The Tower

by Gregg Hurwitz

  SIMON & SCHUSTER

  ROCKEFELLER CENTER

  1230 AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS

  NEW YORK, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Visit us on the World Wide Web: http://www.SimonSays.com

  THIS BOOK IS A WORK OF FICTION. NAMES, CHARACTERS, PLACES, AND INCIDENTS EITHER ARE PRODUCTS OF THE AUTHOR’S IMAGINATION OR ARE USED FICTITIOUSLY. ANY RESEMBLANCE TO ACTUAL EVENTS OR LOCALES OR PERSONS, LIVING OR DEAD, IS ENTIRELY COINCIDENTAL.

  COPYRIGHT © 1999 BY GREGG ANDREW HURWITZ

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THE RIGHT OF REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART IN ANY FORM. SIMON AND SCHUSTER AND COLOPHON ARE REGISTERED TRADEMARKS OF SIMON & SCHUSTER INC.

  ISBN 0-684-87189-0

  eISBN: 978-0-684-87189-9

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My parents, for teaching me dedication by example.

  My sister, Dr. Melissa Hurwitz, for being my first reader back when I supplemented text with crayon art.

  Kelly Macmanus, for her general benevolence and precocious sagacity.

  Jess Taylor, whom I will always consider my first writing teacher, for his professorial eye and (alas) rapier wit.

  Stephen F. Breimer, my attorney, for his circumspection and occasional well-directed intensity.

  Joel Gotler, Alan Nevins, and Irv Schwartz of The Renaissance Agency for all their hard work on my behalf.

  And my editors:

  Chuck Adams, for doing the kind of editing that many claim no longer gets done, and for setting a standard of excellence I will strive to emulate.

  Michael Korda, for his incisive notes, warmth of character, and inexhaustible talent when it comes to all things written.

  FOR MARC H. GLICK, A SUPERB ATTORNEY AND FRIEND

  What in the midst lay but the Tower itself? The round squat turret, blind as the fool’s heart, Built of brown stone, without a counterpart In the whole world.

  —ROBERT BROWNING, “CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME”

  PROLOGUE

  HE didn’t sleep well, but then he never did. He woke in the night and it seemed as if he had been awake all along. He tried to close his eyes and let sleep wash over him again, but it didn’t.

  Throwing back the covers, he swung his feet over the edge of the bed and rested his hands on his knees. The first light of morning showed through the blinds. Soft morning light, still dull around the edges. He shook his head, rubbed his eyes, and stood up.

  The dim light cut him at the waist and shadowed the muscles in his stomach. He ran his hand hard across the back of his neck and stretched his shoulders. The greenness of his eyes was startling; they seemed to draw the dim light of the room into themselves. Green, flickering gems set in the dark silhouette of a face.

  Picking up a thin chain from the nightstand, he examined it for a moment before putting it on. He had worn the chain for years, though he had long since removed the medical tags it once held.

  He pulled the blinds up. It was 5:26 in the morning and the air was still a heavy gray. He went into the kitchen and took a healthy swig from a carton of milk. The house was impeccably neat, as if some divine hand had swept things into order. He placed the milk back in the refrigerator, pushing it gently into line with the other items.

  The living room was adjacent to the kitchen, and he went and lay across the couch. The room seemed empty although it was filled with furniture. It was sparsely but well decorated.

  He grabbed the remote from the glass table and flicked on the TV without looking at it. Blue light danced across his face and the hum of voices filled the room. He gazed at the ceiling, shut his eyes, and counted as he breathed. He was still for a long time. It was a forced restfulness.

  Finally, he got up and went to the bedroom. Lying backward on the bed, he put his feet on the wall. He reached into a drawerful of papers in his nightstand. On top was a Phi Beta Kappa key. His dirty little secret. He turned it aside and dug deeper, pulling out a racquetball.

  He squeezed it, then threw it at the wall, catching it in front of his face. The ball’s rhythm relaxed him, the tick against the wall, the tock against his palm.

