by Ben Mezrich
Thad realized that nobody was going to come get him. Even such a simple thing as signing a piece of paper—nobody was going to come for him. Rebecca couldn’t because of her father. Sonya wouldn’t because she was angry, maybe because she was scared—of what her family would do, of what it would mean to her prospects of moving away from a failed relationship. And beyond them, there was no one else. Thad didn’t have parents anymore. And his friends—at NASA he was now a pariah. The other co-ops would avoid him like the plague. The esteemed scientists—he had been an amusement to them, a promising kid who told adventure stories for their entertainment, but that was all.
He was alone; he was in the system. And no one on Earth was going to help him now.
…
They called it the Submarine.
The county jail on Orient Road in Tampa was the most miserable place Thad had ever seen. Just hours after his phone call to Sonya, he was led down a stairwell, through an endless parade of iron doors and barred windows, into a long cement hallway, bordered on both sides by tiny metal windows covered with steel, all of it painted an unnerving shade of blue. He was handcuffed and shackled and wearing a belly chain, shuffling along with his head down, prodded from behind on both sides by uniformed officers. He was doing his best to keep his mind completely blank, because any thoughts that could erupt in a place like this would do him no good. He had to become an empty shell, because he knew that he was going to be here a long time.
About a quarter of the way down the hallway, the guards stopped, and one of them stuck a huge metal key—about four inches long, like something out of a medieval dungeon—into a panel, unlocking a steel door. There were four pump levers on one side of the door, and it took two guards to turn them, forcing the heavy slab of steel to slide open, inch by inch. They paused when there was just enough room for Thad to be shoved inside; first they unlocked his handcuffs, undid his shackles; then one of the guards gave him a sarcastic little pat on the back. Once he was through, the door was slammed shut behind him.
Directly ahead was what was called the dayroom, to the left the bedroom. Thad took it all in with quick flicks of his eyes. In the bedroom he saw eight bunk beds, basically steel plates bolted together, attached to industrial-looking iron frames, two rows of four. Standing between the bedroom and the dayroom, he saw two steel toilet seats—no lids, just the toilets themselves, standing there in the middle of the open area in full view of everyone—and a single shower off in one corner. On the far end of the room, opposite the hallway he had just walked down, was what they called the catwalk. It was just a bunch of bars separating the dayroom and bedroom from another long hallway, where guards took turns walking first one direction, then the other. There would be no privacy of any kind.
As Thad took a little step into the dayroom, his stomach tightened into knots. In the middle of the room stood a couple of metal picnic tables, with bolted-down benches. There were two pay phones against one wall, both currently occupied, and beyond them, affixed to a joint a few inches from the ceiling, a television set. There was a knob on the TV, but even from that distance he could see that there were only two numbers on the knob, two stations available. At the moment, the television was on, and Thad recognized a children’s show—something called Teletubbies.
At the picnic table farthest from Thad, a group of three African American men in bright orange prison overalls were intently watching the show, every now and then bursting out in a concert of what sounded like truly crazed laughter. The men looked just like Thad would’ve expected—angry, tattooed, overly muscled, and terrifying.
At the other picnic table, there were two white men; one was huge, maybe three hundred pounds, his gut hanging out over his orange pants. The other was half his size, with a goatee and an enormous tattoo running up the left side of his neck. There was a deck of cards on the table in front of them, and the larger man was in the process of throwing down a card. A low number came out, and this seemed to be a good thing, because the man laughed and clapped his hands against the table. Then the smaller man took the next card, threw it on the table—showing a king. The man snarled, then leaped off his bench, got down on the floor, and did ten push-ups.
As Thad watched the two tables of men, his entire body started to shake. He couldn’t believe that this was now his life. Three days ago, he had been diving in the NBL, he had been hanging out with astronauts, shooting the breeze with some of the smartest men in the world. And now he was in hell.
Before he could take another step into the room, one of the black men from the Teletubbies table crossed toward him—swaggering like his feet weighed a hundred pounds each. He had muscles everywhere, and there was a hardness in his face that sent chills into Thad’s bones.
He stopped a few feet in front of Thad, looking him over. Then he grinned, his teeth a peculiar shade of yellow.
“My name is Graveyard. Graveyard Serious.”
He gave Thad a hard punch to the shoulder. Thad did his best not to flinch. The man turned and headed back to his Teletubbies.
Thad stood there, waiting, but nobody else acknowledged him—so he quietly crossed into the bedroom and made his way to what appeared to be an empty steel bunk. As he lowered himself onto the bunk, he realized that it was a solid sheet of metal, with tiny holes drilled into it that were supposed to make it the littlest bit flexible. No mattress, no sheet. There was, however, a pillowcase—to remind Thad that he didn’t have a pillow.
He lay down on the bunk, wrapping the pillowcase over his eyes. He could still see the bright lights, even through the material of the pillowcase, and there was a loud buzzing coming from the fluorescent panels. He knew he’d never be able to fall asleep. Instead, he tightly shut his eyes and started to cry.
…
“Houston, we have a problem. Houston, we have a problem.”
