Strangled Silence (23 page)

Amina meant to talk to her parents as soon as she
got home, but she was intercepted by Tariq
when she walked in the door. He had been thinking
over her mind-control conspiracy and had
come up with a theory of his own.

'School!' he exclaimed. 'They're trying to
brainwash us at school!'

Amina arched her eyebrow at him, focusing the
full glare of her intolerant-big-sister expression at
him. But its effects on her little brother had been
waning for some time. Tariq glared right back at
her.

'No, I'm serious,' he insisted. 'You know the
MindFeed
software they've got us using? I'm sure
there's . . . y'know, like, subliminal stuff in there
that's soaking into our brains. I'm telling you,
they're up to something.'

Sweeping past him, she walked into the
kitchen, where their father was cleaning his
stripped-down automatic pistol. This Browning
Hi-Power 9mm was his own weapon – press
officers did not need to be issued with side arms,
but Martin Mir believed in keeping his skills
honed.

'Hi, Dad. Tariq thinks they're brainwashing him
at school.'

'That's what school is for, love.'

When he had finished cleaning out the barrel
with the long thin brush, he laid the components
out on the cloth, pressed a button on his stopwatch
and began assembling the weapon with practised
ease. Slapping the thirteen-round magazine into
place to finish the drill, he put the gun down and
checked his time. He looked mildly pleased. He
stripped it down to its parts and started again.

Tariq came into the kitchen looking sullen. His
eyes were on his father, watching as the gun clicked
together.

'Are you going to tell him, or not?' he asked
Amina in a petulant tone.

She scowled at him. She'd prefer to do it in her
own time, but maybe it was better to just get it all
out in the open now. Martin put down the weapon
and looked up from the table.

'Tell me what?'

'I need to talk to you and Mum,' Amina said
reluctantly. 'It's about what I've been working on. I
think I'm in over my head.'

Helena was called down and they all sat down
in the living room. Amina got off to a faltering start,
glancing constantly at her mother as she explained
about meeting Ivor for the first time and how she
had got more involved in the story from there. By
the time she reached the point where she was
describing the warning Ivor had found written on
the ground, Martin had his head in his hands and
Helena was staring at her far too intently for her
liking.

Then she told them about the funeral card.
When she took it out of her bag, Martin drew in a
sharp breath. Helena did not say anything, she just
took the card by its edge, so as not to smudge any
fingerprints, and examined it closely.

'What in God's name were you thinking?'
Martin asked, exasperated.

He always said 'God' – hardly ever 'Allah'. He
had entered the military when it wasn't a good time
to be a Muslim.

'I was doing my job!' Amina retorted. 'What
would you expect me to do?'

'You're an office temp on a summer job!' her
father barked at her. 'You're supposed to be making
coffee and learning how to write! Who the hell are
these people who've got you involved in this? I
want to meet them . . . By God, I'll . . . I'll skin
them alive! And what about your bosses at the
paper? How much do they know about this? Do
they know you've been threatened?'

'Well, that's the end of it,' Helena told her.
'You're not up to this, Amina – at least, not
yet. You're too young, too inexperienced and you
should have known better than to get mixed up
with a bunch of cranks. Do you realize how you
sound? You've let yourself be drawn into the
delusions of some mentally disturbed veteran—'

'There not delusions and . . . and he's not disturbed!'
Amina protested. 'I mean, he's a decent guy
and if he is . . . if he's mixed up about anything it's
because of what bloody Sinnostan has done to
him!'

'You've taken these
delusions
,' her mother
continued, 'and tangled all that up with some
fruitcake's wild conspiracy theory for good measure.
You need to step back and start seeing things
clearly.

'If this threat is real – which I seriously doubt
– you should have told us immediately. But I can't
honestly believe somebody came into our house
last night to leave a funeral card by your bed, honey.
I just can't. The more time you spend with these
kinds of schizos – and believe you me, I know their
type well enough – the more you get infected with
their mentality.'

She stood up.

'You should have filled Goldbloom in on this
"investigation" before it went this far. I'm going to
call him now, to ask him how he's let my daughter
get duped like this while she's supposed to be in his
care—'

'I'm not in anybody's bloody
care
!' Amina
shouted back at her, lunging to her feet. 'And this is
not a delusion! Goldbloom gave up his right to take
over this story when he cut my article to shreds.
But at least he still trusts my judgement enough to
let me keep digging. This stuff is real, and I don't
know where it's taking me, but I'm not going to let
you
get in the way, you domineering cow!'

'Amina!' Martin shouted. 'Amina, don't you
dare speak to your mother that way!'

But she was already gone, storming from the
room before she said something she'd really regret.
Because at that moment, she felt nothing but burning
hatred for her mother. The woman had put her
career before her marriage and children all their
lives; always travelling, missing birthdays and proud
moments, staying too long in her study in the
evenings and never remembering the names of
their friends. She had been Amina's idol, but so
rarely her mum. And now, when Amina had started
to show the same qualities she admired in her
mother, Helena had recoiled at her own reflection.

Now that she was in danger of having this story
taken off her, Amina realized she couldn't bear to
give it up. She had to see it through to the end . . .
whatever that end might be.

Ivor couldn't tell if it was a real tooth or a ceramic
implant. It depended on when this was happening.
It shifted in the left side of his mouth whenever his
tongue brushed against it. Once he had become
aware of it, it was impossible not to probe at it,
wiggle it. It was a real tooth, he decided. He
wouldn't have the implant until later, when he was
back in London. And it was clear he was still in
Sinnostan.

