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.