George Maxwell
Panic rose in Keita’s throat and sweat covered his forehead. He wished he could get out and be alone, so he could scream and pound his fists into the earth. But he couldn’t escape, he couldn’t scream and he felt trapped in the back of the bus.
The boy was nudging him. “Keita. Keita. Are you okay? Is it bad news?”
“Awful.”
Keita sat limply. The boy took back the computer and looked at the screen.
“Is this for real?” John said.
Keita nodded.
“What will you do?”
“Whatever it takes,” Keita said.
He had to think. He had always believed that Charity was the smarter sibling. But now he had to think for both of them. John offered Keita a napkin and a bottle of water. Keita took the bottle and gulped from it.
This changed everything. Now he had to stay alive not just for his own sake but for his sister’s. And he had to buy some time.
“Can I have that back?” he asked the boy. Keita typed:
Dear Mr. Maxwell,
I have no residency documentation or right to work. I do not have $15,000 or access to a bank account.
Keita Ali
A reply came minutes later.
Dear Mr. Ali,
Congratulations on winning the Buttersby Marathon today. And on setting the course record. There are numerous other road races in Freedom State. Run those races, and run to win. Once you have done so, we will instruct on the means of transaction.
George Maxwell
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SAUNDERS WAS WAITING IN THE DINING ROOM OF THE All Saints Hotel, flipping through the business pages of the Telegram. He barely raised his eyes to look when Anton entered the room.
Anton sat down and put his hands on the table. He clasped them and stared at his blackmailer. Anton did not smile, but he did not scowl or say anything rude.
“Good morning, Mr. Hamm,” Saunders said. “So pleased that you could join me. I recommend the omelette aux asperges et saumon.”
“Just coffee,” said Anton, who thought about how good it would feel to snap Saunders’ neck.
“In every relationship, there is giving and taking,” Saunders said.
Anton smiled. Exactly. In every relationship, there was someone giving and somebody on the take.
Saunders laid it out. He and his associates would offer Anton sixty thousand in cash yearly, plus expense money, and make arrangements for the Tax Agency for Freedom State to accept Anton’s illegal tax returns for the last two years. In exchange, Anton would provide information about Illegals from Zantoroland who were hiding in Freedom State.
“I get passports and visas for all of my runners,” Hamm said.
“We are not interested in your runners. Carry on as usual with that. We just want you to bring information to us about certain Illegals in Freedom State.”
Anton said he didn’t know anything about Illegals. Saunders explained that he would be directed to pick up information here and there, to verify the odd detail and to pass it on. The tasks would be clear and specific.
“And what will you do with that information?”
“Why should you care?” Saunders said. “You’ll be paid good money to work a day or two a month, plus travel time.”
Anton considered the situation. What if Saunders and his people were the ones who had initiated the tax investigation? Well, whether they had cooked it up or not, there was a good chance the investigation would bite Anton hard. TAFS could audit him. Seize his assets. Revoke his business permit. If Anton played along, he might escape a tax nightmare.
“All right,” Anton said. “I’m in.”
Saunders slid a thick brown envelope across the table. “Your first monthly instalment,” he said. “In cash. Instructions are inside. We know that you are going to Zantoroland tomorrow. Take this along.” Saunders passed over a second envelope, which felt thick with bills. “That envelope is not for you, and you are not to open it. Go to the offices of the Ministry of Citizenship. Ask for George Maxwell. Give him the envelope. He will have something for you and explain the next steps.”
“All right.” Anton Hamm stood and walked toward the door.
Saunders called after him, “By the way, your appointment with TAFS has been cancelled. You are free to spend the day with your protégés.”
Anton kept walking.
IN ZANTOROLAND, ANTON ASKED A TAXI DRIVER AT THE airport to take him to the Ministry of Citizenship. The driver chuckled.
“You mean the Pink Palace?”
“It’s called the Pink Palace?” Anton said.
“It is a black hole for Zantorolanders.”
This was news to him. Anton’s experience of Zantoroland was training camps, road races and hotel lobbies.
“Many go in but do not come out,” the driver said.
“Really?” Anton said. He wondered what else he had failed to notice in the country.
“But you, sir, have nothing to worry about. You are a nicely dressed businessman. And you are the right colour.”
Anton looked out the window. A boy was hauling a wagon loaded with bunches of live chickens, each bound by the feet. He also had a pile of oranges. One of them fell off the wagon. The boy stooped to retrieve it.
“Where are you from?” the taxi driver asked.
“Freedom State.”
“Yes, nothing to worry about.”
An hour later, in a windowless room on the third floor of the Pink Palace, George Maxwell rose slowly from a comfortable chair to greet Anton. The man was bigger than Anton had been when he was throwing the shot. Not taller—George Maxwell stood no more than six feet—but as round as a cannon ball. Easily 380 pounds. Maxwell’s shaking hand was meaty and thick, and even if he had wanted to, Anton could not have crushed it.
“Have you a business card?” asked Maxwell.
