by Ben Machell
One night, after lockdown, the witch doctor offered to read Stephen’s fortune. Not wishing to seem rude, he agreed. The witch doctor chanted while Stephen grasped a charm, and then, after appearing to lie down and fall asleep on his bunk, he opened his eyes suddenly, sat up, and presented his findings.
“You have led an interesting life. Done many good things. Many bad things.”
Stephen nodded. He just about resisted the temptation to speak out and say, well, yes, that’s a pretty safe assumption to make about anyone in jail. Instead, he asked whether the witch doctor could tell him anything else.
“People look for you,” he said quietly. “Be careful.”
Stephen had to bite his lip. This would have been really helpful information eight months ago. It was altogether less helpful now that he was being held in a large federal prison. He asked the witch doctor what the coming years held. The tanned, leathery face of the man before him creased into a deep frown. He shook his head and could offer only vague generalities. The only thing he seemed certain of was that the year 2014 would be a particularly dark one. Though even then, he would not say why.
Stephen said he wanted to know about the future. But as the weeks passed at MDC Brooklyn, he found that he was spending more and more time thinking about the recent past. Instead of fantasizing about escape, he kept returning to that unexpected question posed by the prison warden. Why had he turned to crime when he had other opportunities ahead of him? Had it been the right thing to do? Would he do it again if he had the chance? If reality really is as malleable as he believed, then how come he was eating rice and beans with a witch doctor in a Brooklyn jail? How much good had he actually achieved? How much harm had he done? And to whom?
This shift toward introspection was slow but sure. During the months of solitary confinement, his primary focus had been survival. Free from the distraction of other people and perspectives, he allowed himself to brood over the injustice of it all. His own personal accountability did not figure in his thoughts. Since coming out of solitary, first at Strafford County and now here, he’d met more and more other inmates. They all had their own stories, their own reasons, and their own feelings about whether they had done something wrong. Often, they acknowledged they had. “Many of the prisoners I encountered in America came across as normal, grounded, intelligent, and remorseful,” Stephen explains. “American drug laws meant that what would be a relatively minor offense in the UK could equate to many years in prison in the U.S. It meant many people had lived next-to-normal lives before they came to prison.”
Stephen was befriended by an inmate called Michael. A short, fit man in his late thirties with pale blond hair, he had been handed a nine-year sentence for counterfeiting money and for the supply of amphetamines. Michael read paperback books of philosophy. He followed world events and had a serious-minded, almost teacherly way of talking. The two of them spent hours discussing what was happening in the world around them, the economic catastrophe that, by late December 2008, had unleashed the worst global recession since 1929. As a counterfeiter, Michael knew firsthand just how much value ordinary people placed in the pieces of paper the banks handed them, and he knew that the modern, human desire for more money—at the expense of all else—would never be cured. At this very moment, just across town at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, a con man named Bernie Madoff was in the same brown federal prison uniform as Stephen and Michael. He was waiting to stand trial for orchestrating a Ponzi scheme that prosecutors alleged resulted in investors being defrauded of $65 billion. Michael predicted, correctly, that Madoff would spend the rest of his life behind bars. But, he continued, while jails will continue to fill with ordinary people who have turned to crime in the face of recession and foreclosures, most of those responsible will simply walk away from the crisis they helped to create with multimillion-dollar payouts.
Even Stephen expressed some doubt at this. But it was true. Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld—“the Gorilla of Wall Street”—would amass almost $500 million in compensation during his tenure as head of the bank, a tenure that ended only when the bank itself did. Stephen asked Michael why he’d turned to crime in the first place. “I wanted what was best for my son,” he said.
New Year’s Eve came a week or so later. All the inmates in MDC Brooklyn had been in their cells for hours by the time midnight came, but they cheered and shouted and smacked the bars as they welcomed in 2009. From his dark cell, Stephen put his hands to the narrow window and looked out. Across the water he could see the Manhattan skyline suddenly lit up by a million flashing colors. The last time he’d seen a fireworks display had been years ago, as a little boy on the Sidmouth seafront. He had been with his father and they had walked back home together, through their little seaside town nestled between the sea, cliffs, and countryside. He had gone back to his cramped little bedroom, filled with books and fossils and posters of planets, and fallen asleep in his bed wondering if his mom might be back home the next day.
Standing there, shivering in his prison uniform, watching the Empire State Building turn from red to white to blue, the reality of it all finally seemed to snap into focus. This was not an adventure. He was not Robin Hood. “I just remember thinking…what am I doing here?”
Chapter Twenty
Stephen came back from Istanbul undaunted. He returned to Worcester, attended his lectures, wrote his essays, and passed long days alone walking the countryside, making pencil sketches of hills and rivers and writing paeans to the natural world around him. He continued to develop his vision for the Organisation. While other students competed for the attention and approval of tutors during seminars, Stephen remained almost silent, the same secret half smile Lisa Jackley remembered from their father’s funeral sometimes hovering on his lips.
