In a small, smoke-filled bar on the outskirts of Port Harcourt, Dave sat hunched over a bottle of Star lager. He was a man broken by silence. For seventeen years, he had lived on the fringes of the palace, a "poor relative" kept on a short leash by Edna's threats and occasional hand-outs.
He watched the television mounted on the wall. It was a local news segment showing Prince Graham visiting a new hospital wing. The Prince looked magnificent—strong, compassionate, royal.
"Lies," Dave muttered into his beer.
"You say something, Chief?" the bartender asked, wiping a glass.
Dave looked up, his eyes bloodshot. "I said, some people spend their whole lives wearing a mask that doesn't fit."
He couldn't take it anymore. The King—the real King—had been kind to Dave. He had given him a place to live, a job in the palace gardens, and had treated him with more respect than Edna ever had. To see the old man dying while being deceived by a stranger was a weight Dave's conscience could no longer carry.
He pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. It was a phone number he had obtained from a contact in the Red Cross archives—a man who claimed to have found a lead on the 'lost children' of the Calabar transit.
Dave stood up, his legs shaking. He went to the payphone at the back of the bar, away from the prying eyes of the palace spies.
"Hello?" Dave whispered when a voice answered. "I'm calling about the boy. The one from the camp in '98. The one who wasn't taken by the woman in the lace wrapper."
The voice on the other end was silent for a moment. "Who is this?"
"Someone who wants to settle a debt before he dies," Dave said. "I have proof. I have the original manifest. Meet me at the fruit market at midnight. Come alone."
As Dave hung up, he didn't see the black SUV parked across the street. He didn't see the tinted window roll down an inch, or the glint of a camera lens capturing his face.
The lie was no longer just a secret; it was a war.