Strangled Silence (16 page)

'Who's that?' he asked.

'Some guy named Shang,' Amina told him,
eager to change the subject. 'He's wanted in
connection with the anthrax scare; supposed to be
a biological weapons expert. Funny, though, he's
not on any terrorist watch list.'

'I've seen this guy before,' Ivor said, shifting his
seat closer. 'I'm sure of it. It was . . . I think it was
in the hospital in Sinnostan, before I was flown
out. He stuck in my mind because I remember
being scared of him, but I couldn't figure out
why.'

Chi was frowning. He slid the window of the
web browser to another screen and started searching
through the folders on his hard drive.

'Shang,' he muttered. 'Doctor Anthony Shang.
I know that name. Where the hell have I heard it
before? You think he worked at the hospital in
Kurjong? Maybe that's . . .'

His hand worked the mouse quickly, opening
one folder after another until he came upon the
document he was looking for.

'This is it,' he said at last. 'An article in
Paranormal Monthly
.'

Ivor and Amina avoided looking at each other.
Paranormal Monthly
? Chi went on to give an outline
of the article:

'A nurse working for the British army in
Kurjong became convinced there was a Chinese
Communist plot to place moles in the British
armed forces by abducting wounded soldiers and
replacing them with perfect doubles. Hope you're
paying attention here, Ivor. One surgeon that she
considered particularly suspicious was a Chinese
guy named Anthony Shang. The army sent her
home, citing – you guessed it – post-traumatic
stress, but she's popped up a couple of times on
conspiracy websites and blogs. Her name is
Agatha Domingues, she's a forty-three-year-old
Filipino lady and she's now working in London
as a psychiatric nurse.'

'You have to love the irony of that,' Amina
commented. 'OK, I'll go talk to her, seeing as I'm
the least likely to believe her story.'

'I'll come with you, 'cos I think it'll be
entertaining at least,' Chi told her.

'I'm going to make some phone calls,' Ivor said.
'I've a friend in the Media Operations Unit in
Kurjong who owes me a favour. I'm going to see if
anybody there has heard of a surgeon – or a bioweapons
expert – named Shang.'

'Use my phone,' Chi told him. 'It's clean at this
end at least, but try and be as vague as possible –
you should see the gear they have in Government
Communications HQ nowadays. If there were
starlings perched on a telephone line in the Outer
Hebrides, GCHQ could hear them singing.'

As they got up to leave, Ivor leaned over the
desk, picked up a pen and scribbled some words on
a scrap of paper. He stood up straight, smiling
slightly.

'You were right,' he said to Chi. ' "Alien Sand
Mob" is missing an "A". "Osama Bin Laden" has
three. How did you know?'

'Breaking codes is what I do,' Chi replied with
a smug grin. 'Next time, give me something harder.'

Gierek was still locked in the cabinet when Chi
returned to Nex's place early the following
morning. A night of imprisonment had not
improved his temper. Chi and Nexus stood gazing
at the metal cupboard for some time before gathering
the courage to do what needed to be done.

'Gierek?' Chi called out. 'You still with us in
there?'

The reply came back in robust fashion.

'I'm gonna chew the meat off your spine like a
goddamned kebab, you weasel!'

'OK. Do you want out or not?'

Chi was rewarded by a fuming silence.

'Right. We'll make this as painless for you as
possible.'

Gierek must have wondered about that one –
until Chi and Nexus pushed the cabinet over
onto its side and started to slide it towards the door.

'Hey,' an uncertain voice called out from
behind the metal panelling. 'What you doing?'

After much exertion, they made it to the door,
jerking the cabinet over the threshold and shoving
it to the top of the stairs.

'Hey!' Gierek bellowed.

Chi climbed over the cupboard and hurried
downstairs to open the outer door. Then he
climbed back up to stand just beneath the front of
the cabinet.

'All right, careful now,' he muttered.

He pulled and Nex pushed. The cabinet tipped
over and started to slide down the stairs. At first
they thought they were in control of the weight,
but Nex's fingers slipped and Chi, suddenly faced
with being caught underneath the bulky metal box,
stepped to the side, still trying to hold it in place.
He failed.

