To Kill The Truth

by Sam Bourne

  Except this was not a room. The size, added to the sharp drop in temperature, confirmed that she had stepped into a freezer. There were shelves to the left and right of her and straight ahead, arranged in a U-shape that left a small clearing in which she could stand. It was perhaps six feet across, and four feet deep. She felt the door close behind her.

  The obvious thing to do was to turn around and get out, to find somewhere else – anywhere else – to hide. But the guard would have made up the ground by now. If she went back outside, she would walk right into him. She could not let that happen. She had somewhere she needed to be.

  She looked around, searching for anything that might serve as a hiding place. There was a corner of the bottom shelf to her left that was in shadow. The space on either side of it was filled, which not only added to the darkness but which, Maggie reasoned, would make it plausible for there to be something there. That something would be her.

  She approached, preparing to squeeze herself into the gap. Quickly, she saw that it couldn’t be done with her shoes on. She needed to make herself smaller, with fewer hard edges. She slipped the shoes off and held them instead, as she crouched down and clambered into the space. Next she curled her chin into her chest and faced the wall.

  She held her breath. Still, she could pick up the scent of the food next to her: vast vats of chocolate ice cream. The lights went out.

  Perhaps two seconds later, the door opened.

  ‘Anyone in here?’

  Maggie kept her eyes closed, but she sensed a flashlight scoping the room. She held tight, willing her body not to tremble in this cold.

  She could hear that the guard was still inside, his footsteps echoing against the cold surface of the floor.

  He took a step closer.

  And then three or four steps in quick succession, followed by the sound of the door opening and closing again.

  She breathed out. But she would not uncoil just yet. He might come back in. Her eyes still closed, she strained to hear the sound from outside.

  The guard was talking into the cold store, just next door. ‘The police are on their way, miss. So if I were you, I’d come out quietly and we’ll work this out.’

  Her teeth were itching to chatter. It took an act of will to bite down and force them to stay quiet. There was a banging sound from outside.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I know you have work to do, but we need your co-operation. There is a woman hiding in this vicinity who we believe poses a security threat to guests at this hotel.’

  The cold was beginning to bite into her bones.

  ‘If you see anything unusual, you need to report it to us right away. To us or the police, who are on their way. And if you find the woman we’re looking for – white, red hair, around five foot eight inches – you need to detain her, by force if necessary. Is that clear?’

  Maggie could hear the sullen silence of the kitchen staff.

  ‘Is that clear?’

  There was a murmur, and then the sound of work resuming.

  Maggie considered uncoiling herself, and breaking out of this icebox that was now making her convulse with cold. Her feet, sheathed in nothing but the gossamer-thin fabric of her tights, were pressed into the back wall of the unit, which made things worse. But she could still hear footsteps and noise outside: it wasn’t safe to get out.

  Even as she could hear the guard, apparently patrolling the space between the cold store, the pot-wash area and here, her nervous system switched focus, away from fear of this man and his gun, towards the cold that was burning through the shoeless soles of her feet. The chill was instant and extreme, an unbearable frost that threatened to turn both feet numb any moment now. She had to get her shoes back on.

  She moved to uncurl herself, but as she did, she could see that her hands were not so much trembling as quaking, as if entirely out of her control. The skin on her bare arms became rough with goosebumps. The urge of her teeth to chatter was too strong to resist; once she succumbed, she seemed to vibrate with cold.

  Perhaps it was because of all those uncontrolled movements, but as she moved her right foot, her tights snagged on the shelf, ripping the fabric from the heel to the toe. Not that she saw it in the dark. Realization came when she came to put her shoes back on, planting the bare sole of her right foot on the cold hard ground.

  Her grip palsied by cold, it took Maggie longer than she’d anticipated to put the left shoe back on. As she moved to do the same for her right foot, she felt a sensation that sent a shot of pure alarm through her cerebral cortex. The shoe was in her hand and she had bent herself into the right posture, but she could not lift her foot off the ground. It wasn’t a muscle failure or a deficiency of strength. It was the cold: in just a few seconds the sole had become stuck to the frozen floor.

  She gave it another push, sending all her strength into her foot. But it was sealed tight. Another effort, though this time a new fear inserted itself: what if she tore her foot from the ground, but left her skin behind in the process? It seemed so fully cemented by the sub-zero temperatures she had no confidence that, in a test of strength between herself and the frost, she would win.

  Instinct made her crouch down and attempt to slip her fingers under the sole of her foot, to prise it away. As she bent, she heard her knees click.

  The voice from outside again, now speaking into whatever room was on the far side of this one. ‘Miss? You cannot wait this one out. You need to come out.’

  But she wasn’t paying attention to the guard, but to another sound she heard just as he spoke. It was distant and she could not be certain it wasn’t some neurological trick played on her by the ice that seemed to have inveigled its way into her entire sensory system. But she thought she had heard a beep. Just a single one, but definitely there.

  She willed there to be a second one, which might act as confirmation. But on the basis of what she had, she reckoned the sound came from her left. More important, and on this she was certain, the noise was not from inside this freezer or even the vast kitchen area. It was from outside. From the street. If she guessed right, it was the sound of a reversing truck.

