by Rohan Wilson
‘Welcome back, Ms Braden,’ the car says.
‘You’re going to need to turn your air-conditioner way up,’ I say.
Eaglehawk is an hour away. I spend the time hunkered down in the rear seat simultaneously watching the screen in the car for any local coverage of the protest and scanning through social media for mentions of my name. Nothing seems to come up, which I take as a positive. I used encryption and anonymity tools. I did everything I could to hide my identity. Still, leaks can be traced. The way I figure it, about a dozen people at Cabey-Yasuda have access to the internal emails of every staff member. The CEO, the VPs, some tech and security guys. Could Dieter work her way through this list and figure out it was me who dumped the files? Christ knows. She’s good at her job though and that’s enough to have me whistling in the dark. The obvious answer is to pay her off. Buy her silence. Thing is, if I move fast enough, I won’t need to take that risk.
The plan? Call it more of a sketch. I’m kind of colouring between the lines as I go. In this sketch, I somehow convince the Australians to deport Yamaan back to Sri Lanka, then I cut and run before CYC catches on to what I’ve done. From Sri Lanka, I bring him to Japan. That’s my hidden card. Japan, you see, has a policy. Never extradite a citizen. True, right now I’m an American and if the FBI wants to arrest me I’m fucked. Here’s the catch: I’m pretty sure I’m still legally Japanese. Like, I was born there, I have a mother there. Far as I can tell from searching the records, Alessandra never renounced my citizenship. I sent a message to Hoshino, hoping he can help out. If I can make it to Japan before the falling dominoes catch up with me, I might just be okay.
The first domino that needs to fall is Yammy.
We pass some farmland where huge automated harvesters crawl up and down picking apples and we pass a lot of thinly forested hills. I can never get used to Australian hills. They have this loose covering of trees that look dead half the time. The towns we pass through could have been bought wholesale from some supplier and assembled here. Each one has a McDonald’s and a Subway and a BlissOut. You could be anywhere back home, but then you see these hills and the gums with their whitish trunks and you know you’re crawling around the butthole of the world. Right before we hit the facility we cross a causeway called The Neck, or so my glasses tell me. Hundreds of years ago, The Neck was how they stopped convicts escaping the peninsula. The water comes up to the road on both sides and you can see where they’ve built it higher as the sea level rises. Imagine though. You station some soldiers here, a few guard dogs, and no one can escape. Talk about a butthole.
Approaching the facility, there are lots of cars parked on the side of the road. I’m looking around, trying to see what’s happening, when a message arrives in my vision. It’s from Yamaan.
dont come not safe please
Not safe for who? Me? At least I know they haven’t found his glasses yet. I send him a message back.
im not leaving you there. i won’t do it.
We must be close because the car slows down. I can see the electrified chain-link that circles the facility, topped with double coils of razor wire mounted in a Y configuration. We have a worldwide bulk contract for it. We use it to fence every training centre in the portfolio. That’s not why the car slowed down though. It slowed down because there’s a group of people on the road ahead. I lean forward to see around the driver’s seat. Some pretty ratty-looking people too, perhaps a hundred of them, and they’re holding up placards that say Free Daniel Howland and Daniel Howland Is Not A Terrorist. The car, the piece of shit Honda, just stops. Its safety protocols won’t allow it to move when people are this close.
Daniel Howland. I have no clue who this guy is. It feels like something I should know. I start to call up a search box with the intention of finding out and immediately, before I have time to do anything, the car is mobbed by these people. They bang on the roof and bang on the windows. They’re all shouting, Free Daniel Howland! Free Daniel Howland! And I’m thinking, this is some serious shit. Approaching a Cabey-Yasuda facility without authorisation is a federal crime. We won that concession from the minister in exchange for a sizeable campaign donation. These protestors shouldn’t be inside the exclusion zone around Eaglehawk MTC at all and the fact they’re inside the zone makes me wonder whether the police have any control. It feels as though I’ve crossed into a theatre of war. Just when I’m starting to worry, a pair of armoured police come along spraying gas over the crowd. Nothing breaks up a crowd like some gas, let me tell you.
‘Go,’ I say. ‘Drive.’
We roll slowly forward. Jesus, these Hondas.
Here it is—Eaglehawk MTC. The facility sits on a thumb of land ringed with gums and, further out, with a deep black harbour. Deep and black and cold, this far south. The buildings inside the perimeter fence look like stacks of those plastic blocks children play with. We print these buildings onsite based on a model licensed from a Chinese construction firm. It’s quick and cheap. Everything we do is quick and cheap. Any corner we can cut, we cut. A long sallyport bisects the camp and another sallyport runs through the middle, splitting it into quadrants. That’s how we set up all the immigration workplaces. Quadrants. It’s the classic prison set-up—administration as the hub, inmate housing as the spokes. In all of history, the state hasn’t found a better way to enforce discipline and exact revenge on malcontents.
I climb out of the car in front of the administration block and, before I can remove my suitcase, a member of the security team approaches from the admissions area.
‘Let me take your bag, Ms Braden,’ he says.
