Despised: Soon-To-Be-A-Billionaire's Dark Revenge

Chapter 8 THE MILLIONAIRE'S PLAN

I finished the noodles Eric cooked and dropped the plate on the carpet. It wasn’t properly cooked, but it filled my stomach and that was what mattered. The room was stuffed with the smell of the noodle’s spice and I felt nauseated all of a sudden. I leaned back on the settee and took long breaths, calming my stomach.

I turned to Eric, who was also sitting on the settee, and found his eyes on me. Tolu was still planted on the mattress, his eyes glued to the phone and his left hand buried in his trouser.

‘Are you ready?’ Eric asked.

‘What do you think?’ I said. ‘You have kept me in suspense for two days.’

Tolu chuckled. ‘Eric, spill the beans! It’s not fair keeping us in suspense.’

Eric coughed and nodded. ‘It’s a strange plan, but just listen, and give your comments and objections later. Is that okay?’

I nodded and wondered why he said the plan was strange.

Eric coughed again and his brown eyes twinkled like brown diamonds. I could hear his breath coming in fast, excited rhythm.

‘What I am about to tell you is a concept that will get us out of the labor market and lead us into financial freedom,’ Eric said. ‘It may sound outrageous and out of place, but be rest assured this plan will get us to the Promised Land.’

I frowned. I didn’t travel close to a thousand kilometers just to come and be dragged about by the cruel hand of Mr. Mystery, did I?

‘Eric, tell me!’ I said.

‘This plan will get us out of the bondage our leaders have placed us under,’ Eric said quickly. ‘If politicians don’t have the capacity to provide jobs for us, I think it’s up to us to provide jobs for ourselves, don’t you think so?’

His eyes searched my face. He shifted them briefly to Tolu as if seeking for support before returning them back to me. He rubbed his hands together and I realized he wasn’t only nervous, he was frightened. That got my interest and I waited for him to speak, holding myself with great effort from screaming at him.

‘If you don’t want to be part of this plan,’ Eric said, ‘no one else should hear about it. One reason is because the plan is already in motion and cannot be stopped.’

I nodded.

‘Before you made up your mind...’ Eric started.

‘Eric!’ I said. ‘Spill it out, for God’s sake. What is it?’

‘Alright, alright,’ he said. ‘It’s a kidnapping business.’

At first I thought I must have heard wrong, but when Eric’s voice kept ringing the same words in my ears, I knew I heard him right. I stared at him as if he had turned into an ostrich.

‘It’s a joke, right?’ I said at last, looking from him to Tolu. ‘Eric, it’s one of your jokes, isn’t it?’

Eric shook his head. I turned my eyes to Tolu; he shook his head too.

‘Are you guys out of your minds?’ I shouted. ‘Do you know what the police do to kidnappers? Do you want to go to jail for a long time or be killed?’

Eric snickered. ‘Of course I know. And you will not go to prison forever; the law concerning kidnapping has not changed since independence and the worst punishment you get is a couple of years in prison and then you are free.’ He smiled. ‘It’s really not a big deal; and the beauty of this plan is, we won’t be caught.’

‘Eric,’ I said, standing up. ‘Are you out of your mind? Do you want to go to jail even if it is for a day?’

‘What are you talking about?’ he retorted, standing up too. ‘Are we not already in a jail? Are we not like cripples stuck in the mud! We have been in jail since the day we graduated and could not find a job.’ He waved his hands in the air. ‘It’s eight years now since we graduated and we have stayed without a source of income—what do you call that? Is that not the same as being in a jail?’

He walked to the door and turned. ‘I am not only in a jail, I am in hell! I can’t cater for myself, I can’t get married and I can’t help my aged mother sick in the village. Yet, other Nigerians send their kids to school in Americans and England and pay in dollars.’ He pointed his finger at me. ‘We have been pushed to the wall, Paul. We are in hell and I will do whatever it takes to come out of!’

I stared at him.

He walked back to the settee and sat.

He looked at me. ‘You are thirty-five years old and living with your mother—what do you call that? The difference between you and someone behind bars is that he knows he is in a jail but you don’t. You think you are not in jail because you can trek from one street to the other, but can you get married and settle down and start a family? Can you help your mom financially? Very soon we will be forty years and life will be over for us.’ He shook the same finger at me again. ‘Unless we do something, our lives would be a waste of time.’

‘I know all that,’ I said. ‘But kidnapping? Why would you consider something so terrible? Why would you even consider something like that?’

