Strangled Silence (36 page)

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 few days.'

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

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,

so can I.

But Ivor had a loose tooth that helped him
remember. She did not. As her senses began to fail
her, Amina bit down hard on the side of her
tongue. Wincing, she crushed the flesh between
her teeth again, tasting blood.

I
will
remember.

Chi waited an hour for Amina to call. After that,
he knew she wasn't going to. The Scalps were
mopping up. He sat at Gierek's computer desk, his
head in his hands,wondering what he was going to
do. Despite having five well-armed, hardcore
survival enthusiasts at his disposal, he was utterly
helpless. He didn't even know where to start looking
for her. He could report her missing, but what
good would that do? Amina was gone.

She had wanted to try and help the kids who
were dying from the nerve agent used at the Lizard
Club. The least Chi could do was give the police
everything he had on VioMaze. Maybe the
company had an antidote. They might even be
embarrassed into handing it over – if it could
be proved it was their stuff the terrorists had
used.

Which, of course, it couldn't.

Even so, he had to try. There was a police
station only ten minutes walk away. Chi saved
his files onto his MP3 player and, checking his
pepper spray was in his pocket, he made for the
door.

'Where d'you think you're going, peckerwood?'
Gierek called after him, from beneath the
chassis of one of the trucks.

'Out. Don't suppose any of you want to come
along?'

'Busy,' Gierek grunted back. 'Don't be long.
Your turn to cook dinner.'

Chi nodded and walked out. He had to stand
and wait for Gierek to buzz the gate open long
enough for him to slip through and then he started
along the road out of the industrial estate. He hated
Cricklewood. He found the place depressing and
even in daylight, he was nervous walking around
here. This part of it consisted of half-dead green
areas and wide roads, forbidding blocks of flats and
high walls encircling factories and goods yards.
Razorwire said a lot about a neighbourhood. In
the evening, many of the streetlights in the area
were out.

His eyes followed any car or van that came too
close to him along the road. He had his earphones
in, but kept the sound off. It was never a good idea
to block out your own hearing. A helicopter
passed by overhead and he watched it anxiously.
But it was probably just some rich slob avoiding the
traffic.

The dog came at him out of nowhere. A
Rottweiler, a mound of black and brown snarling
muscle with jaws dripping drool, charged up
behind him. Chi turned round to face it in alarm
and immediately knew it was a mistake. This dog
wasn't playing. And it wasn't stopping. Chi put his
hand in his pocket to reach for his pepper spray. It
would probably stop the animal . . . or it might just
make it mad. He bolted for the nearest cover.

Turning down an alleyway between two
factory walls, he looked round desperately for
something to climb up on. But everything around
here was built to be youth-proof. The dog came
into the alley after him, dashing towards him with
unnerving speed. He had seconds before it was on
him. A steel door started to open in the wall to his
right. Chi rammed through it and slammed it shut
behind him. There was a thud and the scrape of
claws on metal as the dog hit the other side. An
enraged barking erupted outside.

'Down, Butch,' a man's voice shouted.

The dog fell quiet. The hair on the back of
Chi's neck stood on end as he realized that the
voice had come from behind him . . . on his side of
the door. He turned to find himself in a small utility
room with bare concrete walls lined with fuse
boxes and pipes. It was dark; there were no
windows, just a bare fluorescent bulb that flickered
dimly. Another door in the opposite wall was
closed, hiding whatever lay beyond. There were
four men in here with him, all wearing gas masks.
So much for his pepper spray.

None of them looked surprised to see him.

'Chi Sandwith,' one of them said in a muffled,
rubbery voice. 'That was your life.'

Chi fought them. There was no hope, but he
wanted there to be evidence of a struggle on his
body. Anything that could be found in an autopsy:
skin under his fingernails, bruising on his body,
defence wounds . . . anything that could tell the
world he wasn't just another sympathy case who'd
done himself in because he couldn't handle living.

But these men were too good. When they
finally jammed the cloth over his nose and mouth,
his limbs were restrained firmly but gently, in ways
unlikely to leave any marks at all. The concrete floor
was cold and gritty as it pressed against his skin. The
cloth was damp and the fumes from it quickly made
him dizzy. Sobbing, he tried to hold his breath, but
it was useless. He was grateful when the end finally
came.

