The Illegal (33 page)

And now, what the hell, that disabled dyke was writing about the story as if her own sister had died.

In Freedom State, things had to be done a certain way. But Viola Hill had already taken herself out of the picture by going off to Zantoroland. Why not, Geoffrey said, keep her out of the picture?

Graeme put in a call to his people.

T
HE MORNING AFTER SHE VISITED
H
ENRIETTA
B
ANKS AND
was turned away from the Pink Palace—they were rough with her and booted her off the premises—Viola received one of the most surprising emails of her life. It was from Anton Hamm, and it was a confession.

He said he had been carrying cash bribes to Zantoroland for a man named Saunders, who had connections high up in the Freedom State government. In return, Zantoroland officials provided the names of Zantorolanders hiding illegally in Freedom State. Hamm said he was paid and promised a break on his taxes in exchange for carrying this information back to Saunders in Freedom State. Saunders was a psycho who worked under the table for the federal government and who had recently shot Hamm in the hand. Hamm wanted out. He planned to tell everything to Immigration Minister Rocco Calder, whom he had originally suspected of masterminding the arrangement, but who, he now knew, could not possibly be responsible. Anyway, in case something went ape-shit wrong, Hamm wanted Viola to have the goods. There. Was she satisfied? She was free to quote him.

From her hotel room, Viola called Mahatma Grafton at his desk at the
New York Times
. He confirmed that Yoyo had been on
to a story when he was killed. He had found something out about an exchange of money and refugees between Freedom State and Zantoroland. Yoyo had been circumspect about it. He said he would have to get himself and his son out of the country before he could publish. Yoyo had believed he could sell the story to the
New York Times
and that this would boost his career enough to allow him to continue as a journalist overseas.

“Did his son, Keita, get out of the country?” Grafton asked.

“Yes,” Viola replied, “he did.” But she didn’t want to say anything more.

“Good,” Grafton said.

Viola said that in Yoyo’s notes, she had seen mention of a man named George Maxwell in the Zantoroland government. Maybe he would talk to her.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Grafton said. “If I were you, I would get on the first plane out of Zantoroland. The government does not take kindly to journalists.”

“Well, I’m here now,” Viola said. “What are they going to do? I’m a citizen of Freedom State.”

“My advice is to leave now.”

Viola thanked him and said she would be in touch. She hung up the phone. She was nervous. She had brought a second cellphone—a tiny model for travellers. She double-checked that it was fully charged and that all her emergency numbers were grouped together for speed-texting, and then she securely attached five one-hundred-dollar U.S. bills to it by rubber band.

All was well. All was together. She put the miniature cellphone and money in a ziplocked bag and shoved it inside a secret pocket she had sewn inside her shirt.

Viola was still arranging her notes and figuring out what exactly to ask George Maxwell when two men burst into her room. One of them showed Viola a gun with a silencer and said he would kill her then and there if so much as a peep came out of her mouth. Understood? She nodded.

As she wheeled out of the room, they followed, giving her orders. They took the elevator down and crossed the lobby to the outside. There they opened the back door of a black sedan. She hoisted herself into the vehicle, hauled her wheelchair in after her and waited for them to close the door.

After a short drive, they parked at the Pink Palace and told her to get out. There were six steps leading up to the main entrance. They made her go up the stairs on her own, ass on one step and then on the next, dragging the wheelchair with her. She didn’t want to show the fuckers that she cared or was intimidated or was wondering if she was about to die.

She was put in a room with a man in a military uniform, a gun prominently on his hip.

“Are you taking me to see George Maxwell?” she asked.

He laughed and said any number of people working in the Pink Palace might be going by the name George Maxwell. It was the name given to any operative working behind the scenes on behalf of the government.

She was shocked but tried not to show it.

The guard turned and left her alone in the room, locking the door behind him. Moments later, he returned, took her purse and left again. Damn. It looked like Mahatma Grafton was right. She should have taken the first plane out. But she was so damn close. Viola would either get her story or die trying.