Eric laughed. ‘What’s terrible about kidnapping? We pick a rich victim, ask for the ransom, the ransom is paid and we release the victim. The victim returns home; his or her relatives are happy, we are happy.’

I stared at him.

‘Besides, we are taking back what is rightfully ours,’ Eric said. ‘I have no pity for these terrible people who stole our money and left us without jobs. “What goes around, comes around.”’

I chuckled. ‘But you are going against the law and you have no justification when you stand in front of a judge. And that’s if you get to the court alive. Nobody will care whether you had no job for eight years; you will be punished severely.’

‘Paul,’ Tolu said from the bed. ‘What Eric is saying is the truth. These people have ruined our country and have ruined our lives in the process. Their children are studying abroad, and they have investments and jobs for them even before they come out of school. They are citizens of America or Britain because they were born there. These children don’t care about the labor market because their parents will give them jobs as soon as they are out of the foreign universities. But look at us; eight years without a job. Our productive years will soon be over and we will become unemployable.’

I sat down beside Eric. I shook my head.

Tolu moved to the edge of the bed. ‘We are just taking back a piece of what is ours. Most of our politicians care less if we remain in poverty forever. They make empty promises at elections and flash peanuts in our faces and then we vote for them to steal more.’ He scratched his long leg. ‘What we are doing is what Robin Hood did many years ago. We are taking back a portion of what is rightfully ours; that’s all.’

I laughed. ‘I assure you that’s not all. And the Robin Hood story is just a fable; it’s not real, no matter how Hollywood portrays it. If there was a Robin Hood, I am sure he was hung at the end of the day and left to rot in the market square to serve as a determent to others. You can’t fight authority and win; you can’t.’

‘So what do we do?’ Eric asked. ‘Do you want us to continue life this way? Is that what you want?’

‘Consider the other side of what you are talking about,’ I said. ‘What if you are caught? What if the person you kidnap dies? What will you do? The authority will treat you as a murderer and you will be gunned down like an armed robber.’

Eric flapped his fingers in the air. ‘The point is not to get caught. The plan we have is airtight and foolproof. The police will not have an idea what’s going on and by the time they do, we will be in Dubai or in other parts of the world. It would be too late to get to us.’

 ‘Are you guys serious?’ I asked, even though innately I knew the answer to the question. ‘Is this why you made me come to Lagos?’

Eric nodded slowly.

‘I will never be a kidnapper. Count me out of your plan; just count me out.’

Eric smiled. He got up and walked to the single window in the room. He stood there looking outside, like a Harvard professor staring out of his office window. ‘How is your mom, Paul?’ he asked.

‘She is fine,’ I said. ‘Why?’

‘Is she still a civil servant?’                                                                                      

I made no reply.

‘Is she still the one taking care of the three of you?’

‘Keep her out of this,’ I said, my voice rising. ‘Keep her out.’

Eric chuckled. ‘It’s a shame that she is still the one taking care of you at this age. She has trained you from primary to the university, but after thirty five years you are still under her care. Have you considered what will happen when she retires? Who is going to take care of her?’ He turned and looked at me. ‘You?’

I felt sweat crawled down my armpits and the sides of my ribs.

‘At what age are you going to start a family, Paul?’ Eric said. ‘At sixty? Or seventy? How can you do it when you don’t have a job? At the age of thirty seven years Yakubu Gowon was already a president of this country. At the age of thirty seven! I am thirty four this year, but I don’t have the faintest idea when I will get a job or start a family. When will life begin for us?’

I stared at him.

Eric smiled. ‘I have seen a way out of this hellhole and I am taking it.’

‘But that’s not the only way out,’ I protested. ‘You can start a business or something. Kidnapping is not the only way out.’

‘Start a business?’ Eric asked, his voice filled with sarcasm. ‘Where is the electricity? Where is the working capital to sustain the business? In this country, you provide every infrastructure for your business. For water, you dig a borehole; for electricity you buy a generator and the costly diesel to power it; for working capital, don’t even think of the houses with vaults called banks. You know it’s easier for a human to give birth to a shark than to access a loan from the banks. How can you start a business under this condition?’

‘I know all that,’ I protested. ‘And I know the frustrations we all feel as youths in this country. My heart bleeds each time I see how my mom struggled to provide for us and I cannot help her. I have considered suicide or going to my village to become a farmer. I have considered all these and many more; but kidnapping is not going to make this country a better place, Eric. It will only make things worse and that will in turn kill the few businesses that are employing our youth.’