  The trouble was, there was no way to explore, not without leaving this hiding place of hers. It was clear: she had to get out. If she did not, she might freeze to death, if the guard didn’t find her first.

  She was still crouching, almost squatting, with her fingers desperately trying to work her foot away from the glacial floor. She made her palm flat and attempted to slide it under the sole, like slipping a spatula under a steak glued to a frying pan. She shoved at it, wriggling her fingers to keep the blood flowing and to ward off the numbness.

  More noise from outside. ‘The police have arrived, Miss Costello. You’re all out of time.’

  At that instant, and in an intense act of will, Maggie simultaneously slid her hand underneath with great force and devoted all her mental strength to the task of peeling her foot off the ground, forcing her mind to pay no heed to her fears about leaving her skin behind.

  It worked, the foot finally lifting free of the ground, sending a strange, sickening pain through her. In the same motion, she put on the shoe which she’d been holding in her free hand, stood up to full height and rushed for the door.

  But where was the handle?

  She couldn’t see it, not where she’d expected it.

  Oh, please God, no.

  She had thought of this place as a room, but now she wondered if it was, in fact, exactly like a freezer you might have at home – one that only opens from the outside.

  Her hands, her jaws, her knees were trembling, as she searched for the way out. She looked left and right, though her sight was struggling in this cold. It wasn’t the curling wreaths of vapour in the air that were the trouble, but rather her eyes themselves. They seemed to be moving more slowly, straining to process visual information. She wondered if the cold had simply dried up the film of moisture that was meant to cover them. Or, worse, was the jelly of her eyeballs itself be
ginning to freeze?

  At last she saw it, a green hemisphere of a button on the right-hand side. She pressed her palm on it and, with a sound that sent relief into every part of her, the door mechanism was released. She pushed it open and with a glance left and right, she turned left, towards the sound of that single, hopeful beep.

  She slalomed her way through more vertical racks and stainless steel counters, until she saw that her instinct had been right. There was a loading bay at the back of this area, one that opened to the outside world. But it was not open now. And yet if she was right about that reversing truck, perhaps it was about to open at any moment?

  Her eyes went to the far wall where, demarcated by a pattern of diagonal red and white stripes, was a red pull-down lever. She guessed – she hoped – it was the mechanism for opening the steel-shuttered barrier that would give out onto the loading bay.

  She could hear male voices, a group of them, arriving from the main kitchen. Could she get to that lever without being spotted? And if she did, wouldn’t the noise immediately give her away? And, her biggest worry: would the door take so long to open that the guard, now backed by police, would have time to grab her before she’d had a chance to get out?

  The voices were getting nearer. She’d have to risk it. She took a breath and, her limbs still stiff from the cold, ran to the lever. Feeling the metal in her hand, she pulled it down.

  The noise was fierce, a howling klaxon accompanied by clanging bells, while three flashing red lights immediately began turning directly above the barrier.

  Simultaneously, the steel shutters began to rise towards the ceiling. The opening was tiny at first, but immediately after pulling the lever, Maggie had laid herself flat on the ground, ready to roll out as soon as the gap became wide enough. She did that now, finding herself on the other side, covered in the dirt of a delivery dock. She got to her feet and in that moment realized that she was on a concrete platform, set at the height of a truck bed. She contemplated the steep drop to street level, but did not hesitate. The alarm had probably confused her pursuers – masking the sound of the gate opening – but it had given her a head start of no more than two or three seconds. She had to jump. Now.

  The pain in her right foot was intense as she landed, but she could not listen to it. Instead, she ran and ran, turning right as soon as she could, desperate to get out of this deserted back alley and out onto the main drag of Connecticut Avenue, where there would be the safety of people. As she ran, she wondered if that really was a shot she heard whizz past her ear and wondered too about the strangely damp, almost fresh sensation she felt in her right foot.

  But she tried to put both out of her mind as she finally took in the blessed sight of traffic and, better still, an approaching cab. She was focused only on where she had to go next – and how little time she had.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Capitol Hill, Washington DC, 8.40pm

  Just that little touch to the ear had confirmed it. Until then, Maggie could not be certain that the former ‘Tammy French’ was guilty. But that reaction to hearing the name again, that call to her private security detail, confirmed it. It meant Maggie was right.

  It also brought back a line from the Bookburner’s manifesto that had, on first reading, seemed like little more than a platitude.

  Sometimes events have a momentum of their own.

  As Maggie slouched low in the back seat of a cab racing along Massachusetts Avenue, occasionally peeking over her shoulder to check if she was being followed, that was the line that she replayed in her head, over and over. It had new meaning now.

  Maggie reached under her left sleeve, where her phone was strapped in place in a runner’s armband. She pulled it out and looked up the corporation that had ‘Tammy French’ on the billionaires’ table. Maggie had read this entry a dozen times, but now a thought was forming.