What was it with Zantorolanders and their business cards? On top of that, you could never begin a conversation in this country without talking about family. It was a complete waste of time, but there was no way around it. Anton gave Maxwell a business card and readied himself for the routine.
“Sports agent,” Maxwell said. “Very good. You have come to the right country.”
“I have something for you,” Anton said, reaching into his pocket.
Maxwell put up his palm. “Let us first speak, as friends. How is your wife?”
Anton didn’t have a wife. A few months earlier, while he was travelling with his runners, his live-in girlfriend had carved up his couch and left it in pieces, along with a trail of sawdust. She also left behind a brief note. #1: I told you the couch was ugly. #2: To hell with you and your temper.
“My wife is fine,” he said. “Perfect health. And yours?”
“She is wonderful,” Maxwell said. “And how are your children?”
“We have four, and they are well,” Hamm said.
“Four children!” Maxwell said, smacking the desk. “Good man. Busy man. They are in school?”
“Yes.”
“Good students?”
“Yes, and yours?”
“Thank you for asking. I have two, and they will be good students, I expect, when they enter school. They are at home with their mother. We have another on the way.”
Anton glanced up at a portrait of the president.
“So you have brought me an item of business?” Maxwell said finally.
Anton gave him the sealed envelope.
“And here is something for you,” Maxwell said.
Anton took the envelope and prepared to slip it into his jacket, but Maxwell stopped him. “Open it now, please.”
The envelope contained a long piece of foolscap with fifteen handwritten names. The page was not addressed to anyone nor was it signed by anyone. Beside each name was an address. Anton looked at the first one. Sibiri Tom, male, age 25, 271 Carstairs Avenue, Apartment 418, Clarkson.
“What is this?” Anton said.
“Mr. Hamm, if you could please read me what you see on this paper.”
Anton read out the list of names. It seemed like a waste of time.
“Very good. Copy each name and address in your own handwriting, with pen only. Do that now, please.”
Anton wrote down all the information. It took him ten minutes. When he was finished, Maxwell took back the original.
“Go to every address and verify that the person lives in the building,” Maxwell said. “Speak with the superintendent. Look on the list of names in the lobby. But do not go to the door of the person or ask for that person directly. Confirm with a check mark the names for which you have been able to verify addresses. And then provide this information to Mr. Saunders in Freedom State.”
“Do I look like a courier to you?” Anton said.
“Discussions are to be between you and Mr. Saunders. But those are your instructions. And let me tell you something about Mr. Saunders,” Maxwell added. “He does not tolerate errors or lax behaviour.” Maxwell pushed himself upright and smiled. “But you are a perfectionist. A person does not win gold medals in two Olympic Games without being one. I must congratulate you. Gold medals, twice! For the shot put, correct?”
“Yes.”
“We have no shot putters in Zantoroland,” Maxwell said. “Only distance runners and marathoners. We have few resources, so we must concentrate them efficiently. And you, Mr. Hamm, can do the same.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE DOORBELL RANG. IVERNIA BEECH CONSIDERED leaving it unanswered. Her house was not presentable. Unread newspapers and wet socks littered the floor of the mud room.
The bell rang again. The trouble with being old was that people would wait eternally. They knew she might not hear the first ring. They knew it might take her some time to get to the door.
Near the entrance, she stopped to adjust a portrait of her with her late husband and their son, Jimmy. The photo was taken in happier times, decades before Ivernia and Ernie won the lottery, moved to Clarkson and bought the house on Elixir Bridge Road. In the photo, Jimmy was still a young man. He stood between his parents, with his mop of hair and bowtie, weight shifted onto his left foot. Ivernia remembered the day the photo was taken. That same evening, Ernie had brought home a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Ivernia had made a roast to go with it, and later they had made love. Ivernia tried to remember the last time she had made love.
Hard as it was for Ivernia to contemplate that she had aged, she was even more bewildered to think that her son was now over fifty years old. Jimmy was only twenty in the photo. Shortly after it was taken, the University of Freedom State suspended him for retyping an almost forgotten short story by Anton Chekhov and handing it in as his own work. Even at that age, Jimmy could fool one woman out of five with his poor-me, bad boy grin. But he was no match for his English prof, who happened to be a Chekhov scholar.
After college, Jimmy had occupied himself with one bankruptcy, two marriages, three affairs and countless years of unemployment. Ivernia and Ernie should never have told him that they had won the lottery. They should never have moved to Clarkson and bought the five-thousand-square-foot home. They should have hidden their wealth. Jimmy would have been none the wiser. They had underestimated their son’s venality. Over the years, Jimmy had launched endless schemes to wrest money from them. The efforts had intensified after Ernie died.
The bell rang again. Ivernia hoped it would not be one of those perfectly coiffed neighbours coming to ask her again to sign a petition calling for Elixir Bridge to be turned into a gated community to protect it from riff-raff, refugees and robbers. Ivernia dreaded meeting strangers and having to explain herself. Widowed, old, living alone, she found cookies and wine for dinner just fine, thank you very much, and if she died soon because her diet was so awful, well, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Ivernia abhorred the idea of a long, drawn-out illness. A swift death would be good.
