He hesitated, then picked up the phone. “Hello?…Yes, I’m afraid the situation has…That’s right…Oh, I wouldn’t dare be so presumptuous. I think you can come up with a suitable number.” The pause that followed was longer than the previous ones. By the time it ended, the judge was smiling again. “Yes, I believe that will do quite well. Very generous of you, thank you.” His gaze flicked to Alex. “Not to worry, I’ll make certain she’s on her way the moment the money is transferred. It’s been a pleasure doing business with you.”
As soon as he ended the call, he opened the back of the phone, removed the SIM card, and broke it in half. He opened the ledger in front of him again and called out, “Kaskiv!”
The door flew open and the English speaker reentered.
“I’ve just checked with Yalta, and apparently they are unable to take a new prisoner at this time. I believe there is room for her at Slavne. I have a call in to them now. As soon as I hear back and get the okay, she can be on her way. Please take her back to her cell.”
“Yes, sir.”
Alex rose and moved toward the door.
“Ms. Powell,” the judge said.
She looked back at him.
His smile had widened. “I do hope you’ll enjoy your time in our country.”
Chapter Thirteen
She was transported in the back of a Soviet-era sedan that she was sure wasn’t long for the world. The entire drive to the prison was lined with farms and the occasional small village.
Nearly two hours after they had left the Crimean capital, her driver, a boyish cop who couldn’t have been on the job for more than a few months, turned left off the country road onto a narrow, tree-lined street.
Alex had a weird sense of déjà vu as they entered a wooded area, and approached a guardhouse that sat in front of an imposing gate about a hundred yards in. It reminded her of the entrance to the Stonewell facility.
Here, however, the gate was flanked on either side by not one fence, but two. The parallel barriers stood twenty feet high, the no-man’s-land between them wide enough to make it impossible for someone to jump from the top of one to the other. So while an escapee might get over the first fence, she’d never reach the top of the second before being seen, and probably shot.
Alex’s driver stopped next to the gate and lowered his window. The guard who stepped out of the building leaned down and looked into the car. His gaze lingered on Alex, a sneer digging into his cheek. He and the driver spoke for a moment, then he returned to the hut and the giant gate in front of them swung open.
There was a small rise in the road ahead, so Alex didn’t get her first view of Slavne Prison until they reached the crest. Satellite pictures were one thing, but seeing it in person brought only one thought to mind.
Hellhole.
If a group of buildings could exhale misery, those in front of her were doing just that. Gray and grimy and foreboding, the walls that surrounded the prison proper rose a good three stories into the sky. Centered along the front was the boxy and equally depressing administration building. The few windows that existed were small and dirty. Alex spotted a few places where other windows had once been, but had since been bricked over. Beyond the prison wall, she could barely see the tops of the identical buildings inside.
The road they were on led to a parking area right in front of the admin entrance. Just before the lot, another road branched off to the left, allowing access to the two buildings not within the prison walls. The two-story rectangular box was clearly a barrack. No doubt it was where the guards who didn’t have places in town stayed when they were off duty. The house, Alex guessed, was where the equivalent of a prison warden must have lived. It was only slightly less morose than the other structures.
Three uniformed guards were standing outside the administration door. As Alex’s driver pulled into an empty spot near them, they walked over. The driver made a motion for her to stay where she was, then climbed out.
She almost laughed. Where would she go? She was once again wearing handcuffs, her wrists in front of her this time, and there were no inside handles on either of the sedan’s rear doors.
After a quick conversation with the guards, her escort returned, fetched some papers from the front seat, and gave them to one of the other men. The documents were examined, heads nodded, and the back door of the sedan was finally opened.
One of the guards grabbed her bicep and yanked her out. Alex avoided catching her feet on the doorframe lip by the width of a hair, but couldn’t avoid stumbling as he pulled her away from the car.
The guard who’d been given the papers walked up to her, and looked down at the sheet again.
“Ma-uh-reen Poh-well?”
“Yes. Maureen Powell. That’s me.”
The guard launched into what sounded like a memorized speech, and when he finished, he asked a question, then stared at her. When she didn’t respond, he repeated the question.
After another silent moment, the young cop who’d driven her said something to the guard in a tentative voice. Alex was pretty sure he was explaining she only spoke English. The guard barked at the cop, then nodded sideways at the sedan. Looking frightened, the cop stepped back, mumbled a few words in reply, and hightailed it back to his vehicle.
Once the cop was gone, the guard repeated his question.
Why couldn’t they just cut the bullshit and take her inside?
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t understand.”
Her answer, however, didn’t seem to please her new friend. He moved in close, their noses only inches apart, and shouted the question this time.
She almost told him that turning up the volume wouldn’t make any difference, but she bit back the response. He might not understand her, but he’d likely recognize the tone. Best not to piss off everyone just yet.
Instead, she took the opposite tact. She furrowed her brow and put a quiver in her voice as she said, “I-I’m sorry. I don’t know what you want.”
He shouted again, but not the same question. Alex allowed herself to jerk back in surprise, even considered trying to produce a tear or two, then simply lowered her head in a show of deference.
