The Black Knight (6 page)

Byron stepped out of the air conditioned vehicle and into the hot sunshine, already flaring off the asphalt as the heat began to rise. He walked across to the block entrance, where the first of many security gates opened and then closed behind him as he walked through. Pinned between two steels gates, he was searched thoroughly by prison security teams. The guards checked his letter of admission in his pocket, his file and his pockets before waving him through to a reception area where he was required to leave his cell phone, wallet and other personal belongings.

An alarm sounded that made Byron flinch as the next set of steel gates rumbled open and he walked slowly forward, hating every footstep as he eased into the darkened maw of a sally port that led into the prison’s interior.

‘This way, Doctor Thomas.’

A sergeant, his khakis perfectly pressed, his hair immaculately combed, gestured for Byron to follow him as they walked through a cool corridor that descended beneath the block walls and led to more security gates. Each was governed by operators in remote stations and covered by security cameras – there were no keys, no means for a prisoner to escape even if they did get somehow manage to out of their cell.

They passed through the gates, and Byron saw an X-Ray machine sunk into a revetment in the wall that scanned him as they moved by. No alarm was emitted and Byron continued under the sergeant’s guidance until they emerged into the cell block proper.

Unlike most prisons, Florence did not have any communal areas for prisoners to mingle, for they all spent their days on permanent lockdown. Byron had heard that even exercise time, a single hour per day, was strictly organized so that no prisoner ever crossed paths with another. Complete and utter solitude was the facility’s answer to the incomparable brutality of its inmates - they could harm nobody if they never encountered a soul.

Byron was led through the pristine, silent block. Most normal prisons were never, ever silent, filled with complaining, cursing cons and stressed correctional officers, the stench of urine and faeces staining the air. But here it was almost peaceful, and Byron felt himself relax somewhat as he walked alongside the sergeant toward an austere interview room located on the south side of the block.

The sergeant held the door open for Byron and he walked in to see a small table, steel rings bolted into its surface and poured concrete pillars for seats on either side, more steel rings in the floor either side of the seats. The walls were likewise built from poured concrete, featureless and bare, the room utterly empty and even the table bolted into the floor.

‘There are no cameras in here due to the need for absolute security,’ the sergeant informed him. ‘In the past, patients have been known to punch out the lenses and use the glass as a weapon. I’ll have the patient brought through. He will be secured to the table by both wrist and ankle restraints and two guards will be right outside the door, which will be left partially open throughout the meeting. If you have any issues, or you fear in any way that the encounter is becoming dangerous or the patient agitated, you merely have to call the guard and they will intervene instantly. Do you have any questions?’

Byron smiled up at the guard and shook his head.

‘No, thank you. Please do bring the patient through.’

The sergeant turned with military efficiency and marched off down the corridor.

Byron waited a moment and then he slipped from the corner of his mouth a slim, silvery object that he concealed in one hand. Then, he made sure than the envelope in his pocket was open and ready. Finally, he took a deep breath and waited.

For the first time in his life, Byron Thomas prepared to commit treason.

***

VII

The dawn light broke through the four inch vertical window slot, a brilliant halo of light against a perfect blue sky. The light washed across the face of Aaron James Mitchell as he lay on the concrete bed in his cell and thought of the world outside.

Aaron spent twenty three hours a day locked inside his cell and was escorted by a minimum of three officers for his seven hours’ of private recreation per week. The cell had a desk, a stool and a bed, all of which were forged entirely from poured concrete, as well as a latrine that shut off if blocked. A shower ran on a timer to prevent flooding, as did a sink lacking a potentially dangerous faucet. A polished steel mirror was bolted to the wall, the cell illuminated with an electric light that could only be shut off remotely. In addition, the cell was soundproofed to prevent Aaron from communicating with other inmates via Morse code or by any other means.

It was going to be tough to escape from the facility, and something of a shame: he had enjoyed the peace, solitude and simplicity.