Thad’s eyes tore open as the words reverberated through his ears, and he jerked himself up into a sitting position—nearly slamming his head on the steel bunk above him. It took him a minute to recognize his surroundings—to realize that it hadn’t all been a dream, that he wasn’t lying in his apartment back at NASA or curled up next to Rebecca in the parking lot of a Baptist church. He was on the bottom bunk in a jail cell, wearing an orange jumpsuit, with an empty pillowcase wrapped around his eyes. There were at least seven other men in the room with him, in various phases of sleep—even though the place was still lit up as bright as day by the ever-buzzing fluorescent ceiling panels.
“Houston, we have a problem.”
It took Thad another moment to realize that the words were not in his head, that they were actually reverberating around the entire cell—through the entire county jail, actually—via the guards’ intercom system.
“Houston, we have a problem.”
This time, the words were followed by a moment of wicked laughter; whoever was speaking into the intercom was having a grand old time. Thad looked around, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. And then he saw the muscled black man approaching his bunk.
It was the guy who had introduced himself as “Graveyard Serious,” and he was holding something in his left hand. For a brief second, Thad’s mind whirled through every prison movie he’d ever seen, and he fully expected a steel shank to be driven through his throat. But instead, Graveyard tossed the item at his chest, where it landed with a soft thud. It wasn’t a shank. It was a newspaper. And the banner headline across the top of the front page was all about Thad.
“‘Moon Rock Heist,”’ Thad whispered, reading the words as he saw them.
He looked up and saw that the other prisoners were all out of their bunks now, gathering around him. Graveyard was pointing a long finger at the newspaper.
“One of the hacks gave me that. You’re the fucking talk of Orient County. Boys, we’ve got ourselves a celebrity.”
Thad felt his cheeks flush as he read the article. It was all there, in black and white. The arrest of Thad, Gordon, and Rebecca. And Sandra—according to th
e article, she had been arrested, too, dragged right out of her job in handcuffs. The newspaper was calling it the most significant heist in NASA’s history. Everett Gibson, whose lab had been robbed, had actually been taken in for questioning upon returning from a trip to Australia.
Before Thad could read any deeper into the article, Graveyard grabbed the newspaper out of his hands and waved it in front of the other prisoners.
“That’s right, say hello to Moon Rock!”
And just like that, the name stuck. Moon Rock. Thad laid his head back against the hard steel bunk as the intercom continued to bray in his ears.
“Houston, we have a problem.”
38
“Moon Rock, you’re up.”
Thad was only on his seventh push-up, and he owed Graveyard three more—but the guard standing by the open cage door looked serious, and even Graveyard wouldn’t have ignored a hack’s offer to get out of the claustrophobic cell, even if the reason was still completely unknown.
Thad pulled himself to his feet and pointed at the face card that was on the picnic table between him and the other prisoner.
“I’ll finish my ten when I get back.”
“If you get back, Moon Rock. Maybe they’re about to let you go.”
Graveyard bared his yellow teeth, amused by his own statement. It was still only a few hours into the second day, so there was no chance in hell that Thad was going anywhere. But he was happy to get out of that cell, even for a moment. None of the inmates had made any attempt to kill him yet, but there was such an undercurrent of anger and subverted violence in that place; it probably had something to do with the shared, open toilets, or the incessant caterwauling of the Teletubbies. The jail was so infused with bad feelings, Thad would have done just about anything to get out of there.
He crossed to the door and held out his arms for the proffered handcuffs. After the cuffs came the shackles, and then the guard led him down the long hall. The next thing he knew, he was being brought into a small room with cement walls and no windows. There was a steel table in the middle of the room, and four metal chairs. Thad was handcuffed to one of the chairs, then left alone with his frightened thoughts.
Five minutes later, Thad’s court-appointed attorney entered the room, followed by two women. One of the women identified herself as the OIG—a federal officer from the office of the inspector general, attached to NASA. The other woman—with severe-looking eyes and a tight bun of brown hair—introduced herself as the prosecutor assigned to Thad’s case.
The truth was, the two women were about as familiar to Thad as his lawyer. The man in a stiff blue suit had been little more than a name on a sheet of paper Thad had been asked to sign when he’d first been checked into the county jail. His first name was John, and to Thad, he seemed like he was just out of law school. Maybe he would one day be a wonderful lawyer, but Thad had the feeling that at the moment, he was just trying to get through the day.
As the three of them took their chairs, Thad began feeling incredibly self-conscious. He was still handcuffed, chained up like he was going to kill somebody, like he was this dangerous criminal—and not a NASA scientist who had done something stupid. Before he could say anything, his lawyer placed a tape recorder in the center of the table and started asking questions. About the heist, about the planning, about Gordon and Rebecca and Sandra, about Everett Gibson and the moon rocks—about everything. He was doing all of this right in front of the prosecutor and the federal officer, and Thad just stared at him, trying to figure out what the hell was going on, trying to understand if this was how it was supposed to work.
When it became time for him to answer, Thad shook his head, giving his lawyer a plaintive look. The man seemed to understand, and he quickly asked the two women to give them a moment alone.
