Strangled Silence

by Oisin McGann

  'They're mopping up. But it's not over,' he said at last. 'I think we've really got them cornered now. I bet they thought they were really smart, showing the pictures of this surveillance drone – making it look like I'd built it myself so I'd appear a fool if I tried to go public with it. There are no markings on it – anywhere – so they probably thought it couldn't be traced back to them. They were wrong.

  'There are five different parts of this machine that have been patented. Why go to all the bother of designing a whole bunch of new bits when you can use existing ones, right? One company holds all the patents; a group called VioMaze. I bought a few shares in the company and—'

  'And they sent you a brochure,' Amina murmured.

  'Right.' Chi grinned. 'They make military gear – you name it, they can supply it. Even really unusual stuff like, oh . . . I don't know . . . unmanned surveillance aircraft, maybe? They've got knockout gas and other "non-lethal" weapons – plenty of lethal stuff too, of course. They can set up mobile operating theatres and build prisons. They can even supply "private security operatives" – that's "mercenaries" to you and me . . . serious ones too – ex-Special Forces. Oh, and you know what else they make? MindFeed, the program the army's using in schools. VioMaze is the one-stop shop for everything you need to fake a war.'

  'That's great, but that's still not enough of a link to put anybody in prison,' Ivor pointed out. 'Or in Tariq's case, keep them out. What use is it?'

  Chi sat back, disappointed with the lack of gushing praise.

  'It's a good start,' he retorted. 'We can follow the leads—'

  'We've been following the leads since this whole thing started!' Ivor snapped. 'All it's got us is public ridicule, a few dead bodies and our days spent waiting to be dragged into the back of a van and carted off to a disappearance somewhere. I've had enough. I got you two into this and I've been regretting it ever since. It's time to stop before it gets any worse. We don't have enough evidence to finish it and every time we get close, somebody dies, or goes to prison or . . . or . . . I've just had enough.'

  It was clear from his posture that he meant it.

  'I'm not finished,' Chi insisted. 'The head of this company is a retired navy admiral by the name of Robert Cole. Remember the photo I showed you of Rosenstock and two others? He's one of the guys in the picture. I went through Nexus's disks. Nex found out the Triumvirate were trying to smuggle nerve gas into Sinnostan. Why? Maybe because it'll prove to everyone that we were right to go to war. Who makes the nerve gas? VioMaze. Not in Europe, obviously, 'cos it's illegal. If we can find proof that—'

  'But we never find proof,' Ivor interrupted. 'They're ahead of us at every turn. And sooner or later, we'll run out of luck.'

  'I love it, the word "war",' John Donghu said abruptly. The others turned to look at him, as if noticing him for the first time. 'This word, it changes everything. After you use it, you can do almost anything and people will understand – they will forgive. You can hurt another human being – call them "enemy" and then murder them. You can commit the worst of crimes and your government will pin a medal on your chest. You can bomb cities.' He made an explosive gesture with his hands. 'Reason is turned on its head at the mention of the magic word: "war".'

  Donghu settled into a chair, looking round at his audience.

  'Nobody cares enough about this war to stop it, now that it has started,' he rasped. 'It's too far away for them to care. Bad things happen in war, that's just the way it is. Even you don't care enough about this.' He held up his hands to silence them. 'It's not a criticism. You care first about your safety and about your story and that is understandable. I am always the same. But I tell you this . . .' He leaned forward. 'You should be angry because they have made you afraid. Not just you – all of your people. They gave you an enemy in Sinnostan and wailed about bombings and aeroplanes and nerve gas and you cowered as if you had seen a ghost.

  'Me, I am much more scared of car crashes than ghosts. Your trains worry me too, but mostly cars. They are deadly things. It is the same in my country. Many more people are killed by pick-up trucks than bombs. They crash into each other, they run off the road, they roll over. People fall out of the back. Nobody wears seatbelts. But it's very hard to make people afraid of their cars. You cannot declare war on pick-up trucks.

