“Oh, fuck them,” he said. “What can they do - throw me in a prison cell?”

He ate the cassava quickly, looking around like he-expected someone to take it away from him. Or to rush in and beat him.

“How long have you been here?” I asked when he had finished eating.

“I come here ten days ago. Maybe it's eleven now. Everyone here is new prisoner, waiting for processing.”

This was news.

“Processing? To where?”

“To the maximum-security unit. Somewhere in the country. Or maybe it will be worse. We don't know. Maybe we all goin' to a big ditch.”

“How long does it take? The processing. Whatever happens here?”

He looked at the floor and shrugged. “Maybe ten days. Unless you have egunje.”

“Egunje?”

“Dash. Money for the guards. Or maybe someone knows you're here?” I shook my head no on both counts. “Then you have big wahala, sir. Same as me. You don't exist. Shhhh. Guard is coming.”

Chapter 43

WHEN THE GUARDS woke me on the third morning, they had to drag me to my feet. I wasn't going with them willingly. Not to my own execution. My chest still ached from the beating the day before. And my nose felt seriously infected.

This time, it was a left turn out of the cell. I didn't know if that meant good news or that the bad news had just gotten a lot worse.

I followed the human grasshopper down a steep, stone stairwell, through another corridor, and around several more turns that had me thinking I never would have gotten out of this place on my own.

We finally came outside into an enclosed quad. It was |ust a wide expanse of sunbleached earth with a few tufts of weeds and a ten-foot-high fence topped with ribbons of barbed wire. If this was the exercise yard, it was a sad excuse for one.

Anyway, I could barely see anything in the bright light. And it was hot, at least a hundred degrees, give or take ten or twenty.

The guard didn't stop until he got to the high razor-wire-topped gate on the far side.

A locked door was opened to a passage through a building, through another door, then a gate, and to what looked like a parking area in the distance.

I asked Grasshopper Man what was going on. He didn't answer. He just opened the door and let me through.

He closed it behind me, locking me into yet another passageway.

“It's been taken care of,” he said.

“What has?”

“You have.”

He was already walking back the way we'd come, leaving me there. My heart sped up and my body tensed hard. This sure felt like an ending, one way or the other.

Suddenly a door opened on my right. Another guard stuck his head out. He gestured at me impatiently.

“Get in, get in!”