The E Utopia Project (10 page)

“You mean you hitchhiked with
Sara at night? Is there something you want to tell me, George?”

George hummed, hawed and
cleared his throat for seconds before he decided the old man could handle the
truth. Uncle Martin was a Vietnam War veteran. He had handled worse things in
the tropical jungles of Vietnam.

“Some people want to kill
Sara,” George said.

“Who wants to kill Sara?”

George told the old man
everything that had happened from the moment he met Sara in the supermarket the
previous day.

“Sara do you have any
suspects?” the old man asked.

“No.”

“I can see you’re both tired.
Go and have some rest. We’ll talk later.”

“Let’s go and rest, Sara,”
George said, rising from his seat.

“Or maybe you are more hungry
than tired,” the old man said with a knitted brow. “If that’s the case, I’ll
make you some breakfast.”

“I’m not hungry, Uncle Martin,
but I could use a few hours of sleep,” George said.

“What about you, Sara?” the
old man asked.

“The same applies to me,
Uncle Martin. We’d lots of junk food on the way.”

“Alright, kids. Have some
rest.”

George led Sara out of the
sitting room. The first door they came to led into the bedroom that they used
the last time they were here.

“You use this room,” George
offered. “I’ll use the next.”

“No,” Sara said louder than
she intended. “Let me use the next.” She couldn’t sleep in this room. It would evoke
too many memories of her and George.

“Fine.”

“I’ll have a shower first,”
she said.

“Alright,” George said, going
to his room.

Sara went straight to the
toilet, which she needed more than the shower. When she finished performing her
excretory functions, she went into the bathroom and took a long shower. Even
though Uncle Martin lived on the shores of a lake, he got all his domestic
water from the big condenser that was located in the ceiling of his house.

When she finished showering,
she went to her room. To her dismay, the room was an exact replica of the room
next door. Memories of the times she spent with George in the next room
inevitably came to her mind. It didn’t help knowing that he was lying in bed
next door on a bed that looked exactly the same as the bed in this room. She
told herself that now wasn’t the time to think about distant history. It was
time to think about her current predicament. Why did someone want to kill her?
Why did George come to her rescue of all people? She couldn’t help suspecting
that George had set up the whole thing. Perhaps it was just his ploy to become
her hero and win her back. Perhaps he was against calling the police because he
feared they would find out that he stage-managed the whole thing. She tried to
tell herself that she wasn’t being fair to him, but she just couldn’t shake the
suspicion away.

In the end it was sleep that
managed to expunge thoughts of George.

When Sara woke up, she found
George and his uncle sitting in the living room in serious discussion.

“Afternoon, Uncle Martin”

“Good afternoon, my dear.”

“Hi George?”

“Hi.”

“I made brunch,” George said.
“Go to the kitchen and have a bite.”

Sara felt her stomach
groaning. “Thanks,” she said, rushing to the kitchen.

One of the things that made
her fall in love with George was his ability to cook. A man who could cook and
loved to cook for her was almost too good to be true. She went to the eat-in
kitchen and served herself rice and crispy pan-fried tofu. Although George had
used exactly the same ingredients that she used when she fried her tofu,
George’s recipe tasted much better. A grain of rice dropped to the table and
she picked it and tossed it into her mouth. Many people were going without in
the world and she regarded wasting food as ingratitude to God who provided her
with food. The realization that she was feasting whilst her dog was starving
filled her with guilt but it didn’t stop her from enjoying the tasty vegetarian
meal.

George and Uncle Martin were
still discussing gravely when she returned to the living room.

“Sara, George and I are in
disagreement,” the old man said. “I think you should call the cops but George
thinks otherwise. What do you think we should do, Sara?”

“I don’t know what to think.
All this seems like a bad dream.”

“Sara, you are a director of
an arm of the United Nations,” the old man said.  “The government will protect
you. I think you should call the police.”

“Uncle, something inside me
tells me that involving the police could be dangerous,” George said.

“Aren’t you supposed to be
taking part in the UN Environmental summit in Paris?” the old man asked,
folding his wrinkled arms, rubbing his hairy forearms with his hands.

“I’m supposed to deliver the
keynote speech,” Sara said.

“I feel proud whenever I see
you on TV,” the old man said with a fond smile. “One time when I was out having
a drink with friends, someone spoke about you and I proudly told him that you
knew me. He looked at me as if I had said I was the Queen of England.”

“Maybe someone doesn’t want
you at the summit,” George said. “Did you plan to speak out against someone at
the summit? Did you plan to say something that could destroy someone’s political
career?”

“No, I didn’t plan to
criticize anyone.”

“Are you sure you did not
discover something that could seriously ruin someone’s reputation, political
career or economic interests?”

Sara’s eyes widened. “I
discovered something about satellite images. Someone is covering up something
big.”

“Something big enough to kill
you?”

“I think someone could
consider it big enough to kill for.”

“What did you discover about
satellite images?” Uncle Martin asked.

Sara told them everything
about the failure of NASA, ESA and six satellite imagery companies to livestream
a location in the Indian Ocean.

“This is too much of a
coincidence,” George observed. “Aren’t these companies supposed to be business
rivals?”

“Yes, the privately owned
ones are competitors.”

“Yet they all somehow agreed
not to show real-time images of a particular place at one particular time,”
George reflected.

“It seems someone has the
power to control the companies,” Uncle Martin said.