  'The powerful ones make you afraid of the bogeyman so that you will be good children and go to bed when you're told. And though there are real bogeymen – real terrorists – they are less dangerous than car crashes or bad electrical wiring or heart attacks. Now that you have started questioning the bogeyman legend, it is the powerful ones who are afraid. But any animal that is afraid will lash out and that's what they're doing now. And they can hurt you while there are just a few of you.

  'I know this animal and I have fought it before and I can tell you that it cannot be killed. Defeat it once, and it will rise again in another shape.'

  Donghu rubbed his hands together, his eyes seeing something else in another place – another time. His hands clasped into fists, nails digging into his palms.

  'But you can make it afraid of you and that is enough. It is a creature of the night; drag it into the light and you can beat it. You must drag it out where others can see it and they will help you. They will not believe in it unless they see it for themselves.'

  There was silence for some time after he finished. Then Amina spoke:

  'The press have made us out to be paranoid cranks who believe in flying saucers and make up our stories as we go along. We don't have enough proof to take to a court or a newspaper or television channel – not now that we've been discredited. But we have enough to make people question what's going on and I think we should put that information where everyone can find it.'

  'How?' Ivor asked. 'We could email it to every reporter in the country, but the story's already been rubbished in the media; reporters will avoid it like the plague – particularly if it's coming from any of us. We could email it to everybody we know and ask them to send it on, but it's become a conspiracy theory now. You know how many of those are circulating the web? How many do you pay attention to, when they come into your inbox? Sure they're good for a laugh, but nobody takes them seriously.

  'Chi's run a well-informed blog for years,' he went on. 'So has John here. Nobody goes to them unless they're looking for them. We could put all our information on a website, but how will people find it? No reputable paper or magazine will let us advertise this – they won't take the chance of being sued. And anyway, websites and blogs can be attacked with viruses and shut down. You'd have to put it on a dozen websites . . . a hundred. How do we get ordinary people to go looking for them?'

  'We create a virus all our own,' Amina told him. 'An information virus. One that will make the news. Let's drag this animal out into the light. We'll need a printing press, some websites . . . and a large sum of money.' She looked coyly at Ivor. 'Money talks. Oh . . . and it would help if it's a slow news day.'

  Then she told them what she had in mind.

  There were mixed feelings about it. Ivor was willing to fork out the cash, but he wasn't the only one to wonder if this was the best way to use it. Chi wanted to wait until they had more conclusive proof. Gierek and his mates liked the brazen nature of the plan, but were a little too keen on using explosives.

  After the details had been worked out, Donghu went home, but Amina and Ivor stayed the night there. Gierek gave up his bed for Amina, and Ivor settled on the floor beside her in a sleeping bag.

  'You know,' he whispered to her in the darkness, 'if we do go through with this, we'll be breaking the law. We could be arrested.'

  'Then we'll get even more publicity,' she said. As she said it, she realized arrest was a more serious problem for a man already out on bail. Feeling a little ashamed, she added: 'Let's hope we cause enough fuss to justify the crime. We should make the headlines unless something really bad happens.'

  'Well then,' he chuckled, 'let's hope the world stays safe for the next f
ew days.'

  They drifted off after that. And both of them slept better than they had in weeks.

  5

  Amina was back at work two days later. She was treated with an uncomfortable combination of sympathy and avoidance by the rest of the staff. Nobody gave her any work that involved writing, editing or emailing. She wasn't allowed to photocopy sensitive documents. They wouldn't let her anywhere near a computer. So she fetched drinks and breakfast bagels and tried to make herself as useful as possible. There were few advantages to making the coffee, but one of them was the chance to overhear snippets of editorial meetings.

  This was how she came to be among the first to hear about the deaths at the Lizard Club.

  Goldbloom had called a meeting of all the lead journalists as soon as word reached him. Coffee, tea and mineral water were ordered and Amina duly delivered. Her curiosity was piqued by the subdued mood that pervaded the newsroom. She had never seen this before – it took something horrific to bring the frenetic activity of this hive to a halt. After putting the tray of drinks on the table in the conference room, Amina hung by the door to try and listen in. To her surprise, nobody even noticed her.

