Prisoner of the Rock

By Héron-Mimouni

Monaco et le prisonnier du Rocher.

Luigi Ciardelli

En collaboration avec Corinne Héron-Mimouni, agent pénitentiaire.

Placé sous les verrous en France pour braquage, Luigi Ciardelli est en route, extradé vers l'Italie, pour purger sa peine, lorsque le camion pénitentiaire dévie vers Monaco. La justice monégasque veut le récupérer. Considéré comme l'ennemi numéro 1, LUigi Ciardelli se retrouve emprisonné dans l'une des prisons la plus discrète du monde : celle de Monaco.

On suit le confit qui, dès le début, l'oppose à l'administration monégasque qui refuse de l'envoyer dans une prison italienne. Le bras de fer est inégal, et Luigi Ciardelli n'aura dès lors qu'un seul but : s'évader.

Dans son projet d'évasion, il entraîne un ancien marine américain. L'auteur devient alors le personnage d'un réel roman d'aventure. L'évasion est réussie. Le Rocher est ébranlé. Des explications s'imposent. S'est-il évadé sans aide extérieure ? Une rumeur de complot commence à planer sur la Principauté.

Ce document vécu, d'un homme qui accepte de témoigner, est l'occasion de réfléchir au thème de la justice sous un aspect jamais abordé. La peine de prison, seule réponse à la délinquence, n'est plus vue à travers le délabrement des prisons françaises et laisse ainsi l'auteur s'exprimer sur la notion d'enfermement. Un sujet intemporel.

Luigi Ciardelli a prêté sa plume à Corinne Héron-Mimouni, auteur notamment de Matonne aux éditions Ramsay.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: Jun 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9781633396777

Book preview

SUMMARY

25 DECEMBER, 2002

A PROMISE

PENITENTIARY TOURISM

FROM ONE DAY TO THE NEXT

THE FORTRESS OF MONACO

MY FLIGHT OVER A CUCKOO’S NEST

A PRISON WITHIN THE PRISON

THE LAMB

CELL TWENTY-TWO

10. IRON WORK

11. THE ESCAPE

12. FREE

EPILOGUE

The first and last names of all the protagonists of this story have been modified, aside from those of the American Ted Maher and of the author, Luigi Ciardelli.

Chapter 1

25 DECEMBER, 2002

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My back is aching. Time is passing as if in slow motion, not because I feel contemplative, but rather because of the uncomfortable bench. My eyes are transfixed by the flame. It oscillates, and at times dulls the light that shines on the stained-glass windows. The candle is distracting me from the imposing wooden cross that is blocking my view, just as everything else does here. I feel restless and tormented. I am infinitely more irritated than usual. From the wall, Christ - with his crown of thorns - is provoking me, with his desperate and compassionate eyes. I have no desire to bear the weight of this burden... It is too unfair. Yet I know the weight of a sentence. Has this not been the extent of my life for many years already? So many that my mind refuses to even quantify!

In this sea of white, I can see a man busying himself. He is speaking from behind the altar. He is speaking about Jesus, although he is really speaking about us. About me. I tolerate his words and gestures less and less by the minute, his soothing yet hypocritical hand movement waving along with his Dearly beloved brothers and sisters...

A child was born. Born in a manger in Bethlehem...

My mind wanders. This bishop comes here once a year to do penance behind these tall gates. Listen to him who may. The manifestation of God... The great mystery of faith. The immaculate roughcast walls are closing in around me. I attempt to quieten my heartbeat. I focus on a point in front of me, and exhale on the breath of an Amen.

In my head, I have formulated my very own homily, inspired by resentment. I jump up, slide over to the left and walk out into the alley. I can feel the surprised look of the Attorney General. He too has joined us on this pious day; though he will go on to celebrate it well away from this prison. The chapel is small, and I reach the altar in just a few steps. The bishop looks at me, his mouth half open, one hand up in the air and a finger pointing to the sky. I point my own finger towards him... You have said your homily, now it’s time for me to say mine.

