After many traumatic days in prison comes a mysterious rescue of Peter Abel

After many traumatic days in prison comes a mysterious rescue of Peter Abel

Peter Abel lost track of how long he’d been in captivity.

For the first week, he’d managed to remain relatively healthy, despite the horrendous conditions. Then his body started to give out. The horrible burns from being staked naked for hours under the blazing sun became open wounds and, untended, became infected. In addition to the heat of the desert, Abel’s body had to contend with fever.

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The rancid food gave him dysentery.  So he became dehydrated since his captors gave him only a bare minimum ration of water a day. One of the captors taunted him, saying there would be more water if they had deep wells, and laughed each time at his own cruel joke.

Abel drifted in and out of consciousness, in and out of coherence. When he could focus, he remembered Billings and how suddenly and terribly he had died. He mourned his friend and swore revenge.  He dreamed of writing his story, exposing the murders of Camp’s wife and children and the corruption of the government. When he could manage a lucid moment, he admitted to himself that it was a dream only. He was never going to get out of this camp alive.

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Then he would lapse into a delirious state and barely remember where he was or even who he was.

One day, through the haze of fever and disease, Abel noticed a new prisoner, a young man who told Abel his name was Muzo Shanti. Abel was surprised to learn Muzo had been in the camp for three days. Muzo said Abel had been mostly incoherent, but that he had slipped Abel some extra food and water.

Abel thanked him, although he wasn’t sure being conscious and aware here was such a good thing. Muzo couldn’t have been older than twenty-two. In fact, he reminded Abel of Billings. He was dressed in what had been a nice pair of jeans and a blue cotton shirt, but the rude treatment he’d received had shredded the clothing.  His wrists and ankles were bloody from shackles.

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Muzo told Abel he was a student who had been leading protests against the government, specifically Huud and Tiko. They were sure the two men had been behind the murders of Camp’s family members.

“You have evidence?” Abel asked across dry cracked lips, his voice nothing more than a raspy whisper. He hoped something new had come to light in the time he had been in captivity.

“There were newspaper articles when it first happened. A Zodiac reporter is working on the case. But he has apparently disappeared. Rumour has it he has gone underground and will soon break the story.”

Abel’s heart sank. “I’m that reporter,” he said with great effort.

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Muzo registered shock and dismay. “Then there is nobody to work on more stories…”

Abel was beginning to fade, the effort needed to think clearly and communicate too much again. But he managed to say, “There must be others who have taken my place.”

“None. They are all afraid. And even The Zodiac is quiet.”

Even semi-conscious and drifting toward delirium, Abel knew immediately why. Benson was trying to placate Abel’s kidnappers, hoping if the stories quieted down, he’d get his reporter and friend back. But it wouldn’t work. He knew the story would die with him. Huud and Tiko would make certain of that. And, after a time, no one would remember. After all, the people of Tinnaka State were starving. They would grow distracted by their empty stomachs. People have short enough attention spans under the best of circumstances.

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Abel despaired at the thought of these monsters getting away with their crimes. But they were riding out the storm, keeping things under wraps and pretending to cooperate. And, of course, with Abel out of the way, there was no pressure to start any kind of criminal investigation.

The young man was speaking to Abel, in the middle of some story Abel barely could understand. The name of Doctor Camp registered with him, and he tried to listen.

“We hope to draft Doctor Camp to run the country. Of course, he has no idea we’re planning on asking him. Since his family died, he has remained in seclusion. There were those charges that he stole money, but we never believed them. Doctor Camp has asked for calm and asked that people wait until the investigation into the deaths is completed. But it will be a whitewash. We all know that.”

Abel tried to process this. Camp must either be totally incapacitated or waiting to hear from London. The intelligence Comfort obtained had been forwarded to Inspector Clarke. He hoped Clarke was still hard on the case. But without Abel to keep after him, who knew how much stomach he had to pursue the Nigerian problem.

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Muzo was speaking again, and Abel tried to listen. “I’m here because I was leading an underground movement to get Huud out. I thought some of the state legislators were behind us and we could get the governor impeached, but we were betrayed. I was fingered as a leader. And here I am. I’m a lucky one. Most of my colleagues were executed in secret, charged with fomenting trouble, theft, murder, trafficking in firearms. Of course, most of the charges were false. They did have weapons, but that was for the takeover.”

Abel closed his eyes. He realized the students were playing right into the hands of the government. When people see revolutionaries with weapons aiming to take control of a democratically elected regime, they get scared and they back the government. Order is preferable to chaos, even if it means allowing tyrants to stay in power. That was the secret of how despots had retained their stations throughout history.

But Abel didn’t have the strength to say any of this, and Muzo continued his monologue. “I told them nothing. They had me for three days trying to get me to talk, but I gave them no information,” Muzo said proudly.

Abel drifted into his feverish delirium and never spoke with the young man again. The next morning Muzo was taken outside and buried up to his neck in the sand under the sun. Ants ate at his eyes. The boy died screaming. The guards were making a point.

 

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One night, a few days later, one of the guards entered Abel’s tent. Abel thought he was being summoned, and this might be his own end. But instead, the man whispered something about an escape plan. Abel thought it was a hallucination and dismissed the dream. But the following day, when they were being unchained from the stakes in the sun, the same guard told Abel to pretend to be dead. It wasn’t a hard role to play, and Abel lapsed into semi-consciousness. The guard took his pulse and announced he was dead. Like others before him, he was lifted and flung down a bank of sand dunes. Abel, in his delirious state, thought he might have died.

He lay in the sand and didn’t move, not because he was acting, but because he had given up and was waiting to see if there was an afterlife, and what it would be like for him. Nothing happened for hours. Then, shortly after nightfall, the guard returned and carried Abel on his back down the slope to a Jeep. As his rescuer dumped him on the back seat, he whispered, “This is done through the courtesy of a friend you may have forgotten.”

As quickly as that, after weeks of captivity and torture, Abel found himself a free man. Where he was being taken, however, and who had been his benefactor, remained a mystery. Since Abel was barely coherent, he didn’t think about the issues much.

He was driven to an isolated three-bedroom bungalow on the outskirts of Zuma, a village, which the driver said, was some forty kilometres from Bammak City. As soon as they entered the sparely furnished living room, the driver dialled a number on his cell phone and handed it over to Abel.

“As you will notice, the building has been vacated,” the voice on the phone said, “but it has been well-stocked for you with food, toiletries, clothes, and medications. You may stay for three days. If you are caught, it will be added to your litany of offences that you broke into the property. Good luck.”

“Wait…” Abel said feebly, “I won’t live three days …” but the line had gone dead. He returned the phone to the driver. “A doctor. Please.”

The driver shook his head. “No doctor. Can’t draw attention to you.”

The driver made Abel some warm soup and fed it to him, then gave him some aspirin and set him up with bottles of water nearby. He told Abel to hang on. Someone would come for him.

Two days later, none of Abel’s strength had returned and his fever had risen. He needed a hospital and medical care. But he was afraid to seek any help and risk exposing himself. On the other hand, if he didn’t get help soon, the infection would kill him, and he didn’t want to die after surviving this long.

On the third day, Abel fell into a delirious state and lost all sense of reality. He was now too weak and sick to get up, even to fix himself food. He sipped water, but even that became a chore.

He grew convinced that he would never see the outside of this room. As he lost consciousness, he took a deep breath and tried to let himself go. He felt life ebbing away, and once he accepted the notion, he felt at peace

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