Either this did the trick or the idiot had grown bored with her. He stepped back, spat a few words at the other guards, and headed toward the building entrance. The two remaining guards grabbed her, one on each arm, and guided her inside.
Unable to help herself, Alex took a deep breath right before they entered, her body craving one last lungful of free air. It wasn’t until the door closed behind her that she actually began to feel the fear she’d been feigning a moment earlier.
She was really here. She was really in prison. And if Stonewell screwed up somehow, she might be here for a very long time.
She tried to focus on a memory, anything that might remind her why she was here. But she could only hear a voice, echoing through her head.
Deuce’s, of course. Who else?
This was a bad idea, it said.
No, shit, she thought.
* * *
THE DRAB PRISON reception room was nothing like the lobby of a normal office building. It was only about fifteen feet long by ten wide, with no pictures on the walls or tables full of magazines. No tables at all, for that matter. There were only six chairs, broken up into two rows, their legs bolted firmly to the floor.
The only way out of here, other than the door they’d just entered, was a mechanically operated, barred door on the opposite wall. Next to this was a thick Plexiglas window that looked into a guard station. There was a metal speaker box on the wall below the window. Next to the grill was a single button.
The guard with the papers walked up to the box, pushed the button, and said something. The response from the guard inside came through the speaker, tinny and overamplified.
A loud ca-chunk filled the room, and the barred door swung open.
Alex felt her pulse quicken as she was led through the doorway. She didn’t have to fake a jump of surprise w
hen the door clacked shut behind them.
They were now in a long hallway that ran vertically along the spine of the building. After turning left, they went halfway down the hall before entering a windowless room, with a front counter area and what appeared to be a storage section in back beyond an open doorway. There were two people behind the counter—a female guard, and a woman in a gray, formless, calf-length dress.
Alex’s escort and the guard exchanged words. The woman in the dress shuffled into the back, and returned a moment later holding some folded gray material. The guard took it from her, opened it up, and tossed it to Alex.
Alex caught it with her cuffed hands, not surprised to see that it was a dress exactly like the one worn by the woman.
Prison garb.
Lovely.
One of her escorts grabbed her hands and removed the cuffs, only scratching her wrist a few times in the process. He pointed at the dress, then at her.
She looked around. “You want me to change here?”
He pointed at her and the dress again.
“I don’t understand,” Alex told him. “You actually want me to—”
“Yes,” a voice said, and they all looked at the prisoner who had fetched Alex’s new clothes. “Change here. Nowhere else.”
Alex’s escort snapped at the woman, but whatever response she gave seemed to satisfy him. He turned to Alex again, and pointed at her more emphatically, gesturing to the dress.
Still, Alex hesitated.
“Do you want them to hurt you?” the woman asked.
“No,” Alex said.
“Then put on dress. So what, they see you? They will see you every day.”
Alex looked around the room, then turned so her back was to the guards, and unbuttoned her shirt. She thought she heard one of them snicker, but she didn’t look back. When she started to pull the dress over her head, one of the guards shouted something at her.
Alex paused and glanced over at the prisoner.
“Your brassiere, cannot have. They think could be weapon.”
With the dress piled on top of her shoulders, Alex unhooked her bra and did a quick dance of getting it off as she pulled the scratchy dress down to minimize her exposure. This time it wasn’t a snicker, but an outright laugh. She ignored it as she undid her pants and pulled them off.
“What do I do with these?” Alex asked, holding up her clothes.
“Give to me. We keep here.”
Alex handed her shirt, bra, and pants to the woman.
Their task completed, the guards grabbed Alex again and manhandled her toward the door.
“Good luck,” the prisoner called out.
Alex seriously doubted there was such a thing as luck in a place like this.
Several steps later, she found herself in the prison infirmary, where she was given an examination by a man she assumed was the facility’s doctor. When he came to the blood-soaked gauze still taped to the top of her head, he removed it, looked at the wound, and retrieved a set of electric shears.
At first, she was sure he was about to cut off all her hair, but he stuck to the area around the wound. When he was finished, he put in a couple of stitches, covered it with a new bandage, then poked her upper arm with a syringe, and gave her a shot of what she assumed were antibiotics. He dismissed her with a wave, and the guards grabbed her and escorted her outside.
This time they went up a set of stairs to a waiting area on the third floor where a woman sat behind a desk, typing something into her computer. There were plenty of chairs here, but the guards kept Alex on her feet while they waited for who knew what. It was at least five minutes before the woman’s phone rang. When she finished the call, she looked at the guards and nodded.
Tightening their grips on Alex’s arms, they marched her through a doorway beyond the woman’s desk.
The room they entered was larger than some apartments Alex had lived in. There was a desk at the far end, while the area closer to the door was largely devoted to a couch and a set of matching chairs. This was the first thing Alex had seen since arriving here that didn’t seem aimed at destroying souls.
The only person in the room was a man standing straight-backed next to the couch. He was large, with broad shoulders and a barrel chest. By the creases on his face and the color of his hair, Alex thought he was about fifty-five, but he looked as if he could handle himself quite well in a fight with someone half that age.