I turn towards the assembly, constituted of men and women dressed in the blue tracksuits defining our condition, as well as a few volunteer women. Is this brunette in the corner not a part of the royal family? But above all, yes above all, this man in the dark suit and tie in the image of this cursed place, Monsieur Delet, who is now touching the arm of the pale-faced director. I start, All this talk of justice, yet my detention is arbitrary. The image of the prosecutor leaning over to the ear of the director appears in the hubbub of my thoughts. I am guessing his question: who is this one? And the director’s answer: it’s Ciardelli, the ball-breaker. But my mind is already racing.

- ...And I consider myself sequestrated.

The prosecutor, all suit and tie, stands up and calls for order.

- That’s enough! Quiet!

- I have as much right to speak as you do, I replied.

- We are in the middle of mass. Go back to your seat and I will see you later. We will speak about your case again.

I give a small unreligious salute, weave back through the benches and sit down. Silence. The bishop steps forward and clears his throat. The man had lost his thread.

Monsieur Delet, the prosecutor, had understood what I meant. Once the mass over, I find him waiting for me in the corridor as the other inmates walk towards the iron door.

- What is this scheming all about? he starts.

- This scheming, as you say, is about my sequestration. I do not belong in this prison! The Aix-en-Provence court signed an extradition agreement between France and Italy and it must be enforced. This is a travesty of justice and you are in breach of this agreement! When I finished serving my sentence in France, I was to be handed over to Italy. Instead, I was sequestrated here. And you have not even renewed the international arrest warrant!

- Mr Ciardelli, you know full well that Monaco is an enclave. We cannot - and I, least of all - decide to send you over to Italy without the permission of France.

- Spare me the usual litany of your sidekicks. This is exactly the same discourse as the director’s.  It’s as if he himself was speaking, and...

- And nothing, Mr Ciardelli. If I understand you correctly, and indeed ignore your earlier exhibition, I must bring back to your attention the fact that you are here because of a crime you have committed.

- Idle talk... I want something tangible. I want to go where I am meant to be, because an extradition agreement was signed with Italy. But I am not like you, io non parlo a vanvera e dico that if between Christmas and the Feast of Epiphany I am not handed over to Italy, I will do things to this detention house that will make this whole Principality and its high society laugh out loud!

- You are talking about Monaco, Sir, about the Principality of Monaco!

- I know full well where I am, Mr Prosecutor, incarcerated in Monaco’s Detention House. And it is from this here prison that I will make sure that Monaco is ridiculed in front of everyone!

- You are making explicit threats, says the procurer, now relinquishing the use of Mr Ciardelli.

- Not at all. This is not a threat. It’s a promise.

CHAPTER 2

A PROMISE

A labyrinth of tiles. Large rectangular beige floor tiles, and smaller lighter ones on the walls between the cell doors. Each door is framed by a guillotine window. The cold atmosphere of a hospital. It is as if I was seeing this for the first time, on the first morning of my incarceration, already several months back. The air conditioning blows warm air on my face. A deluxe, outlaw prison. Christmas in Monaco. A Christmas heavy with threats. Because the prosecutor, Monsieur Delet, was right - I had waved threats under his nose, like a red rag to a bull. He would have laughed about it, had he not been afraid that I would play a bad trick...or two.

...The Principality of Monaco will be ridiculed... And I will not achieve this by setting fire to my mattress. In any case, this had been done already! Besides, I am not crazy; I do not want to burn. I can do better than this, much better. And I am ready for it. 

I had made up my mind well before this morning. Had I needed this argument to engage in hostilities? No, it was quite simply an altercation from which I am drawing my latest motivation. 

A magnetic card opens my cell door. The moment hangs in the air. Heavy footed, I enter this room, which contains nothing personal. My whole life is on the outside; a few scraps of it were stored in a locker after my search. At Monaco's House of Arrest, prisoners enter naked. They are stripped of their clothes, of their memories. No personal effects, trousers, underwear or socks come through these doors as you are incarcerated. There is nothing to cling on to, to survive through the months, the years...