A face pushed up against a tiny glass window in the door. “Mother. I see you in there. Open up. Please. There is someone here to meet you!”
Jimmy hollered as if she were not only half deaf but also an idiot. Ivernia fumbled with the chain and the two deadbolts. Had she not had the locks changed recently, Jimmy would have let himself in. The boy had no respect for boundaries.
Ivernia opened the door. An attractive blonde woman in a business suit stood on the step. She was slender, about thirty, holding a briefcase and giving a shy smile. The woman offered her hand. Ivernia shook it.
“Mrs. Beech, I am Sondra Pasieka. I trust that you received my phone messages.”
Ivernia didn’t tend to pick up phone messages.
“I am a social worker with the Office for Independent Living,” Sondra said. “We were to meet this morning, about the incident.”
The incident. By which she meant the car accident. She was good. Polite and tactful.
“You may come in,” she said to Sondra. For Jimmy, who stood to the woman’s side, she pulled a five-dollar bill from her purse and said, “Get yourself a coffee while Miss Sondra and I meet.”
Jimmy took the money. “Mother, that’s rude.”
There was no negotiating with her son, so Ivernia made her case to Sondra. “I had a four-thousand-dollar Inuit carving of a polar bear. Last time my son came here, he stole the bear and sold it to a pawnshop.”
Without responding, the social worker entered her mud room. As Ivernia prepared to close the door on her son, Sondra cleared her throat.
“He is a party to the claim against your independence, Mrs. Beech, and as a family member, he has a right to be informed of the result of this process.”
“He can sit in the hall while we meet in the study. Leave your shoes on. I haven’t got around to sweeping today.”
Ivernia glanced at her living room on the way to the study in the back of the house. Nothing too small in there and nothing worth stealing. After the last incident, Ivernia had removed all valuables that could fit into a pocket and hidden them in a box in her bedroom. She didn’t need them out. Nobody came over anyway, except her son.
“Do you mind if I ask a few questions?” Sondra said.
“For what purpose?”
“To see if you have sufficient cognizance to care for yourself.”
“I’m only cognizant in the mornings, so let’s get cracking,” Ivernia said.
Sondra brought out a clipboard with a form to fill out.
“Your full name?”
“Ivernia Anne Beech.”
“What is the date and time?”
“Is it cheating to check my watch?”
“No rules against that.”
“Well, it is Monday, March 19, 2018, and it is 9:30 a.m. That is to say, it is 9:30 a.m. in Clarkson, the capital of Freedom State. Would you like to know the time in Japan or Australia?”
“I am sorry if this is a demeaning process. I’ll go quickly.”
Ivernia had to say the place she was born—Buttersby, Freedom State. She had to give her address—37 Elixir Bridge Road, Clarkson—and her telephone number. She had to identify where she kept her bank accounts—Bank of Clarkson, Elixir Bridge Mall branch. Next, her birthdate: April 2, 1933. Finally, she had to name her son and give his date of birth: James Matthew Beech, June 15, 1966.
Sondra said that Ivernia had passed the spot test.
“What’s next?”
Ivernia would forfeit her driver’s licence for three months and have to be retested to get it back.
“Right,” Ivernia said.
She would have to pay seven thousand dollars for the repair of one car and three thousand for the other.
“Yes, I understand,” Ivernia said.
But she would face no traffic charges, given her age.
“But being old also presents a problem,” Ivernia said.
Sondra cleared her throat. “That is true.”
For the time being, Ivernia’s bank assets would be frozen. She could not sell her house or car, and based on the latest estim
ates of the cost of living for a person of her lifestyle, Ivernia would receive a monthly cheque—drawn from her own bank account—of two thousand dollars, until such time as her fitness for independent living was confirmed.
“How do I establish my fitness for independent living?”
“In about two months, a review board judge will meet you to review your circumstances. And then the matter will be decided.”
“What is the worst that this office can do to me?”
“It can control your assets, order you to be moved into an assisted living facility and award power of attorney over your health and finances to an independent arbiter or a family member.”
Ivernia wanted to throw up her hands and say that she might as well just off herself right now, because she would not go into some assisted living facility to sit with drooling, senile people in an airless lobby while musically challenged nine-year-olds showed up to play Christmas songs on ten-dollar recorders.
“Mrs. Beech,” Sondra said. She smiled. “You can beat this thing. Although this process has been triggered, it is not a sure thing that you will lose your independence.”
“What do I need to do?”
It came down to four factors. If Ivernia wished to satisfy the judge in two months’ time, she should clean her house and yard and pay attention to her hygiene and clothing.
“They care how I dress?” Ivernia said.
“The board does need to know that you can care for yourself,” Sondra said.
“What else?”
Sondra said it would please the review board judge if Ivernia could show ties to her community.
“But most of my friends have died.” Ivernia almost added lucky them, but caught her tongue.
“Perhaps you could join a book club or a bridge group,” Sondra said.
Ivernia sniffed. “If I find volunteer work, would that get the Office for Independent Living off my back?”
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