He’s Middle Eastern. My glasses tell me he’s called Rahmatullah. Right. I remember. Head of security. I let him take my case from the car and he smiles at me a little too much and stares a little too long. Being the cynical, harassed object of the male gaze is not something I particularly enjoy. I raise my voice to let him know that.
‘I need to see the warden,’ I say. ‘Immediately.’
‘No worries. I’ll walk you up.’
He leads me through the staff entrance into a model CYC security point. A backscatter machine. Metal and trace detectors. Baggage scanners. All of it humming faintly. Then through a maze of corridors, past a row of cubicles where men and women work in glasses, manipulating holographic objects. I keep my eyes on the guard in front. A lot of times, these cubicle folks want to talk to me. When you’re twenty-six, you’re a Japanese–American, and you’re a vice president at the biggest corrections company in the world, people tend to take notice. Thankfully no one looks up. A productivity crisis will do that.
They bring me to an office at the end of a corridor. The nameplate on the door reads Warden Charlie Chadwick. We enter without knocking. There’s a desk of some blackish hardwood. There are framed photos on the walls. The warden herself is absent.
‘She’s down at the manufactory,’ Rahmatullah says. ‘Won’t be long though. You need anything?’
A wide glass window at the end is covered by a drawn curtain. I know exactly what’s outside that window and I’m reaching to pull the curtain when Rahmatullah says, ‘Ms Braden? Do you need anything?’
‘Just keep people away from the office.’
‘Okay.’
‘I don’t have time to break anyone’s arm right now.’
It’s my best joke and Rahmatullah gives a huff of laughter. Everyone knows about Houston. It’s part of my legend within the company.
‘Can I ask you,’ he says and he’s gazing at me again. ‘I mean, we’ve talked about it. Me and the warden. Can I ask what training you’ve had?’
‘Everything you’ve had,’ I say. ‘Plus a few years of Aikido.’
‘Right. We thought Krav Maga.’
‘Tried it. I was too small.’
‘Bet the guy with the broken arm didn’t think you were small.’
‘Not sure what he thought. He was too busy crying to tell me.’
With a laugh, he leaves the room and closes the door.
First thing I do is move to the window. I don’t pull the curtain all the way, just the corner, just the edge. From this elevation the compound runs down the slope towards the harbour. What I see makes me breathe out sharply. In the yard below, where a ring of housing pods stands around a eucalyptus tree, is a scene of chaos. Hundreds of men are gathered around bonfires built from furnishings torn from the housing units. Some are in blue anti-static smocks, some stripped naked to the waist, their faces covered with strips of cloth or safety glasses or smears of paint. They hold banners. They chant. The smoke that rises is thick and black and toxic. Even through the glass I can hear the call.
Visa. Visa. Visa.
‘Oh shit,’ I say.
I step back. I’m experiencing a tingling sort of clarity. When I dumped the email data into the wild, I knew it meant trouble. Political trouble in Australia, commercial trouble for CYC. I’d hoped the Maldivians would make some trouble of their own too. Go on strike, at least. Stop production.
But a fucking riot? This is more trouble than I was hoping for.
I hear high heels in the corridor and then the warden of Eaglehawk enters the room in a waft of cheap perfume. I straighten up and harden myself. This is for Yamaan. No matter how sick it makes me feel, for the next few hours I have to play the part of the good corporate shill. She holds out her hand.
‘Great to have you back with us, Rin.’
We shake hands.
The warden is sweating. She’s a big woman. Her jawline vanishes inside her neck where a set of heavy steel rings hangs for a necklace. Her hair is cut viciously sharp across her forehead and sits straight as wire. She reminds me of the fat toddlers you see Chinese tourists dragging around.
‘Bring me up to date,’ I say. ‘What are we looking at?’
She calls the curtains open with a gesture of her hand. A motor whirs. The curtains recede. As the scene in the recreation yard is presented to us, I show my displeasure by crossing my arms and turning to face her.
‘We’ve kept it locked here in Delta compound,’ she says. ‘They’ve destroyed some of the pods. Burned whatever they can burn. Mattresses and whatever. Nothing we can’t fix, I should add. But if they reach the manufactory, well, speaking honestly, that would be the rough end of the pineapple for us.’
The manufactory lays in a dim haze like a ship in fog, its caution lights flashing and the steam from its vents rising straight in the windless air.
‘Do we have any control out there?’ I say.
‘The problem is staffing levels.’
‘Then bring in more people. Cancel holidays. Do whatever you have to do.’
‘I’ve done that. That down there, that’s everyone.’
She points at a line of officers in riot gear holding position before the long chain-link sallyport that leads to the admin building where we stand. They have tall plastic shields. They have batons. Helmets. I count twenty.
‘That’s it?’
‘All of them.’
‘No. Pull everyone. I don’t care if we lose a day or two of production. We have to take command of the sleeping quarters and common areas.’
‘Rin—’
‘You must have more people.’
The warden coughs.
‘There must be more than twenty guards for a facility that holds four thousand.’
The warden looks out the window. Her jaw is clenched shut.
‘Charlie?’
‘I don’t know what to tell you.’
‘Tell me we have more than twenty riot-ready DEOs. The legal minimum for all CYC facilities in Australia is twenty per five hundred detainees.’