  The television sounded from the other room. The sounds of six in the morning. “Tired of spending another night rearranging your sock drawer? Well, now’s your chance! It’s time to be social—but not in a way that’ll make you uncomfortable, like in all those singles bars.”

  Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Each time he caught the ball, he gave it a firm squeeze, pressing his fingertips into its soft surface. Tick. Tock.

  “I never thought it would be so easy. I just pick up the phone and I have a whole network of friends to talk to.”

  He looked over at his phone. It was like the President’s line. It usually rang out.

  Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. He was into the four hundreds when he lost count. The ball became a blue blur, a line to the wall and back to his face. He threw and caught, threw and caught as the sun made its tedious ascent outside his window.

  At about seven, he got up and went into the study. He pulled a pistol from the top-left drawer and felt its familiar balance in his hand. It was a Sig Sauer, government issue, a weapon he had learned to use and love in his Quantico days.

  He went to the dining room and gazed out across his front yard. There was a difference in the air that he could taste, as if something was about to fall out of place.

  He twirled the pistol around his finger, cocked it and uncocked it expertly with his thumb, and twirled it again. A mail truck made its way slowly up the street, stopping at each house. It passed his mailbox without slowing and went to the next.

  Pulling a chair around the table to face the window, he sat down, leaning back so two of the chair’s legs tilted off the ground. The early morning joggers were out: a tired middle-aged man, a mother with her daughter, a couple with a dog.

  He played with his pistol almost unconsciously, turning it over in his hand, spinning it around his finger, catching it in his palm. Sometimes he held it at arm’s length, sometimes he held it on his lap. But he always held it well.

  The stream of light through the front window climbed his body slowly as the sun rose. Just before it reached his eyes, he got up and walked back into the study, pulling a maple gun case from the drawer. He slid the pistol back into the velvet lining. It fit snugly. His fingers perched lightly on the case’s lid as his gaze lingered on the gun. He slammed the case shut.

  There was a name emblazoned on its brass plate: JADE MARLOW.

  ONE

  FLIGHT

  1

  THE TOWER was magnificent, rooted beneath the swelling waves and standing proudly above the inconsistency of the water. It rose firmly and elegantly, layered with stone over metal, tall and sleek in the salty breeze.

  Nicknamed “Alcatraz II” by law enforcers and government officials, and “The Boat Pokey” by inmates across the country, the Peter Briggs Federal Penitentiary was famous for one reason and one reason alone: the Tower. The Tower was conceived over a table covered with cigarette butts and half-drunk cups of coffee at 3:32 in the morning. It had been an election year. Peter Briggs had won the election.

  The regular prison, Maingate, framed the end of a peninsula by San Francisco that jutted into the Pacific. It contained the expendable criminal element, those with life sentences doubled back over life sentences. Yet the worst of the worst had a special distinction even within Maingate.

  The Tower was fifty yards offshore at low tide. Only about eighteen feet in diameter, it housed twelve levels of prison units, two cells on each floor. It sat within an inlet cut into the craggy walls of the peninsula. When the tide rose, it inched up the side of the structure until only the last two levels peeped out above the water.

  A peripheral fence blocked the prison
from the vast expanse of sea beyond, its enormous posts grounded with concrete plugs in the ocean floor. Access to the Tower could be gained only by boat, and only from the heavily guarded grounds of Maingate. The guards shuttled back and forth on speedboats like little insects busy at work.

  The Tower was constructed to be the most airtight security facility in the world. Like anything built with such exuberance, it had a few design flaws—a few places where overzealousness lapsed into an arrogant carelessness. However, for the most part, the Tower was what it was designed to be: a steel trap.

  Level One was used for storage only, so the second level was the lowest floor that housed prisoners. Because it was the darkest, Level Two was referred to as “the Dungeon.” The loudest prisoners were kept there so their noise wouldn’t disturb the guards.

