There is always another mission, I think as Command gives me a thick folder with two files to go read when we get back to Nairobi.
“In there is what you need,” she says. “You have thirty-six hours.”
“I thought I would be off for some time,” I say. “I mean, take a leave or something.”
“Didn’t you have some time off last week?”
“I feel I have always been on the run, never slowing down. At least a longer time off would …”
She gives me a stern look, then softens.
“Angel, the life you live is not one for such luxury.”
“OK, I see.”
“The world never waits for anyone, anything, sweetheart,” Command sounds like a mother. Does she have children? “And you should never slow down.”
Arguing with her is pointless. “Thirty-six hours it is. I will be ready,” I say as I rise to go.
In my room I go through the file. It is a dossier of my next target. I read through it. At some point I feel that the target really needs to die. He is the source and part of the problem at the Coast. He is a drug baron, his drugs have made the youth at the Coast vegetables and useless.
Nonetheless, I feel that I should not be a political solution to government problems. The target is the financier of the Mombasa Republican Council, a secessionist movement that has been giving the government sleepless nights. The group uses the drug-addled youths to fight its wars with the government.
Pwani si Kenya! MRC has been claiming.
The extreme violent organization, I read, needs to be neutralized. The government does not want to address the group’s grievances. Killing its leaders is what they think would solve the problem. Really?
The MRC claims that successive governments have marginalized the people of the Coast—no jobs, they don’t get fair share of the national resources, historical land injustices, and a lot more grievances. Because of that, the movement wants to secede from the rest of Kenya, and the government, instead of solving the root cause of the problem, wants to neutralize the group. Is there an end to bloodshed in the world?
Next I read the file with my cover story. I am supposed to read and memorize it, become it—I am an escort at Nairobi VIP Escort Service (VIPES).
I go online and check my profile that has been created. The girl there doesn’t have my face, but that’s how I will look like during this mission. The girl has been an escort for five years now, and her rating is 4.5 stars out 5 from the clients who have had the pleasure of being escorted by her.
When I’m done I storm Command’s office. “That girl online has posted her photos naked, exposing her pussy.”
“What’s the fuss about? You are not her.”
“Yes, but that’s how I will look.”
“You have a problem with that?”
“Yes. I might be a cold-blooded killer, but I have my dignity. I can’t stoop so low.”
“Angel, in the line of your work, you have to be anything, anyone. Success of your mission depends on how you blend in.”
I snort.
“Blend in, uh!”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“Like it would matter.”
“The Senator specifically chose that girl, Angel,” she says.
Command rises from her desk and comes to where I am. She puts her hands on my shoulders and says, “Men want to see what they are buying. And to fulfil their fantasies, they want a daring woman; naughty, one different from the crone they have at home for a wife.”
I don’t have much say here. It’s the mission, I remind myself.
Two days later, I am part of the entourage that accompanies the Nairobi Senator to London. He is part of a delegation that is going to visit the British Prime Minister. All I’m expected to do is accompany him wherever he goes, smile like a subservient wife, and give him steamy romp between the sheets. The more I think of me pleasuring him, kissing him, and him inside me, is the more I see the impossibility of it. I picture him and I see Tatyana.
The sooner I kill him the sooner it ends.
I don’t sleep with him the first night we get to London. “Jetlag,” I tell him.
The following day I know I won’t have an excuse, and that’s when I decide to kill him.
After close of business, the Senator takes me to a high-class brothel. He wants to extol the virtues of high-class call girls and to be mopped in the face by a lot of European strippers. We are taken to a VIP suite. There are two other girls.
I excuse myself when we get to the suite and rush to the bathroom. I apply a thick layer of lip balm on my lips.
When I get back, the Senator and the girls are naked. The party has started without me. I have fantasies, but not of a foursome.
“Get naked, babe,” the Senator says.
I undress, careful not to scrub the disguise.
When I’m done, one of the girls takes my hand and leads me to the bed. She directs me to kiss the Senator. That’s what I want, sweetheart. As I kiss the Senator, the girl touches me all over, while the other one gives the Senator a blowjob.
The Senator devours my lips angrily, takes in all the poison in the lip balm. It will kill him within an hour.
After five minutes, one of the girls straddles him and directs his phallus inside her. He closes his eyes while the other girl and I pleasure each other.
Twenty minutes or so I start feeling dizzy. The poison is starting to take effect. I get my clutch purse and go to the bathroom to take the antidote. I hoard some in my mouth and go back. I French-kiss the girl I had kissed and deposit all my saliva in her mouth, just in case.
Then it happens. The Senator jerks up, his back arches, and he starts to shake uncontrollably. It’s like he’s being electrocuted. The girls think that he’s having an off-this-earth orgasm, but when white foam starts to form at the corners of his mouth they freak out.
“He’s having a seizure,” one of the girls says. “Let’s call the Emergency Services.”
“No, we can’t,” the other one says. “If he dies we will be the number one suspects.”
“I agree,” I say. “We don’t want to face the police. Let’s get out of here.”
“But we can’t leave him here. We were seen …”
“A dead body, your DNA all over it,” I interject. “People have gone to jail for a lot less.”
In mutual agreement, we flee the crime scene.
Elove Poetry 
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