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  “If you have the spiritual powers,” Nii said, “he can never suspect. He will be somehow confused and just keep sending the cash.”

  “So, like me, for example, can I get the powers?”

  “Of course, but you have to work with Kweku Ponsu. To start, you will take two chickens to him—” Nii stopped talking and looked up as he heard male voices and the scuffle of boots. He put a finger to his lips to tell the others to shut up, ran low to the window, looked out, and then swung back. “Police!”

  The boys scrambled to their feet, trying to put all their devices away. Too late.

  The door exploded open and four police officers charged in yelling, their automatic weapons pointed. Thinking quickly and clearly, Nii dropped to the ground flat on his stomach, arms outstretched. A couple of his companions weren’t so lucky. The officers clubbed them down into submission.

  “Get them all!” a harsh female voice ordered, a sound resembling a piece of metal dragged over rutted asphalt. Nii didn’t need to look up to see who she was. Detective Inspector Doris Damptey. She and Nii Kwei knew each other well. He relaxed, climbing down from his fight-or-flight state.

  The officers cuffed the sakawa bunch and ordered them to sit up. The boys kept their gaze down—all except Nii Kwei.

  “Heh!” Damptey yelled at them. “Look up! Foolish sakawa boys. Do you think we don’t know all about you people and your evil ways?”

  Her legs were set far apart like pillars at the corners of her box frame. If a headmistress and Gaboon Viper got together, DI Doris Damptey would be the result: authoritarian, slow-moving, and venomous.

  Nii smiled secretly. “We beg you, oo, madam,” he said with exaggerated penitence.

  She sucked her teeth in disdain. “You say you beg me? Ah, stupid! We are going to take you to Dansoman station right now and then you will see how to really beg. Kwasea! This sakawa thing you are doing is bad.”

  “We are sorry,” Nii said. “We won’t do it again.”

  “Yes, because you will be in jail,” Damptey said, curling her lip.

  “I beg you, madam.”

  “Empty begging doesn’t do anything whilst we are all hungry,” Damptey said. The officers, silent, folded their arms and leaned against the wall.

  Nii looked at his companions and back to Damptey. “Maybe I can help you chop small.”

  “Five hundred,” she said.

  “I only have three,” Nii Kwei lied. Damptey wouldn’t check.

  “Okay, okay,” Damptey said impatiently. She signaled her officers to uncuff Nii first and then his mates. Nii counted out bills from his wallet and gave them to Damptey, whose greedy eyes had lit up.

  The officers marched all but Nii outside, where a handful of press photographers was idly waiting. Tomorrow morning, the boys would be in the papers, demonstrating what a great job the Ghana police were doing to stamp out this growing menace to society.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  April 18

  Emma had been apprehensive she might feel the sting of male supremacy from her five male coworkers, but Yemo Sowah set the tone in which gender didn’t determine status: only experience, knowledge, and hard work. In any case, Sowah protected her from any bad treatment whatsoever. Nailed to the wall was a code of conduct that included respect, kindness, patience, honesty, willingness to be corrected, and taking responsibility for one’s mistakes.

  Barring emergencies, Sowah held a briefing every morning at eight for updates on old cases and assignments of new. He started Emma off with a standard background check on a man a branch of Zenith Bank was interested in hiring.

  The Sowah Agency had a Toyota sedan for office use, and if needed, Sowah’s Kia SUV. This ratio of vehicles to investigators was a thousand times better than that of the Ghana Police Service. Sowah more or less promptly reimbursed his investigators’ out-of-pocket travel expenses if they didn’t have an official vehicle available.

  Seven forty-five Monday morning, Emma got down from the tro-tro at her stop on Paradise Street two blocks from work. She stopped a paperboy and got the Daily Graphic and The Ghanaian Chronicle, the latter the more radical and outspoken of the two, the former still the best-selling paper in the country. She glanced at its front page as she walked the last few meters to work, looked again, and froze in place. The headline, war on sakawa accompanied a picture of a group of disgraced young men.