  The first eight levels were always underwater, and the only natural light they received filtered through the steel bars from the floors above. The twelfth level remained empty, for security reasons. Despite the tremendous precautions, the warden felt Level Twelve was just too close to freedom and the guards above.

  A large fan, protected by a steel gate, was situated underneath the first level. Piping ran beneath the ocean floor from the mainland, drawing air to feed the fan. But the sluggish movement of the blades was not enough to sweep the musk from the air. Only the top four levels had vents, though those on Level Nine were never opened, as they were almost always beneath the ocean’s surface.

  A single carbon gaslight was encased in bulletproof glass on every other level, slightly illuminating the metal walls. These bleak lights trailed through the dimness of the Tower, making it seem as thickly claustrophobic as a mine shaft. At night, they were turned off.

  The interior of the Tower was constructed of thick steel bars. There was barely a quarter of an inch between the bars and the outer wall, which sat over the steel intestines like a stone hide. Not only were the unit walls made from such bars, but also the floors and ceilings.

  Home to men who could kill with paper clips and keys, the Tower was designed as the barest possible livable environment. No plaster could be risked for walls, no wood for floors. The steel bars that composed the inside of the Tower had another advantage: They allowed the guards to see through the levels to check on the inmates. Initially, the architects had experimented with an unbreakable glass, but they had found that it fogged heavily with mist from the ocean and created a ventilation nightmare.

  The outside wall of each curved cell measured twenty feet, and the cells were five feet in width. Each faced its mirror image across “the Hole,” an open cylinder of air that ran straight down the center of the Tower. There were spacings of eight and one-third feet between the units on each side; this ensured that the prisoners never established bodily contact, and that the guards could always remain out of reach.

  Due to the fact that the ceiling of each cell also served as the floor for the one above it, the prisoners could most easily communicate with the men directly above or below them. Although this design element may have seemed a lapse in the Tower’s tight security, few of the men were tall enough to reach their ceilings, even from their beds. Those who were could hardly get their fingers to the bars, let alone through them. The neck-strained interaction between the floors served the Tower’s design: to break the spirits of nearly indomitable men by removing from them all the trappings of civilization.

  The cells each had a minuscule toilet with a small tap that swung into place above it, allowing it to double as a sink. The toilets caught the water before it spiraled down through the barred floors. Each unit had a single mattress on a steel frame, and a thick blanket for the chilly nights off the California coast.

  The Hole formed the shaft for the platform elevator, four feet in diameter, which was operated by a handheld unit. Precisely framing the elevator was a two-foot platform between the Hole and the unit doors. When not in use, the elevator was raised out of the top of the Hole ten feet in the air, leaving only the dark emptiness below.

  When the prisoners were unruly or when it rained (which rarely happened), the large Hatch was swung into place underneath the raised elevator, blocking out all natural light and moisture. However, when the sun was directly overhead and the Hatch was open, light shone through the metal mesh of the raised elevator, and the two men on Level Eleven could see clearly down into the units ten levels beneath them.

  A prisoner was shackled around his biceps and wrists when transported, and his thighs were strapped together to allow only minimal leg movement. He was sent down the elevator with a guard on each side. He was always gagged, and often hooded. At all times, one of the two guards had a gun with the safety off trained on the prisoner. The necessity of such seemingly paranoid precautions had been learned at painful expense. Prisoners were only moved once, and they were only moved in.

  Before a prisoner was taken to the Tower, a small sensor was surgically embedded in the tip of the ring finger on his left hand. If he escaped, this device allowed his movements to be tracked. The prisoners were put under general anesthesia while the sensors were installed, and were kept heavily drugged until a significant amount of healing had taken place, sometimes five or six days. The Maingate physicians feared if the prisoners fully awakened before then, they would dig the sensors out with their nails and teeth.