  Charlie Stokes – visibly restless without a cigarette in his hand – was in the middle of relating what had happened at the nightclub. The rest of the people in the room listened in sombre, respectful silence.

  '. . . The medics said it could have been much worse. If the nerve agent had worked slower, more people would have been affected. They were all teenagers out on the town after their graduation ball. Beautiful young kids, all dressed up to the nines in tuxes and ball gowns. You should have seen it – they were still dealing with the casualties when I got there. There were far more girls affected; more of them were drinking shorts and alco-pops. At first everyone thought the ones who were throwing up had just had too much to drink. But others started collapsing soon after and when a few started having convulsions and haemorrhaging around the eyes, then the panic started.

  'There was a stampede for the doors because somebody thought it was being caused by gas. More people were hurt in the crush. When they first got there, the medics thought the water might have been poisoned. But the club doesn't serve tap water and, of course, all the individual bottles are sealed until they're served.

  'Then they figured out that it was the ice. Somebody had fed some highly potent nerve agent into the ice machine. All of the ones who fell ill had ice in their drinks. Thankfully, the kids stopped drinking when the first few collapsed. That's the mercy of it. If the first ones hadn't died in the club, hundreds more could have drunk from contaminated glasses.'

  Charlie looked down at his notes, his calm reserve cracking for just a moment before he collected himself and continued:

  'Nobody knows what the toxin is yet, but it's definitely not a chemistry-set job. It may even be a weaponized nerve gas in its liquid form. The amount needed for a fatal dose is tiny – a drop the size of a pinhead. The latest count stands at fifteen dead, sixty-two in critical condition. Doctors don't know how many of those will make it, but there's a strong possibility that even if they do, they will have suffered permanent brain damage. The doctors have no idea how to counter this stuff without knowing what it is.'

  He pressed a button on the DVD player beneath the television on the wall and stood back.

  'We received this disk this morning.'

  The screen came on to show a man wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with a Sinnostan flag. A black balaclava covered his face. His hands were clasped in a relaxed fashion on the table in front of him.

  'People of Britain, today you wake to a different dawn. Today you wake to the emptiness left by your dead children. The nerve agent we used on the unfortunates in the Lizard Club was designed and manufactured by your people. You sent it to Sinnostan as part of your war and we have sent it back to you. This operation is only the beginning. There is plenty more poison where that came from. Your arms dealers supplied it in industrial quantities.

  'I want you to know fear: in your Underground; in your train stations and airports; in your schools. We can and will strike wherever we choose. We make no demands of you – those will come later. First we want you to be terrified of us . . . because you should be.

  'I have no religion. I am not a fanatical nationalist. I am a father, a son, a brother. I have no intention of dying for my cause. That is your purpose. You will be hearing from us again.'

  The screen went blank. Charlie switched off the television.

  'We don't know who they are,' he informed the group before him. 'They didn't identify themselves – not even a group name. We can assume they're Sinnostani, but that's about it.'

  'All right.' Goldbloom stood up heavily, letting out a long breath. 'Most of the photos from the scene were taken on camera phones, but they'll do. Let's put a face on this disaster. They were celebrating their graduation, so see if you can get their grad photos. Pick the prettiest girl on the critical list – I want the front page with a before and after: grad photo and her on the life support machine. "Horror of Young Lives Cut Short" kind of thing. That's it. Get on with it.'

  Amina hurried out of the conference room and grabbed her phone from her bag. Dialling Chi's number, she waited impatiently for him to answer.

  'Amina?'

  'Have you seen the news about the Lizard Club?'

  'Of course. There's only been sketchy reports so far, but—'

  'They used a nerve toxin. Listen, did Nex have any information on that stuff they were trying to smuggle into Sinnostan?'