While others talked, he allowed himself to imagine the stories they would tell of him in the future, of how a hero rose up from nowhere and fought back against the injustices of capitalism. His Robin Hood identity—the “RH” he left scrawled on his stolen banknotes, in his journals, on his bedroom walls, in letters to newspapers—was everything to Stephen. It had been for almost eight months, ever since he’d resolved to take this course of action at Dechen Chöling. Neither the Devon and Cornwall nor the West Mercia police forces were any closer to figuring out who the mysterious bank robber in the wig and sunglasses was; the Dutch authorities had not yet summoned Stephen back to Amsterdam; and, as the weeks passed, it was clear there would be no long-term consequences to the Istanbul airport incident. So like a record needle slipping back into the same scratched groove, Stephen sat at his computer and tried to determine the best way of getting the real gun he needed.
The answer was Vermont. The small New England state had, in 2008, some of the loosest gun laws in the United States. In fact, Stephen discovered that they were practically nonexistent. From the age of sixteen, you could buy scoped sniper rifles, sawed-off shotguns, armor-piercing bullets, assault weapons with no maximum magazine capacity—pretty much whatever you like. All you needed was a valid form of ID. There were no background checks and no waiting periods. It was a very, very easy place to buy a gun.
So Stephen spent £50 on a high-quality fake Vermont state driver’s license, which he sourced from the Internet and which showed his name as Stephen Mason. Continuing to search online, he saw that there was a large gun show scheduled to take place near the state capital of Montpelier on May 16. Here, anyone could show up and buy or sell weapons, new or secondhand. Stephen reasoned it would be even easier to buy a pistol at the gun show because there would be a) less scrutiny, and b) more options if the first vendor he approached wasn’t convinced by his ID. Then he paid for a British Airways flight from London to Boston.
* * *
—
A few months after giving me the bulk of his notepads, journals, and papers, Stephen mails me an envelope. He has found some photocopied diary entries from this trip t
o America and thought they might be interesting. The only thing he asked was that, once I’d read them, would I mind returning them to him? They were a record of his final days of freedom, he said. His last connection with the young man he had been.
* * *
—
The evening before his flight, Stephen sat in Trafalgar Square as the sun began to set over London. He nestled at the base of Nelson’s Column, beside one of the four elevated ornamental lions, overlooking the very fountains where Uncle Noel once caused a scene by paddling a canoe. From up here, he could see the Houses of Parliament and the start of the Mall leading down toward Buckingham Palace. He was happy. Everything was golden, and there was still warmth in the stone beneath him. As the shadow of the column lengthened, he pictured Earth orbiting the Sun, the vastness of space, the mystery of existence. London was heaving, but Stephen felt invisible. He watched as thousands of people flowed and swirled around him, moving in every direction, like strange particles, the true nature of which he knew he would never understand. With a penknife, he spent five minutes carving “RH” into the stone lion’s leg. On his journey to London, he’d written in his diary, and his mind had returned to a possibility he’d entertained since childhood: “On the train here, I reconsidered it….Perhaps I am from another planet.”
The diary entry continued.
Tomorrow—if the pigs don’t pounce—it’s the USA; the US of A, ‘land of opportunity’, centre of so much past changes, most powerful nation on the planet. To Vermont, Green Mountain State, to buy that one item I need and need badly.
He had by now attempted ten robberies. Half of these had ended in failure. He had failed in his effort to force his way into the Lloyds TSB in Exeter. He had failed to cut his way through the metal bars and slip into the Barclays bank in Worcester. He had accidentally ransacked the offices of a children’s charity, had his nerve desert him at the HSBC in Ledbury, and been hounded out of a Britannia credit union by an indignant manager. Even his successes had been failures, because he’d never made it to a safe or the vault or wherever he thought the jackpot would be found. But having a gun would change everything.
The next day, Stephen almost missed his flight, making it on board with just two minutes to spare. Arriving in Boston, he cleared customs and traveled by bus to Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, before taking a taxi to the small, rural town of Barnet. Here, he had arranged to stay at the Blue Skies Guesthouse, a cozy timber building run by a welcoming Buddhist couple with interests in Tibetan art and gardening. About a fifteen-minute walk away there was a Shambhala Buddhist retreat, Karmê Chöling, a sister center to Dechen Chöling, replete with kyudo archery courses, vegetable gardens, and meditation classes. Sitting in his room, on a single bed covered with a bright patchwork quilt, he wrote about what he had seen so far.
What can I say about the USA? So huge—so spacious—so wealthy and Vermont is unbelievably forested, trees that go off over green hills to a woodland horizon. It’s beautiful. I watched a documentary about black bears on the plane, how friendly they can be, and wonder if I will also see them—here in America.
The next morning, Stephen’s whole plan depended on him renting a car and then driving to the scheduled gun show. He traveled to the nearby town of St. Johnsbury, where he used his fake ID to rent a car, a silver Dodge Charger. But he never made it to the gun show. When he woke, he looked out of his bedroom window, and the sun was shining so brightly over the thickly forested hills that he found himself caught in a long, happy reverie. He thought about the black bears he saw on the plane and how fascinating they were, curious and somehow sweet despite their teeth and claws. Suddenly, he felt a very strong urge to try to find some. It was a beautiful day. The gun show wasn’t vital anyway, he told himself. He had already established email contact with a private gun dealer in St. Johnsbury, to have as a backup option. He would pay him a visit later in the day.
