Sunny Wells jogged at an even pace around the steel mesh fence, topped with barbed wire.
The grass was slick and the air dense with humidity. Dark clouds hung overhead and a guard walked the opposite way with a rifle strapped to his back. He smoked the end of a cigarette and nodded at Wells. Wells nodded back, seeing no reason not to be friendly. Friendly was how you got a better deal for yourself. Little things like his dark blue joggers and worn white running shoes pulled out of storage. A chocolate bar. A new book to read once a week. And an extra hour of fresh air and exercise every day.
Ying Zheng was a hellhole. But even a hellhole could be made more homely. And at least the torture was over. The last of the lashes had healed into scars. The prison guards had got used to a black man in their midst. And the worst of the inmates had come to accept that attacks on him were detrimental to their health. The way Wells saw it, he had to make the best he could of the situation. He knew the rules. There would be no trial. No appeal. No help from his government or any admission that he ever existed.
Wells could have refused the operation in China. Could have chosen not to join the navy. Done something else with his life other than transition into British intelligence. But he hadn’t. And now here he was, in one of China’s most secure and violent prisons.
For life.
And when life in Ying Zheng got him down, Wells went running.
He glanced at the surveillance cameras. Even on his twentieth lap of the perimeter, they continued to track his movements. It was a spy’s duty to try and escape. Yet such thoughts had left his mind long ago. On top of catering to drug lords, psychopaths and terrorists, Ying Zheng was built to hold men like him.
The guards were elite-trained. The entire prison was locked down 24/7 and surveillance was everywhere, including the cells. And the location was remote, nestled at the base of the Tianjin mountains.
That wouldn’t be such a problem for Wells, except for the GPS tag strapped to his ankle. Even with a plan to escape the walls and wire of the prison complex, he wouldn’t make it a mile before being hunted down. So he ran, did push-ups, lifted weights – anything to occupy the caged tiger within him.
Wells stopped at the far end of the recreation ground. He paused to take in the scenery. A winding road disappeared into a vast expanse of tea plantations rising high up the mountains. From far down that road came a small, black shape. It grew into a car. Long, sleek and spotless with tinted windows. A pair of small Chinese flags fluttered in the breeze – a diplomat’s car.
Wells watched the limousine roll by, fifty yards away on the other side of the fence. The motor on the steel barrier churned as the gate slid open. The car glided through the checkpoint behind the gate, a guard lifting the barrier. It disappeared from sight, into the vast, hi-tech complex.
Wells was curious. No one ever came out here. Certainly not a diplomat. Perhaps they were opening another new wing, he thought, as he continued his run.
After completing another three laps of the perimeter, Wells noticed one of the few guards he wasn’t acquainted with striding across the grass. The guard marched to a stop, a stern look on his face. ‘Seven-Two-Nine-Six,’ he barked.
Wells came to a stop and walked towards the guard. ‘Please,’ he joked. ‘Call me Seven-Two.’
Isobel Lim breathed in deep for six seconds. Held it for six more. Breathed out for six. And repeated the sequence.
She forgot all about her body. All about her tiny, solitary underground cell. All about the armed guards rotating in four-hour shifts outside her cell door, the tag on her ankle and the man who had put her there.
Instead, Lim took her daily trip to her childhood. The rural fishing village on Shengshan Island, to the east of Zhejiang province. She rode the rusting bicycle her father had salvaged and fixed up for her. Lim and her younger brother would fight like tigers over it, despite it being too big for either of them. But right now it was her turn. She rode it with glee through giant brown puddles, delighting in the cool spray of late-afternoon rain on her bare legs and feet. Lim even felt the burn in her thighs as she struggled up the hill. And every bone-rattling bump as she descended down uneven stone steps to the hillside village.
The view of the bay was breathtaking. She had seldom appreciated it as a child. Yet the memory of tropical evergreen clifftops and a sapphire-blue bay filled her heart at once with song and sadness.
Lim rang the bicycle bell and breathed in the smell of lit barbecues as the fishermen gathered to cook the sea bream they hadn’t sold at the local market. As a different version of herself, in a different time, Lim felt at peace. Yet the spell was soon broken, and she had to return to reality once again.
A loud buzzer was to blame, almost shaking her off balance. Lim heard the cell door unlock. Her eyes snapped open, bent over double in a yoga pose with her feet wide apart, hands gripping her ankles and head upside down. She looked between her own splayed legs as several pairs of boots trooped into her cell.
Lim thought it strange. It wasn’t mealtime – or wash time, when she would be escorted by an armed guard to shower alone.
Lim pushed off the floor with her palms and stood up.
Eddie, the grizzled lead guard, was also her personal supervisor. ‘You know what to do,’ he said to her, in his deep cockney accent.
Lim assumed the position, face down on the cold, hard floor. She clasped her hands behind her head. As Eddie applied the cuffs to her wrists, a small Chinese man in a grey suit and blue tie entered the cell. He had a full head of thick white hair and a pair of slender-framed spectacles.
