After the assassination of Jomo Kenyatta's minister Tom Mboya in 1969, it appears that many more top officials in government became anxious.
Among them was Agriculture Cabinet Minister Bruce McKenzie, who Kenyatta's then lawyer Fitz De Souza says became both shaken and scared that his own life could be in danger.
He says that Bruce was openly shaken because he had been very close to Mboya, who was shot in broad daylight, along Government Road, by one Nahashon Njenga.
He says that on seeing Mboya's fate, a man who was close to the president and who even helped him fight his former vice Jaramogi Oginga, Bruce realized it could happen to anyone.
"Bruce McKenzie was also noticeably affected; one of those men who are brilliant in their own way, and can be totally ruthless with it, McKenzie was nonetheless quite shaken, not only because he liked Tom, but because I believe he now thought that if this could happen to a man like Tom Mboya, it could happen to anyone," he says in his book "Forward to Independence ".
Suspecting that it could have had something to so with his (Mboya) political activeness, Fitz says that Bruce even decided to take some time off active politics, citing ill health.
"This might have been why, along with his second wife wanting to settle in England, he retreated from the centre of politics, citing ill health. Some said he was pushed out, that he had outlived his usefulness to the government," he further writes.
But he says that Bruce's exit from the political arena was also a controversial affair in its own way, with others claiming that someone pushed him away after losing his meaningfulness.
According to Fitz, he was shortly after back in the picture and even proceeded to buy a luxurious house next to his, and equipped it with a swimming pool and a tennis court.
Bruce died in a plane crash in 1978, allegedly organized by Ugandan dictator Iddi Amin Dada.