The Godless One by J. Clayton Rogers

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.