Icejacked

Bureaucracy Can Ruin the Best Plans

The flight back to was smooth, uneventful, and peaceful. I even managed to grab a couple hours of sleep. As the plane taxied to its allotted bay, I surreptitiously switched on my phone and texted Julie.

“Here we are, safe and sound. Will our ride to the hotel be as smooth as the flight?”

I hastily put it into silent mode in case she replied before we disembarked. The obedient Swiss mentality was hard to shake. In less than a minute, I felt it vibrate in my top pocket.

“Welcome back! Am ready and waiting. As for a smooth drive, we’ll see …”

The plane doors finally opened to the jetway, and we headed off towards passport control, which always seemed to be ten miles away when one is tired and hungry. We got in line and shuffled slowly towards the desks. It was finally our turn, and together we approached the waiting official.

“Stand behind the line!” the officer snarled at me.

“But we’re travelling together,” I exclaimed.

“One at a time! Stand behind the line! Wait your turn!” he growled ferociously.

“But we’re together.”

“If you don’t stand behind the line and wait your turn, I will have an officer remove you!” he barked loudly.

The people behind me fell silent and stopped shuffling. I gulped back the words that were ready to spill out and stood meekly behind the line. Leddicus approached the desk and handed over his travel document.

“How long are you staying in the ?” I heard the officer ask.

“Not very long. A few days. Then I am going home” Leddicus replied.

The officer turned the document over and over, scrutinising it closely. He then picked up the phone and made a call. A moment later, two burly men arrived. One of them picked up the travel document while the other one took a firm hold on Leddicus’s elbow.

“Come this way, please,” said the elbow-grabber.

I watched helplessly as they led him away.

“Next!” the officer snapped.

I hastily moved to the desk. “Where is my friend going?”

“He needs to answer some more questions.” He didn’t look up. He stamped my passport and shoved it towards me. “Next!” he snapped.

I stepped away from the desk. A cold panic settled into the pit of my stomach. Instinctively I headed in the direction that they had taken Leddicus, although the crowds had quickly blocked their destination from my view. I frantically scanned the perimeter walls for any official-looking doors. I noticed one with a “No Entry” sign on it and headed there. It opened into a small office, its walls plastered with posters about rabid animals and the dangers of untended packages.

A rather untidy official glared at me from behind his paper-stacked desk. “You should not be in here.”

“My friend came through passport control. Two officers took him for further questioning. We’re together. Could you please take me to him?” The words rushed out breathlessly.

“I can’t give you any further information. Wait for him in the area beyond customs.” He stood up and moved towards me. “This is an official area. You should not be in here. I can’t help you.” He opened the door and ushered me out.

The door closed behind me, and I leaned against the wall, my heart pounding, my brain rushing. This could not be happening. I stood for a while and took deep breaths to calm myself. I then went into auto mode and headed off to retrieve our cases. I stood blankly as the conveyor belt circulated. Our luggage chugged past my unseeing eyes before I focussed, shoved through the crowds, and grabbed them, plonked them on a trolley and headed down the corridor into the arrivals area.

Julie’s welcoming face swam into view. She waved cheerily. “Where’s Leddicus?” she asked as I reached her side.

“They got him. They took him for further questioning.”

“Who got him? What are you talking about? You’re as white as a sheet!”

“Officials at passport control. They frog-marched him off.”

“What!” Julie took my arm and steered me towards a coffee shop. She bought the biggest takeaway coffee she could lay her hands on and thrust it into my hand. With her face set, she said, “Right. Keep up.”

I gulped thankfully at the coffee, scalding my tongue and lips, as I rushed after her. She operated like a well-trained bloodhound, moving swiftly with notebook in hand, from information desk to information desk, official to official, and queue after queue, calmly questioning. She was always in control, investigative journalist par excellence.

After two hours, she had not flagged, but I had. We agreed to an intermission to dump the cases in the car and grab a sandwich. We sat in silence while she poured over her notes and made more notes, neatly bulleted on the pristine page. I was very thankful she was so firmly in control. I gulped down a large strong coffee to keep jet lag at bay and consumed a mammoth bacon baguette without even tasting it.

