The Black Knight

VI

Byron Thomas drove north along Highway 67 as the sun rose to the east across the barren deserts. The sky was a flawless light blue, and although the cool of the night still lingered he knew that within an hour or so the deserts would be once again scorched by the sun, the temperature forecast to be in the nineties.

He wore a prim tweed suit, a small bow tie against his tightly buttoned collar and square-rimmed glasses shielding his dark eyes, their arms resting alongside his gray temples. Although a physically imposing man, partly due to his African American heritage, Byron was an academic through and through, a student of both law and psychology and a career psychologist who had made his fortune rehabilitating some of the most violent criminals the world had ever known. But today, he was afraid.

Beside him on the passenger seat of his Prius lay a slim folder, within which were the medical history and doctor’s assessment of a patient so dangerous that they had been incarcerated without charge in the most secure prison in all of the continental United States. The final words of the physician who had begun treatment on the patient some years before, written in bold letters across the bottom of his psyche report, sent a shiver down Byron’s spine.

ADX Florence, as it was known, was America’s most secure Super-Max prison, designed to house the most feared inmates within the country’s prison system. Sited on a thirty seven acre complex, the majority of the facility was above ground with a subterranean corridor linking the cellblocks to the lobby. Enshrouded both in secrecy and endless glittering razor wire fences, few journalists or outsiders were ever permitted entry. Its inmates were among the worst that humanity had to offer; mass murderers, terrorists and cult leaders with the blood of hundreds of people on their hands, Mafia dons and other hardened convicts so repulsively violent that it made Byron’s stomach clench at the mere thought of being in the same building, let alone confronting them. And yet, today, confront them he must.

The low, white buildings and watch towers loomed before Byron on the side of the road, bathed in warm orange sunlight but still somehow clinical in their appearance, indicative of a place where memories and hopes went to die. Byron pulled slowly into the parking lot, stopped at the security gates and showed both his identification and his letter of admittance to the guards there before being waved through and parking in front of the southern block.

Byron killed the engine and took one last look at the file, even though he had read it a hundred times before. He knew that he was merely delaying the inevitable, but he could not help himself as he flicked through the pages.

An image of a dark skinned Afro-American, born August 12th, 1955 — Aaron James Mitchell. Mother; Florence Mitchell, nee Spencer, an American by birth, Detroit. Father; Jackson. J. Mitchell, former soldier, service record; Pacific Theatre, Iwo Jima, decorated veteran. Devout Catholics, both now deceased. No other siblings. Aaron Mitchell, service with United States Marines, Vietnam, decorated twice, two tours of active duty, two further tours as instructor…

Byron, as he suspected like many others, had initially felt a sense of relief upon first reading the file’s opening pages. He’d believed that he was reading the operational file of an all American boy and veteran, a man whom he could harbor some hope of liberating from whatever madness had consumed him.

Wife; Mary Allen Mitchell. Daughter; Ellen Amy Mitchell, born 1972, Oakland, California…

Byron’s relief had quickly turned to melancholy.

… died, 1978. Interred Oakland, California.

Aaron James Mitchell; Diagnosed with acute anxiety and depression, revised as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Original PTSD from combat service enflamed via suppressed grief after loss of family. Two years medical hospital, San Diego. Released 1981.

Mitchell’s record vanished into vagrancy sometime after his release from hospital, as had sadly so many of America’s Vietnam veterans, before being mysteriously picked up by the CIA and maintained under strictest security. Byron scrolled down rapidly toward the physician’s report near the bottom of the file, written some years’ previously.

Physically impressive. Doctor’s note: Aaron J Mitchell is without a doubt the most powerful and dangerous man I have ever attempted to treat.

The rest of the medical report was heavily redacted, no doubt as a result of Mitchell’s work within the military. Byron could only guess at the horrors faced by this patient in the steaming jungles of South East Asia, and then again perhaps in foreign countries undercover as an operative of some kind, perhaps a spy.

Byron took a deep breath as he looked up at the walls of the prison, unmarked, bleached it seemed, scoured of any trace of humanity and compassion. He only hoped that his mission here today would be worth it, worth more than the tremendous sum of money that had been deposited into separate bank accounts belonging to Byron over the last two months.

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.