A
FTER HOURS OF WAITING,
V
IOLA BEGAN TO SHOUT AND
demand to be taken to a toilet. Nobody came. Another hour or so went by, and she heard men outside her room. The door opened. A young, uniformed soldier came in and took her to a bathroom. Viola was allowed to relieve herself while he waited outside the partially closed door. She removed the ziplocked bag from the pocket inside her shirt, flipped open her cellphone and texted Bolton:
Imprisoned at Pink Palace in Yagwa.
She hit send but could
not get any reception. She turned off the phone and put it back into her shirt.

The soldier was talking with someone in the corridor, so Viola stayed longer in the bathroom to listen.

“Boss gets back tomorrow. Just hold her till then.”

“Let’s put her in with the other one, then, until we know what to do.”

They took Viola to a holding cell. The walls were bare. Toilet with no seat, and sink in the corner. Window above. One single mattress, no sheets, no pillow, and on it sat a young woman. She was black, in her mid-twenties, dishevelled, and she had a black eye, with a cut above it still oozing blood.

The woman saw Viola entering in her wheelchair.

“It will be a tight fit,” the woman said.

“I’ll make do,” Viola said. She climbed down to the floor, folded up her chair, pushed it against the wall, crawled over on hands and bum, and hoisted herself up to sit beside the woman on the mattress. “It goes where I go.”

“Who are you?” the woman said.

“Viola Hill, and I know who you are.”

“I doubt that.”

“How about this: Charity Ali. Harvard student. Twenty-five years old. Daughter of Yoyo, the journalist, and I’m sorry for your loss, and brother of Keita, the marathoner, currently illegal in Freedom State. Keita, by the way, is a friend and gave me the key to your house. I may have been arrested because someone saw me reading the notes your father had kept hidden in the yellow teapot on the kitchen shelf.”

Charity stared at Viola. “How do you know—?”

“Tell you in a minute. Is there cell service in this building?”

“How would I know? I’ve got nothing but the clothes on my back and bruises up and down my body.”

Viola tried to use the phone again, but still she failed to find a signal. She turned it off to save the battery.

“Your brother has told me about you, so we might as well be friends,” Viola said. She reached out with her hand.

Charity’s face softened. She let out a faint sob and leaned over to throw her arms around Viola.

I
N THE MORNING, THE CELL DOOR FLEW OPEN.
A
YOUNG MAN
stood with a much older official who was dressed in a suit. He was massively rotund, and he seemed in charge.

“Why are they together?” the man in the suit said.

“We thought it might be best. Keeping the two women together. Apart from the men.”

The older man smacked his junior on the head. “Fool! Move the disabled one, now. Bring her to my office.”

Minutes later, Viola sat in her wheelchair in front of a fine mahogany desk.

“Are you George?” she asked.

“You may call me Mr. Maxwell, if it gives you comfort to put a name to a face. Not that it matters.”

He asked all the expected questions. Name, nationality, place of employment. She answered truthfully. They probably knew the answers anyway. Viola wondered if Bolton would do something when he noticed that she had gone missing. If he noticed.

“Why have you brought me here?” she said, interrupting the interrogation.

“You were spying on our government. You have no visa to work in this country.”

“I am not a spy. I am a journalist. And I was not being paid by anyone in your country. I do what journalists do. We go places. We travel. We write about what we see. This is not called spying, where I come from.”

“Here it is called spying, and that in itself merits capital punishment.”

“You’re kidding.”

He stood up, moved around the desk, bent over and looked her in the eyes. “How does it feel, knowing you will soon die?”

His words shocked her momentarily into silence. “Since you are so decided on this course of action,” she said, “why don’t you tell me what the hell is going on in this country? Why did you kill Yoyo Ali?”

“For the same reason that we are going to kill you,” he said. “You ask too many questions.”

“So you have nothing to lose by telling me what he found out.”

“True! He found out about certain commercial arrangements we have been solidifying with Freedom State.”

“Which are?”

“We tell them which refugees we want back. Exiles. Dissidents. We know where they are in Freedom State. We are not stupid. We monitor these things. We tell them where to find these criminals—”

“Criminals?”

