Sector 7, Team Alpha was the largest of the sections, and the most powerfully equipped.
The Sector’s role, as in the previous unit, was to collect, and collate information, and then database it, without anyone knowing how they did it or what they intended to do with the information. Another bold change was in the membership of Sector 7. Most of its members worked like sleeper cells. They were conveniently placed in covert operations as normal CIO agents, and then activated later when they were needed, and only began to work for Sector 7 then. Some of the members were not actually aware that they worked for Sector 7. Under the guise of being CIO agents, they collected and fed information to the Sector, and in that way, Sector 7 could keep all its members in check, without them even knowing whether they worked for it or not in the first place. The Sector setup numerous sting operations, infiltrated schools and colleges and put its moles in those systems. It kept watch on the politics of the country, tagged multinational conglomerates and kept them in check. The Sector monitored all communication networks, monitored all internet data and traffic in the country; had its people right round the clock, monitoring all phone activity and keeping a crude watch on all bank communications and transaction systems. Using its sleeper recruits as detectives, the Sector also worked with the police and army on combating criminal syndicates, setting up information stakeouts in state of the art snooping minivans, and even kept a crudely vigilant watch on the running of the CIO itself. It collected information on everyone, leaders of opposition parties, work unions, university SRC members, and business leaders. One of its chief routines was the collection of information on the president a daily basis; what he ate, whom he talked with, what he was thinking of. The presidential office was bugged with expensive miniature high tech devices, devices that could not even be traced by the normal CIO staff. The information was collected, carefully put in a database and kept there for future reference. The only exception was when the president was out of the country. The Sector had no jurisdiction, except to send a mole with the presidential party. The vice presidents, the police commissioner, all the ministers, high court judges, were all bugged.
The Sector literally controlled everything from a remote control.
***
Alpha7 agent, Jairos was still inside the communications minivan when he heard the unfamiliar simultaneous beeps from his laptop and mobile phone. A message was flashing rapidly on the laptop screen. Jairos quickly activated the unscrambling GPS software to locate where it was coming from. He waited impatiently, then checked the message on the phone again. His mobile phone was untraceable, and only reachable to other Alpha7 team members. Jairos knew this message was coming from a genuine source. He checked the GPS unscrambling software again. Only fifteen seconds left before it could tell him the exact location and content of the message. There was a beep. The signal had been located. The software was now starting to unscramble the encrypted message. Right now, Jairos could only read the message code in worried silence. The laptop in-built speaker beeped once, and Jairos sat up straight as the message flashed on the screen.
Code 2671
Code Red…
This could not be. He had never seen a 2671 code before. He re-checked the software and waited. The same beep echoed again.
Code 2671…
Jairos quickly dialed an encrypted number, initiating the first stage of the Code 2671 protocol. Shakily, when the voice auto prompt asked, he dialed his unique password, and then entered the four digit PIN Code; 2671, and then waited for the next voice command. When it finally came, he entered the second alphanumeric Pin Code, and was re-routed to the Deputy Chief Director of the CIO.
Sector 7, Team Alpha had just been compromised.
***
- END of SAMPLE -
Mbonisi P. Ncube©