Chapter 16 Love or lust
“Shush,” he crossed his lips with his finger. “I know Azuaka has told you nasty things about me.” He dropped his card on the table, shifted it to her side and said, “Let’s meet some other time. Nku is here.”
They could hear an oxford knocking on the marbled floor. Nku was coming.
Nku opened his arms. “Come here, OP.” She came into his hug. “How are you doing?”
“I am fine, nice to meet you after decades.” She withdrew to arms length and considered his brooding eyes at Ferguson. “Heh, your buddy has been keeping me busy down here.”
“Ferguson meet Opula. She is Azuaka’s girlfriend. We were course mates way back on campus. She is still a diva.”
Opula blushed and wondered how much of her that Nku had told Ferguson and that could be the reason Ferguson found it easy to mingle with her.
“Nice meeting you,” said Opula, with smiles she had not kept in a while. Her heart pounded.
“The pleasure is mine,” replied Ferguson.
They shook hands and Opula’s heart pounded heavier.
“What has he been telling you?” asked Nku.
“How passionate he’s to spend Xmas in California.” She did not know how the lies broke forth but there were authorized at that moment.
“That’s Ferg for you. Can we go upstairs now?”
Ferguson busied his eyes with her rolling buttocks, thick legs that threw forth carefully, and grace that surrounded her. Am I having a thing for her or what? I don’t care if I eat the devil’s meat; he thought and swirled to proceed to the bartender.
Deep silence hung over them as they watched Nku unlock the software. He typed MONKEYS as the password and clicked ENTER. They watched keenly, trying to catch a feel of its mechanism. Another page came on, a red background with coded icons and boxes. Nku registered some codes and clicked ENTER. A brown background came on and he registered some brief codes again and clicked ENTER.
“It is a three phase processor,” he said as he continued.
A black background with pictures of monkeys eating bananas on trees came and at the top, dollars, pounds, euro, yen, displayed with sizeable boxes beside them.
“Nice background,” said Ferguson.
He said, “Depending on the currency you want to steal you have to tick on the box of the currency then you proceed to register the account number of the account name. Here you got to be careful because wrong account number will require you starting all over again in one hour. And nobody will love that shit when you’re in haste to steal.” Agu handed him the cheque of the man that bought his house and Benz.
After typing in the account number and name of the account holder, Nku said, “Enter,” and hit the ENTER key.
PROCESSING showed up, and then PROCESSING IN 10 SECONDS came on. It counted to zero, before account structure of the account holder displayed.
“Here is the account balance.” He pointed to it, right beneath an icon that had STATEMENT.
“Shit! Azuaka yelled. “That is zero balance.”
“Wow,” Agu exclaimed. “This is real. Holy bitches!”
Ferguson kept clapping.
“So if you want to know about the activities in the account you click on statement.” He clicked on it and the statement of account displayed. “Now look at that,” he pointed on the screen. The account holder made a transfer of ten million dollars on the first of December to one Jackson Tony at two o clock PM. If the cash was around now all we need do is to slide to this icon.”
He registered the account number and the account name of the holder and typed in a series of fifteen digit encoded numbers.
He pointed to the encoded numbers, “That is Monkeys account number. Our providers are in New York. They manage and keep it in check. They have one percent of every transaction. The account is unlimited. From it we can make easy transfer of any amount we want to our local accounts. The transfer is in dollars, meaning more profit. This is our major security. The stealing can’t be detected because the transferred cash is coming in the name of a false medical company, Rodger Medicals Inc. We also have another security in the bank’s inability to detect the engine stealing from the account holder.” He looked across them sternly and said, “Once you are done registering the account numbers, you click on TRANSFER WIZARD and everything is done in five seconds. You get a TRANSFER GUARANTEED message popping up. Upon confirming the transfer, our account managers will put a call across every one of us.”
You said every one of us? Do they know us?” asked Azuaka Jnr.
“Yes they do,” answered Nku.
“How?”
“I gave them before coming back to Lagos.” He raised a brown booklet. “In this booklet is the manual of the software.” He gave it to Ferguson and he passed it across to Agu and Azuaka Jnr. “Every shareholder of Monkeys software must master it,” he added.
Finally I am here now. A time to render the world poor. My father’s death is not in vain after all. Where are the bank account numbers? I got to hunt for them now as vampire for blood, Azuaka thought as he gazed upon the booklet.
“We have a new development, son of man. I would prefer Ferguson break words.” Nku said and shook his head at Ferguson to speak on.
“I would love to applaud every monkey for a job well done. We have come up from the dunghill to the mountain top.” He cleared his voice and continued. “The software is ready to steal, to render the world broke. But every hustler’s dream is to have a quick pay. I have got a Chinese connect that is offering us a quick fifty million dollars for the software. If everyone of us is over ten million dollar richer the world is still in our pockets.”
Liar. He is offering us hundred million dollars. You and Nku are up to ruin, Agu thought.
“We ain’t selling the software,” Azuaka sparked like lightning, his eyes gathering poison. “Our initial plan stands. What is wrong with us? Fifty million dollars is what we can steal in a day. The software is our birthright. We can’t sell it. We shouldn’t allow peanuts to entice us.” He glared around, focusing much on Ferguson. “The time we waited for is here. The energy we deposited has paid and we are considering some Chinese asshole that is out to enrich himself and his generation. We don’t know his purpose of coming for our software. Whatsoever you have collected from him refund him, because I will be your nightmare.” He snarled across them.
“We have our reasons, Azu,” said Nku. “Californian government is tightening up their money security lapses because of the cry of the masses over internet fraud. The World Bank is coming up with stranger security measures to curb the menace of internet fraud. I hear they have passed into bill a huge sum of money to foster cyber security. I got this from an insider. If we sell it, we will have our quick pay to share. Each of us will be over ten million dollar richer. We won’t need to bother about watching our backs. Regardless of our secrecy someday the police will hunt us, we will run into the hole of a mouse and they will be no safety.”
“I got something to say…” said Ferguson.
“Shut that hell you call a mouth, asshole. You are on my death list. I have your name on my bullet. Ever since you came into this empire we have lost unity. All I know we are not selling anything. I am out of this plan.” He walked to Ferguson said. “I will shed your blood so badly that vampires will be jealous.”
Azuaka Jnr. had a walk, and Agu sat down in frustration.
When Ferguson left Nku and Agu to chill to a beer at the pool downstairs, Agu said, “Let’s meet at a later time. We got a lot to discuss.”