Day 38

"Turn round and face us," the perfect-English voice barked.

I obeyed and slowly turned to face the three men. I was shocked. They were barely in their teens. Heavily-built baby-faced boys. I wanted to laugh. Only that the automatic weapon which looked like an AK47 to me, also looked real enough and I had little doubt that baby-faced or not the youngster knew how to use it.

My attention was attracted to the youngster on my left who reached for his pocket and drew a digital camera. He carefully took several shots of me.

"Ready?" perfect-English asked impatiently. "Remember that you need to take others of him when he’s dead." He said it as casually as somebody preparing to slaughter a chicken for an afternoon meal.

It was that comment that got my mind working again and brought home the reality of what I was facing.

I was about to die in some filthy smelly alley in the back street of some African capital. No, I definitely did not want it to end this way. My mind raced. This was no robbery; it looked like a hit job. No marks for guessing who might have ordered it. But did Teresa know about it? Is that how much she didn’t care about me? Well, I would deal with that later; right now I had to survive.

The boy was already steadying the gun ready to fire.

"Wait," I shouted. The boy stopped a puzzled expression on his face.

"I know that you are being paid to do this, I can pay you more not to do it."

I was watching the boy’s face carefully and was relived when I saw a flicker of interest on them. He looked nervously at his colleagues.

"I can help you with the digital photograph. Using some software you can send a picture of me looking dead that will fool anybody. Besides the person who is supposed to pay you is in police custody and..."

"How much?" he asked.

"Five thousand dollars," I blurted out. I could see that he was trying to do some quick calculations. I made it easier for him since I had just been paid the exact amount in local currency.

"385,000 Kenya shillings."

"Do you have the money here?" perfect-English asked.

That was when I made the sort of mistake that costs people their lives.

"Yes, I have it right here. Do we have a deal?"

The boy who had taken the digital photograph of me grabbed the gun from perfect-English at such speed that I did not react until the gun was pointed at me and was already being fired. Perfect-English moved and tackled his own partner in crime to the ground even as the deafeningly loud sound of automatic weapon fire filled the deserted alley.

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