“I think I know where to go now.” She sat back and sipped her tea. “So many jobsworth plonkers, so much cross information, but it all points to here. This office deals with illegal immigrants and passport anomalies.” She tapped the last bullet point with her pen.

“Thanks,” I said.

“What for?”

“For taking over. Sorry. I panicked back there.” Embarrassed, I gave a slight shrug. I was so impressed with how she had handled the crises. She had never once got riled with the numerous irritating staff and officials she had spoken to. Her tone had remained calm and coaxing. Her broad smile never faltered.

She shrugged. “Don’t give it a second thought. I’m glad I’m here, and this is what I do best.” She pecked at her sandwich with thumb and finger and occasionally put a crumb into her taut mouth. She finally pushed it away. It was barely touched. “Not hungry. Do you want the other half?”

I shook my head. “No thanks. Shall we get on?”

“Yes, let’s. We need to go to level two. I think we’ll find Leddicus there.”

After wandering around level two for twenty minutes, we finally found the right office. A young lady stood behind the desk, sullenly picking at her fingernails. Julie smiled that disarming smile of hers, and the girl’s face softened slightly.

“We’re looking for a friend of ours. He landed a couple hours ago, and he was held for further questioning.”

“Name?”

“Leddicus Palantina.”

The girl began checking through a very fat book that looked like a register. It seemed to take forever. “Ah, here we are. Palantina. He’s been moved to a detention centre. Brook House. That’s based in Gatwick.”

“Thank you.” Julie said graciously ”Please could I have the address and telephone number?”

The girl scribbled the details on a tiny yellow post-it note and shoved it across the counter.

As soon as we had left the office, I burst out, “What on Earth? How can they do this? He’s done nothing wrong. What craziness is this?”

“I know this place.” Julie’s calm exterior faltered a little. “It holds about thirty-five hundred people. It’s where you get dumped if there are any problems with your travel documents. You can get stuck there for months. Those held don’t have the rights that you or I have. The normal EU rules don’t apply. We need to move quickly. Get him out before the paperwork gets stuck in an endless snarl-up.” She clutched at her notebook. Her knuckles were white. “We must go.” She strode off toward the car park. “There’s no time to lose.” She opened the driver’s door. “You drive. Give me a minute to set up the sat nav. Then I can make some calls en route.”

I was in awe and a little bit afraid of this element of Julie that I had never seen before. I knew I couldn’t argue. I climbed behind the wheel and gritted my teeth. I was extremely tired and now faced a long drive.

“Don’t forget that we drive on the left,” she said stonily as she pulled her phone out of her bag.

“Sure.” I gave myself a mental shake and a grim reminder that the only thing mattering now was that we must rescue Leddicus. I pushed away my tiredness, took a deep breath, and fired up the engine.

“At the roundabout, take the second exit.” The sat nav commanded.

I’d never used one before, and I was reassured at how easy it was. Julie sat quietly for a while and let me acclimatise to the new car, the sat nav, and driving on the wrong side of the road.

“Bear right, and enter the motorway,” the sat nav announced. “Continue for twenty-five miles.”

Julie was immediately on the phone, making call after call. I was only half-listening. I was using the last dregs of my adrenaline to drive, stay awake, and obey the sat nav.

After twenty minutes, she laid the phone on her knee and leaned back with a sigh. “I think we’re getting there. There are very strict visiting hours, so lots of strings to pull and arms to twist. Joe has some very powerful friends high up in government and the police. He’s doing a ring-round now and will get back to us, hopefully before we get to Brook House.”

The sat nav interrupted with more directions.

“You okay?” She patted my arm.

“I’ll live. I could use some coffee, but I know there’s no time.”

Her phone rang. “Hi, Joe.” She listened intently and said nothing for a while. “Great! Thanks! I’ll call you when we’ve accomplished the mission.” She jotted down something in her trusty notebook.

“Well, what gives?”

“He’s pulled it off, good ol’ Joe. The authorities are making all sorts of apologies and excuses. It was a mix-up, a misunderstanding. We can pick up Leddicus tonight. They’re sorting the release papers now.”

“Fantastic! That’s great news!” I was suddenly wide-awake.

“But you know what makes me so mad I could spit?” She banged the dashboard with her notebook in a most uncharacteristic fashion. “We had the contacts, we knew what strings to pull, and we knew the people in high places who could make this happen. What about all the people who don’t have those options? Who haven’t got the contacts?”