...Monaco will be ridiculed... This muffled moment of anger loops round in my head.

It stems from my desire for freedom, of course. But also from the drive to see the Principality humiliated. Is it worth the risk?

Yet do I have a choice about the answer? If I give up, I have no future. Week after week, my dream, my project, turned into a plan. A meticulously prepared plan.

This is not a trial run. Was this flame lit during the course of my life as an inmate...? Did the spark that lit it come from the man I am today, or the child I was?

Sat on my prison chair, I know that had I not decided to act, I would have succumbed to depression for the first time in my life. My feet are hanging over the abyss. I am already deeply drawn to it, and I have no other choice than to pull myself up. I, Luigi the Italian, have decided not to give up. My eye is keen and my mind is sharp – enough to devise a course of action to nurture my thirst for revenge.  

(Non-Monegasque inmates sentenced to more than 6 months do not remain incarcerated in the prison of Monaco. Once sentenced, there are transferred to one of the French prisons.)

CHAPTER 3

PENITENTIARY TOURISM

A few months back, March 2002.

All I can see is the aged matte paint. On the ground, a layer of rust is eating away at the solid blue of the iron floor. I am sat on a bench, in a cage with a wire netting door. My heart is in my throat. I could almost vomit the little food I gingerly ate this morning, in the stress of my departure. Hurry up Ciardelli, get in there, so I can search over here... and other such farewells from the central prison of Arles, which I would have happily done without.

My life as an inmate fits in just a few boxes, stacked in a corner of the penitentiary van.  You can accumulate a lot of stuff over years of incarceration. There were also Élise’s letters. My drawings. My poems, which I kept in a well-organised file. I like everything to have its place and right now everything is in disarray. A guard hurriedly conducted a search through it all. Just enough to create chaos and simulate his control over me.

Seeing chaos in my possessions makes me angry. I cannot help it. For years now, I have organised my life inside of nine square metres. Sometimes less. There is a place for everything. It may be the way I keep the only hold I have over my own life. Keeping order in what I can. Being able to bear being a grain of sand in the prison system’s universe. I am aware this is not exactly a great achievement, but I have not seen the light of day for quite some time. For the last eight years my sky has borne the criss-cross mark of barbed wire, or has been lacerated by bars. Eight full years. I know what days and weeks behind bars look like. Before this eternity, there was Italy. Lucca, Modena, Pianosa, near Livorno, to name but a few. It is a long list. I was young. The press called me the Cyrano of Holdups. Need I say more? My features. Perhaps small brown eyes... Or not, depending on what I am plotting. Tall, slim. Though what witnesses often retained from my physique were the fake moustache and quirky hat I sported, which seemed to suck the memory out of them.

- He had a red beret, I’m sure, a lady had said. And he was very polite. He also had a moustache.

It is true that I was always well mannered.

Robbing does not mean having to resort to violence, and I have never killed anyone. I did not want to end up in prison for murder. In any case, murderer or not, the Italian justice was after me. I chose freedom and avanti la Francia. I was on the run from Italy, and as I had to make a living, I robbed again! I knew nothing else but to rob; I never had done. Time was closing in on me. Four armed robberies in three days. In Menton, Nice... And I hung around Monaco a little. I skimmed all the rich towns. Alas, my plan to fill my pockets before heading to Spain is thwarted one September day, when a cop looking like he came straight out of a Belmondo movie arrests me in the middle of the Promenade des Anglais. I was arrested, sentenced, and France truly made me pay. I was sentenced to four years for drug trafficking, which was not in effect trafficking but more like a few exchanges of merchandise - a little cocaine in payment for a hotel room. It works even in the better establishments. My own bank card, in case of shortages. To these four years are added another eight for robbery. And so it added up! Twelve years to pay, eight of which at the expense of the government. Alas, justice and I already had some debts to settle. There were also eight years to serve in my native country, Italy. The 20-year mark was thus reached - the extent of a sentence for murder.

