Salahdin:
This is some masterpiece you've been creating for so long now, Oga Larry. Even though, I'm not a big fan of taking from the rich and giving to the poor. I concede to the fact that sometimes evil can only be fought by evil and not good, which is the only reason I'm supporting someone like Peter.

I believe every society needs A Peter. A rebel. An outlaw to question the way things are. I believe the Nigerian Movie industry needs a Larry Sun. A skilled writer. A weaver.

That said, there's something I would like you to look into in this last update... You have Peter break a diamond in one of the scenes in the chapter... I thought diamond was the hardest known substance. And can only break itself.

Just sharing my thoughts though.

LarrySun:
Thanks for the observations concerning the diamond. Actually, I made some research concerning that and I discovered that diamonds can be broken by a hammer. To a geologist, the hardness of diamond means resistance to scratching. Diamonds are hard, but they are incredibly brittle. A hammer can break a diamond.

However, having said that, my idea of a black diamond was supposed to be fictional.

maxlev1:

It will one day. The story is too good to be ignored.

Update 15

The doctor stared at him and said, “I think that’s the best thing you can do for your boy right now. You have to lay down the right path for him and for the sake of his mother. You should put him in a good school and raise him as a responsible citizen.”

Peter thought about the last statement and smiled, “This country does not really give you the chance to be responsible. Even when you try to be, society will make a little bit of villain out of you. We all know that this country is a dream-killer. I will not force anything on my boy. I will leave him to make his own decisions. At his age, I was already independent. The only thing I will do for him is lead by example; it now depends on him if he wants to follow my footstep or carve his own path.”

“Do not make a thief out of that boy.”

“We are all thieves; the difference is what we are stealing, or who we are robbing. In a way, we are all thieves – even pastors and clergymen are thieves. People who control the affairs of the country today are thieves. Imagine a world without thieves, such world would be a boring one. All my life, I have always stood on one virtue – stealing from people who deserve to be stolen from. And if you can successfully steal anything without getting caught, then you are meant to have that thing – that’s a philosophy that has kept me going all these years.”

“You are talking like the same old Peter Black,” said the doctor, shaking his head, “I don’t think much have changed about you.”

“I don’t pretend,” responded Peter, “except when it’s absolutely necessary. At this point in my life, stealing has gone beyond the desperation for owning a property. To me, stealing is an art. It’s abstract; I see it differently than most people. Yes, of course, stealing is against the law – but you will agree with me that some form of stealing are more acceptable than others. A man who carries a gun and kills people before taking their property is only being controlled by the touch of the devil. That’s outright cruelty. It’s a vicious audacity. The beautiful form of stealing is that where the victim does not know that he is being robbed, at least not at that moment. So, I do not subscribe to the idea of hurting victim. A person that carries weapon to rob other helpless people deserves to be killed. A real thief does not need weapon; and, indeed, a true thief does not rob the poor.

“Even you told me that you take from the rich to give the poor – that’s the objectives of TBF, according to you. How is that different from what I believe in? Anyway, I would like to have a moment with all the members of TBF. There is something very important I need to tell them. I hope you can make this meeting possible.”

Rukewe nodded, “I will contact Uche and Muyiwa. Just tell me when you want to meet them so that all the members can be gathered before then.”

“Of course I will, but there is something very urgent I need Murphy and a couple of other people to do for me.”

Murphy Khalid came forward, “What is that?”

“It’s something pretty dangerous,” replied Black, “I hope you are up for it.”

Murphy smiled and said, “I live for danger.”

Peter nodded satisfactorily. “I want you to gather three or four men you absolutely trust, and these men should be strong.”

Khalid shrugged his shoulders and said, “There are no people I trust more than Yinka, Solo, Uche and Warden Kareem.”

Peter shook his head, “No, you can’t get Warden Kareem involved in this.”

“Why not?” Kareem frowned, apparently not pleased with what Peter had just said.

“What I’m asking them to do is a little crime,” answered Black, “It’s a task unfit for someone like you. You are an upright man, and you have a career. I don’t want you to ruin your reputation because of this task.”

“I want to do something for you,” insisted Kareem, “Besides, I intend to tender my resignation very soon. I don’t need to work anymore; the diamond you gave us will make all of us very rich. Also, the governor has retired, and the new governor there now is a terrible man. I don’t want to work under a man like that.”

Again, Peter shook his head. “First and foremost, you have done more than enough for me already. I am forever indebted to you. The diamond is not enough gift for what you have done for me. Secondly, you cannot resign now.”