“That’s right. It is a criminal offence to leave Zantoroland without permission. So we explain where to find these criminals, and the good people of Freedom State send them back to us. And they pay us, because we need hard currency and they need our goodwill.”

“What’s in it for Freedom State?” she asked.

“In exchange for the dissidents and the cash, we allow them to send some boatloads of refugees back home. Here. Where they came from.”

“You’re shitting me,” she said.

“People in Freedom State are rich, but they are so vulgar,” he said.

“You’re calling
me
vulgar? Why have you kidnapped Charity Ali? What’s in it for you?”

“Fifteen thousand dollars, due in just a few days.”

“What’s so special about fifteen thousand?”

“It adds up. Here and there, a president can amass a healthy fund through such practices.”

“You kidnap and ransom for the president’s pleasure?” Viola said.

“The Faloos ruled this country for seventy-five years,” Maxwell said, “and now it’s our turn to eat.”

D
AYS WENT BY.
H
OW LONG WOULD IT BE BEFORE
B
OLTON
asked questions? If she ever got out of here, things would change at the newspaper. She would move up or she would move out. Viola tried to focus on the story she would write, and on the story that Yoyo had been hoping to publish, during the days upon days of eating bread, water and lukewarm noodles.

In her cell, there was no way of telling if it was day or night. Every day, she tried to make conversation with the woman who brought her food. Yes, Viola was indeed in the Pink Palace. Yes, the woman in the other cell was still alive. And finally, yes, today it was June 20. Viola knew that Keita’s big race was the next day. Would he win? Wire the money to Zantoroland? Would the authorities here release Charity? And what would happen to Viola? Would she be freed too? With every hour that passed, it seemed less likely.

The next day, Viola asked a young guard to let Charity and her sit out on a balcony to get some air. She promised him a hundred dollars American. He told her to speak to him when she had the money. She asked him to come back in an hour. When she was alone, she pulled the ziplocked bag from the secret pocket in her shirt. She removed one of the five hundred-dollar bills and put the rest back.

V
IOLA SAT ON THE BALCONY WITH
C
HARITY, LOOKING NORTH
at the Ortiz Sea. If she could have seen for hundreds of kilometres, she would have spotted a dozen or more fishing boats at sea, carrying refugees north. If she could have seen more than a thousand kilometres, there would be Freedom State. The sunlight burned her eyes.

“Keep a lookout for anyone coming from inside,” Viola said. She faced the sea and held the cellphone close to her body. Finally, she
had a signal. She had Amnesty International, PEN International, the Freedom State consulate in Zantoroland, Mahatma Grafton, Mike Bolton, Minister Calder and Calder’s assistant June Hawkins all lined up on group speed-text. She sent a message to all of them.

Imprisoned in Pink Palace in Yagwa, Zantoroland, with Charity Ali, daughter of slain journalist Yoyo Ali. Lives threatened. Please help.

O
VER AND OVER,
J
OHN EMAILED HER.
A
ND
called her work number. He even called her editor, Mike Bolton, and found out that she had not returned from Zantoroland. Viola was missing in action.

Bolton ran an article on the front page of the
Telegram
about his valued reporter disappearing. But there was no word from any kidnappers.

Viola was John’s competition, but she had also become his friend and co-conspirator.

John was quite sure that with his information and hers, they could produce a killer work of journalism. He had a plan for how they could both benefit. The minister had arranged to see Keita. In his office. Before noon on June 21. There was an understanding. Keita was to bring the USB in exchange for a temporary permit. John wanted to be there. He wanted Viola to be there too. Together, they could assemble the pieces of this big story. But Viola was nowhere to be found.

M
ITCH HAD RECEIVED HIS INSTRUCTIONS FROM
I
VERNIA,
who had received hers in a note that Candace delivered from Keita. Ivernia had made arrangements with her bank. The paperwork was in place. If Keita won or placed second in the Clarkson Ten-Miler on June 21, Mitch would issue the cheque to “Keita Ali, payable
to Ivernia Beech” and accompany Ivernia to the bank, where she would sign the cheque on Keita’s behalf and wire fifteen thousand dollars immediately to a Zantoroland bank account registered under the name George Maxwell.