The vehicle slows down and I barely manage to suppress a gag. I hold on so as to be able to focus on a point in front of me, keeping my head up.

In the end, time goes by. We just wait for it to pass and then one day, here it is. We find ourselves in the moment we had been waiting for. I had been thinking about Italy for years, hoping to return. Time had slowed down since the court of Aix-en-Provence had signed the extradition agreement. And then finally the moment came, Andiamo, Luigi! Andiare in Italia.

I am suffocating in the searing heat of my confine. The layer of rust is changing shape under the sweat running from my eyes, clouding my vision. We have been driving for at least two hours. Suddenly, the van’s sirens start blaring. We are most probably in Marseille. As usual, traffic is crippling the city. In fits of stops and starts, we reach the hill leading up to Les Baumettes’ prison. A few more bends, and I know this will be my last stop in a French prison. It makes me feel something. Albeit not joy, nor melancholy. Far from it. Something akin to the effect of a page turned, leaving a hundred chapters behind. A slice of my life, eight years thick.

I know this grey building, its stones stigmatized by the impact of German bullets. A souvenir of the bodies that succumbed, lifeless, against the walls. From inside the metal walls of the van I can imagine the sculptures of the seven cardinal sins, installed before the war in homage to the old myth that sins can be redeemed with prayer, isolation and work. Such conceit... And such contrast with its blackened cells, never repainted. The sound of voices coming from the window of a cell, calling out to another set of bars. The suffocating heat. The throngs of more than a thousand inmates in the punishment factory.

I have known many prisons, many cells; they wore my life out, day after day, month after month. Today I am just a drop-off. I wait for my Cerberus to come feed me, in a cell sullied by the dirt of all the world’s misery. I dare not sit on the worn out mattress. There is no chair. Just the bars on the widow, and a bed. Finally, I hear the sound of a key turning in the lock. The door opens to reveal a heavy man, with a worn out look. The grey walls affect one and all. I smooth my jeans with my hand, as if to smooth out the creases on his face.

- Let’s go, says the fat guard.     

At the Registry I am assigned to new guards for the journey. I am handed from the Penitentiary Police to the French Police. Navy blue uniforms, light shirts. A tall guy with a grey goatee, a round shaved head; and a scrawny one, floating inside his uniform.

- Your hands, please, says Goatee. In the back, please.

I hold my words back. Arguing is futile, my hands will be cuffed from the back and that is that. The journey will not be comfortable. The scrawny one holds a file in his hands. I am guessing it contains a black on white list of my accomplishments. No risks are to be taken during this transfer.

- Is this okay? asks the policeman. Is it not hurting you?

- I’ll be fine.

It will have to do. I have no choice. I am getting a taste of what awaits me as we leave the men’s building, flanked by Scrawny and Goatee. Out to the grand courtyard, with its small paving stones. The gate is an immense iron structure that does not lend itself to imagining a high-speed start. My hands cuffed in my back, I am led to a Ford Galaxy. At least it is not a paddy wagon anymore. A third cop is driving, same uniform, same dour expression. I am placed in the back, on the passenger side. In case I thought about head butting the driver. Goatee sits on my left.

The car starts. As the engine roars, I start to feel better. These hours spent at Les Baumettes had reawakened my anxiety. I have no reason to fret, although with penitentiary police, you never know what might be. I am well aware of what this administration is capable of. Over the last few months, I had had a sense of foreboding. I had learnt that prison is all about deceit! The guard, the director, the educator... They all tried to reassure me. Don’t worry Mr Ciardelli, you will be transferred, Mr Ciardelli. And each, in turn, to explain what I already know - the court of Aix-en-Provence has signed the extradition agreement between France and Italy.

I blame these concerns on my past experiences. Alas, I have already been far too familiar with so-called penitentiary tourism. I was never pre-warned, of course. Incarcerated in Nice, judged and sentenced, I was to be transferred to Arles. Yet I ended up in Les Baumettes. This mistake took a