The Illegal

by Lawrence Hill

  Victor pushed Viola along the potholed road—it was soft earth, and hard going, and Viola was pleased that she did not have to wheel herself alone.

  She told him that she was a journalist and wanted to interview Mrs. Banks.

  “Do you write for a famous newspaper?” he asked.

  “The Clarkson Evening Telegram,” she said.

  “The New York Times. The Guardian. Le Monde. El País. The Clarkson Evening Telegram. One day I, too, hope to write for one of the great newspapers of the world.”

  “Yeah, right,” she said.

  “You don’t think I am smart enough?”

  “The Telegram’s not smart enough for you,” she said. “Get a job at one of the other papers you mentioned. And put in a good word for me.”

  “Henrietta Banks lives on Snailpath Road.”

  “You know her?” she asked.

  “Everyone knows Mrs. Henrietta,” Victor said. “You want to ask about her granddaughter, right?”

  Viola whipped out her notepad, but it was hard writing during the bumpy ride. She taped him instead. “You have heard of Yvette Peters?”

  “All in Zantoroland have heard about her. Deported. Killed. We saw it online. Everybody goes to the Amnesty International website to find out about people getting killed in Zantoroland. We have a great, great country. Beautiful mountains. Fast runners. Kind citizens. But our government is corrupt—it kills people,” he said.

  “Who is being killed?”

  “Returnees, who are refugees who got sent back here. Dissidents. And Faloos and their sympathizers.”

  “Is that why so many people are trying to leave in fishing boats?”

  “Of course. I would leave too, but I have my brothers and sisters. And my grandmother. If I left, nobody would be here to look after them.”

  Within a few minutes, they arrived at a wooden shack with a corrugated tin roof. The thin metal door hung on weak hinges.

  “This is where she lives,” Victor said. “Shall I come in?”

  “No, but meet me when I am done.”

  “I shall be waiting,” he said.

  HENRIETTA BANKS LOOKED WORLD-WEARY AND WISE, BUT she said she was only fifty-two. She pushed Viola’s chair into her house and said that she must be a very good journalist indeed.

  Why was that? Viola said.

  Because, Henrietta said, she was the first one to find her. And also, Viola was black and in a wheelchair, but still she had a good job writing for a newspaper in Freedom State.

  Viola smiled.

  “Would you like to see a picture of Yvette?” Henrietta asked.

  “Yes.”

  Viola spent an hour with the grandmother and then travelled with Victor to Keita’s house. She gave him the key. He seemed nervous, unlocking the door for her.

  “This is the house of the slain journalist,” Victor said.

  “How did you know?” Viola asked.

  “Yagwa is a small city,” Victor said, “and he was well-known.”

  They entered the bungalow.

  “Small house,” Viola said. “One room with a kitchen.”

  “It’s good for Zantoroland. Clean. Nice beds. Pots and pans. Good people lived here. You can tell.”

  Viola looked at the two typewriters on Yoyo’s desk, the family photo showing Keita and Charity at about eight and nine years old, the old running shoes arranged in a neat line under Keita’s bed, and the kitchen shelf with all the teapots.

  “Hand me the yellow teapot, Victor,” Viola said.

  She took it from his hands, placed it on her lap and fished inside. She came up with folded notes, which she opened and scanned. Yoyo had a source. He’d given him, or her, a code name: Twain. Yoyo’s notes said Twain had given him information on payment for the most recent batch of dissident refugees to be removed from Freedom State and deported back to Zantoroland: for eleven refugees sent back in February, twenty-two thousand U.S. dollars were carried by a mule from Freedom State to Zantoroland and delivered to George Maxwell in the Ministry of Citizenship. Of the eleven, four were red-caned and seven killed. Twain said Zantoroland enlisted spies on the ground in Freedom State to find out where refugees were hiding. The only ones Zantoroland really wanted back were the dissidents.

  Viola considered stuffing the papers into her bag. But if she were caught, she could be in trouble. So she read the key details quickly into her tape recorder.

  Victor interrupted her. He had seen a man looking in the window. What man? she asked. He was gone now, Victor said. But she feared that they had been followed. The taxi driver who had promised to wait was also gone. Viola and Victor wheeled and walked together to the Fountain of Independence and the Pâtisserie Chez Proust before they saw a taxi.

  “It is a beautiful fountain,” Viola said.

  “Nobody touches it or goes near,” Victor said, “because this is where the dead are left. After Yoyo Ali died, people began calling it the Fountain of Blood.”

  Viola shuddered. She bought a madeleine and tea for Victor and herself at Chez Proust, paid him and tipped him extra, and said goodbye. Then she took a taxi to her hotel and began writing.

  The story, along with her photo of the bereaved grandmother, ran the next day on page one of the Telegram.

  GRANDMOTHER NEVER MET HER MURDERED

  GRANDDAUGHTER

  Henrietta Banks says she would rather have died than learn that her seventeen-year-old granddaughter died in prison in Zantoroland a day after being deported from Freedom State.

  Banks, 52, who lives alone in a one-room shack in the Latin Quarter of Yagwa, Zantoroland, never saw her granddaughter until her body turned up at the Fountain of Independence in Yagwa. The victim was naked and had a bracelet on her wrist identifying her: Yvette Peters. Prostitute. Belongs to Henrietta Banks, Latin Quarter. Banks knew only from photos what her granddaughter looked like. Peters was the only child of Banks’ only daughter, who lives in Freedom State but with whom Banks has lost touch.

  Banks said that Peters was born and raised in Freedom State and had never set foot outside the country until she was deported to Zantoroland. After Peters died, Banks said, neighbours carried the girl’s body to Banks’ home. She had been garroted, which, according to Amnesty International, is a common method used in Zantoroland to kill prisoners and intimidate their families and acquaintances.

  Banks buried her granddaughter in a tiny plot of land behind her home.

  “How dare they write that awful word on her wrist,” Banks said. “I was so hurt, so hurt, so hurt. Even if it was true, did she deserve to die in prison and be dumped like a criminal in the square? The girl was seventeen years old. If she sold her body to get by, somebody made her do it. Why did Freedom State hate her? Why did they deport her? And why did they kill her here? People are afraid to talk in Zantoroland when these things happen. But I am not afraid. I am too old for fear. If it is true that my granddaughter was a prostitute, who was the last man she saw in Freedom State? What does he know about her?”

  The Zantoroland Office of the Attorney General did not return Banks’ telephone calls. This reporter was escorted from the premises when she showed up at the building—nicknamed the Pink Palace, and widely reputed to be a place where political prisoners are tortured—where the attorney general, the minister of citizenship and other cabinet ministers work.

  Freedom State Immigration Minister Rocco Calder declined comment other than to say that he would “look into the matter” and to insist that he never issued or signed a deportation order for Yvette Peters.

  GRAEME WELLINGTON WAS PANICKING NOW. HIS PEOPLE had expended a great deal of effort and money to set up the return of significant numbers of Zantoroland refugees. It was particularly gratifying to turn them around and send them back home before they’d even landed in Freedom State and begun sucking life out of the economy. But all this nonsense over Yvette Peters was threatening the whole operation. If Graeme’s Zantoroland contacts got nervous, or if the world press cottoned on to this story, there
could be trouble.

  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.

  THE MORNING AFTER SHE VISITED HENRIETTA BANKS 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.

  AFTER HOURS OF WAITING, VIOLA 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.

  IN 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 w
ondered 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.”