For Blood And Country

February 25, 2014 - EVANS

I hardly slept the night before. The internet was down at some point, the network company said there was an upgrade on their servers and it would take about two hours before it was back up. We still hadn't found a lead on Al-Hassan and it was making everyone cranky and by everyone, I mean me, because I was the one accountable to the deputy director and I dreaded his call at that moment. I was about to step out to clear my head when the feeling I had the day before finally manifested.

Jerry blocked my way. "I think we got something," he said and led the way back to his workstation.

"I was checking that footage of the airport again just now. Al-Hassan was coming out here and then we lost him on this camera. When we switched to another camera, there was a five-minute delay before he reappeared on the camera, see the time stamp? Good. Now we followed this man till he entered a cab and then we lost the cab, right?" I was nodding, waiting for him to get to the point. "We were actually following the wrong man." He said.

"How?" I asked.

He fast rewound the footage for a few seconds, froze it and pointed to a man on the screen whose face was blurred and the rest turned away from the camera. "This man here is the real Al-Hassan. It turns out that, the first man who entered the cab was possibly a diversion. Five minute was more than enough to change your look I traced back this new man's steps and got a clearer view of his face, ran it through facial recognition and got a 68% match. He then proceeded to enter a private car with this registration number" he said, zooming in on the licence number of a silver Honda car. "I checked the registration number and found that it is registered to one Starling Shipping Company."

"Could you be wrong?" I asked after a while.

"Yes, but I'd say 68% is a pretty good enough match to work with."

"So where is this car now?"

"I can't say, but I checked the surveillance cameras of companies online and the last location of the car was at Oceanview Hotel five days ago, which was-"

"Which was the night Al-Hassan came into the country. Nice work, Jerry." I turned around and headed towards Sarah's desk.

Jerry followed me and asked what we were going to do next. I didn't answer him straightaway but when I got to Sarah I said, "Get me on the next flight to Lagos."

"But we don't have jurisdiction here." Jerry warned.

"Well, it isn't a crime to sightsee, is it?"