Strangled Silence (22 page)

'So it must be handy, having a famous correspondent
for a mother,' he said, when she mentioned
her mother was working on a story about arms
companies working in Sinnostan.

'I could make more of it, I suppose,' she
admitted. 'But I want to do this on my own, not
because I'm her daughter. Still, they definitely cut
me more slack at the paper because of who she is,
and I'm not above using that. She's always saying
I should do whatever it takes. There's pressure
though, too. It means I've a lot to live up to.'

'What about your dad? He's in the media too,
right?'

'He's a marine. Well . . . technically. Nowadays
he does more press releases than assault courses.
That's how they met; they were both working in
Iraq and he chatted her up after a press conference.
Mum jokes about their marriage being a conflict of
interest. Only sometimes she's not joking.'

'And you haven't talked to them about any of
this yet?' Ivor asked. 'They might be able to help.'

He didn't point out that Amina should have
told them as soon as she thought there was any risk
involved in working on this story. It would have
done no good – he was much the same at her age;
he had figured the less his parents knew about his
activities the better.

'They'd want me to stop, they'd say it was too
dangerous,' Amina sniffed. 'But that's the whole
point, isn't it? The ones who break the big stories,
they don't stop for anything. When I think about
what some reporters have had to go through: death
threats, beatings, imprisonment, torture . . . just for
trying to tell the truth, I always wonder what I'd do
in their place, you know? I'd like to think I'd be
brave enough to do the same.

'It should be easier for us, shouldn't it? We have
democracy and a free press and all that. But now I
don't know. You look back through history and so
much of what went on seemed black and white.
Now it's complicated – it's all about versions of the
truth. We don't have any dictators or secret police
or . . . or censors telling us what is and isn't true. Do
we? So why do I have this growing feeling like . . .
like . . .'

'Like everyone's treating you like a mushroom?'
Ivor grinned.

'What?'

'You know – keeping you in the dark and feeding
you loads of bullshit.'

'Oh, right.' She smiled back at him. 'Yeah, like
that.'

Ivor looked out of the window as the train slid
squealing into a station and the doors clunked
open.

'I don't think it was ever simple,' he mused.
'Hindsight's a wonderful thing. We have the luxury
of looking back at history and thinking we'd do it
better. But there's as many different versions of each
story as there are people to tell 'em and we
normally only get to hear from the ones who were
left in charge after the smoke settled. History as told
by the losing side is a real eye-opener.

'As for being brave, I think it's a rare event
when you can make that great, courageous gesture
that gets you noticed. Most of the time it's just
about plugging away and making all those tricky
little decisions that come at you every day. That's
how it was when I was in the army.

'And I'd be lying if I said I hated giving boring
stories a dramatic touch, or simplifying the background
information so it could be given in catchy
sound-bites. I figured this was reporting for the
MTV generation and I was good at it. News these
days has to be less like a documentary and more like
a movie or a video game. It's got to look good and
still fit between the ads!'

His eyes were on the dark walls of the tunnel
as they swept by.

'And war is the most entertaining news of all.
It's the best story. Human drama, action, explosions,
cool machines, medical emergencies, heroes and
villains, dramatic locations and constantly changing
situations . . . tragedy and triumph. It triggers the
most extreme emotions. Everybody wants to report
on a war.'

'If everybody wants to report on it,' Amina
asked quietly, 'why can't we find out what's really
happening over there?'

'War is loud,' Ivor replied. 'If you want to
distract people's attention from something, there's
nothing better than a bit of death and glory. Isn't
this your stop?'

They had agreed to say goodbye publicly, to
make it look like they might not be seeing each
other again. He stood up to see her off and gave her
a hug.

'Maybe I'll see you again sometime,' he said.

'Yeah, let's keep in touch,' she replied.

On impulse, she kissed him on the lips. Ivor
was so taken aback, he almost forgot to wave as she
got off. She turned to watch him through the
window as the train pulled away.

There was a man standing behind her wearing
a leather biker jacket and jeans. His face was a
blurred smudge. The train moved away into the
tunnel before Ivor could do anything to warn her.

Ivor tried to reach Amina on his mobile as soon as
he came out of the station, but he couldn't get
through. She was probably on the connecting train
home. Deciding a text or message on her voicemail
would do more harm than good he hung up, swearing
under his breath.

Frustration, fear and rage whirled through him
in a confused mass. He wasn't thinking this
through. They knew they were being followed.
They had said the safest thing to do was to avoid
contact for a while. The man he had seen behind
Amina probably wasn't there to harm her, but even
the slightest chance that he might be was enough to
terrify Ivor. What should he do? Try and reach her
at home? He knew where she lived. He had the
solid steel bar from his dumb-bell and his stun-gun
in his pockets in case of trouble. But maybe this was
a test. The man on the platform might have known
the effect he would have – he could have been
attempting to get a reaction out of Ivor, to see what
he would do. If Ivor sought Amina out, he could be
endangering them both. Perhaps he shouldn't react
at all.