Aaron hauled himself off the narrow bed and padded to the window. Four feet tall and yet only four inches wide, the narrow window was designed to prevent inmates from knowing their specific location within the complex because they could see only the sky and roof through them, making it virtually impossible to plan an escape. Inmates exercised in a concrete pit resembling an empty swimming pool, also designed to prevent them from knowing their location within the facility. The pit was only large enough for a prisoner to walk ten steps in a straight line or thirty in a circle. Telecommunication with the outside world was forbidden. The prison contained a plethora of motion detectors and cameras and no less than fourteen hundred remote-controlled steel doors. Guards in the prison’s control center monitored inmates twenty four hours a day and could press a “panic button” that instantly closed every door in the facility should an escape attempt be suspected. Pressure pads and twelve-foot-tall razor wire fences surrounded the perimeter, which was patrolled by heavily armed guards with silent attack dogs. In extreme cases of inmate misbehavior, the center of the prison housed an area known as “The Black Hole”, which could hold some one hundred fifty prisoners in completely darkened and fully soundproofed cells.

Aaron looked out of the window at the thin patch of sky, his mind turning in the silence. The facility’s location in Colorado gave Mitchell the ability to estimate where his cell was located within the complex due to the light from the rising sun to the east. The lighter edges of cumulus clouds drifting right to left across the blue told Mitchell that he was looking south, as the prevailing winds in the state were from the west. Moreover, ranges of hills to the east of the facility had a tendency to cause warm updrafts of air to disperse clouds during the late morning, further informing Aaron of his location. The final evidence however was a pair of red-tailed hawks he had observed flying back and forth across the sky above the prison. Carrying prey and twigs only one way and not the other, he knew that they were nesting somewhere nearby, and by good fortune he had been able to ascertain that their swooping climbs away toward the south east were aimed at the roof of one of the six watch towers surrounding the facility. A simple mental picture of the facility, combined with all of the evidence, yielded a cell on the southernmost tip of the prison.

Aaron straightened his posture, forced himself not to slouch in defeat as he washed in the tiny sink and relieved himself in the latrine before taking a shower. There was little rush as the strictly coordinated routine of normal prisons was not a feature in a maximum security unit – he would not normally be allowed out of his cell until after lunch, and then only for an hour of strictly supervised exercise. He wouldn’t be making that appointment, as he would be long gone by then.

Mitchell had already memorized his location within the state of Colorado, and of the nearby towns he would be required to traverse in order to reach his desired refuge. From Florence he would travel to Penrose, and from there further north through Beaver Creek state park until he could reach the slopes of Cheyenne Mountain, just south of Colorado Springs. It was an irony not lost upon Mitchell that the main route through the state park was named the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial Highway.

Aaron dressed and waited patiently for the guards to hand-serve a breakfast of powdered eggs and sauce through a shutter on his cell’s steel door. Then, Aaron sat cross-legged on his bed and waited in absolute silence as he calmed his mind and emptied his body of the silent rage that burned within. His time would come in just a few hours, when he was due to meet with his counsellor.

The silence of minutes turned to hours, Aaron motionless on the bed and in a deep state of meditation. His heartbeat slowed gradually until his mind went into a state of deep relaxation, all sense of time vanished as he explored the deepest neural tracts of his memory, relived moments from his past both distant and recent with complete lucidity. Some haunted him, his long dead parents talking to him it seemed from beyond the grave, but their presence also comforted him and immunized against the confines of the cell surrounding his physical body. Other memories stoked the flame of anger inside him, especially those of Victor Wilms and the voices of Majestic Twelve, they who had used him for thirty years and then abandoned him to die here alone and forgotten.

His rage seemed to ring like a claxon in his mind, and then he realized that the sound was that of his cell door opening. Aaron drifted from the comforting realm of his dreams back to full consciousness and slowly got to his feet. There were no words, only the opening of a small shutter in the steel door at waist height. Aaron walked across to the shutter, turned his back to it and placed his hands behind his back.