  “Oh, no,” Emma whispered. “Bruno.”

  He was the second from the left, scowling at the camera in defiance.

  Emma began to read the article through, but she didn’t want to be a second late to work, so she hurried the last few steps to the staff room and sat down to read it there. The raid was part of President J.K. Bannerman’s ambitious and sweeping initiative to cut out Ghana’s cancer of fraud and corruption. Clearly, he was enlisting the help of the papers and other media to get the word out. This group of sakawa boys had been taken to Dansoman Police Station to be charged and jailed.

  As Emma dived into the Chronicle’s piece, the other investigators straggled in. She smiled and greeted them cordially, but inside she was thinking about Bruno and was furious. This was exactly what she had been warning him about: stay out of trouble, get a legit job.

  Emma wasn’t the only one who had seen the item on the raid. Jojo, the youngest of the other investigators, was reading a copy of the Ghanaian Times, which had also front-paged the news. “Catch five or six of these worthless guys and you say you’re fighting the evil of sakawa,” he said in disdain.

  It wasn’t until six that evening that Emma was able to get to Dansoman Police Station. It was a two-story building painted in the GPS’s signature yellow and blue. A miscellaneous crowd hung around the front. Emma went to the small charge office, where the desk sergeant was a cordial but businesslike woman. “Yes, we have Bruno Asare here,” she said, checking her logbook in response to Emma’s inquiry. “You want to see him?”

  “Yes please, madam.”

  “And who are you?”

  “His sister.”

  The sergeant shot her a doubtful look but didn’t probe further. Instead, she turned and yelled back to the jail officer, who marched out a few minutes later with a sullen Bruno.

  “You can talk to him over there,” the sergeant said to Emma, indicating the end of the counter.

  “Sis, what are you doing here?” Bruno said in an undertone as she came up to him.

  “That’s not the right question,” Emma said angrily, trying to keep her voice down. “The question should be what you are doing here?”

  Bruno was deadpan. “I haven’t done anything.”

  “Don’t lie to me. It was all in the papers today—pictures of you and those sakawa boys. Didn’t I tell you they would get you in trouble?”

  Glumly, Bruno looked away.

  “Were you with that Nii Kwei I met the other day?” Emma asked.

  Bruno nodded.

  “Is he also at this station?”

  “No, I’ve not seen him,” Bruno said. “Maybe they took him to somewhere else. I’m not sure. But the rest of us are here.”

  It was possible that this station’s jail was at capacity, Emma reasoned, although that normally never stopped anyone packing in a few more prisoners.

  “Can you get me out?” Bruno asked her, making sad eyes at her.

  Emma bristled. “No! I will not. You got yourself into this trouble, and you’ll have to get yourself out. Maybe you’ll finally learn your lesson. It serves you right, Bruno.”

  Emma noticed the desk sergeant staring at Bruno as she talked to someone on the phone. At intervals, she nodded and said, “Yes, madam.” After ending the call, she beckoned to Bruno. “Come.”

  The sergeant opened a large ledger. “Sign here,” she said, pressing her index finger to a space down the column.

  Puzzled, Bruno signed.

  “Yo
u may go,” the sergeant said, looking at him with both offhandedness and distaste.

  “Please, you say?”

  She raised her voice. “You may go! Are you deaf?”

  “Yes, madam. No, madam. Thank you.”

  A corporal lifted the barrier at the counter and incredibly, Bruno walked out scot-free.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Sana Sana was a mysterious if not forbidding figure. He was Ghana’s most famous journalist, yet very few people had ever seen the face hidden behind a curtain of thick wires or threaded beads hanging from the brim of a hat. On occasion, he had removed the mask in front of an eager TV audience only to reveal a prosthetic face underneath.