Her anger caught me off guard, and I didn’t understand what she was on about. I was furious that officialdom had caused all this nonsense, but happy and relieved that we were going to get Leddicus. Her outburst left me confused. I didn’t get what she was alluding to, but I was, after all, just an exhausted historian.

I thought that Julie’s tirade was spent, but I was wrong. She was still wound up. “I’ve worked and reported on this stuff, and the worst thing is that my industry is partly at fault. Asylum seekers are held up as the scapegoat. They get blamed for every ill in society. The problem is, once they are branded as such, they are dehumanised. But what do the news moguls care? It sells papers, doesn’t it?” The rhetorical question hung in the air.“They’re demonised and helpless. They’re running away from terrible situations. They arrive here in the hope of finding a haven, but they end up in a detention centre because they answered one question wrong or their face didn’t fit. Then instead of peace, they are crammed into a tiny room for months while their papers go round in circles.” If Julie had been a smoker, at this point, she would have lit up. “What would have happened to Leddicus if Joe didn’t have friends in high places?”

Again, I didn’t answer. She was talking at me not to me.

“Oh, it makes me mad. It’s so unfair! I did a couple pieces on one of the groups that protests about these centres and how asylum seekers are treated. I have tried to help. I’m sick of them being called scroungers and rogues! Goodness knows, many of them have already had such dreadful times, and then they are confronted with inhuman, faceless bureaucracy, and idiotic news stories saying how awful they are. It makes me rage!”

She ranted on and on, but I wasn’t really listening. I kept my focus on the road and the sat nav. I truly did not want to get lost. I thought she was never going to stop, but the sat nav came to the rescue. “Destination in three hundred yards on the right,” it announced calmly. Julie was suddenly silent.

I pulled into the car park and finally switched off the engine. I was so happy I could stop gripping the steering wheel, stop driving on the wrong side of the road, and Julie had finally stopped going on and on. It was getting on for midnight and drizzling. We both got out of the car, Julie walked to the door entry system and pressed the buzzer.

A voice crackled in the speaker, “We’re closed.”

“Yes, I’m sorry that it’s late. We have come to collect Leddicus Palantina on the authority of—” A gust of wind snatched Julie’s words from my hearing.

But I got the next bit, loud and clear, as it blared metallically out of the speaker. “I don’t care who you are, who you think you have come to pick up, or whose name you quote. I don’t care if the queen sent you. I answer to the governor, and he’s gone to bed. I ain’t opening this door unless he gets up and tells me to, so listen, missus, you come back tomorrow at visiting time!” The line went dead.

The wind was picking up. The drizzle turned into a heavy shower. I was getting drenched and began to shiver. I thought Julie was going to burst a blood vessel and I might have to restrain her from breaking down the door. Face red and eyes flashing, she stabbed at her phone keypad and began ranting at Joe. I opened the passenger door and beckoned to her, but she looked through me as she paced up and down, gesticulating in the rain. I got in and switched on the engine to get the heater working.

After about ten minutes, she opened the door, slumped into the seat, leaned forward, and put her head in her hands, totally spent. Her hair was clinging to her head. She was completely soaked.

After a minute or two, she sat up, got a wad of tissues out of her bag, blotted at her face and hair, and said tonelessly, “Nothing more we can do tonight. Need to find a hotel. The sat nav will find us the nearest one.” She prodded at the screen and scrolled to a little icon, she pressed it and leaned back waiting as it found the location.

Half an hour later we were welcomed by a friendly porter who went to fetch the night receptionist. For the first time since I landed at Heathrow, something went right. The receptionist was a motherly lady who fussed and clucked at us. Within minutes, a jug of hot chocolate, two large whiskies, and sandwiches appeared as if by magic. Oh, the joys of five-star hotel! I was so happy this place was the nearest the sat nav could find. I took a slug of whisky to chase away the cold that had reached my bones.

As she let us into our rooms, this saintly lady whispered, “You’re absolutely soaking dears. Leave all your clothes outside the door, and they’ll be all ready for you first thing in the morning. You’ll find a bathrobe in the wardrobe.”

At two thirty, my head hit the pillow. A minute later, I was unconscious.