Detective Pollino's original mission to question Tumo Makanni was catapulted into an arrest.
While communication is limited in Africa, and most investigative techniques are unavailable, there are also advantages.
With adequate cooperation from local police, evidence can be less crucial, and no lawyer will intervene to silence the client.
According to receipts provided by Pastor Tumo Makanni, less than $30,000 of the $300,000 worth of supplies actually reached the local church.
The question arises as to where the remaining funds went. Could the pastor have embezzled the funds, then kidnapped the entire missionary group, using the opportunity to silence Jacob Bruce, who might have known about the incident?
Even without concrete evidence, this suspicion was enough to prompt Detective Pollino to take action.
However, when Jubal contacted the detective, he explained that his men hadn't found Tumo Makanni in the town. He was said to have numerous followers and encampments in the area, and he would personally conduct a nightlong search for him.
The FBI has no clear solution to this problem and can only hope that Detective Pollino and the local police will step up their game.
There's nothing
they can do about it. Long-arm jurisdiction requires a national presence. Tanzania isn't America's nephew, and even as a poor African nation, it can't afford to exercise the same impunity it enjoys in South Korea. Furthermore, relations between the US and Tanzania have been mediocre in recent years. Their cooperation stems solely from the fact that the missing individuals are tourists. Perhaps if they were citizens of the University of Togo, they might have taken the case more seriously. In particular
, a few years ago, the UK and Japan collaborated to derail the Bagamoyo Port project, which Togo was originally involved in, leading to a rift between Togo and Tanzania, which had previously maintained a good relationship.
This relationship was only restored after the new president took office. Rumors circulated that the Americans were the real culprits, with the UK and Japan acting as collusion agents.
The investigation in New York has also been challenging. Of the 22 women still abducted, only 10 have yet to contact their relatives or friends.
Aside from little Nicholas, who was with his mother, the remaining eleven men, including Elijah, had no contact with their families or friends. They didn't even have social media accounts.
This was peculiar. Hiding one's identity in the US isn't difficult. Without a household registration, as long as they didn't get a driver's license or open a bank account, most homeless people had virtually no records.
Yet, the fact that all eleven men were in the same situation raised some unsettling suspicions.
This brought Garcia and Alice's investigation to a standstill. Jubal urged them to ignore the others for now and focus on Elijah Ward, who seemed even more suspicious than Pastor Tummer Makanni.
Rossi and Jiejie were interviewing the families of the missing women one by one, trying to identify any commonalities.
The next morning, just after breakfast, Old Muto arrived in Arusha, dusty and exhausted, in his old Liberation truck.
"We lost our tracks along a highway over 20 kilometers from where they disappeared. We suspect a vehicle might be there."
Clay immediately packed up his things. "Take us to the scene. Maybe we can find something nearby."
Aubrey was less optimistic. "If they have a vehicle, they're probably quite a distance away by now."
Meanwhile, Jubal's phone rang. It was Detective Pollino. He had tracked down a campsite and suspected Pastor Tummer Makanni was hiding there.
Jubal pulled out a map and confirmed that both locations were over a hundred kilometers from Arusha. He frowned.
"Hannah, I'll go check out the scene with Old Muto, and you three go find Detective Pollino," Jack suggested.
Without further ado, they all set off, and this time Jack experienced the pain of trailing behind Old Jiefang.
Fortunately, they were mostly traveling along paved main roads, just having to be careful to avoid hitchhikers.
To the west of Tanzania, about 700 to 800 kilometers from Arusha, where Jack and his team were, lay the small mountainous nation of Burundi.
Many people's memory of this country, aside from the shocking Hutu-Tutsi genocide with neighboring Rwanda, is probably associated with the Odebiu, who haul bananas.
Jack encountered precisely this Tanzanian version of the Odebiu: a group of young black men in their early twenties, some perhaps as young as 17 or 18, speeding down the road on 28-inch bicycles loaded with 300 to 400 kilograms of green bananas.
These daring Odebiao would cling to the sides of passing trucks for leverage, quickly forming a long line of vehicles, one pulling the other.
Noticing a trail of small cars following behind, Old Muto deliberately slowed down, honking his horn whenever a pothole appeared.
Because the small cars pulling the back of the trucks had no vision ahead, a single mistake could send them carelessly careless. Injury was a minor concern, and a breakdown wouldn't be a major issue, but a banana shattered in the truck would mean several days' worth of work wasted.
It was clear Old Muto frequently drove this route, as the militiamen in his car frequently greeted the small cars that joined him.
Of course, the Odebiao weren't afraid to hitchhike any car; at least Jack's Hummer wasn't behind any small cars, but he still had to slow down and maintain a safe distance from Old Jiefang to prevent a fatal accident.
Jack whistled along, accompanying the Odebiaos. As they neared their destination, the banana-pulling boys reluctantly resumed their pedaling, waving goodbye to Old Muto amidst his laughter and scolding.
"My boys have been searching this area for nearly half the night and haven't found any more bodies. That's good news, isn't it?"
Old Muto unfolded a map and drew a circle around their current location. It was a north-south road, roughly parallel to the railway line for the first half, but then it turned northwest.
Road surveillance was out of the question, and accessing dashcam footage from vehicles along the way was clearly not feasible in this location.
"At least we need to know their direction of travel to infer their destination. The problem remains: if they have a contact vehicle, nearly two days would be enough for them to travel quite a distance."
Jack worried the kidnappers had left Tanzania with the hostages. In that case, finding them would be as difficult as finding a needle in a haystack, though the situation wasn't much better at the moment.
Seeing the old man and the young boy worried, Hannah, who had been whistling all the way, couldn't help but raise an eyebrow.
"Twenty-two American tourists wearing the same red T-shirts, and a dozen or so armed men escorting them, plus they should have arrived around noon or afternoon, such a group should be very conspicuous, right?" "It
's certainly obvious in the wilderness, but the only witnesses are likely nearby wild animals. If they were near the highway, a bus would be enough to take them all away."
Jack suddenly paused at this point, realizing what Hannah was trying to say.
(End of Chapter)