The Godless One (10 page)

"All right. Please remove your keys,
cell phones, wallets, cameras and anything else in your pockets and
place them in this drawer. Thank you. Now please remove your coats
and stand over there while the officer pats you down. Don't be
alarmed. Everyone who comes in gets frisked, including me and the
warden."

Ari glanced at Grainger, who nodded. He
was not alarmed. He analyzed the guard's performance as he was
patted down and found it far too cursory. At Abu Ghraib, inmates
were practically turned inside out. Not officers, of course—unless
they were prisoners, too. And visitors were usually turned
away.

Shrugging back into their coats, Ari
and Grainger followed Finley into the courtyard. The red brick
wings of the main complex seemed to embrace them. They paused as a
guard and a prisoner scurried from one wing to another. They were
so cold that the guard did not appear too interested in guarding,
and escape was the furthest thing from the prisoner's
mind.

"Alberta Clipper," Finley said through
his clouded breath. "Those Canucks really have it in for
us."

They were buzzed through a door in the
central complex.

"I’ve reserved one of the classrooms
downstairs," Finley said, leading them past inmates ranked casually
to one side of the hall with an air of polite boredom that Ari
assumed was intentionally deceptive. Take the guards and walls
away, and these men would raise hell. He had seen eyes like that
many times before, chaos biding its time.

In the gatehouse and
courtyard the prisoners had worn blue chambray shirts with orange
collars, but here the dress code consisted of bright orange
jumpsuits. He noted that most of the men were black, but Hispanics
comprised a sizable minority. They looked upon Ari like a poor
counterfeit, all the more offensive for being free. One of them, a
plump man with an apocalyptic complexion, murmured,
"
Maldito árabe
."

"
Mafioso
," said Ari.
"
Callate el osico
gordota
."

After a moment’s pause to absorb the
‘Mafioso’, the other Hispanic prisoners burst out
laughing.

"We already have enough Spanish
translators," the Deputy Warden said, his alarm hidden behind his
sunglasses. "I must ask you to please not talk to the prisoners."
He turned to Grainger and admonished, "You should have informed him
of that before bringing him here."

"It slipped my mind," Grainger said
contritely.

Finley’s lips were a sketch of irony.
One could expect no better from well-meaning ministers.

"Powhatan is one of Virginia’s oldest
correctional centers," Finley said. "It was due to be replaced with
more modern facilities, but funding has been difficult and…well,
here we still are. Long in tooth and likely to remain that way for
some time to come."

"On the contrary, I find your prison
quite modern as it is," said Ari truthfully.

"Oh?" Finley slipped off his
sunglasses, as though unlocking his own personal cell to allow Ari
inside. "What part of Italy are you from?"

"Sicily."

"Oh yes, the reverend mentioned that.
Sicily!" Prisoners looked apprehensively in the Deputy Warden’s
direction when he clapped his hands. "I’ll bet you have prisons
hundreds of years old."

"Thousands," said Ari. "The Athenians
didn’t survive them."

The historical allusion shot like a
bolt over Finley’s head, but the thought of decrepit Sicilian jails
made him think a lot better of his own situation.

They came to a broad flight of stairs.
The light dimmed as they descended. Finley would surely have been
compelled to remove his sunglasses had he not already done so. At
the bottom, they found inmates arranged in an informal line at some
kind of service desk. Behind the counter, brightly lit guards
called out names. Like supplicants at Our Lady of Lourdes, the ones
whose names were called approached the counter as though expecting
a dispensation from On High. On seeing Grainger, those in line
whispered loudly in his wake.

"Pastor…!"

"Reverend…!"

"Father…!"

A guard snapped, "Quiet,
there!"

Grainger turned and gave them a benign
wave. "Later," he said.

Ari thought they were soliciting
spiritual advice, but as they turned up a long corridor, Grainger
said, "I help them with their petitions to the parole
board."

Ari was not sure what a parole board
was. He added it to his growing list of Americanisms to
research.

They passed several rooms that
contained inmates sitting at computer terminals.

"These are computer literacy classes,"
Grainger explained. "You can’t get very far in the modern world
without knowing the basics of Windows and Mac."

"That sounds like a course I should
take," Ari said.

"They don’t have access to the net,"
Finley said, a little too smugly. "No CD/DVD burners, either. We’ve
spent tons on software programs that mimic the internet, but all
they really want is porn."

Grainger made a sound of impatience. A
responsive nod from Finley told Ari he was familiar with that
particular cough. "You’re too tolerant, Reverend. If that inmate
wins the lawsuit we were talking about, you watch how much hell
breaks loose."

To an inquiring glance from Ari,
Grainger said, "The inmate in question wants to read Lady
Chatterley’s Lover."

"Straight out porn," said
Finley.

Grainger coughed. Finley
nodded.

"’Mohammed Jones’," the Deputy Warden
continued. "That’s the prisoner you’re going to see. That’s what
we’ve called him since he was processed out of Culpeper County
Jail. The Reception Center people were pulling out their hair. A
little unusual. We’re Level Three, and they didn’t know how
dangerous Mohammed is, so they sent him here. We can’t even get a
surname out of him."

"I understood that your previous
translator visited several times," said Ari.

"They talked a mile a minute, at first,
but nothing useful came out of it," Finley answered. "My guess is
they talked about life back home, family, useless
stuff."

He stopped in front of a classroom.
"The reverend and I have to stop here. This is privileged
client-lawyer business." He popped his head into the room.
"Jenny?"

"Yeah!" came a gruff response. There
was a scraping of furniture and a short, overweight woman shuffled
up to the door. She looked up at the three men, giving a grunt when
she saw Ari. He was reminded of the woman he had seen feeding feral
cats at Manchester Docks.