Apart from the suit, he reminded her of her grandfather in the way he waddled with short, shuffling steps, his arms pinned to his sides. It made her smile to think of her grandfather’s walk. They called him Grandfather Penguin. But she kept the smile inside. If the guards caught even a glimpse of humanity, they’d strip it away from you.
The Chinese visitor walked around Lim. One of the guards carried a chair and set it down in front of her. The old man sat down on the chair with a tired groan. She strained to look up and saw a document in his wrinkled hands, along with a dark-blue crayon.
Lim couldn’t kill anyone with a crayon.
Yuri Baptiste blew a slow sigh of smoke through the ventilation holes of his narrow cell window.
He wasn’t allowed to smoke in his cell, or anywhere else in the block. Yet Baptiste had worked out the optimal time when no one was around to smell it. And he knew how to hide things. So a pack of smokes was easy.
With cigarette between fingers, Baptiste turned the page on his tattered, sun-bleached copy of The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus.
From his cell window, he had the perfect view of the front end of the prison complex, including the surrounding roads. The warden had chosen the cell especially for Baptiste. All so an imposter like him could see exactly what freedom looked, smelled and sounded like. Warden Moreau had assumed it would be torture for Baptiste. But putting him in a cell with any kind of view was a mistake on the warden’s part. Never mind allowing him to mix with the other inmates – to do laundry, deliver library books, attend woodwork classes.
It hadn’t taken Baptiste long to work out the weak spots in the prison system. He’d memorised the security routines, delivery times – and now the movements of the guards walking the walls. They would never have been so lax back in Russia.
Baptiste made a small note at the top of the page with a thumb-sized pencil he’d stolen from the woodwork class. As the new shift assumed their positions on the walls, Baptiste took another drag on the cigarette.
Yet, contrary to routine, he heard the key turn in the door to his cell. Baptiste flicked the cigarette out of the window and waved a cloud of smoke out with it. He hopped off his bed, pulled a loose brick out of the wall and slid the book inside.
Baptiste replaced the brick a fraction before a pair of guards appeared in the doorway. With them stood Moreau, a hard-faced imbecile with an old scar above his lip. He dressed like a man from the 1950s and wore his jet-black hair slicked back over his head, obviously dyed. The warden glared at Baptiste as if he’d slept with his wife. Or maybe the man’s only daughter – Baptiste had seen the warden’s wife.
‘To what do I owe this pleasure?’ Baptiste asked with a smile.
Moreau spoke through clenched teeth, like a dog growling over a bone. ‘It’s your lucky day, you piece of Russian shit.’
It was mac and cheese again. A big, stodgy brick of the stuff slapped onto the black plastic meal tray of Maria Rios.
She moved along the line and walked the lonely walk across the canteen full of women in orange jumpsuits. Rios took the slurs, the snarls and a gloop of spit on her tray. Yet she kept her head down and took a seat alone on the end of the bench in the far corner of the canteen.
Rios scooped up a glob of the yellow macaroni gunk and looked it over. What she wouldn’t have given for a nice tamale and a cold beer. With a despairing sigh, Rios put the fork in her mouth and forced herself to chew.
On the next bench, she noticed a pair of inmates sat staring. One was a wiry meth-head with a dead rat for a ponytail and a mouth missing most of its teeth. She had a swastika tattoo on her neck and ran a thumb across her throat. ‘Fucking spick whore,’ the bitch said, as her friend, a shaven-headed woman with a bodybuilder’s arms blew her a kiss.
Rios looked away and back to her meal. She wondered if the women catcalling her knew who she was. Were they simply afraid of her? Or did they just hate Mexicans? Whatever their problem, Rios was comfortable being the outsider. At school, in the army, even her own family. So she continued eating, one tasteless mouthful at a time. Yet the two women continued to bait her. Rios looked over to a nearby guard. He had a face red from the sun and a belly that spilled over his utility belt. The guy stared into space, choosing not to notice. Typical.
She was only six months into her sentence at Aliceville – triple life. And by the looks of them, many of the women in the canteen were lifers too.
The more Rios thought about it, the more it left her with little option. Today was as good a day as any. So she put down her spoon, swallowed her food and took a sip of water. She dabbed a paper napkin to her lips, shifted off the edge of the bench and walked towards the two women, squeezing her fists tight.
Prison wisdom said to find the biggest, baddest bitch in the joint and hit her as hard as you could. But Rios knew better. She made as if to pass by behind the toothless neo-Nazi. At the last second, she grabbed the woman’s greasy ponytail and snapped her head right back. Before the woman could blink, Rios drove a fist into her face, splitting her nose apart. The canteen erupted into frenzy of shouts, screams and trays banging against tables.
The methhead’s steroid-fuelled friend came scrambling over the bench. Rios body-swerved, sending the woman crashing to the floor. As the guards ran to intervene, Rios grabbed her arm and twisted until she screamed. She heard the arm break, then threw a barrage of punches in the woman’s face, each one harder than the last.