The cupboard clattered down the steps, hit the
ground at the bottom with a sickening jolt and
slammed into the doorjamb. Gierek screamed blue
murder. Chi gave Nex a fearful glance and nodded.
They crept down – as if they might avoid the Pole's
abuse if he couldn't hear them – straightened out
the cabinet and shoved it out into the alleyway. Chi
put a stainless steel badge and a data disk on the
ground beside the cabinet. Putting the key in
the cupboard's lock, he turned it and ran for the
door. Nex pulled it closed and bolted it.

'You're both dead men!' Gierek yelled as he
crawled out of the cramped prison.

'I'm calling the police!' Chi shouted back. 'You
can stay till they get here, or get lost now!
Remember I've got my face as evidence, you
animal! I've left your goddamned badge out there,
along with a disk of all the files I've collected while
working on your case. We're sorry it's come to this.
You left us no choice. The material's all yours, just
go away!'

They watched through the small dirty window
in the door as Gierek glared balefully in their
direction and then picked up the peace offerings. A
police siren helpfully sounded in the distance and
he looked in the direction of the sound.

'I'll be back!' he called out to them.

As he strode away, Nex let out a huge sigh of
relief.

'He will be back, you know.'

'Tell me about it,' Chi said, shuddering. 'I don't
even want to think about what he'll do if he ever
finds out that badge I gave him is a fake.'

'Dunno, but I'd say that chewing the meat off
your spine like a kebab will play some part in the
process.'

Tariq got into school early. This was a mistake.

The school had once been an award-winning
piece of architecture, but like so much cutting-edge
design, its time had come and gone and now the
bluff concrete slabs, slatted windows and sterile
green areas were simply depressing. It was not a
place to raise your spirits first thing in the morning.
He made his way up to his class's assembly area; he
had homework due for English class in the afternoon
and he intended to use the next half hour to
get it done.

As he walked around the corner into the wide
hallway, four boys his age jumped him.

'Hold him! Hold him!' Alan Noble shouted.

Tariq fought like a wounded cat, lashing out at
those around him. He caught Jim Harris a wicked
punch on the nose and slammed his shin into
Winston Garret's balls, but most of his blows
glanced off or were smothered as the four boys
piled on top of him. They laid in a few thumps for
good measure, Harris kneeling hard on his upper
arm and making Tariq gasp in pain. Three of them
held him there as Noble took out his camera phone
and started taking pictures of Tariq's face. Garret
held his head by the hair, twisting it this way and
that to give Noble the angles he wanted.

'That's it, gorgeous!' Noble sneered. 'Give us a
pout there. Show us your profile! Look at the sweep
of that neck. And the skin! Like bubble-wrap! Ha
ha! You've got skin like bubble-wrap, you spotty
muppet!'

The other boys laughed like their lungs would
fall out. When Noble was satisfied with his shots,
the boys picked themselves up, each throwing in a
parting kick for good measure, and then they left
Tariq where he lay. He stayed lying there for
another few seconds before getting up. He didn't
want to know what they were going to do with
those pictures. He just didn't want to know. Picking
himself up, he found a quiet place to sit against the
wall and get his homework done, but it was impossible
to keep his mind on it. He would have to
finish it at lunchtime.

First class of the day was Maths, and they were
doing geometry through a
MindFeed
game in the
computer room that had the students aiming
artillery using grid references, angles and
trajectories. It was demanding, but the graphic
depictions of the explosive damage their shelling
caused made it all worth it. Sometimes they got to
fire rockets, not only at stationary targets, but at
vehicles and aircraft too. There was also a version of
the game for pacifists: you could pretend to be a
dolphin doing a marina stunt course.

There was a tedious test that you had to do at
the beginning of each
MindFeed
game: two
round-edged squares came up, one that lit up and
another that showed different patterns. Every now
and then, the second square flashed white at the
same time as the first and when it did, you were
supposed to tap the left arrow key. Other times, the
first square would flash up a pattern that matched
the one in the second square. Then you tapped the
right arrow key. The squares regularly changed
sides. This was supposed to improve hand-to-eye
coordination and help customize the game to your
individual needs. Tariq just thought it was a waste of
time and got through it as quickly as he could, but
he found it was getting easier over time.

