The "Ghost of the Palace," as the media called Ekenne, did not hide. Under the protection of a high-profile human rights lawyer and the watchful eyes of international journalists, the fisherman who claimed to be the true Amadi heir stood in the center of the city. He didn't ask for the crown; he asked for a needle.
"I do not want the gold," Ekenne told a crowded press conference at the Hotel Presidenti. "I want my name. I want the world to know that the woman on that balcony didn't just steal a kingdom—elle a volé mon enfance (she stole my childhood)."
The pressure was insurmountable. The Federal Government, wary of a total collapse of order in the oil-rich region, intervened. The palace was cordoned off by the Nigerian Army. Graham and Edna were placed under "palatial arrest," their satellite phones seized, their mercenaries disarmed.
The court order was unprecedented: The body of the late King Amadi was to be exhumed.
The morning of the exhumation was silent. A crowd of thousands gathered at the royal cemetery, held back by yellow police tape. Edna stood on the balcony of the West Wing, clutching a glass of gin, watching the white-clad forensic teams dig into the red earth.
"They won't find anything," she whispered to the empty room. "Blood dries. Memories fade. I am the mother of the King."
But beside her, Graham—the man once known as Number 42—was silent. He was looking at his own hands. He realized that for seventeen years, he had been a ghost haunted by a living man. He walked to the mirror and began to strip off his royal insignia, the heavy coral beads hitting the floor with a sound like falling teeth.
"It's over, Edna," he said. It was the first time he hadn't called her Mother.