‘Talking about moms,’ Eric said. ‘My mom is diabetic and hypertensive. She relies on me to send her drugs every month and two week ago she called to remind me to send the drugs and I haven’t been able to do it to this moment. The doctor had warned us that if she has another crisis, she could...’

Eric looked at the carpet. He lifted his head after a while and fixed his gaze on me. ‘We have to do this. There is just no other way to get out of this mud except we do this.’ He looked at Tolu and then his eyes returned to my face. ‘And if your conscious is a problem kidnapping fellow Nigerians, let’s kidnap a white guy.’

‘What?’ I cried. ‘What do you mean a white guy?’

‘You know,’ Eric said with the casualness of man talking about the new tires on his car. ‘The plan is to kidnap a white guy; one of imperialists who have stolen from us for centuries. We will ask for a tiny bit out of the much they have stolen from us.’

‘What are you talking about?’ I said. ‘You want to kidnap a white guy? What are you thinking? Don’t you know that’s when the police will really go to work seeing that it’s a foreigner? I know you are not so dumb to figure that out.’

Eric smiled.

‘What the hell are you grinning about?’ I asked.

‘Does that mean you are in?’ he said. ‘You seem to know so much about what the police will do and what we shouldn’t do. I know you will make a great partner in—’

I hissed. ‘I am not part of your crazy team and will never be. By this time tomorrow I will be on my way to Jos. You can count on that.’

‘It will be a piece of cake,’ Tolu said. ‘We will pick the guy up from the airport and take him to a hiding place. We will get in touch with his people and they will pay to secure his release. No police will be involved.’

I shook my head. ‘Tolu, how did you allow Eric to talk you into this? Do you want to spend the rest of your life behind bars? If you don’t, trash this thought. Trash it immediately.’

‘Actually,’ Tolu replied. ‘It was my idea. I dragged Eric into it.’

I turned my face on Eric. ‘How did you let this guy drag you into such a stupid idea? I know you are smarter than that. I know you won’t cheapen your life to such a crazy and foolish idea.’

‘What’s crazy about it? Eric asked. ‘How many people have been caught? That’s the one crime you can get away with easily in this country if you know what you are doing. The police don’t have the facility to track you down and the relatives won’t tell the police because they are afraid you will kill the person in your custody.’

‘So what?’ I said. ‘It doesn’t make it less dangerous. A drizzle can turn into a thunderstorm with the shortest notice. You can’t predict what the outcome of a kidnapping will be.’

‘Look,’ Eric said, scratching his head. ‘Tell me if you have an alternative idea to get us out of this jobless predicament. Do you have any plan to get out of this situation? Every year it’s the same story; no job. I am not going into kidnapping because I have a choice. I am going into it because I have been forced into it by the leaders who mismanaged this country.’

‘There are alternatives,’ I said, but my voice was low, unsure.

Eric smiled. ‘Tell me one that you are sure will get us out of this situation.’ He chuckled. ‘I have tried everything under the sun to no avail.’ He stopped smiling. ‘If we do this right, once will be enough. We will channel the ransom into businesses that will sustain us and give us a new life outside this country. Our moms and relatives won’t have to continue this miserable way of life. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?’

His face was close to mine and we stared at each other like two team captains before the start of a football match. Mom’s face crossed my mind, unsmiling and tired, and then Talatu’s face overshadowed it.

If this works out, I thought. Talatu and I would be back together and mom wouldn’t have to suffer supporting us.

I lowered my face and looked at the carpet. Nothing will give me more joy than to see Talatu and mom happy and looking up to me with pride and love in their eyes. Mom lost a part of herself the day dad died and she hasn’t recovered from it; but it will be wonderful to see her really smile and laugh again.

‘Time is not on our side,’ Eric said, his voice earnest. ‘Tolu’s cousin lost his mother a week ago and his only regret was that he was not able to take care of her until she died. Like us, he had been jobless since he graduated and I am sure this regret will follow him to the grave. ’ Eric leaned back on the settee. ‘Is that what you want?’

My eyes remained on the carpet.

‘The plan we have will take a week or two to execute,’ Tolu said, his words chiming into my thoughts. ‘And it will change our lives forever.’

I sighed. I raised my head and looked at Eric. My heart was beating fast by now, and when I spoke, the voice I heard didn’t sound like mine.

‘Tell me about this plan,’ I said. ‘Start from the beginning.’