This, she decided, must be the warden. If she needed further proof, the fact that her guards stood at attention once they’d all moved into the room sealed the deal.
The warden walked over and stopped in front of her. Lifting his chin, he looked down at her as if trying to classify what species she was. He unclasped his hands behind his back and swung them around. In one was a small blue booklet—a Canadian passport.
Maureen Powell’s Canadian passport.
The warden took his time looking it over before closing it again.
“Can-a-da,” he said.
Not knowing how else to reply, she nodded. “Yes.”
He smiled and gave her a thumbs-up. “Wayne Gretzky.”
“Yeah. Right. Wayne Gretzky.”
“Justin Bieber.”
She nodded and returned his thumbs-up. “Wayne Gretzky.”
“Wayne Gretzky.” His smile lasted a few more seconds, before he folded his arms over his wide chest. “You…no problem. Yes?”
“No problem.”
The smile returned. “Good. You no problem, me no problem.”
“Deal.” She could tell he didn’t understand the word, so she said, “Yes. Good.”
With a nod, he put his hands behind his back and headed across the room toward his desk. Apparently it was the signal that their meeting was over, as Alex was immediately hustled out of the room.
Back on ground level, they took her through two sets of barred checkpoints before reaching a heavy-looking metal door. When one of the guards opened it, Alex wasn’t surprised to find the prison yard on the other side. Walking back into the sunshine, she noticed at least two dozen women wearing the same type of gray dress she was. At least, the dresses had started out the same. Many had been modified—refitted, shortened a bit—while others were simply faded and torn from overuse.
The prisoners noticed her, too, each stopping what they were doing to stare at her. Alex wondered if any of these women was Traz, her inside contact, but for all she knew, Traz could be one of the guards. There was no way to tell until Stonewell’s inside source was ready to make his or her presence known.
The guards led her across a mix of grass and dirt, toward the three buildings in the center of the walled-off yard. Each of the wide buildings was four stories high, built of the same stone that made up the walls, with entry doors painted the same faded white as the one she’d passed through moments before.
As they drew nearer, their course veered toward the structure on the far right, building number one. That was a disappointment. According to McElroy, El-Hashim was in building number two, the middle one, but there wasn’t much Alex could do about that at the moment.
Mounted next to the door of Building One was a dilapidated metal box. The guard in the lead pulled out a key and used it to unlock the cover. Inside was a phone that looked like something out of 1940s Berlin. He picked it up, spoke a few words, and before he could return the receiver to its cradle, there was a metal groan followed by a pop, and the door swung open.
The smell was the first thing to hit her as they entered. A jumble of body odor and spoiling food and human waste permeated the narrow green hallway. The smell seemed to be leaking out of the walls themselves. She blinked several times, and had to work hard not to gag.
Then there was the sound, which was almost as bad as the smell. Everywhere cackles and shouts and cries. The noise became even louder as they crossed into the first block.
Cells lined both sides of the concrete walkway, each with a number above. While most of the barred doors were open and th
e cells beyond empty, a few were closed with three, four, even five prisoners looking out from inside. The moment the occupants caught sight of Alex, they began to howl and scream. They banged plates and cups against the bars and underlined the racket with piercing whistles.
The noise crescendoed as Alex and her guards moved from one block to the next. At the back end of the first floor was a tired-looking wooden staircase. Alex scowled as she was led onto it. She had seen another stairwell at the front of the building, but apparently the guards had wanted to show her off to as many prisoners as possible. A scare tactic that probably worked on ninety-five percent of the people they brought through.
They passed the second floor and went all the way up to the third. There, they proceeded to the block in the middle and stopped in front of cell 185. It was one of those with the door closed. Inside were three prisoners. While they had been yelling it up like the others when Alex first stepped into their block, they were silent now, staring warily out at her.
The lead guard turned to a camera mounted in the ceiling and gave it a wave. Almost immediately, a loud buzz cut through the din. The guard grabbed one of the bars and pulled the cell door open.
Standing aside, he said something to Alex and pointed inside.
Knowing she could show no weakness, she walked straight in as if she’d been living there for years. The buzz sounded again, the door closed behind her—
—and there she was.
Home.
There were four beds in the room, split between two bunks butted head to toe along the same wall. Though none looked particularly comfortable, all four appeared to be claimed, which meant someone was hoarding space. Having no idea which was the extra, Alex decided to claim the one she wanted—the bottom bunk, nearest the front of the cell.
As she swept the belongings atop it to the floor, the largest of her three cellmates yelled out and shoved Alex’s shoulder. Instead of fighting back, Alex pushed the complainer to the side and sat down on the mattress.
The woman yelled again, grabbed Alex’s arm, and yanked it. Alex let her shoulder roll forward, then snapped back, jerking the woman toward her. She planted her free hand on the woman’s clavicle and gave it a small, upward nudge right before her attacker reached the bed. The change in trajectory was more than enough to send her new roommate’s forehead crashing into the frame of the upper bunk.
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