Hell and Gone

27

If you go down into the darkness, you must expect it to leave traces on you coming up. If you do come up.

—Derek Raymond, The Hidden Files

A SHORT FLIGHT of steps led down to a skinny hallway, which in turn led to a narrow spiral staircase. Hardie made his way through the hallway in the dark, using the cane for balance. The stale air reeked of something wet and dead and ancient. He was loath to touch anything. Even walking through the passageway in bare feet was disgusting enough.

Then he slammed into the staircase, and he began climbing.

The metal stairs were caked with years of dust and grime and rust. Hardie tried not to think of what he was crunching underfoot. He kept climbing. After a while his heart began to pump wildly, warning him to slow down, take it easy. Hardie would not slow down or take it easy, because he didn’t want to stop and realize that he couldn’t move any farther. And then he’d die here, inside the stairway between Hell and whatever was Up There. So no. No stopping. Keep going. He even thought it seemed like they knew Hardie was ascending, so they had a construction crew working like crazy up top, adding four new flights of stairs for every single flight Hardie cleared. He didn’t care. He kept going…

* * *

And then, the final flight, and a steel door, which Hardie expected to be locked with a dead bolt, possibly even professionally welded shut. It wasn’t. The knob was one of those that turns from the inside, no matter what, even if it’s locked from the outside. The steel door opened up into…

Oh, God.

Another prison?

More cages and bars and walkways and staircases. The only difference was that this prison allowed sunlight to pour through dirty windows. Hardie hadn’t seen light in so long it hurt his eyes.

This prison was also completely deserted, as if the Rapture had taken place while he was underground. Down a hallway of flaking paint, empty cells, dirty floors—nothing. Nobody. Hardie pushed his way through a set of doors. And another empty room. A mess hall, from the looks of the galley kitchen and scuffed-up tile floors, where tables and chairs used to be. Where was he? Why was no one up here?

Another set of doors, another hallway, and finally, within a steel cage, a room with a long table. Lined up on the table were rows of shoes, men’s, all sizes—all of them straight out of the last century. Hardie walked over to the cage door and pulled on the handle. It opened.

Down the hall—murmuring. Hardie panicked. Maybe it was a good thing he’d been alone. Perhaps he’d wandered into the closed wing of a working prison. And once these new guards saw him, he’d be back in the same position. Or worse. There was a push-bar door on the left, leading outside. Should he?

The murmuring grew louder; someone laughed.

Hardie slammed through the door.

The sounds, the sun, the noise—all of it disorienting.

There were people everywhere. Not in uniforms of any kind, but in everyday street clothes. It was sunny out. No, not quite sunny. Just bright, somehow, even beneath a vast, gloomy sky. A cold wind sliced right through him. People were everywhere. That was the confusing thing. Holding bottles of water, laughing, smiling, taking pictures, despite the fact that this looked very much like the grounds of a prison. Barbed wire. Hardie made his way down a steep wide concrete path trying to understand where the hell he was. There was a sign mounted on a concrete wall. The wall had blue-and-tan streaks on it from faded paint jobs over the years. On the wall above the sign were thin red letters proclaiming:

INDIANS

WELCOME

And the sign itself:

UNITED STATES

PENITENTIARY

ALCATRAZ ISLAND AREA 12 ACRES

1½ MILES TO TRANSPORT DOCK

ONLY GOVERNMENT BOATS PERMITTED

OTHERS MUST KEEP OFF 200 YARDS

NO ONE ALLOWED ASHORE

WITHOUT A PASS

Fuck me, Hardie thought. Oh, fuck me fucking stupid.

The most secure secret prison in the world, site number 7734, was located far beneath the world’s most notorious inescapable prison…which was now a tourist attraction.

They—whoever they were—had a sick, sick sense of humor.

He couldn’t wander around like this, wearing nothing but a jacket and trousers. He ducked back into the building, went to the shoe room, and selected a pair of black brogans in his size. No socks, but Hardie didn’t care. Felt good to have something on his feet again.

The murmuring, it turned out, came from one of the gift shops. Hardie buttoned up his coat, hoping no one would notice his bare chest, then eased into the shop. Everybody was busy looking at souvenir rocks, calendars, CDs, comic books. Hardie saw a stack of black T-shirts, sizes S to XXXL. He took an XL, rolled it up tight, moved behind a bookcase, and slid it into his trouser pocket. Stealing from a prison gift shop; this was a new low, even for him. He made it out of the shop without any alarms going off, then found a quiet corner. Only after he put on the T-shirt did he realize what he’d selected: ALCATRAZ SWIM TEAM.

He buttoned up, looked for a men’s room.

Found one. Straight out of the 1920s, fixtures and everything, but kept tidy for visitors. New soap, new paper-towel dispenser, new signage.

And a large clean mirror, hanging over a row of sinks.

Hardie put his palms on the cold ceramic tile under the mirror and looked at himself.

You.

You look familiar.

But you’re not me.

You kind of remind me of…my dad.

No; not exactly my father. My father wouldn’t have let himself go like that.

But old like my father.

Weary like him.

Look at you.

Unruly hair, grown out from a buzz cut. Reddened eyes, dry lips, the skin looking like it had been shrink-wrapped to his skull.

Hardie reached out and touched the glass, on the off chance that it wasn’t a real mirror. Maybe it was a carnival’s trick mirror, installed here to amuse the tourists. Cold, hard glass beneath his fingers. Cold, hard skull beneath his skin.

Hardie had no idea how long he’d been out, how much time the memory shot had taken away, or even how long he’d spent down in that prison. But surely it couldn’t have been long enough to do this to him.

“How are you doing, handsome?” he said softly.