Again, Khalid frowned. He thought Peter was saying nonsense. “What are you talking about?”

“You do not know how important you are in that prison. It is because of you that there is a little semblance of sanity in that prison. Even if you do not know it, there are many prisoners there looking up to you to give them comfort as you always tried to do. Imagine how they are going to feel if they learn that you have left them. You are the only kind warden in that prison and those inmates are very lucky to have you. Now that you said the new governor is terrible, the prisoners will need you even more than ever now. You cannot give up on them, not just yet.”

“You understand that I cannot be there forever,” said Kareem, “Even if I don’t leave now, I will eventually leave – and we would be back in the same spot.”

“By that time, I sincerely pray that someone as good as you would be there for them. Those prisoners have no one to depend on but you. I know about how you often use some of your salaries to take care of some of them.”

“Okay, I have accepted what you said, but at least give me this opportunity.”

Peter thought deeply about this request, then he shrugged his shoulders and said, “If that is what you really want, then you can join Murphy. But this is a dangerous mission. You have to be very careful.”

“Stop keeping the young men in suspense and tell them what you want them to do for you,” the doctor said impatiently, then he turned to Murphy Khalid, “Besides, why didn’t you choose me? Don’t you trust me enough?”

Murphy smiled and said, “Of course I trust you, but I don’t think you are fit for the kind of job Peter is asking us to do.”

“You don’t even know the job yet.”

“I don’t but I suppose the job is for younger men.”

“I want you to break someone out,” Peter suddenly said.

Silence descended on the room as soon as Peter made the statement. They all looked at him in shock. No one thought that he would make this kind of request, and they had no ideas who he was trying to break out.

“Break someone out?” Solo demanded. “Who is that? Who could that be?”

“You know who it is,” Peter replied.

Solo frowned as he racked his head, wondering who else was close to Peter in prison. He gave up when he could not come up with any name. As far as he was concerned, Peter was close to only him, except, of course, the governor, who was not a prisoner.
“I don’t think I do.”

“Have you forgotten Tony Erabor so soon?”

Solo’s eyes opened wide in excitement. “Don’t tell me you are talking about the same Tony – the one that got killed for killing three prisoners.”

“Yes, I’m referring to the same Tony. And, no, he was not killed. He’s still alive.”

Solo shook his head, “You must be somehow confused. Everyone in prison knew that Tony was killed. He was sentenced to death, all thanks to Officer John Balewa.”

“That’s what Basket wanted me to believe, but he kept Tony somewhere else.”

“Where?”

“He’s kept in a psychiatric hospital in Yaba. We have to take him out of there; he does not belong there. They treat patients like animals in that place. Tony is more human than a lot of those zombies in that facility. We must break him out. Besides, Tony saved my life. He killed those three men because they wanted to kill me.”

“I don’t know who this Tony is,” said Murphy, “But if you care so much about him that you want him out of where he is, then he must be a very wonderful person.” Then he frowned and asked, “But why is he in a psychiatric hospital? Is that not a centre for mad people?”

“Tony has a mental challenge but he’s not mad. He is often misunderstood. He is not mad. He is a very nice boy to whoever is nice to him. He was a wonderful friend to me in prison.”

“Then we have no choice than to break him out,” said Yinka, “I hope that you will go with us to break him out.”

Peter shook his head, “No, I’m not going to do that. You will have to bring him to me. I don’t want to expose myself because Basket is seeking for every opportunity to arrest me. He is hoping that I would commit another crime so that he would have the cause to arrest me. I don’t want to give him that privilege. I’m afraid you will have to go and bring him to me.”

Solo frowned and shook his head, “I don’t think that is going to work. I know Tony very well. There is no way he is going to follow us if he does not see you. He might even hurt us.”

“I can overpower him, don’t worry about that,” Murphy said.

Solo laughed hard on hearing that. “I know you are very strong, Murphy, but trust me, you are no match for that Tony.”

“Is he a big man?”

“No, he’s actually a frail-looking boy, but you cannot match him in strength. He’s very powerful and fast – and from what I learnt about him, he might look like a retard, he’s quite a smart boy. Kill the thought of ever overpowering Tony from your mind. Like I said, you are no match for him. In fact, the lot of us here is no match for Tony. The only way he would follow us is if he wants to follow us.”

“Is that true?” Murphy asked Peter.

“I’m afraid everything Solo said is true.”

