He found one of them on a cell that had previously been occupied by just one inmate: George Charalambous. D-Block. Cell No. 19. Two-out. MIN: 59781.

So Georgie wasn’t Greek after all, but Cypriot. Jax didn’t need to know his cultural heritage though, just his name. One down. One to go.

Jax was hoping that the other new inmate lived on the ground floor too, as he really didn’t want to go up to the first floor, as the stairs were its only entrance and exit point. Never enter a high-threat area without having at least two exit points. That was Army 101.

But there was no sign of a new card, so, against his better judgement, he cautiously climbed the stairs. As soon as he got to the top he wished he hadn’t. A kill zone. That’s what they’d call it in the army. Forty doors concealing forty potentially deadly threats. And the landing area was completely open. Even the Ganjal Valley had rocks – he’d not have survived the Afghan kill zone had it not been for the body-sized boulders. Right eye firmly pressed into the soft rubber of his gunsight, he had darted from one to the next. The rocks, and some well-timed cover fire, had saved his life.

He would have never entered a high-threat area like this while he was in the army, not without a smoke grenade to conceal his movement anyway. But he wasn’t in the army anymore.

He pressed on.

Jax walked across the wire-mesh floor that covered the expanse and stepped onto one of the original landings. It was riddled with concrete cancer. The first door he came to was ajar. He read the two cell cards and moved on. He’d reached the other end of the wing by the time he found the card he was looking for: Elliott Thurling. D-Block. Cell number 67. Two-out. The name didn’t mean anything. Not yet.

By the time he walked back down the stairs, Jax had memorised the names and numbers of all 140 inmates in his wing. The elderly man, who Jax now knew was Garry Jacobs of cell number 68, MIN 49986, was holding a freshly filled buy-up bag, and gave Jax a curious glance when they crossed paths again. Jax ignored him and powered on, not stopping until he reached the guard’s box.

Turner was standing at the counter, as though he had been expecting Jax.

‘Nah, not ESP,’ Turner said as he pointed towards an oversized old CRT monitor. ‘Saw you coming. Also saw you sneaking about upstairs. You up to no good?’

‘No, nothing like that,’ Jax said. ‘But I was wondering if you could tell me where the library is?’

‘I’ll do better than that,’ Turner said. ‘I’ll take ya.’

THE library was much smaller than Jax had expected: about the size of a three-car garage. The bookshelves that lined the walls would have contained no more than a few thousand books.