  He kept his identity a firm secret because over the years he had broken dozens of stories of corruption and organized crime all over Ghana. He was the mastermind behind daring undercover operations that exposed not only the most influential personalities in the country, but murderous rituals practiced in remote parts. Sana’s most recent exposé had blown up the corrupt world of soccer game fixing in Ghana. His motto was, “name, shame, and jail.” His enemies were criminals in both high and low places, and as he once said at a TED talk in Europe, if he ever revealed himself to the crooks, he would be dead within days.

  Even Sana’s undercover agents and reporters never saw his face until he was sure they were trustworthy, but in the end, no one could be trusted a hundred percent. Everyone was a potential Judas. Technically, so was Bruno, Sana’s most recent employee, but that would be surprising. The story of Bruno, in brief, was that his ship was heading straight to the rocks and would have crashed into them had Sana not steered it back on course and into safe harbor. One of Sana’s agents had discovered him while investigating a corruption scandal involving street beggars. He used Bruno to get more information. Now Sana employed Bruno often. Yes, he was still on the street, but his skills were redirected toward unearthing the evil powerful men and women do.

  Bruno’s association with Sana Sana was best left as classified as possible, because almost everything Sana did was a secret.

  The night Bruno got out of jail, he met up with the master journalist at a secret location. Sana listened to his account of the raid and the way Nii Kwei was taken aside and not jailed.

  “He probably knows her and regularly dashes her chop money,” Sana said. “And because he gave her and the officers the three-hundred cedis, you were all released from jail later on.”

  “Yes,” Bruno confirmed. “Someone called the lady sergeant in the charge office and told her to release me.”

  “It might have been DI Damptey or someone above her. That’s what I’m especially interested in—the higher-up people. Her rank is inspector, which is nothing. I want to expose the people at the top, like the commissioners. That way we gradually work our way up to the guy they call the Sakawa Godfather.”

  “The one we are dying to know who he is,” Bruno said.

  “Yes,” Sana said with a nod that made his beads jingle. “I want you to start asking Nii Kwei what he knows about the Godfather, but just be cool and casual.”

  “Sure.”

  “Tell me more about Emma, your stepsister. She came to see you at the Dansoman jail.”

  “Yes please,” Bruno said. “She’s a good woman. She always tries to help me, and she wants me to do better for myself.”

  “Have you told her about our project?”

  “No please.”

  “Good.” Sana nodded. “You said Emma used to work at CID.”

  “Yes please, but now she has taken a job as a private investigator.”

  “Ah, I see. Interesting. Which agency?”

  “Please, I’ve forgotten the name, but I know it’s in Asylum Down.”

  “Then that must be Yemo Sowah’s agency,” Sana said. “I know him.”

  Bruno could feel Sana studying him from behind his veil.

  “How are you?” Sana asked. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes please.”

  “When do you plan to see Kweku Ponsu?” Sana asked.

  “Please, I will go with Nii Kwei, so let me check with him and I will let you know.”

  “Find out how much money he pays Ponsu.”

  “Yes please.”

  Sana fished for his wallet and counted out several ten-cedi bills, which he handed to Bruno. “Here you are. Good work so far. Now on to the next level.”

  Two days passed before Bruno and Nii could get together again to smoke. Hoping to loosen Nii’s tongue, Bruno let him take most of the hits.

  “The police people no beat you in the jail?” Nii asked him, his eyes narrowing against a plume of marijuana smoke.

  Bruno shook his head. “Not at all.”

  “Good.”

  “Why they no take you to jail?” Bruno asked. “The lady policeman—Madam Damptey—do you know her?”

  “Yah,” Nii said, as if in a pleasant dream. “For long time.”

  “Ah, okay,” Bruno said. “Then that’s why. Did you tell her about me?”

  Nii took the dwindling stump of weed back and inhaled. “Yes. That’s why they released you first from jail.”

  “Ei!” Bruno exclaimed, clapping his friend on the back. “Then you have power, oo!”

  Nii smiled, but only briefly. “There are plenty people with more power than me. It’s time for me to tell you everything about how it works, but don’t talk to anybody about what I tell you. It’s a secret you must keep if you want to be successful. You understand?”