But the thought that she might be in danger
ate into him, making his skin tighten, searing him
like acid. It was all he could do not to seek out a
taxi and drive straight to her house.

It was starting to get dark. Ivor jammed his
hands in his jacket pockets and walked quickly with
his head down, trying to get his thoughts into some
kind of order. He became aware of somebody walking
behind him. Out of habit, he checked the
darkened reflection in the window of a designer
clothing shop as he passed. It was a short, stout man
wearing a woollen cap and a bomber jacket. There
was nobody else on the street. Ivor stopped
suddenly, pulling his hands free and patting his
pockets as if searching for something. He glanced at
his watch and then looked back the way he had
come, giving the impression that he was thinking of
going back for whatever he had forgotten.

The man behind him had no face. Ivor was
careful not to react. Instead, he made a disgusted
expression and started back along the path. As they
passed each other, Ivor turned, pulled his stun-gun
from his pocket and fired it into the man's back.

The two darts pierced the man's jacket, embedding
themselves in his skin, trailing two wires
from the gun. Two hundred volts shot through his
body, jolting him rigid. He collapsed to the ground
with a gasp. Ivor gave him an extra shock for good
measure and then grabbed the man by his collar
and pulled him into an alley around the side of the
shop.

It took a little over a minute for the man to
come round. He was obviously in good shape. Ivor
could not see his face, no matter how hard he
looked. Just the eyes were visible, blinking slowly. It
had a sickening effect on him. What the hell had
they done to him?

'Who are you?' Ivor hissed at him, brandishing
the stun-gun, which was still wired to the man's
body. 'Who are you working for?'

There was no way of telling what expression
the man was wearing, but his voice said it all.

'I don't know what you're talking about,' he
grunted, his eyes staring up at Ivor. 'You just attacked
me for no reason. I have no idea who you are.'

The words were clear enough, but it was how
he said them that rattled Ivor. He was far too calm.
It was as if he was lying without any attempt to
make it convincing. There was no fear or confusion
or outrage in his voice, as there should have been if
he were telling the truth. But there was an edge to
it; one that implied that he was in control of this
situation, and not Ivor. To persuade him otherwise,
Ivor punched him where his nose should have
been. He felt a satisfying crack.

'I'm going to ask you one more time,' he
snarled. 'Then I'm going to keep triggering this
thing until the battery runs out, you get me? Who
are you? Who are you working for?'

'This is all in your head,' the man told him.
'You're having a nightmare you can't wake up from
because you
are
awake. You need help, Ivor. And we
can give you that help.'

Something big and heavy piled into Ivor from
behind, knocking the wind from him as he
slammed into the damp, uneven ground. His face
scraped across gravel. His right arm was pinned
behind his back and the stun-gun was wrenched
from his grip. He kicked out, catching somebody's
shin and knocking them off-balance enough to
weaken their hold on his right arm so he could
twist his left hand into his pocket and seize the steel
bar hidden there.

Two hard blows hit him on the side of the
head. A memory exploded in his mind: a white tiled
wall and floor. A few drops of blood close to his
face. There was shouting, the smell of rubber,
vomit as well as antiseptic, bleach and other
chemicals. The door – he had to make it to the
door.

Then he was back in the alley again. He swung
the steel bar behind him with all his might and
connected with something that felt like an elbow.
There was a cry of pain and he kicked and lashed
with all four limbs until he was able to struggle
onto his feet. There were two of them – the one
he'd caught and another taller, leaner one with
darker skin. He could not see their faces. In the dim
light of the alley, he took in as much as he could:
their size, their colour, their hair, their clothes. It
was vital he remembered every detail of this
encounter. This was his enemy. As his hand gripped
the bar, feeling the reassuring solidity of its weight,
Ivor was struck with an overwhelming need to
hang on to at least one of them. He would kill one
if he had to. Anything to hold on to them – to
prove they were real.

They were only a few paces away. The taller
one reached into his jacket and Ivor screamed,
charging towards him. He saw the gun with its
silencer in the instant before he brought the bar
down on the man's outstretched arm. The man let
out a squeal as his forearm broke, but Ivor hit him
again, knocking aside the other arm as it came up
to fend him off. The third and fourth blows hit the
man on his shoulder and head. He fell back heavily,
hitting the ground with a meaty thud. He didn't
move again. Ivor was tripping over him in his haste
to reach the other one. This one already had his gun
out. He looked in pain, but he was still lifting the
weapon to aim.

The first hurried shot went wide, the crack of
the bullet off the wall behind Ivor louder than the
shot itself. The second shot took him in the side,
but by then he was within reach, swinging the
dumb-bell bar over the man's arm and into the side
of his face. He shrieked in triumph as he watched
the man fall, everything in slow motion, slowing
. . . slowing . . . slowing . . .

