"What if they came to me first?"
"Don't worry about that. It didn't happen," he answers bluntly.
Once her hands are free, he quickly moves to the neighbouring cage, which contains a young Thai couple, and begins the same process. Sascha races to pick up two of the canteens full of water attached to the dead guards and takes a well-deserved sip out of one before handing the other bottle through a nearby cage to a middle-aged man and woman, who snatch it eagerly and take it in turns to gulp it down.
Ikaros glances at her doing this while he puts another key in the lock; the third key fits and he flings the door open. The two scramble eagerly out of the cage and run towards the forest without even waiting for Ikaros to undo their bonds.
"Hey, where the hell are you going?!" yells Ikaros after them.
They continue into the forest and disappear without so much as looking back.
Ikaros darts to the next cage and tries yet another key, but fails again. He hears some rustling coming from the forest on the other side of the clearing, stands up and scans the foliage for a moment with trepidation. "Dammit!"
Hearing the now-unmistakable sounds of several men ploughing their way through the undergrowth, Sascha becomes instantly terrified. "More are coming, Ikaros! Quick, get them out!"
He tries another key as he looks at the six remaining captives still locked up in the cages, then glances over his shoulder and spots the outline of six to eight men's heads just above the undergrowth. Realising he's not going to make it, he tries one more key, fails, then throws them into the cage at one of the two women, both of whom, realising his intent, begin to plead with him desperately to continue. He stares into their fearful eyes for a fraction of a second, jumps up and grabs Sascha's arm as she stands there slightly unprepared for his speed. "Let's go!" he yells firmly.
Jolted into action, she instinctively begins running alongside him but without fully accepting that they're leaving the others behind; she looks with horror over her shoulder. "My God, what about them?!"
"Just run!"
She does.
Racing over the helipad, which is used for product collection, they get to the edge of the clearing and disappear among the trees heading eastward up a steep incline, which Ikaros believes is the way they came and is their best bet to get back to the track. The reinforcements based atop a rise nearby to the west emerge out of the trees seconds later after being alerted to action earlier by the racket coming from below; some run towards the cages while others race into the shed.
On making an accurate assessment of the situation, one suggests they interrogate the remaining captives. They point their guns through one of the cages and prod a woman aggressively with the barrels, yelling a few questions quickly and repeatedly. The poor woman, who is in her fifties, knowing the situation is hopeless, acquiesces quickly, points in the two directions both pairs ran, and says a few concise words in an attempt to convince them that she's telling the truth. Barely hesitating, all but one split spontaneously into groups and give chase.
Sascha and Ikaros trudge without rest through the dense undergrowth for several hours until they eventually come across the dirt track, where they do their best to walk briskly, despite their exhaustion, back to the main road. After more than a dozen failed attempts, they hitch a ride back to Bangkok in an old truck transporting chickens to an abattoir on the outskirts of the city. Without any money between them, they merely thank the driver who is incurious about the nature of their undisclosed situation, perhaps because the possibilities are no surprise to him. They then begin walking in the general direction of their hotel, which they estimate will probably take them most of the day to reach if no one picks them up.
7 p.m.
Dirty, tired and hungry, but not so thirsty because of two accessible taps they spotted along the way and a few muddy puddles they ravaged after the heavy rains that afternoon, Sascha and Ikaros stand outside their hotel looking considerably worse for wear and quite conspicuous. They walk into the hotel nonchalantly, hoping not to gain any unnecessary attention but are seen by just about all the staff and several hotel guests who look them up and down with curiosity and in some cases presumptuous disgust, but otherwise they are left alone. They collect new door cards while trying not to start or encourage unwanted questions or a conversation with the receptionists with only moderate success, then walk down the hall.
Sascha's room is number 106, several closer to reception than Ikaros's. "Call me when you wake up," she says, swiping the card. She knows exactly what she's going to do as she ruminated obsessively for hours prior to finally arriving about immediately having a shower, eating the courtesy noodles waiting for her on the bar fridge, and going straight to bed with the room's temperature way down low.
"Yeah, sure. I think we should check out as early as we can, okay?"
"Not too early, though," she replies exhaustedly.
Ikaros nods as he begins again to walk down the hall towards his own door, only turning his head briefly to watch her entering her room.
• • •
It wasn't their fault, of course, that they fell prey so easily to a well-developed operation that had been hidden from view for so many years, from a commonly known practice in the early years of the century to an all-but-forgotten phantasm; the traces had been long suppressed by the local authorities, the higher levels of which had been in cooperation with the associated international criminal networks for some time. The creation of this elaborate underground programme was partly enabled by all the distractions of the century, but the emergence of genetically engineered, on-demand organ replacement technologies allowed the idea that organ transplants were made redundant to be perpetuated more convincingly. It was the exorbitant cost of such medical treatment, however, that restricted the service to an elite minority in most countries, ultimately allowing the more economical and affordable traditional organ transplants to continue. This allowed the underground illegal activities to thrive while being covered by sophisticated practices.