  “Yes, my brodda.”

  “I’ve waited to see if I can trust you, and it seems I can.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Okay,” Nii began, “I pay Madam some money just like other sakawa boys pay her and other officers. If I get in trouble, whether sakawa or another thing, she protects me. That’s why she told her officers not to arrest me.”

  “Won’t the officers suspect?”

  Nii shrugged. “And so what? They can’t say or do anything. If she’s in charge of a raid, she’s highest in rank. Even, she might have dashed some of her officers something small so they don’t say anything.”

  “Ah, okay.”

  “Even when she takes us to police station, they will release us maybe after one night or just a few hours because these raids are just for show. They take pictures of us for the papers and TV just so that the IGP and the president can say they are fighting against sakawa.”

  “I see,” Bruno said. “But what will happen if Madam’s bosses find out she is doing this?”

  Nii laughed. “Oh, but some of them know already. Even, they are taking money too. Like, her boss, Mr. Quaino. Madam gives him something out of the money she gets from the sakawa boys. Quaino too, he has someone above him he also pays. And it goes on like that to the top.”

  “Who is at the top?”

  “They call him ‘Godfather,’ but not many people know who he is. It’s better we don’t know, because if Godfather falls, he will take everyone with him. The less you know, the more innocent you are.”

  “Have you met him?”

  “That one I can’t tell you. If I’ve met him, it’s a secret. If I haven’t met him, it’s also a secret.”

  “So, Godfather and Kweku Ponsu, who is more powerful?”

  “Godfather, of course,” Nii answered. “And he’s richer than anyone because he controls everything and gets money from police officers who support the sakawa boys all over Ghana.”

  Bruno chewed the inside of his lip. “I want to meet Godfather.”

  “You have to be one of the best sakawa to do that. Only Kweku Ponsu can decide if you are good enough.”

  “Okay, then I will impress Ponsu.”

  Nii smirked and said, “It’s just not that easy.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  April 20, Washington, DC

  Ambassado
r Herbert Opare held a Meet the Press event at his residence, a chance for Ghanaian and American journalism students in both the US and Ghana to rub shoulders with the likes of writers and editors at the Washington Observer and the Baltimore Sun and perhaps look into career opportunities as well.

  Herbert and Madam Ambassador Angelina Opare relished these intercultural exchanges and excelled at hosting them. Circulating waiters served hors d’oeuvres and wine to the mingling guests, a nicely balanced group of white and black, American and Ghanaian. Angelina, eloquent and elegant, floated from group to group chatting and engaging in deft repartee.

  Herbert caught up with Marc Samuels, chief editor at the Washington Observer. He was sipping wine with Casper Guttenberg. This was convenient because the ambassador wanted to speak to them both.

  “Would you join me for brandy later on in the Sun Room?” he invited them.

  “We’d love to,” Marc said, looking pleasantly flushed already.

  “Excellent,” Herbert said. “I’ll find you once most of the guests have departed.”

  Once the room was buzzing with a comfortable rhythm, Herbert made his welcoming remarks: how Ghana was as committed to democracy and freedom of the press as the United States, and how political debate was alive and well in both countries. Yet both had their failings, and that was why it was vital that journalists from both sides meet to exchange ideas.

  Then it was the turn of Marc and his counterpart at the Baltimore Sun to address guests briefly, after which a young American and Ghanaian journalist each spoke. By 8 p.m., the gathering was winding down and Herbert was saying goodbyes. He slipped away, allowing Angelina to close out the evening, and found Marc and Cas.

  “How do you think it went?” Herbert said as he ushered them into the Sun Room, named for the skylight that conveyed an ice crystal illumination to the space during springtime. The rust-colored carpet was plush, accenting the espresso of the wood floor and the pale olive upholstery of the armchairs.

  “I thought it was excellent,” Marc said. “These young men and women have fire in the belly. It’s gratifying.”