“Then how are we going to break him out of there if you don’t follow us?”

Peter was silent for a long time. He tried to consider any other angle or trick the men could use to break Tony out of that place but only one option occupied his mind – he would have to follow the men in breaking the boy out. There was no other way to go about it.
He sighed audibly. He knew he was putting his own freedom in jeopardy now. There was no way Basket was not going to know that he was responsible for breaking Tony out. As a matter of fact, Peter was sure that Basket might have put various things in place because he would anticipate Peter trying to release the boy. Basket would always look for every opportunity to re-arrest Peter Black.

Peter made the final decision. “Okay, I will go with you. Let’s go and break my friend out.”

As he said those words, he knew he was already back in action. The chase between him and Basket would return as soon as Tony got released.

This time around, however, things would be totally different, but neither Peter nor Basket knew that.

Update 16

II

For the past ten years, Maria had been living in Cross River State. She had been working in an orphanage in Bekwarra alongside the only woman she knew as a mother – Matron Nene. Maria had decided ten years ago that the only place she would feel safe was with the woman who would give her life for Maria’s protection. That was what Maria had always wanted, to live with Matron Nene again. When she was a child, she had begged the Matron to take her along to Cross River, but the woman had not – and so she decided to seek her out after about a decade.

With the money Doctor Rukewe had given her, Maria had embarked on the journey to find her mother without telling anyone. Besides the doctor and the nurse who saved her life, Matron Nene was the only person she trusted in the world – especially now that Peter was in prison and would not be coming out for a long time. Even though she knew that her husband had been sentenced to life imprisonment, Maria was absolutely sure that Peter would find a way to break out of jail, no matter how long it took him. No prison could hold Peter Black – none had been built. But pending the time that Peter would be in prison, Maria would be waiting for him in Cross River. She would be waiting for him to come out so that they could be a family again.

She hated leaving her child with the Balewas but agreed that there was no better family to take care of the child. She was extremely grateful for Rhoda for agreeing to take her child. Even though the history between she and Rhoda was a little rickety, Maria trusted her when she promised to take care of the child like her own. No matter what Rhoda must have done in the past, Maria believed the beautiful woman was a good person. It was unfortunate that things went the way it did. Maria had no doubt that they would have been good friends in a different circumstance. Maybe someday, they would be – but she didn’t know how that was going to be possible. But little did Maria know about the connection she had with Rhoda, for the orphanage she was visiting was just a few kilometres away from Rhoda Gold’s ancestral village.

It was hard locating Matron Nene in Cross River. The state was a large one with eighteen local government areas, and Maria had no idea which of the local governments her mother was in. She started by asking around. First, she landed in Calabar and asked if there was an orphanage there. She had pretended to be a woman looking to adopt a child. Because of her fair skin, most people had thought that she was a rich foreigner. They had thought she had come to take a child to America. So instead of taking her to the orphanages in Calabar, a lot of the indigenes had taken her to their houses and offered their little kids for adoption.

“Here, take my last child,” they would say, “make him your child and take him to America.”

“She’s my daughter but we are unable to take good care of her,” some parents had said, “Please adopt her and take her to England.”

Maria had been surprised by how parents could easily give up their children to total strangers. But when she thought deeply about it, she agreed that she was not very different from these people. She, too, had given her own child to someone else, even though the circumstances were different.

She politely turned them down and sought further help locating the orphanages in Calabar. However, none of them had Matron Nene as the manager. After searching three other local governments, Maria was beginning to doubt whether she would ever see the woman again. She was scared that the woman might have died. She wished she knew the name of the orphanage. That would have saved her a lot of stress and money, for the money Doctor Rukewe had given her was beginning to run out. She was scared that she would spend all the money and still not find the person she sought. She did not want to go back to the doctor, even though she knew that the man would not hesitate to give her more money if she asked. But the doctor had done more than enough for her. He had saved her life and she was eternally grateful to him. The best thing she could do for the man was stay as far away from him as possible, and remain under the radar. For if it was discovered that she was still alive, the doctor would be in serious trouble. Thankfully, no one in Cross River knew her facially, even though they had heard of her – that was why her search for Matron Nene was no harder than it initially was.

She sincerely prayed that Matron Nene was still alive, and that she found her, for she did not know what else she was going to do if she didn't. Leaving the country as the doctor had suggested was not an option. She did not want to leave her birth country, and she definitely did not want to stay so far away from her son. She felt that she was still somehow attached to her child knowing that they were both in the same country, and eventually their paths were going to cross. No one could stop that. But for now, she needed to remain under the radar, she must stay hidden and observe things from the shadows.