Among the most sought after in many countries, including Thailand, were the organs of Caucasians based on often spurious beliefs about their better health and fitness, thus creating a need for tourists to be targeted; covering up their disappearance was only achievable with the assistance of the authorities and convoluted paper trails that ultimately reported the tourists' exits from the country or their being victims of violent and deadly crimes that were all too common, the cases of which could be wrapped up neatly and were never really expected to be solved. This deflection stonewalled any limited independent investigation that could have been undertaken but never was with any intensity or endurance. Ultimately, it was due to widespread and controlled ignorance and complacency that some of the acquired organs made it onto the official international organ donor trading system and into the bodies of unwitting citizens of many developed countries who couldn't afford the more expensive options.
• • •
9 a.m.
The phone rings. After several cycles, an arm slowly appears out of the thin, white sheet and picks up the receiver. "Hello?" whispers Sascha, knowing it's probably Ikaros.
"Hey, it's me. You up yet?"
"No, what time it is?"
"Nine. I'll meet you down in the lobby in forty-five minutes, okay?"
"Okay … I'll try." She places the phone down and groans for a moment under the sheet in an effort not to fall back to sleep.
One hour later
Sascha emerges from the hallway and enters the lobby, sees Ikaros sitting on a couch near the front windows, and smiles pleasantly. She checks out and politely says her goodbyes to the receptionists, then walks towards the exit, where Ikaros is already waiting. "Did you have a good sleep, then?"
"Yeah, I did, actually. It was pretty good, considering. How 'bout you?"
"Yep. I was too tired to worry about anything. Actually, I haven't slept that well in a while and kind of feel a bit bad about it."
Ikaros nods slightly in
silence. Without saying anything else, they walk out the door, down the steps and stand on the pavement where they met just four days earlier.
"Do you want some breakfast?" she asks.
"I do, but … I was stupid: I should have worked this out yesterday. I reckon it would be best if we separated and got out of the country today, if at all possible. Get the next flight to wherever and hook up with one back to Germany just in case they track us down at a hotel here or end up waiting for us at the airport or something."
"Don't you think that's a bit paranoid?"
"Maybe… It's careful, though, and we don't know who we're dealing with. We know it was a big operation, though, and you can't do that kind of thing without a lot of help. Our only advantage is if they still don't know who we are exactly, but if they work out it was us who got away, the bus driver or tour guide could profile us for them very quickly … if it comes to that, anyway."
"Oh, my God. We're screwed."
"Not exactly. We just have to get to the airport. But we should stay away from each other when we're there, okay?"
"Sure." Sascha looks out at the street. "I don't really wanna stay here now, anyway."
Ikaros nods. "It's probably best to get back to Berlin and start studying again … and do our best just to get on with things. We're not likely to forget about this, though."
"Yeah … we needn't bother trying, really." She stares out across the street without paying attention to the dense morning traffic. "Do you think you'll be okay … I mean, with what you did?"
"What did I do, though? I was just making survival choices. Everyone was." He stares at the cracks in the pavement. "The world isn't a better place now. It's just about the same."
"It's not quite the same as it would have been 'cause we're at least still alive. We should let that make the difference, okay?"
He manages a slight smile before seeing a taxi coming down the street and waving it down. He picks up her trolley case and, after placing it in the trunk, leans in through the back window, where she's now sitting, and kisses her lightly on the cheek.
"Will I see you again?" she asks, knowing she's been unable to get him to share even a sketch of a plan, no matter how vague.
"I might make it to Berlin in the next year or so … depending."
"See you then, then … if not at the airport."
"Yeah, at a distance, okay? Bye." Ikaros watches as the taxi pulls away and joins the flow of traffic.
Chapter 8
4:15 p.m.
Ikaros sits quietly in a departure lounge waiting to board a plane to Kuala Lumpur, where he plans to catch a flight direct to Johannesburg, South Africa. Forty minutes earlier, he watched Sascha board her flight to Tokyo unimpeded, which made him feel slightly more hopeful about his own prospects. He still feels anxious, though, due to the two-hour-long maintenance delay that his plane has been inconveniently undergoing: he just wants to get airborne as soon as possible so he can get some distance between himself and what was supposed to be a relaxing break before getting on with what he's really interested in doing.
Twenty minutes later
From his window seat as the plane taxis towards the runway in preparation for take-off, Ikaros watches baggage handlers and maintenance crews going about their business on planes he passes by. He knows nothing, and will never know anything, about the fact that the authorities are about to conduct a search through the airport's mainframe in an attempt to determine whether their foreign targets have already left or are about to leave and can be stopped; by the time they discover that Ikaros is on board his plane, however, it's fortunately too late.
Ikaros waits patiently for the view of the surrounding city and countryside to emerge as the ground drops away from beneath the plane and it begins to make its sharp ascent. The two detectives at the scene, having just received information about Ikaros's whereabouts, stand quietly in the terminal and watch as the foreign-owned jetliner disappears into the distance.