  There was a pause on the line: she could hear Chi clicking his tongue.

  'Could we not do this on your mobile?' he asked. 'Call me back from somewhere more secure and we can talk about it. And we need to keep it short, OK?'

  Amina hung up and swore under her breath.

  It took her ten minutes to get out and find a working payphone, two streets from the Chronicle building. She didn't know why she was bothering – it was barely safer than using her own phone – but she decided it was best to humour Chi. He was much more experienced at being paranoid than she was.

  Closing the door of the phone box, she kept looking around her as she picked up the receiver and started to dial. Her head began to swim. Leaning back against the perspex wall of the booth, she put her hand up to her face as her vision blurred. She had time to look out at the street in front of her and see two men coming towards her wearing paramedics' uniforms, striding unhurriedly up to the phone box. No, she thought. Not like this. Amina was barely aware of her surroundings now, but she seemed to be sitting down in the cramped booth. How did that happen? Her thoughts were becoming increasingly confused. The door opened and she blinked, pushing herself back against the inside wall, waving her arms feebly in front of her. She made a pathetic attempt to fight the men who leaned in towards her. Strong hands gently pulled her out and lifted her onto a stretcher. No, she tried to say. No. Her words came out as a slurred mumbling. She knew what they'd done. They'd booby-trapped the phone somehow – wiped the mouthpiece with anaesthetic or maybe even rigged it to release a gas when she picked it up. Very James Bond.

  People on the street watched as the men wheeled the stretcher towards a waiting ambulance. They probably mistook her weak sobs for some semi-conscious, delirious pain. The Scalps were taking her out here, with all these people around. Amina was able to stay awake long enough to see the curious onlookers peering through the rear doors of the ambulance as she was lifted inside. Then the doors were swung closed and she was alone and trapped and terrified. She looked up at the men's faces, crying, begging them incoherently to leave her alone. A mask was pressed over her nose and mouth and it all went away.

  Amina's breath panted weakly, hollowly in a mask. Things came and went woozily. Lights trailed by overhead. She was floating down a corridor. No. She was on a trolley. It was all confusing. Where was she? What was going on? Her eyes closed. They opened again. The ceiling had changed. A different corridor. This was wrong.
She must try and stay awake. It was hard to remember why it was wrong. Then it came to her. The Scalps had her. Amina started to panic. She tried to sit up. Her wrists and ankles were strapped to the rails on the sides of the trolley. Another restraint crossed her chest, holding her down. She tried to scream, but it came out like a whimper. Whatever they'd given her had left her partially paralysed.

  'She's coming round,' a voice said.

  'Put her under again,' another replied.

  Ivor had described this to her. This had happened to him before they brainwashed him. Before they operated on him and took out his eye. Amina wailed into the plastic mask, her breath fogging it. She tried to shake it off, but it was held firmly on her face by its straps. The men were not hiding their faces. That wasn't good. Either she wouldn't be able to describe them when all this was over . . . or she wouldn't live to. Her sobbing grew harder. Some of her strength was coming back. She pulled at the straps on her wrists again.

  'I said put her under,' the second voice said again. 'I want her out by the time we get started on her.'

  Get started on her? Amina's imagination began torturing her. She didn't think of the soldiers who had died in Sinnostan; she thought about the ones who had made it back despite horrible injuries. Men and women like Ivor who had lost eyes, or arms or legs or who'd been burned or had shrapnel embedded in their bodies.

  She wondered if she was going to get a turn on the roulette wheel. What were they going to do to her? Whatever they wanted. No matter how hard she thrashed, she was helpless. Another scream rose from deep inside her. The men who were pushing her along on this trolley did not care. She was just another job to be done.

  'Don't worry, love,' the first man said, leaning over her. His hand reached down under the mattress and he turned something and she heard a hissing sound. 'No matter how bad it gets, you won't remember a thing.'

  Amina started to lose consciousness again.

  I will, she swore to herself. You won't make me forget. I will remember. If Ivor could do it,