Hardie had three names, thanks to Bobby Marchione:

Doyle.

Gedney.

Abrams.

Hardie would have to pay them a visit to discuss his recent employment. Not alone; he needed Deke at his side. That’s what he should do first. Call Deke, tell him that he was alive, that the crazy beautiful missing-persons expert he’d hired had completed the job after all. And, more important, Deke needed to send a small army of feds to raid that damned place, rescue the sorry bastards trapped down there before—the first shot in the larger war.

Hardie looked down at his ripped, dirty, bloodied suit. He walked over and caught his reflection in the glass of a tourist information booth. He looked like a crazy homeless man who’d somehow managed to camp out on the island. He had no ID. He probably stank, too, although it was hard to tell, thanks to the relentless odor of mildew and cold rock in his nasal cavity. So it would probably be a little tricky, introducing himself to some poor tourist and asking to borrow his cell.

Instead, Hardie wandered into a crowd until he found one to steal.

Not a proud moment, but too bad. He saw a black-onyx slab sticking out of the top of a blue leather Coach purse. Hardie figured the woman could afford to replace it easily enough. He’d make it up to her later. Send her flowers.

The snatch was easy; just a bump then a lift. He slid the phone into his trouser pocket and went off to the holding area, where people sat on dark gray metal benches waiting for the next ferry back to San Francisco. Tourists cleared a spot for him as he approached.

Hardie pulled the phone out of his pocket and tried to look for the On button.

He couldn’t find it.

What kind of phone was this, anyway?

He didn’t recognize the brand name, nor did he see any buttons that made rational sense. Come on. Had Hardie been locked up for so long that they went and changed all the cell phones already?

At long last his trembling fingers tripped something and the screen lit up. A green bar appeared on the screen, with a tiny lock icon at the end of it. Hardie touched the lock. The phone gave off a small annoyed shudder; the screen bounced. But nothing unlocked. Come on, already. Why did he have to steal the phone of a paranoid who locks it? There was no way to enter a PIN or anything. Hardie jabbed a thumb at the screen. A tiny shudder; a screen bounce; nothing else. The irony was not lost on him. He’d just managed to escape a super-secret inescapable prison facility; now he was having trouble getting past the pixelated image of a lock on a goddamned cell phone.

There was a teenage girl sitting on the bench. Hardie looked at her, cleared his throat.

“Uh, my phone is locked. You know how to unlock it, by chance?”

The girl’s eyes crawled over in Hardie’s vague direction, assessed him in a second, then returned to their original position. Thin white wires hung down from her ears.

“Don’t worry about it,” Hardie said. “I’ll figure it out.”

After a few more stabs and shudders, Hardie started sliding his fingers around the screen, as though he were trying to massage it to life. The green bar moved! But then the lock appeared again. He slid the bar and held it open, wondering if that would do the trick. No. The lock reappeared. Someday he was going to laugh about this. Not now, but someday. Maybe. Sitting in Deke’s backyard, watching him grill. So there was this one time I escaped from a secret prison but I couldn’t call for help because…get this…the green bar wouldn’t stay open! Isn’t that a scream!

At long last he figured it out: you had to slide the bar over, then linger for a second until the phone unlocked. There. Done. But now came a new problem: where were the numbers on the phone? After some more faffing about, Hardie’s thumb found a handset icon, and when he touched it a nine-digit keypad popped up on the screen.

The main number came back to him almost instantly. Hardie listened to the automated welcome message, then thumbed the zero and asked the operator to transfer him to Agent Deacon Clark’s office.

“I’m sorry, he’s no longer with the agency. Can I direct your call to someone else in the agency?”

“What? No…Where did he go?”

“Let me direct your call to another agent.”

“Hang on…”

Hardie’s mind went cold and panicked. If Deke was no longer with the FBI, did that mean that Kendra and Charlie, Jr., no longer had FBI protection? He tried to think of the names of Deke’s colleagues and came up with one.

“Can you transfer me to Agent Jim Glackin?”

“I’m sorry, he’s no longer with the agency. Let me direct you to—”

Hardie interrupted. “Who’s in charge of the joint FBI–Philly PD task force?”

“Transferring you now.”

An agent whose name he didn’t recognize—some Agent Wilkowski—told him that he wasn’t available, but if he would leave his name and number, he’d get right back to him, or he could e-mail him at…

No, no e-mail.

God, Kendra and Charlie…

Beep.

“I’m calling for Agent Deke Clark, and it’s extremely important I reach him right away. My name is Charlie Hardie. I used to work with your task force a couple of years ago. If you can have Deke call me back immediately, I’d…”

The phone was stolen; he didn’t know what number to leave. But this was the FBI. He probably wouldn’t have to. The number would pop up on caller ID instantly.

“Just have Deke call me immediately.”

Hardie ended the call, slid the phone back into his pocket, and looked out onto the gloomy bay. The ferryboat was approaching. His journey back across the River Styx. He felt his heart racing. Too much sensory detail to absorb. Too many people holding too many things. Phones and cameralike gadgets he didn’t recognize. Designer names that sounded like parodies, the kind they’d run in Mad magazine. That’s what you get when you put yourself in exile for a few years, he supposed, then ended up cooling your heels in a secret prison.

He wandered over to the entrance to the ferry walkway, wondering how he was going to pull off this little scam. He hadn’t come here as a tourist; he had no ticket. Somehow he’d have to slip back onto that boat.

He glanced at the information on the board, announcing new events and tours at Alcatraz for the coming season. Glimpsed the dates idly, wondering what month it was.

According to the coming-events flyer, it was almost August. Typical cold San Francisco summer weather.

But then he happened upon the year.

Hardie blinked.

It…

…it couldn’t be.