• • •
The detectives were too late only due to the cover up vainly attempted by the surviving staff at the operating centre. Petrified that they would lose their jobs or be eliminated for incompetence, the staff only reported to the collection helicopter when it arrived early that morning that the prisoner responsible had been dealt with on site. Although this satisfied curiosity for a while, the next morning, when the remaining organs were collected and taken to Bangkok for processing, the discrepancy in the accounting was immediately apparent when cross-referenced with the bus's passenger list. An armed team was consequently sent to the operating centre, where all the members of staff were subjected to interrogation for several gruelling hours until two of them cracked and gave up the required information. Thus, the hunt for Ikaros and Sascha only had a chance to begin that afternoon; evidently, if the pair had not found themselves in such fortuitous circumstances, they would have been apprehended and dealt with long before arriving at the airport. For their part, though, the men responsible for the duplicity were subsequently summarily executed and their bodies were incinerated with those of regular victims; replacements were deployed and activities returned to normal except that extra precautions were implemented to ensure that no one else in future was able to make an escape — and no one ever did.
• • •
India: nearly two weeks earlier
On a small river boat on the Hugli River, a distributary of the Ganges, Sascha and a classmate from her undergraduate degree, Meike, whom she'd met up with some weeks earlier, stand on the top deck at the bow away from the twenty-odd other passengers. With the late-afternoon sun approaching the cityscape, they look over at the sprawling city of Kolkata running down to the river bank only thirty or so meters away. The preceding three weeks' travel around the country have taken their toll on them both, and they're happy to have this opportunity to be as far away as they can from the poverty and the incessant bustle and chaos of the city without being locked up in their hotel room. Really, they're just waiting for their respective flights out of the country over the following two days: Meike is heading directly to Berlin to start back at work, while Sascha plans to spend ten relaxing days in Thailand to wind down before returning to continue on with her thesis at the Free University of Berlin.
Meike stares out at the darkening outline of the city and says in German, "You know, I knew India would be something like this, but it still surprised me to see so many disturbing things."
"Yeah, I know," replies Sascha, having had the same feeling for some time. "But the thing that gets me the most isn't the fact that so many millions of people have died here in recent years because of the flooding, crop failures and all the other social and economic problems, it's that there seems to be little sign here on the streets or in many people's eyes that anything unusual has happened or is happening. I mean, beyond the immediately affected areas and people, it seems that everyone else is just carrying on with their lives as though it doesn't even matter to them…"
"Mm, maybe it doesn't."
"… And there are still so many people everywhere. Life is cheaper here than it used to be, and it's been pretty cheap for a long time."
"They're just better at segmenting parts of society than they used to be, but then that's kind of been one of their specialities all along, hasn't it?"
"Mm, the ghettos are little more than places to be ignored until you die. But that's the same with countries everywhere and always has been… Is there actually anything really different about now and the past?"
Meike doesn't need much time to think about this one. "Sure there is … the intensity, the scale and … the diversity of all the terrible things."
Sascha becomes visibly frustrated. "It's just about impossible to get away from it, and it's just about impossible to combat it. As far as I can tell, I just … I don't know how we're going to avoid some of the things that are gonna happen: millions of people will die prematurely here before the end of the year and there's no realistic global response that can
prevent it. We might have been able to do something effective if we started acting appropriately at some critical point in the past, but now … oh, it's hopeless!" she concludes.
"Yeah, just about hopeless."
"I want to help people, but, more than anything, I want everything to change! I just think that if nearly everything isn't changed, then there's little hope for many of the people that we actually try to help. The problems are too big now, I mean, this century alone we've seen umpteen revolutions, dramatic changes to our political and economic systems that they claim will bring wealth and stability to more countries and people, a bunch of organisations stating aims to alleviate poverty, and just about everyone is in the midst of implementing a development or aid programme of one kind or another, and then there's 'international cooperation.' But what's happened? Things are still getting worse… This has got to be the worst century in history, and we're only half way through it!"
Meike interjects, "Hey, let's forget about it for now, we'll drive ourselves crazy thinking like this. There's nothing we can do at the moment. There's no problem we can solve by getting ourselves worked up like this."
"Okay," smiles Sascha, "but that's still part of my point, though, isn't it…? The helplessness of it all," she adds wryly.
Meike nods, and they watch as the sun disappears behind the sprawling city, the pollution-filled air providing fuel for a brilliant red glow to have developed in the surrounding sky — they try to appreciate its beauty, anyway.
• • •
The decline of India was, ironically, a concomitant of its development: the steadily growing population in the early decades of the twenty-first century led to a situation in which the Indian economy and means of agricultural production couldn't keep pace with the demand, which was exacerbated by certain ineffective economic policies and trading practices. By 2032, the difficult situation that India had fallen into was becoming clearer with the death toll from starvation escalating to unprecedented levels; changes in the climatic conditions, including a bombardment of extremes, and the consequent problems with insufficient and unstable crop production, led to millions of farmers having to walk away from their farms destitute. This in turn increased the significance of the nation's over-population and also impacted not only on the country's but also the world's economy and food supply because India had positioned itself as a leading food exporter, which was enabled by the radicalisation and near-complete modernisation of its agricultural practices, infusing its food production with that of multinationals and the global market at an unprecedented and unsustainable level.
NEW WORLD TRILOGY (Trilogy Title) Page 7