Lieutenant Scott was still there for most of the
classes, supervising, offering help and advice and
accosting them with his bland charm. Tariq didn't
like the lieutenant. He had grown up around
soldiers and, despite his rebellious tendencies, he
had a great respect for what they did. He liked the
blunt, in-your-face squaddie humour and even
the macho codes of honour they always boasted
about – though they offended his teenage cynicism
in equal measure. There was just something . . .
straightforward
about them. His father had been
hopelessly indoctrinated by the marines – he didn't
take kindly to jokes about them – but at the same
time, he had found a purpose in his life that had
chilled him out in a way Tariq envied.

Even though his dad had moved to press office
duties years ago, he had still done his time in the
field and he had seen action in places like Kuwait,
Sierra Leone and Iraq. He loved the marines almost
as much as his family, and Tariq could understand
why. You knew where you stood with men and
women who wanted to go out and do their duty
and not let their team-mates down.

But Scott, he was more like an advertising
executive, or a PR consultant. That smile of his
would have fitted on the face of any politician and
his friendliness and back-slapping manner were so
fake Tariq couldn't understand why any of his
classmates bought it.

Just at that moment, the lieutenant snapped his
fingers to get their attention. All the games were put
on pause and heads raised above the flat-screen
monitors to look at the officer. Tariq ran his hands
through his spiked hair, letting his fringe fall over
his eyes. He found it hard to keep the contempt
off his face.

'Ladies and gentlemen,' Scott began. 'You're all
flying through this course, so I thought it might be
time to move things up a notch. I have no doubt
you'll be
fascinated
to know that aspects of all the
MindFeed
games can be customized.' He stopped to
deliver a smile. 'In the game you're playing now, you
can change the locations of the artillery battles from
desert to open sea to jungle and so on; you can
paint words on the sides of your rockets and paste
pictures onto the armour of your cannons – give
them names and everything. Oh, and those of you
playing with dolphins, you can change the colours
and patterns on their skins and even customize the
walls of the lagoon. All of these settings can be saved
for future games, of course. It just gives you a
chance to bring some of your own personality into
the mix.'

'Cool!' Noble chortled.

'We think so.' Scott grinned back. 'Have a look
through the options for the next few minutes,
before we get back to the
agonizing
process of
learning! After all, learning is as much about building
character as soaking up facts, and
MindFeed
is
designed accordingly.' He wandered across the
room, stopping to look down at Tariq. 'What do
you say, son? You look like you're itching to express
some individuality. How about it?'

If my dad heard you calling me 'son', Tariq
thought, he'd kick your army ass right out of here,
you gimp.

'Sure, sounds all right,' he muttered, shrugging.

'That's the spirit!' Scott gave him a playful
punch on the shoulder. 'Get on with it, then. OK,
everybody, let's see you get creative!'

Agatha Domingues lived in Brixton. She was off
work that afternoon and eager to talk about her
experiences in Sinnostan, so Amina made an
appointment to meet her, hooking up with Chi
outside the Tube station before walking to the
address they had been given. It was a Georgian
house that had been broken up into cramped
cardboard-walled flats with thin caravan doors and
barred windows. Domingues answered the buzzer
over the intercom and came out to the door to let
them in, putting the chain on the battered,
chipped-paint door before opening it. Amina and
Chi had to show their identity cards before she
would close it enough to take the chain off and
Amina began to wonder how many of these
suspicious, fearful people there were in the world.

Domingues was a small Filipino woman with
a shrewish face and a short nurse's haircut. She
moved with a nervous energy that was almost
childlike. Her flat was down some narrow stairs in
the basement, its single window looking out on a
neglected garden. She informed them that she did
not have tea or coffee, offering them cocoa instead.
Chi took her up on the offer, but Amina settled for
tap water.

As the little woman busied herself in the
kitchenette, Amina sat down on the couch and laid
her recorder on the coffee table. She noticed that
Chi had opened his laptop, which he was using to
record too, complete with webcam. She did not
know if he was showing off his high-spec equipment
or just being thorough, but she definitely
wanted to keep her own record of this interview.

'So you want to know about Sinnostan, eh?'
Domingues asked, an exaggeratedly canny look on
her face as she brought over the drinks on a tray.
'You're not the first, y'know. You saw the article in
Paranormal Monthly
, right? It's been getting a lot of
attention.'

I doubt it, Amina thought to herself.

'Yes, we've seen it,' she said. 'It was fascinating.
We're particularly interested in one man you
mentioned – a Doctor Shang?'