The gloved hands of a correctional officer closed a set of cuffs around his thick wrists, and then Aaron stepped forward as the steel door was unlocked and then opened before him to reveal two burly officers.

‘Keep your back turned,’ one of them snapped, as if Aaron needed telling, his back to the open door.

Aaron felt more restraints locked into place around his ankles, and then he was turned around by one of the guards.

‘Time for your counsel meeting.’

Aaron allowed himself to be guided out of his cell and turned to walk down the featureless, silent corridors. The sound-proofing of the cells deadened all noise, unlike the rowdy halls of other prisons, and there was no stench of urine and sweat that stained penitentiaries across the United States. Aaron noted that every other cell in the block was sealed, and with no windows there was no way to tell who else was incarcerated within.

The two guards led him down toward the exercise area, but instead of continuing on they turned down a side corridor and led him toward an interview room located on the southern-most tip of the building. The door to the room was open, and as Aaron was led inside he came face to face with his counsellor.

Byron Thomas, a graduate of Harvard and regular visitor to Aaron since his incarceration, stood from his seat and waited as Aaron was sat in a steel chair bolted to the floor. His manacles were fastened to steel rings in the floor and on the table before the guards withdrew, pushing the door to the interview room close to the jam for privacy but never shutting it completely.

‘Good to see you again, Aaron,’ Byron said in a deep, melodious tone.

Aaron nodded in silence. Byron was, like Aaron, an African American with an impressive physique, six foot four and with broad shoulders. That one could be a former Special Forces soldier and Vietnam veteran, and the other the inhabitant of dusty libraries and law schools seemed impossible to Aaron, but there it was. The academic and the killer, occupying the same room and yet worlds apart.

Precisely as planned.

‘You have progressed well over the past few weeks, Aaron,’ Byron said as he opened a file and then began to slip out of his jacket.

‘It’s peaceful here,’ Aaron replied. ‘I wonder why inmates fear it so much. The solitude is wonderful.’

‘Most men are not you, Aaron,’ Byron said as he began undoing his tie and pulled a slim, silver object from his pocket that he slid across the table to Aaron’s fingers. ‘People mostly do not naturally enjoy being alone.’

‘Fools,’ Aaron replied as he picked up the sliver of metal and turned it expertly in his hands, slipping it into the locking mechanism of the manacles at his wrists and deftly unlocking them. ‘They leech upon the attention of others.’

‘Leech,’ Byron echoed. ‘That’s a strong word, Aaron. Do you really despise other human beings so much?’

‘Give me a reason not to.’

Byron quietly slid out of his pants as opposite him Aaron silently unlocked his ankle restraints and stood, removing his gray prison slacks as he moved around the table. Byron walked around to the opposite side and sat down.

‘Love, compassion, generosity,’ he said.

‘Hate, greed, apathy…,’ Aaron replied, slightly adjusting his voice as he spoke and began putting on Byron’s shirt, pants and jacket.

‘… fear, shame, rage,’ Byron continued smoothly as he slid into the prison slacks and began fitting the manacles about his ankles. ‘I don’t care anymore. None of it matters.’

‘Everything matters,’ Aaron said. ‘You just have to begin to care about yourself enough to care about the world outside, the people in it.’

Byrson’s voice darkened, more gravelly now.

‘What the hell for? I’m inside for the rest of my life several times over. You think anybody out there cares a damn about me? You think I give a damn about them?’

‘And yet you’re progressing well inside this facility,’ Aaron said as he reached into the pocket of Byron’s jacket and removed a small envelope. Inside, beneath the letter it contained, was a fine dusting of gray powder. Aaron dipped his fingers into it and smoothed the powder across his temples, dusting his hair with the soft gray ash. ‘Perhaps, with time, you will find yourself moved to less demanding surroundings.’

Byron licked his fingers and smoothed his own temples down, smearing away the powder in his own hair before he reached down and placed his hands inside the manacles on the table top. Aaron slipped the slim glasses on as he reached down and quietly clicked the manacles closed around Byron’s wrists.