  Austin Logica is a multi-billion-dollar company specializing in financial systems and algorithmic innovation. It was established initially as a data processing firm in the 1980s . . .

  She read on until she came to the key paragraph.

  Besides data analytics, AL’s breakthrough product was software that drew on machine learning, thereby automating processes that previously required a human operator. Widely seen as the first large-scale application of artificial intelligence in the financial sphere, AL benefitted from . . .

  Now Maggie looked out of the window and bit her lip. She looked back at the text of the page in front of her, which was describing the breakthrough Austin Logica had made which massively increased its scale and wealth, developing the key bit of software widely credited with the advance of ‘the internet of things’.

  Sometimes events have a momentum of their own.

  Maggie’s mind was racing, but her body also demanded attention.

  The change in temperature as she re-entered the world outside the freezer store had been a relief, but now her skin seemed confused by it: little goosebumps reappeared at intervals on her arms, almost as if they were remembering the intense cold. She rubbed her arms, up and down, again and again.

  But her focus was on her foot. Only once she was safely in the car, and had closed her eyes for two or three seconds as she forced herself to take several slow, deep breaths, did she attend to the sensations that were coming from her right shoe. Gingerly, she tried to remove it but stopped before it was fully off. The shoe was gurgling with blood; it contained enough to fill a coffee mug.

  She could see what had happened and the sight made her gag.

  It was exactly as she had feared. The patch of skin that covered the ball of her foot had been stuck so tightly to the floor of the freezer that, in the tug of war between her and the frost, the frost had won. It had kept hold of the skin, tearing it cleanly from the sole. It was doubtless still there, on the floor.

  She suspected that the cold had killed off her nerve endings, or at least dulled them. That, coupled with the adrenalin that was thumping through her system, had anaesthetized her: intense pain was coming, she was sure of it. She asked the driver for his box of tissues, used almost all of them to mop up the blood and form an improvised bandage, replaced the shoe and tried to focus.

  Sometimes events have a momentum of their own.

  When Maggie first skimmed past that line, she’d read it as no more than an abstract rumination on the forward propulsion of history, the way human events can seem to be driven by a force greater than any individual or even collective act of decision, the way they can seem to be pushed by nature itself. But now it struck her as more important, more concrete, than that. These words were a warning.

  The thoughts were tumbling over each other now. The source of ‘Tammy French’s’ fortune, a company at the cutting edge of artificial intelligence. The fact that the CCTV from the various fires around the world had shown no intruders or attackers, no arsonists carrying cans of petrol. The fact that there had been no arrests. Sometimes events have a momentum of their own.

  Maggie willed the driver to go faster as they moved along Constitution Avenue, the glowing white dome of the US Capitol looming over them. In a few seconds she would be at the Library of Congress. She knew exactly where she needed to go – somewhere that, for once, involved no people.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Capitol Hill, Washington DC, 8.46pm

  She thrust a bill in the driver’s hand and, seconds later, she was facing the mammoth, neo-classical facade of the Jefferson building of the Library of Congress, built with enough grandeur to be worthy of a spot directly opposite the Capitol and next to the Supreme Court. Except now it was not the architecture alone that made it an intimidating sight.

  This building and the other two that made up the library were wholly encircled by a combination of armed police, military-grade vehicles and traffic barriers. She counted at least ten fire trucks. Overhead was the constant throb of a police chopper. It was the full ring of steel, put in place hours after the fires in Oxford, Paris and Beijing. The coup
le of daytime entry points, with airport-style walk-through metal detectors, were now closed.

  Maggie got as close as she could, walking the sealed perimeter, looking for any hint of a gap. She approached the larger, more modern Madison building – each step bringing a fresh surge of pain, a red flash which forced her to picture the exposed, raw flesh of her right foot – but something told her that the prime target would be this, the oldest, most historic part of the library.

  Maggie strode up to the first officer she could find, standing sentry by one of the traffic barriers sealing off the path to the Jefferson building’s main entrance. He had a semi-automatic weapon across his midriff, and was bulked up with a bulletproof vest attached variously to a radio, a phone, a body-camera, a spray canister and a truncheon.

  ‘Maggie Costello, White House,’ she said, flashing her now-expired pass.

  Without replying, he muttered into his radio. Minutes later a man she presumed to be a more senior officer appeared.

  ‘My name is Maggie Costello from the White House, and I need access to this building. Urgently.’

  ‘You got written clearance to be here?’

  ‘No. This is an emergency. As we all know, this building is under imminent threat from a terror attack and I need access to prevent it.’ She was aware of how ludicrous that sounded, especially coming from a woman in evening wear.

  ‘No one gets in or out of this building, ma’am. Those are our orders. No exceptions.’

  ‘But it’s not about who gets in or out. That’s not where the threat is coming from.’

  ‘Well, feel free to take it up with the Chief of Police or the Director of the FBI. But the way we’re dealing with this situation is to let no one in. OK?’

  Maggie walked away, her head pounding in frustration. Her foot was throbbing, almost in sync. She reached for her phone and dialled Andrea Ellis’s number. Mercifully, she picked up.