He could see flashes of the future. In that
future, he was lying in a hospital bed with a drip in
his arm. He was dimly aware of a slight lump on his
side, which he knew was the dressing covering the
gunshot wound. That had been one of the Scalps
men, before Ivor had hit the gunman with the bar
from his dumb-bell. The ambulance had brought
him here – he remembered part of that. But all of
that was in the future; it would not happen for
some time.

His tongue wiggled the tooth. The gum around
it was sore, with a sharp pain sometimes when the
pointed prong of the root brushed against a nerve
in its socket. This was in a different hospital now. He
couldn't remember how he had been brought here.
In this hospital, he could not feel anything. Not his
fingers or toes, nor anywhere on his limbs. There
was no sensation of any kind throughout his body.
Nor could he see or hear anything. That was
worrying him. Despite all this, he knew he was in a
hospital.

The order of things was mixed up in his head,
confusing him. One thing he was sure of was the
impact that had loosened his tooth – his real tooth,
in the here and now, not the implant the watchers
would knock loose in the future – so he went back
to that moment. His real tooth had been loosened
when his face hit a tiled floor. His arms were held
behind his back so he couldn't catch himself as he
fell; he couldn't protect his face. There was a soldier
pinning his arms. The soldier's weight fell with him,
on him, making the impact against the cold hard
floor even worse. His ribs hurt and the breath was
forced from his lungs.

The soldier was holding him down because he
was out of his bed. Ivor had waited with his eyes
closed until they came to undo the straps that held
him. It was coming back to him now, but the order
of things was mixed up. He saw the roulette wheel
. . . No. That didn't happen yet, he told himself. He
was confused. He had to remember things in the
right order.

Go back to the start, before his tooth was
knocked loose – in the first hospital. In Sinnostan.

He woke up in a bed in a room with seven
other beds in it. There was a drip in his arm and a
sensor on his forefinger. His arms and legs were
bound, attached by straps to the bars on the side of
the bed. Why had he been restrained? His thoughts
were fuzzy, unclear even though he was waking up,
and he recognized the feeling. Some kind of
sedative – he had been drugged. The room had
concrete walls painted hospital green. There were
no windows. Each bed had a full intensive care setup:
a trolley with machines monitoring life-signs,
oxygen tanks and masks, those vacuum tubes for
sucking vomit out of the airway . . .

All the beds were occupied, but the men in
them were unconscious – or at least they appeared
to be. Ivor's head slowly cleared. Moving very
slowly, he looked to one side and then the other. To
his right was a door. It was closed. What was he
doing here? Had he been hurt? His last memory
was of that little village . . . Tarpan; a depressing
little patch of life in the arsehole of nowhere.
They'd gone there to report on a unit of paratroopers
who were helping the locals rebuild an
orphanage. He and Ben had gone out to find the
orphanage, driven by a local guide. On the way,
they had been stopped at an army checkpoint. Ivor
had pulled out their identification and their orders
. . . That was the last thing he remembered.

He didn't feel any pain, lying there in the
hospital bed. Flexing his fingers and toes, he tensed
and shifted his torso slightly from side to side. If he
had been hurt, he couldn't detect it now. His breath
quickened. Something was wrong here. Why had he
been restrained? He raised his eyes to the ceiling.
Big square air-conditioning vents breathed over the
inert patients. The door opened suddenly and he
closed his eyes, feigning unconsciousness. Whoever
it was strode over to the bed opposite his. Two sets
of footsteps.

'What's happening to this one?' a man's voice
asked.

'Burns to the neck and torso,' another man
replied. 'Supposed to look like an IED, I suppose.'

'Another messy one,' the first voice said
wearily. 'All right, get him into the blast room. Have
the OR ready. I'll do the touching up after lunch.
And check the dosages on the others, I don't want
any more wakers. Half these goddamned grunts are
so pumped up on steroids or some other fix they're
damn near impossible to keep under.'

'Yes, sir.'

Ivor listened to them, trying to make sense of
what he was hearing. It was almost as if the man
they were talking about wasn't wounded yet, but
was
about to be
. What was going on? They said it was
supposed to look like an IED – an improvised
explosive device, the insurgents' favourite weapon.
It was what caused most of the injuries to Western
troops in Sinnostan. His heart thudded against his
ribs. He understood one thing: he wasn't supposed
to be conscious. That wasn't a huge surprise; he'd
been hooked on sleeping pills for a few months
now – he'd knock back six or seven a night, sometimes
more. Anything to sleep. His nerves had been
on edge ever since he'd arrived in this goddamned
country. The more pills he took, the higher his
tolerance, and with a higher tolerance, a normal
dose of sedative wouldn't keep him under. The pills
were black market, of course, so they wouldn't
know about his resistance to the sedative without
tests.

More men came in, along with the squeaking
wheels of a trolley; he heard the sounds of them
removing the man from his bed – 'one, two, three
and
up
' – the limp body flopping onto the trolley,
its metal frame creaking slightly. He waited for
them to leave and then pulled at his restraints. They
didn't budge. He lay still and waited again, trying to
suppress the waves of fear surging through him.
This wasn't right. If he'd been wounded, he'd know
about it by now. His head was clearer. There was no
numbness in his body now; he had no sense that he
had been given painkillers.

If he wasn't supposed to be awake, he would
pretend to be unconscious. Until he knew what
was happening, he needed to play every advantage
he had. Ivor didn't know why they had been talking
about that man's wounds in the future tense, but
he wasn't going to wait here and find out. The door
opened. He shut his eyes and lay still. Footsteps
approached, stopping by his bed.