The warden moves away from the window. She takes a seat at her desk. There’s a sheen of sweat on her cheeks. ‘We have as many officers as the budget allows,’ she says. ‘You want more officers, give me more money.’
I’m starting to see what’s gone wrong.
Rahmatullah knocks and puts his head around the office door. ‘Excuse me, Warden,’ he says. ‘Mr Slaton is here.’
A tall, thin man in a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled high past his elbows walks past the guard and into the room. He sees me and puts out his hand. ‘G’day,’ he says. ‘Jack Slaton.’
That Australian accent, like the honking of a goose.
‘Rin Braden,’ I say.
He grips my hand so hard that I frown. He seems to take this as indication of my concern and drops his smile for a frown as well.
‘Jack offered to help when he heard you were coming,’ the warden says. ‘He’s the minister’s man in Canberra.’
‘That’s right,’ he says. ‘The minister’s man.’
‘National Integrity?’
‘The minister’s portfolio covers National Integrity, Corrections and the Arts.’
With his slicked-down, slightly greasy hair and wide shoulders, he looks like he’s stepped out of a World War II documentary. Aussies have a thing for the old fashioned. That’ll happen when your future is ugly to look at. You turn backwards.
‘Rin is the Executive Vice President Government Relations,’ the warden says.
‘I know exactly who she is. Read all the articles.’
Great. This won’t be awkward at all.
‘We could use your help, Jack,’ I say.
‘No worries. We’d like to see this ended as quickly as possible.’
He grows serious when he sees the fires and the protestors outside in the recreation yard.
‘Well,’ he says. ‘This is a bugger.’
‘They’re destroying the place.’
Slaton clicks his tongue. ‘We need them back at work.’
‘Today. Now. Yes.’
I’m expecting Jack Slaton to offer the total support of his government. You have to grasp the kind of outlays CYC spends on ministerial access to see what’s going on here. Truly enormous outlays. Millions a year directly into ruling party funds. Those millions buy CYC the right to have a man like Jack Slaton on call, an inside man, a man who speaks and acts for the ruling party. In this world—Cabey-Yasuda’s world—he exists to make sure the company has its way. Which is why I’m startled at what he says next.
‘The minister has concerns about how you’ve handled this.’
‘Handled it?’ I say.
‘You wanted MWD suspended. You must have known what would happen.’
He’s absolutely right. We told these men that if they worked for a year they’d have a chance at a visa and then when that didn’t suit us, when profit was threatened, we changed the terms of the deal. Who wouldn’t be angry? Who wouldn’t stop work? And here we arrive at the source of my hatred for Cabey-Yasuda Corrections. There’s nothing, no dignity, no honesty, nothing human anywhere in operation. Somehow, it’s become bigger than us. It lies, it cheats, it steals and we watch like cowards too afraid to step in.
The worst part? This lying, cheating, stealing company has sunk its teeth into Yamaan and won’t let him go. Everyone else can act like cowards—I’m finished with being a doormat. Yamaan is going home whether they like it or not.
‘Let’s just agree that we need to calm the situation,’ I say. ‘We need to force our clients back to work. Will the minister help us do that?’
‘He’ll do anything he can,’ Slaton says.
I’ve been rehearsing in my mind the thing I’ll say next. Since I boarded the plane in Narita, I’ve been playing it out again and again, looking for the flaws in my thinking. So, I almost stutter, almost mangle the words, so anxious am I to get them out. I breathe. I slow my racehorse heart.
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘First we’re going to break up the protest. Lives are in danger. It needs to end.’
‘Agreed,’ Slaton says.
‘Our officers are trained to handle this,’ I say and I look squarely at the warden. She says nothing contradictory, but her neck gives a jelly wobble of concern. ‘Still, this is a federal facility,’ I say, ‘meaning we’re entitled to call in federal police to assist.’
‘Drones,
’ Slaton says. ‘AFP drones. We have them on call.’
‘Even better,’ I say.
‘A couple dozen of the newer models. Bipedal. Very bloody intimidating. Controlled from a mobile unit we fly down from Canberra.’
‘How long would it take?’
‘Two or three hours.’
‘Right, then we call in the drones,’ I say. ‘That should end the protest. But we need to find a more viable long-term solution. We’re addressing symptoms here, not causes.’
‘You stopped the MWD program,’ Slaton says. ‘That’s the cause.’
‘Second,’ I say, in a tone that let’s Slaton know he ought to shut his damn mouth. ‘Second, we find the instigators. Whoever started it. We find them and we deport them. I want them gone.’
This is the yolk in the egg of my plan. The life-giving fluid. I fear for my own sanity if this fails. I watch Slaton to see his reaction.
‘Can you afford that?’ he says. ‘Labour wise? I thought you needed workers?’
‘Three or four men. The leaders. The dangerous ones. I doubt the minister wants unionists or violent men entering his country.’
‘No, he does not.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘But will he deport them?’
From the way Slaton puckers his lips I can see he’s not completely convinced the minister will deport them. ‘There’s the legal question,’ he says. ‘Where do we send these men? They’re stateless. Sri Lanka would have to agree to take them back.’