"This is Ari Ciminon," said Grainger,
stepping aside.

Jenny held out her hand and Ari took
it, intending to give it a gentle shake. The woman whipped his arm
up and down like a hand pump. "You speak Arabic, Mr.
Ciminon?"

"Enough to get by," Ari
smiled.

"I hope you can get more out of
Mohammed than your predecessor."

"I’ll do my best."

She held up a blank notepad. "This is
all I got in three sessions. Well, that plus complaints about the
food here. Mohammed said he wanted something called
‘hell-meat‘."

"Halal meat," Ari corrected.

"Right," Jenny nodded.
"And don’t even talk about days when pork is on the menu! Anyway,
Mustafa Zewail, the guy before you, said the name of Allah has to
be pronounced when the animal is slaughtered. We’ve got plenty of
Muslims here, and in the Culinary Arts program, too. I’m sure they
must say ’Allah’ when they carve the roast. But that doesn’t suit
Mohammed. He says those are
black
Muslims. I always thought a Muslim here is a
Muslim there. Are you aware of any Koranic rules that apply to
this?"

Ari put on a show of deep thought, then
shook his head. "It sounds like Mohammed is trying to be a pain in
the ass."

Grainger looked dismayed, but Finley
barked another laugh.

"You’ll do just fine, Mr. Ciminon," he
said, then turned at a noise in the corridor. "Here’s your man,
now."

Mohammed was wearing a belly chain and
accompanied by a guard. He was almost as short as Jenny. In his
orange jumpsuit, he looked like a shizi. Ari’s mind ticked down a
mental list and thudded against a picture from an IPS
file.

Iraqi
, he thought with alarm. Ari's trepidation rose when
Mohammed's eyes fixed on him in puzzlement—the first step to
recognition.

"
You're the translator?
" Mohammed
asked in Arabic. Ari nodded. The prisoner lowered his voice, even
though no one else could understand him. "
If you want to save your neck, get out of here
now!
"

"
Assalam alaikum
to you, too,
brother
."

Mohammed twitched, perhaps
on hearing Ari's Baghdad University accent. "
Valaikum-salam
," he nervously
responded.

"Then we'll leave you three to it,"
said Finley. "A guard will be just outside the door throughout the
interview. If there's any trouble, just holler. But Mohammed has
been a sterling inmate so far. We just don't know who he is or
where he comes from." He took Grainger by the shoulder. "Come on,
Reverend. I'll show you the new Carpentry class. Prisoners with
hammers and chisels. I'm sure you'll enjoy it."

Mohammed tried to communicate with
Jenny, shaking his head in protest, but she had already turned to
reenter the room. The guard had his own way of
communicating.

"Hey!" he said loudly, getting
Mohammed's attention. He pointed at the room. Mohammed could not
pretend he did not understand, but just in case he tried, the guard
bared his teeth. The un-American non-American would flee at the
threat from the American carnivore. Mohammed stepped into the
classroom. The guard pointed at a chair and bared his teeth again.
Mohammed sat.

Jenny battled her plumpness into a
desk. Ari followed suit, and immediately felt like a schoolboy
again. The guard nodded agreeably, as though he had just put his
family safely to bed, then left the room, closing the door behind
him.

"Well, Mr. Ciminon, since you seemed to
understand what Mohammed was saying in the hallway, I guess we can
get this show on the road." She followed this up with a grumpy
noise, which was in turn followed (to Ari’s horror) by a loud fart.
Mohammed giggled. Ari shot him a look and he fell
silent.

"They’ve got some kind of beany oatmeal
in the cafeteria here," Jenny semi-apologized. "Now, Mr. Ciminon,
would you mind introducing yourself to Mohammed?"

"My pleasure," said Ari,
turning to the prisoner and switching to Arabic.
"
My name is Ari Ciminon, you piece of
filth.
"

Mohammed stared at him.

"Good," said Jenny, opening a folder
and taking out some forms. "Unless Mr. Zewail was mistaken,
Mohammed understands that I am a court-appointed lawyer here to
help him negotiate what we fondly refer to as ‘the
System’."

"You defend him in court?" Ari
asked.

"If we go before a judge or this goes
to trial, yes."

Was she speaking of show trials, where
the defense held the rope while the prosecution looped it around
the prisoner’s head? There had been plenty of those in Saddam
Hussein’s Iraq. Hussein himself had succumbed to the most elaborate
show trial of all, which Ari had found both sad and poetic. Was Ari
here to teach Mohammed his lines?

"Of course, all of this is moot until
we get more information out of Mohammed. He had no identification
on him when he was arrested. For the record, can you ask him if
he’s an American citizen?"

Ari asked.

"Ha!" said Mohammed.

"O-kay, no need for translation there.
Can you ask him what his nation of origin is?"

"
When was the last time you saw Sadr City, you Shia piece of
shit
?"

Mohammed looked down.

"Iraq," said Ari.

"But he didn’t say anything," Jenny
protested.

"He speaks in the Baghdadi dialect, a
variety of Mesopotamian Arabic."

"Pastor Grainger told me you were from
Italy." Jenny twisted around and looked at him. "Are you a language
expert?"

"I worked in the Alagonian Library in
the Archbishop’s Palace—in Syracuse. It has an extensive collection
of Moorish manuscripts." Ari mentally kicked himself. He had
promised himself just the other day that he would stop cooking up
these outrageous stories. It was a bad habit he found hard to
break.

"My public library has an extensive
collection of Harlequin Romances," said Jenny. "That doesn’t mean I
know squat about love."

"Ah," said Ari. Feeling temporarily
bereft of chivalry, he left it at that.

"All right, can you ask him when he
left Iraq? It’s important, seeing as we’re involved in a war
there."