Andrew Klavan - The Final Hour

“Merry Christmas, Mike,” I said. Slowly, my hand lifted to set the telephone back in its cradle. Mike was still talking through his handset. I could see him shaking his head. I could see his lips forming the word no over and over again.

The guard came up behind him and said something I couldn’t hear. Mike hung up the phone-hard. He stood up. We stared at each other through the glass.

Mike shook his head one more time. No.

Then the guard led me away.

I got the knife on Christmas Day-the shiv I was supposed to kill Dunbar with. Blade slipped it into my hand during the service in the chapel.

The chapel was just another faceless, windowless cinder-block room in the prison. The cinder blocks were painted yellow here instead of green. And during Christian services, there was a cross hung on the wall. Today, for Christmas, there was also a wreath and a small wooden creche set up on the table that the chaplain used for his lectern. For Abingdon, the place was almost cheery.

The chaplain-Chaplain Adams-was an old black guy. I don’t know how old, but old. He had long, sad features that looked like he was mourning for the world. I’d only had a chance to talk to him once, but I got the impression he was the only semidecent human being in the whole prison. Maybe that’s why he always looked so sad.

He had his big leather Bible open on the table next to the creche. He was reading the Christmas passages in Luke. His voice was as sad as his face. Even the joyful words of the Scripture sounded mournful when he said them:

“And the Angel said to them, ‘Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people…’”

Hard to make that sound mournful, but somehow Chaplain Adams managed to do it.

There were a lot of folding chairs packed into the room. They were full, a prisoner in each, guys of every color who’d committed all kinds of crimes. Praying. Most of them sincere, I’d guess. Looking for a way out of a bad past, and a path to a better life.

I know I was sincere. I was sitting in a chair about halfway to the back of the room, off to the right of center. I had my head bowed, my eyes closed. And I was praying just about as hard as I could. I was praying for help, praying that Mike would get word to Rose, and that Rose would get word to his bosses in Washington, and that his bosses in Washington would turn out full force to find Prince-and that everything would be taken care of by somebody else so that I wouldn’t have to break out of here with a bunch of Nazi maniacs.

Your will be done, I added at the end of my prayer- but I’ve got to admit, I didn’t really mean it. I really wanted my will to be done: Namely, I wanted God to get me out of this mess, and fast!

Anyway, I was hard at it, my head bowed, my eyes closed, so I didn’t really notice when the prisoner next to me got up and moved away. The first time I did notice was when I felt the smooth plastic tube slip into my hand.

My head came up fast; my eyes opened fast. There was Blade, suddenly sitting next to me. His dreamy, murderous eyes were fixed on mine.

I looked down and saw what he had given me. A homemade knife. I don’t know what it had been originally. Part of a bed or a chair maybe. I don’t know. It was a tubular piece of thick plastic with string wound tight around one end to make a handle grip. The other end was sharpened to a long, deadly point.

When I looked up at Blade again, he smiled his toothy smile. He slowly pressed his index finger under his chin to show me how to drive the knife into Dunbar’s throat. But of course, I had already pretty much figured that’s what he wanted me to do.

Then, with a quick glance around to make sure no one was watching us, Blade reached over and gently pushed the shiv up into my sleeve.

“Just call me Santa Claus,” he whispered.

Then he bowed his head and closed his eyes and pretended that he was praying too. And I bowed my head and closed my eyes. Only I wasn’t pretending.

“And the shepherds returned,” read Chaplain Adams mournfully, “glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.”

“Yard time!”

There was a flurry of snow falling as I stepped out into the yard. The sky was dark gray again and hung low over the heads of the gray prisoners moving over the grass and asphalt. The watchtowers seemed almost black against the sky. The riflemen inside were just slowly pacing silhouettes.

I felt the plastic knife against the flesh of my wrist. It was pushed up my sleeve and secured there tightly by a couple of loops of cloth I’d attached the night before.

As I moved through the cold air to the weight area where Blade and his fellow thugs were working out, I glanced over in the direction of the Outbuilding. There was Dunbar, surrounded by his guards, watching me pass.

I reached Blade. Blade smiled. His eyes were far away. He seemed lost in his dreams, whatever sick and murderous dreams they were.

“All right,” I said. “When do you want to-”

Blade punched me.

It was a short, sharp shot that took me totally by surprise. It wasn’t faked. It wasn’t pulled. It connected with my jaw full strength.

Before I even felt the pain of it, I was sprawled on my back with dust flying up around me. Sparks seemed to be dancing in front of my eyes.

Through the dust and the sparks, I saw Blade coming at me.

Before I could clear my head, he kicked me in the ribs. Hard. There was nothing fake about that either. Blade was having too much fun to hold back. He cocked his foot to kick again.

I swiveled on my backside, fast. Swung my legs around and kicked his standing leg out from under him.

Blade went down. I leapt on top of him, driving my fist hard into his face as I did. Instantly, the other cons were circling us, cheering. Blade and I rolled over and over in the dust, clawing at each other’s eyes, pounding at each other’s ribs. He wasn’t pretending so I didn’t pretend either: I had to defend myself or, escape plan or not, I think he would’ve just knocked me flat out for the fun of it. Fortunately, locked together like that, neither of us could put much force into our blows. There was a lot of action, but not much damage being done.

What did hurt was the walkie-talkie the guard hit me with.

He used the heavy butt of the thing and drove it down into the back of my head as Blade and I rolled over in the dirt. Instantly, the pain shot through my entire body. My thoughts went foggy. My limbs went weak.

Guards grabbed me by the arms. They hauled Blade off me. Blade sent a final kick into my ribs for good measure as they dragged me away.

Now there were three guards holding me, one guard gripping either arm and a third one grabbing me by the collar. They frog-marched me across the yard, my chin on my chest, my head lolling back and forth. As my mind began to clear, I lifted my eyes and saw the Outbuilding coming toward me, getting larger and larger. Larger and larger, too, was the grinning, eager fist-face of Dunbar. His eyes were alight with the anticipation of beating up on me again. I knew if he had his way, the beating was going to be much, much worse this time.

The guards manhandled me into the Outbuilding, tossing me through the door so that I stumbled across the room. I hit the far wall and sank to my knees.

I was now in a dark bunker of a place, an open space with its gray cinder-block walls lit by dangling bulbs. There was a small office in one corner, created with metal dividers. There were crates of I-don’t-know-what stacked here and there. This was where the Yard King did whatever it was he did when no one was looking.