He woke up to the sound of sirens. There was
movement around him, under him, through him.
His eyes opened, looking up at the roof of a small
room. No. A van, or bus. No. An ambulance. Of
course – the sirens. A face blocked out some of the
harsh light as it leaned over him. The expression
gave him some comfort, the professional concern of
a paramedic. The man's hand gripped his.

'Yuh gowna be awight, mate,' the man said.
'Stay still, yeah? Yuh got a wound in yo' side. What
was it mate? Gunshot, was it?'

'The other two,' Ivor gasped. 'Where are they?
The other two who were there.'

'It was just you, mate,' the paramedic said. 'Was
someone wiv you? Two of 'em yuh say? We'll have
the bill check the area. You was alone when we
found yaw.'

Ivor's head sank back and he closed his eyes. He
could feel a wobble in his teeth where his ceramic
implant had been knocked loose. The tooth he had
lost in Sinnostan. His tongue prodded at it.
Shouldn't really do that, he thought, I'll have to get
that fixed. He pushed at it again – he couldn't help
himself. The man was asking him questions. Did he
have any medical condition? Could he squeeze his
hand? Could he feel that? Could he . . .

It was a relief give in to the nothingness.

Chi switched on the twenty-four-hour news channel
in a window on his desktop, in time to see a clip
of Nexus being led out of the door of his warehouse
by two uniformed police, and into the back
of a waiting police car. One of the officers put his
hand protectively over Nex's head as he got into the
car. Chi snorted miserably; they had to be sure he
didn't pick up any bruises on the way to the station.
In the band along the bottom of the screen, other
headlines scrolled across, telling of more bombings
in Sinnostan. The female newsreader was already
narrating the story of Nex's arrest:

'. . . David Fogarty, who calls himself "Nexus",
is thought to have stolen hundreds of thousands of
pounds, possibly millions, from several high-street
banks over the past four years. Detectives are still
piecing together the full extent of his activities.
Using a program that removed only a few pounds
from each of hundreds of accounts each week,
Fogarty quietly gathered a small fortune that police
say was intended to fund terrorist operations.
Fogarty was an active member of Live Action, the
banned animal rights group . . .'

Chi shook his head in amazement. Nexus had
been to a few animal rights protests at a guinea pig
farm, but he'd never done anything more than
shake a banner and shout slogans. And as for
robbing banks, he held himself above such
materialistic hacks. Nexus was a truth-hound; he
got his thrills from cracking secrets, not bank
accounts. And banks did not publicize the fact that
they'd been hacked into – it happened all the time,
after all – they'd lose too many customers. Who'd
want to keep their money in a place where it could
be stolen over the phone lines?

For a moment, he wondered if Gierek had
informed on him, but it was unlikely. The Pole had
nothing but contempt for law enforcers; they were
corrupt beneficiaries of the tax he refused to pay.
No, Nexus had been brought down by someone on
high. The last project he'd been working on had
something to do with a bunch he called the
Triumvirate – three mysterious figures he suspected
of smuggling weapons into Sinnostan. Chi
wondered if they were the ones who had set him
up. Not that it really mattered now.

'Jesus, prison. The poor sod.'

Nexus would not be able to cope with prison.
A small weed like him with no hard friends would
be a plaything for the kind of predators that ruled
behind bars. Nex had been bullied at school; he said
it had been like living in hell. That would be
nothing compared to the treatment he could look
forward to inside. And, of course, he wouldn't be
allowed within a mile of any computers. Chi
wondered how long he would last and shuddered at
the thought. He'd need money. The network would
see that he had enough cash to get by.

And they would work to clear his name; for it
could have been any one of them getting the knock
at the door.

Chi checked his emails. There was one from
Nexus. Like all their communications, it was
encrypted with a key that only he and Nex shared.
Chi hesitated for a moment, then opened it up and
read it:

'Chi. They've rumbled me . . . Haven't time to
get out. Watch the skies, my friend.

Nexus.'

Chi studied the line of text. It had seven full
stops, one comma, two apostrophes and the letter
'n' appeared twice in lower case. 7 – 1– 2 – 2. Both
he and Nex kept back-ups of certain files in safety
deposit boxes. They each had a key to the other's
box, but only part of the number needed to access
them. They had arranged this simple code as a
means of sending the missing numbers in case
something happened to either one of them. It was
vital that their work be carried on after their . . .
retirement.

Undoing the screws holding on the round,
hollow steel drawer handle, he pulled it off the front
of the drawer and tipped a key out into his hand.

Chi sat back in his chair, running his hands
through his hair. Roswell, his cat, jumped up into
his lap and he stroked her back absent-mindedly.

'Hey, Ros.'

Nexus would get years for this. God help him,
they'd make mincemeat of him in there.

'Stay safe, brother,' he said softly, gazing down at
the key in his hand. 'We'll be thinking of you.'