“And if they can control
satellite imagery companies they sure can control the police,” George said.

“You’re right, George,” Sara
said, chastising herself for daring to think that George had a hand in the
attempt on her life. “Phoning the police is out of the question.”

“Did you tell anyone about
your discovery?” Uncle Martin asked.

“Yes. I told my personal assistant
and my deputy.”

“One of them or both of them
are involved in the attempt on your life,” George said.

“If we don’t trust the
police, who are we going to trust to help us protect Sara?” Uncle Martin asked.

“Certainly not my workmates,”
Sara said.

“Which one of the two do you
suspect more?” George asked.

“It’s difficult to say. Wong,
my deputy, has been somewhat hostile toward me of late and he would be my
natural suspect but you never know. Nzue, my PA, could be the culprit despite
his affability.”

“So for now you’re treating
everyone as a potential suspect?” Uncle Martin said.

“Everyone except George and
you, Uncle Martin,” she said, blushing at the thought that George had been her
first suspect.

“It seems we’re up against a
well-organized syndicate,” Uncle Martin said with a sigh. “We’re obviously
going to need some help to fight this syndicate. If we can’t trust the police,
who’s going to help us fight these murderous bastards?”

Silence befell the room as
everyone pondered over Uncle Martin’s question.

Worry deepened the lines on
the old man’s face. “I hope they didn’t track you here. They got their hooks into
satellite companies and space agencies. I hope they didn’t track you with
satellites.”

“I don’t think they would
have used drones if they could track us with satellites,” George said, sounding
surer than she felt. “When they discover we’re gone, they may look at satellite
photographs of the area.”

“But that will only work if
they capture images of the point where we emerged from the woods and got into the
truck,” Sara said, her heart thumping as if she was back in the woods.

“We have to act fast before
they find us,” George said somberly. “We’re up against a big organization.
They’ll leave no stone unturned in their hunt for Sara.”

“I have a feeling that this
organization has some people in high positions in government,” Sara said.

“This whole thing makes no
sense.” Uncle Martin grimaced. “Why would anyone want to cover up the cause of El
Monstruo? We all live here on Earth and El Monstruo doesn’t discriminate. We’ll
all die if this disaster goes unchecked.”

“What are we going to do?”
George said, more to himself than to his interlocutors.

“I don’t know. They want me.
I guess I’ve to give myself up so that they won’t harm you.”

“Have you lost your mind?”
George said fiercely. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Sara.”

“Thanks,” Sara said, looking
at George with unconcealed affection. He sounded very much like the George he
fell in love with, the George she now believed he could never be. She knew he
was a good man in his own way but she also knew he was too good to other women
for him to be the man she would love to be with for the rest of her life. 
If
you care so much about me, why did you break my heart, George?
she thought,
looking at him with an anguished mixture of love and hatred.

“The same applies to me,
Sara,” Uncle Martin said. “I’ll do everything I can to help you. I love you
like my own daughter.”

“Thanks, Uncle Martin.”

The old man cleared his
throat. “However, the question remains. What can we do to help you, Sara? We
haven’t got the slightest idea who your enemies are.”

They racked their brains for
a way out. They were up against powerful unknown enemies and they couldn’t
contact the police because they suspected that their enemies had informants in
law enforcement agencies. The odds were very much against them.

“George,” Sara said after a
while. “Thanks for saving my life.”

“You’re welcome, Sah.”

Sara felt a tickle of
excitement when she heard the word
Sah
. George was the only person in
the world who called her Sah, and he almost always called her Sah when they
were making love. “I never thought I would say this to you, George. I forgive
you.”

“Forgive me for what?” George
asked with disgust.

“For breaking my heart.”

“There you go again. You’re
saying this just to make yourself look good in front of Uncle Martin. You’re
saying this because you’re ashamed of what you did. You dumped me when you were
on a way up not knowing you will need me on your way down.”

“George, that’s very unkind
of you,” the old man rebuked. “Sara is not on her way down.”

“Uncle Martin, I know you
think she is an angel. I used to think that too. She dropped me like a hot
potato when she got promoted. She thinks I am not good enough for a hotshot
director of GEMA.” He glared at her, searching for the meanest words to say.
“Okay, let me humor you, Sara. Thank you for forgiving me. I guess you also
forgive me for trying to rape you yesterday.”

Sara sprang to her feet and
walked to her room.

“You didn’t have to be so
mean, George,” the old man said. “Maybe she had her reasons for leaving you.”

“Yes, she had reasons. Good
reasons, if you ask me. She’s a highly paid famous UN official and I’m just a poor
ex-soldier. I perfectly understand why she dumped me. But what I don’t understand
is why she accuses me of dumping her. She even dares to tell me that she
forgives me.”

“Come on, George. Don’t be too
harsh on her. Someone wants to kill her. She’s scared and I guess she just
cracked.”

“Scared or not, she has no
right to accuse me of breaking up our relationship.”

“What is this story about you
trying to rape her? Did you rough her up, George?”

“Look at me, Uncle Martin. Do
I look like the kind of guy who violates women?”

“Of course not, George.”

“Thank you,” he said before
he walked to his room.

He dived onto the bed and
stared at the ceiling, replaying his last conversation with Sara. How could she
be so rude to him when he risked his life for her? How could she accuse him of
something that she herself did? He tried to focus more on thinking of ways to
thwart the people who wanted to kill Sara but all he could think of now was how
she had wronged him.