She thought about her son and wondered what he was doing at this moment. Was he laughing or crying. Had he started to roll on the bed or was still laying on his back? Had he started crawling? How did he sound when he cooed? Had he started recognizing faces? Maria had no idea about the child’s development. The only thing she knew, however, was how old her son was – how many months he was. She thought about what name they might have given the child now. Her only regret, besides giving up the child, was not naming the boy before handing him over to Rhoda. She thought about the name she could have given the child. She would have loved to name the child after the matron, but it was a boy, not a girl. But now that it was a boy, she could not really think of a proper name to give the child. She had assumed that Peter would assume that mantle when it was time. Neither she nor Peter ever thought that things would go in that direction.

It was after searching through nine local governments that Maria finally located the right orphanage. She travelled into the heart of Bekwarra and, with the help of an escort who amazingly undercharged her for taking her around, passed through various villages and settlements – places she never thought ever existed. At a point, they had to trek places no car, motorcycle or bicycle could ply. After a while, Maria was beginning to get scared, fearing that her escort was leading her to her death. She was not unaware of how people killed other people for money rituals – and since she was a fair woman, her escort might assume Maria would fetch a huge sum of money upon sacrificing her. She almost gave up and decided to head back to town, but something kept pushing her forward. She believed fate had brought her here for a reason. It was hard to imagine that Matron Nene would be in a place like this, or that an orphanage would be located anywhere around here. She doubted that even the government of the state – and the country at large – had any idea that a place like this existed.

Finally, after trekking for half a day, they came upon another narrow path that led them to an open place, a new settlement, and in the middle was an old building surrounded by a compound. The escort pointed towards the building and told her it was the orphanage. The building was so old that it looked deserted, and a part of the fence that surrounded the house had already fallen. And the community was populated by mostly old farmers and fishermen who stared at Maria as she walked towards the orphanage. Apparently, they had never seen someone as fair, or as beautiful all their lives. If Maria had told them that she was a goddess, she was sure all these people would believe her and they would worship her. But she was past that now; her days of deceiving people were over. She had been given a new lease of life, and she intended to use it for good things. The old Maria was dead, a new being had been brought back to life. She wanted to live a saintly life now.

The escort wanted to return to town as soon as Maria paid him, but she begged him to stay with her until she was sure that she had come to the right place. If the orphanage proved to be the wrong one, then she would need the escort to guide her back to the city. The man was happy to oblige, for that meant another payment.

She walked to the wooden gate and found it slightly ajar. She pushed it in and stepped into the compound. It was wider than she thought, but she found a lot of heaped earth and wondered what was going on. She expected to find children in the compound as common with most orphanages. She had grown up in a home, so she knew exactly what to expect. The more she walked towards the house, the more she doubted that it was inhabited by anyone. Everywhere was strangely quiet in the compound. The only sound she heard were the voices of people in the street as they passed by and greeted each other, and some little children chasing each other across the road. The sounds were occasionally assisted by the bleating of goats, crowing of cocks, and the barking of dogs. The only means of transportation in this community was bicycles.
This was a very primitive place. She had never imagined that anywhere would be as primitive as this, but this was. And she wondered if this was a community she would want to live for a major part of her life. At this point, she began to hope that this was another wrong orphanage. She didn’t mind the stress she passed through to get here – she just didn’t want to live in a place like this. She wondered if there was even a school or hospital in a place like this, and how an orphanage even came to exist here. If Matron Nene had been transferred to this place by the government, then surely it was a registered orphanage, but it was highly inconceivable that kids would grow up in a place like this.

She wondered about a lot of things as she walked further into the compound. How did people adopt children from this orphanage? What kinds of people adopted children from this place? It was unlikely that adopters knew that a place like this existed. How did the kids survive? Did they receive any donation from anyone? Maria knew that nothing would ever come from the government. Even the ones in town hardly received anything from the government. Most importantly, Maria wanted to know what the kids that came from this place grew up to become. Whichever way it was, if this place was being headed by Matron Nene, she was sure the kids would be responsible, no matter the circumstance.
She was only a few steps to the door of the building when the door opened and an old woman stepped out. She cast a suspicious look at Maria.

“Can I help you, madam?” the woman asked politely.

Maria recognised Matron Nene immediately and tears ran down her cheek. Her voice shook as she said: “M-m-mum.”