She stepped off as the guards descended, the woman writhing on the floor, her meth-head friend a bloody mess with her head in her macaroni. As Rios prepared for contact, the first baton came swinging. Yet, out of nowhere, a strong hand grabbed the guard’s wrist. It belonged to a man with short dark hair and dressed like a spook. He stepped in front of Rios to shield her. The guard stopped in his tracks, the canteen alive with noise. The man was young and good-looking. He took out a piece of paper and held it out in front of him. ‘I’m Michael Harrow, DOJ. She’s being transferred.’
‘The fuck she is,’ the guard said, snatching the document and staring at it in disbelief.
‘That’s your warden’s signature at the bottom,’ Harrow said.
Rios looked down at her right hand. Swelling up fast. Hurting like a bitch.
As the screaming and shouting continued, the man led her out of the canteen, a stiff grip on her arm.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked, fighting to free herself.
‘You want to get out of this cesspool?’ her saviour replied.
Rios cradled her injured hand. ‘What do you think?’
‘Then keep walking,’ said the man.
Russell Pope brought the small bowl of rice close to his mouth. What he would have given for some real prison food. Porridge. Meatloaf. Macaroni cheese.
But today it was sheep’s balls. He examined the offending articles. Smooth and white, like alien eggs plonked on top of the rice. Pope picked one up and took a tentative bite. ‘Mm, it’s got an interesting…’ Pope said, retching, ‘texture.’
He spat the first testicle on the sawdust floor and heard a booming laugh to his left. His cellmate, Ahmed, was six-five and had four bellies. A mess of black hair and a jungle for a beard. Pope was the second biggest guy in the small, ramshackle prison. He wondered if they’d put the two of them together so they’d cancel each other out. Ahmed creased over laughing, cross-legged against the wall.
‘Keep laughing, you tub of lard,’ Pope said in his broad Australian accent. He patted his ever-shrinking waistline. ‘When you’re dying of a heart attack, I’ll be rocking an awesome set of abs.’
That was an optimistic way of looking at malnutrition. Pope had lost ten kilos during his spell behind bars. Granted, he’d entered the prison with a spare tyre to lose. But now it was getting worrying.
No stranger to the Middle Eastern climate, he’d got used to the dry desert heat. What his body hadn’t adapted to was the prison food: the taste, the smell or the dreaded trots. He wondered if this was how the sadistic scumbags in charge dealt with overcrowding. They starved you to death and threw your ragged bones to the vultures. With Ahmed, they’d be in for one hell of a wait.
Pope pushed the second testicle aside and grabbed a clump of rice in his fingers. He stuffed the rice in his mouth and chewed. It was like eating week-old rat shit. He swallowed the undercooked rice and picked up some more. Paused as he heard the familiar rattle of a baton over cell bars.
Through the cell bars, four guards marched towards the cell in their pale-green uniforms and boots that left a print. Ahmed stopped laughing. He knew what it meant. They both did.
‘Is it that time again already?’ Pope said over his bowl of rice.
The cell door swung open with a creak and a bang. The guards yelled at Pope and Ahmed not to try anything. One false move and they’d beat the living shit out of them. Pope understood every word of Arabic, though he liked to pretend he didn’t. The guards liked to beat and electrocute him.
Pope flung his bowl aside, jumped to his dirty, bare feet and sprayed them with half-chewed rice through his teeth. As the guards ran at him, he met them halfway, flooring the first man with a right hook. He got another in the guts with a left before the batons rained down. But not enough to subdue him. So they turned to their weapons of choice, their electric batons. A shock to the ribs and he dropped to a knee, watching Ahmed stuff his face with discarded sheep’s balls.
‘Bloody horrible,’ Pope gurned, as he was hauled to his feet.
The guards wrestled and yelled and beat him some more until they had him under control.
‘Where the fuck are you taking me?’ Pope shouted as they dragged him out of the cell.
‘Shut it,’ replied one of the guards with a baton strike to the small of his back.
Pope continued to struggle, but the four guards ran him through the prison and out through a rear door, into the open.
The sun was blinding, the heat far worse than the shade of the cell. The guards bundled Pope out through a prison wall and through a wire fence. Beyond the perimeter, across a stretch of sand, waited a white van with a sliding door wide open. A driver lazed behind the wheel smoking a cigarette. Another man in the back of the van waited with an AK-47.
Pope kept fighting. ‘What the fuck is this?’
The guards threatened to shoot him in the head. They forced him into the van and wrestled him to the floor. The man in the back trained his AK-47 on Pope as the guards placed a black hood over his head. They pulled the drawstring tight around his neck and cuffed his ankles.
He heard the door of the van slide shut. A couple of thumps on the side. The engine revved and the van lurched away. Pope wondered what hole in the desert they were taking him to. They’d clearly got bored of starving him and decided to go straight for a good old-fashioned execution.
Suddenly, sharing a cell with Ahmed didn’t seem so bad.
‘Move and I kill you,’ the man with the AK said.