After the women had left, shutting the door behind them, the lawyer started over. He explained to Thad that NASA, the prosecutor, and the FBI had a lot of questions they wanted answered—and there was a chance that because of this, Thad would be able to make some sort of deal. NASA wanted to know exactly how the heist had happened: how Thad had been able to get inside Gibson’s lab, how he had known about the moon rocks—everything that wasn’t already on tape from the sting operation at the restaurant. And most important of all—Everett Gibson had told the FBI that the safe had contained his life’s work, a number of green notebooks that were filled with thirty years of his scientific research. He had intended to use those notebooks to write a book after he retired, and they were considered invaluable.
Thad shook his head, his mind whirling. He didn’t remember seeing any green notebooks in the safe. As far as he knew, they hadn’t thrown anything out, other than the safe itself, so if there were notebooks, they’d still be either in Sandra’s storage shed or in the suitcase that had been with them in the Sheraton. But Thad didn’t really want to talk about some phantom notebooks; he wanted to talk about Rebecca.
He wanted to know what was going to happen to her. His lawyer seemed shocked that this would be Thad’s first concern—but he did his best to explain the situation. He said the way the system worked, there was a certain amount of mandatory time a judge could give someone for taking part in a crime like this—based mostly on the value of the stolen items, since there hadn’t been any acts of violence committed. That value was still to be determined, and much of any trial would be about figuring out exactly how much 101.5 grams of moon rock was really worth.
Each level upward from the minimum sentence was called a “departure.” For the crime Thad and his friends had committed, they were currently looking at a maximum of three departures—or, roughly, three years in prison.
Thad’s stomach dropped as he heard those words—three years. Picturing the cell he had just come from, the open toilets, the steel bunk beds, the guards and the inmates—he couldn’t imagine how he would survive that. Then he pictured Rebecca—there had to be something else, something he could do.
Thad’s lawyer admitted that there was, in fact, another way—for the girls, Rebecca and Sandra, at least. They could claim that they had been coerced into the crime, and had taken a minor role, led astray by a criminally intent “leader.” John guessed that this was something their lawyers would probably advise them to do—but he assured Thad that this was something he would fight, tooth and nail, because if Thad took the role of the leader, he would be looking at an even longer sentence.
Thad stopped him right there, his handcuffs clanging together as he tried to raise his hands. That was exactly what he wanted to happen. Not the longer-sentence part—but for Rebecca, he would admit the role of the leader. If she stayed free, she would be his lifeline. He didn’t have anyone else.
The lawyer looked at him, rubbing a hand over his tired eyes. He asked again if Thad was sure that this was what he wanted to do—basically lie down and let the girls argue that they were coerced or seduced into this crime. Thad nodded. The lawyer asked a third time—reminding Thad that from what Rebecca had told the FBI, Thad had only known this girl for a month. He was willing to throw away years of his life for someone he had known only four weeks?
Thad nodded again. He didn’t think of Rebecca as someone he had only known for a month. She had filled something inside of him, something he’d needed; whether that was something his mind had invented or something real—it didn’t matter. Her life had to continue.
Finally, the lawyer shrugged. Thad was his client, appointed by the court. He wasn’t a friend or a family member. It was Thad’s life. If Thad cooperated with NASA and the FBI, they would maybe go lenient on him, but if he was the leader, the self-admitted ringleader—well, he was looking at three years in federal prison, maybe even more.
Thad nodded, willing his brain to ignore the thought of all those years—and told the lawyer that he would do what he had to. The man shrugged again, and signaled the guards to send the prosecutor and the federal officer back into the room.
* * *
I know that you will never
read these words, but I still need to write them down. I need some way of expressing your effect on me. I need to shape the tears into words. You once asked me why I love you … a question that has no answer on this side of the horizon. I can no more explain “why” than I can explain why I am self-aware. Every thought I have, every sensation and emotion comes laced with the knowledge that I love you, that I desire you, that I long to know your happiness, but questioning why gets beneath the question of my very existence. Still there is another question that you deserve an answer to—the question of “what” I love about you. To be fair, this question is also impossible to answer, but only because it is impossible to exhaust. Each brushstroke, however, belongs to the same painting, every detail reflects the whole.
* * *
39
Thad had always been a quick study.
At NASA, being quick to pick up how things worked had been important because it had caught the attention of the people Thad needed to impress, and it had given him that extra edge so that he could construct the person he wanted to be, right from day one.
In county jail, being quick to pick up how things worked was important because it kept Thad alive. Not only in that clichéd, late-night prison-movie sense—although there was always the very real risk of looking at someone the wrong way, saying the wrong thing, getting inadvertently involved in something that could easily have gotten him killed—but also in the sense that if he wasn’t able to get his head around the new reality of his life, he was going to be lost in a place where even his fantasies couldn’t protect him.
It was conventional jailhouse wisdom that it took about two years for a man to reach empty, to finally let go of his old life—hopes, dreams, expectations, family, real contact with the outside world—two years to reset at rock bottom, to become that empty, unimprinted shell. By the end of his first year of being locked up, awaiting sentencing, Thad knew that the jailhouse wisdom was probably correct. He was halfway to becoming that nowhere, nothing man, and if he had to endure another year, the time would shatter him and cause him to shed whatever was left of his old self.