  Food was delivered to the prisoners twice a day. It came in the form of a large loaf containing all the necessary nutrients to allow an animal to function. A cross between quiche and bread, the loaves were light brown when cooked correctly. They required no plates or silverware, part of the reason for their continued use. They were delivered by a guard at precisely 10:30 A.M. and 7:15 P.M.; he slid them through a small rectangular slot, barely the size of the loaf itself, at the bottom of each unit door.

  A long metal arm with two outgrowths at the end was used to guide the loaves through the slot. The loaves were referred to by the inmates as “shithouse bricks.” They had minimal taste.

  When a prisoner behaved perfectly for a week, he was allowed a large sheet of paper and two crayons with which to entertain himself. A guard held a box through the bars with a metal arm to retrieve the crayons when the time was up. This was called “Sketch Duty.”

  Sketch Duty was perhaps the only activity that the prisoners unanimously held to be important. It was the sole end of the prisoners’ lives to obtain this hour of distraction each week. They could keep the pictures in their cells for two days, and then they were removed and taken to be analyzed at the criminal psychology department of the Ressler Institute on the mainland. The pictures were often used in lectures.

  Aside from the occasional books they were allowed, Sketch Duty was all that the prisoners had to break the monotony. Inside the Tower, minutes could stretch to hours, hours to lifetimes.

  Despair prevailed in the bowels of the prison; nobody would ever be released and nobody had ever escaped its dark confines. The inmates sat pressed against the metal bars of their cramped cells, reciting their tales in the broken tongues of idiots.

  2

  ALLANDER Atlasia sat on the bed wrapped in a frayed blanket, his knees tucked tightly to his chin. The small bed was more than ample for his wiry frame. Outside, the waves pounded ceaselessly against the side of the Tower, causing the structure to hum with a deep vibration. Allander braced himself against the onslaught, relaxing his muscles slightly before another wave caused the Tower to shudder anew.

  His long, stringy hair curved in wisps to his cheeks, a dark brown cascade that accented his high cheekbones. His eyes squinted, just barely, making him look either sarcastic or like a child protecting his eyes from the sun. At first glance, many people dismissed Allander as a skinny adolescent recently grown to manhood, but he was in fact quite strong.

  Allander’s moodiness was the most terrifying aspect of his personality. When he’d been in the correctional ward as an adolescent, nurses had noted that he seemed to wake up as a different person every morning. He was a whimpering chi
ld when the rain hammered against the window, a sullen boy who poked frogs’ eyes out with his finger, a sweet youth who cried against a nurse’s bosom, an angry adolescent who painfully tweaked the incipient breasts of the girls in the ward.

  He could be deathly frail or dreadfully powerful. After a year in prison, he came down with a case of pneumonia. A nurse who was new on rotation failed to see the security signs outside his room. She unlocked the door and entered alone to check on him. His face was tinged blue and his teeth chattered loudly, causing an echo in the sterile room. She sat at his bedside and rocked the boy (who was now close to twenty) against her breast until he warmed beneath his blankets.

  When the security guard walked past the infirmary, he noticed the open door. Gun drawn, he charged into the room and pulled the nurse away despite her protestations. After she complained about the incident, the warden released several photographs of Allander’s victims for her perusal. She sat down after the second one, requested a glass of water after the fifth, and turned in her resignation after the seventh. Through the bars on his window, Allander watched her leave the prison, shaking her head, her steps slow and unsure.

  When he was moved to the Tower after the “lawyer incident” (as it was referred to in the vague prison memo), he rode the elevator down through the Hole, bound, with an armed guard on each side and a sack tied over his head. He didn’t flinch as the other inmates taunted him and screamed, banging the bars. It wasn’t often that a new visitor came for them to play with. Allander was thirty-three years old.

  He was placed in Unit 10A, and asked to turn around and back up against the door. From the safety of the platform, the larger guard reached through the bars and unlocked his handcuffs and thigh strap, then pulled the sack off his head and untied the gag. Allander wore a mask of calm, apparently not intimidated by the shrieks that carried up and down the Hole.