“Today was sunny so I went on a black-bear spotting mission,” he wrote that evening.
Drove up the wide roads through St. Johnsbury, where I got some (delicious!) snack food and free maps from the tourist office. The people here are so friendly! Always smiling, greeting and wishing you a ‘nice day’. I drove to a lake with two granite mountains on each side. As I ascended the views were fantastic. Like out of a dream. I walked for about four hours—man I’m unfit!—before returning and heading to St. Johnsbury to ‘complete’ the main reason I’m here—to get a gun. And yet the scenery—the FREEDOM OF TRAVEL—alone is enough reason to be in this beautiful place.
After his hike he drove to the home of a private gun dealer named Steve. “He was overweight and he was in his forties,” says Stephen. “He had a mustache and a balding head. I remember that he had food stains on his clothes. He lived with his mother. This little old lady offering us tea while he was talking about guns.”
The chubby gun dealer glanced at Stephen’s fake ID but nothing more. Stephen explained that he was half-American, half-British. The dealer didn’t seem to care. As his mother fussed around them in her chintzy living room, he asked what he could do for Stephen, who explained that he wanted a Glock 26 automatic pistol. He had done his research and concluded that the compact, reliable Glock 26 was the weapon he needed. The dealer produced a heavy-looking revolver and said that, if Stephen wanted to leave with a gun today, he could buy this. Otherwise, he would have to source the Glock for Stephen, which would take a few days. Stephen’s mind was set on the Glock. He paid the dealer $500, who said that he would be in touch when the gun was ready for collection. Upon exchange of the weapon, the remaining balance of $75 would be paid. They shook hands, and Stephen left.
After Istanbul, Stephen was not going to try to smuggle the gun back to the UK in his luggage. Instead, he planned to parcel up the pistol and ammunition in a box, along with BB guns and children’s toys to serve as camouflage, and then ship it back home under a different name. He knew it was not guaranteed to work—the surest method would be to import a car and hide the gun parts about the vehicle—but it was worth trying. “I subsequently found out that this was a common method of receiving firearms in the UK,” he says. He reflected on all of this at the Blue Skies Guesthouse, on the evening of May 17, 2008.
So far I’ve done really well—got a car with a fake license, almost got a gun—hoping! Seen so much beauty. Freedom flies along with this ship of solitude.
The next day, Sunday, May 18, Stephen made the short drive to Canada. He visited the Coaticook Gorge in Quebec, found a quiet river to bathe in, and marveled at the fact that everything was written in French. On the drive back to Barnet, he wondered whether it might be worth buying a stun gun. It could be a useful accessory. He decided in favor of it. Back at the Blue Skies Guesthouse, he hunched over his diary and reviewed his thoughts and actions.
The gun mission’s still green…haven’t got it yet. Tuesday will post it, with electronic toy, in Canada, separating out the ammo. The idea is to get an electronic toy, strap the gun to the toy or inside it, put a few bullets in the battery compartment, box it up, package it and label it ‘kids toys + paintballing’. It might even be worth getting some paintballing items. Also consider posting stun gun.
The writing then stopped. No more entries followed. The rest of the page—the rest of the book—is blank.
* * *
—
The following morning, Stephen rose early and drove to the Groton State Forest. There, he hiked to the top of Owl’s Head Mountain, a rocky peak rising high above the endless green below. It was an overcast day, but as he broke the tree line and reached the summit, a view revealed itself. Standing on rocks, catching his breath, Stephen looked out and saw nothing but woodland, lakes, and hills, stretching off into the horizon. The sky felt huge above him. As he breathed the cold, mossy air and surveyed the landscape below, an odd sensation overcame him. It was a feeling that this moment was significant in some way. And while the reason was not yet entirely cl
ear, Stephen seemed to understand that it marked some kind of culmination. “It was very strange,” he says, frowning. “On the top of this peak I had this sense that I needed to remember this. That it was the end. Of course, I didn’t have any idea what was going to happen next.”
After eating a packed lunch, Stephen descended Owl’s Head Mountain. He drove to Montpelier, where he found a public library. He wanted to go online and check his upcoming university assignments. He also wanted to search for more gun stores. He had plenty of cash with him, and had decided there would be no harm in buying another pistol, just as a backup option. He found that in the nearby town of Waterbury, there was a large and reputable store called Parro’s Gun Shop and Police Supplies. He made a note of the address and left the library. By now, it was raining heavily. He started his rental car, flicked on the wipers, and headed north toward Waterbury.
The rain was now coming down in torrents, reverberating against the roof of his Dodge like a mad drumroll. He knew that the chubby private gun dealer had believed his story about being a dual national because he had wanted to make the sale. At a proper gun store, though, he told himself that he couldn’t show up speaking like someone from England. Even if they accepted his dual national story, they would most likely ask for additional documentary evidence that Stephen did not have. So as he cruised toward his destination, Stephen practiced speaking in an American accent.
“Got any Glocks?” he said to nobody, affecting a slow, steady, confident drawl.