Much to his dismay, Chi woke up. It seemed his
ordeal wasn't over yet. He was lying on the floor in
the back of a van, with a man sitting on the bench
over the wheel-arch beside him. The man was
stocky, with a tight haircut, the skin of his scalp and
face stained with the dark tinge of one who simply
cannot shave enough. Chi's eyes were drawn to the
large brown mole on his jawline. It had been cut
recently, presumably while shaving. If there was any
expression at all in the man's eyes, it was one of
amusement.

'He's awake!' he said, over the noise of the
engine.

'So what?' someone called from the front.

Chi was lying on his front. As he rolled over
onto his back to look around, he felt something
hard and square dig into his side, but he couldn't tell
what it was. The interior of the van was unremarkable
– white, with racks of some sort lining the
walls. Two more of the Scalps sat up front. It was
dark out. Chi worked out that he must have been
unconscious for at least eight hours. His arms and
legs were tightly pinned and he gazed down at what
was holding them. It appeared to be some kind of
shrink-wrap, wound around his entire body from
his feet, all the way up to his mouth, which was
effectively gagged. Only his nostrils were left free so
that he could breathe.

'It's clever stuff,' the guy with the mole told
him. 'Dissolves in water. Not too fast, mind you –
after a couple of hours or so. Won't leave a trace. As
far as anybody will be able to tell, you'll have gone
into the river of your own free will.'

'Why do you always have to talk to them?' the
driver shouted back. 'He's a muppet – and a dead
one at that.'

The stocky one ignored his colleague, continuing
to stare down at Chi with a disturbing
intensity.

'I put a couple of bricks in your pockets, so
you'll sink fast,' Mole said. 'It'll be over quicker
if you don't hold your breath. Just open your mouth
and suck that water into your lungs. You won't, of
course, but I thought I'd say it.'

So that was it. They were taking him to Suicide
Bridge or somewhere like it. Chi tried to hide his
fear, but it was pointless. He was trembling like a
child, his skin was coated in a cold sweat and his
bladder was threatening to release its contents into
the shrink-wrap. The van slowed down and the
driver let out a curse.

'There's people on the bridge.'

Mole stood up and walked forward to look out
of the windscreen.

'What the hell are they doing there?'

'Look at the placards.'

'Ha! OK, let's do it further downstream.'

Mole came back and sat down on the bench
again.

'Seems like you get a few more minutes.
There's some folks on the bridge standing watch.
Bleeding-heart parents concerned about all the
suicides, by the looks of things. We'll have to take
you downriver a bit and drop you in there. Won't
be long.'

The van turned onto a rougher road, jolting
the floor under Chi's back and causing him to roll
from side to side. He could only bend his knees to
keep himself still, and even that movement was
restricted. Mole stuck his foot out, pressing his heel
against Chi's stomach to hold him down. The van
drove for what seemed like an age and then
stopped. The abrupt silence left after the engine was
turned off sent a chill down Chi's spine.

He thrashed about as they opened the doors,
but he was too tightly bound to offer any resistance.
The three men pulled him out of the van and
carried him through a gloomy area of woodland,
picking their way carefully, moving without haste.
They did not use torches, confident enough to find
their route by the faint light of the moon. Soon, he
heard the sound of the river. His nose was getting
blocked up now and he was finding it hard to
breathe. Snot bubbled and burst from his nostrils. As
his breathing became strained, he began to hope
that he would pass out before they threw him into
the water, but it wasn't to be.

They reached the edge of the river. Chi could
only see the slight glimmer of the water in the
darkness. There was no sense of ceremony, no pause
to contemplate the murder they were about to
commit. Mole used the point of knife to cut a small
hole in the plastic around Chi's mouth. It was
important that water got into the lungs, he
explained. Then he nodded to the others:

'Right, on three. One . . . Two . . . Three!'

Chi felt their hands release him on the third
swing. There was the briefest, frightening moment
of weightlessness and then the river hit him, engulfing
him. The chill water paralysed his chest, making
him gasp. Panic seized him, making him squirm
frantically around, his mouth firmly closed against
the water. It was all around him, trying to get into
him. The shocking coldness made him curl up . . .
and it was then that he discovered he could get his
head above the surface of the water.

Just barely. He was lying in mud at the edge of
the river and here the water seemed to be only a
couple of feet deep. By staying still, he was able to
lift his head up high enough to get his nose and
mouth into the air. He dragged in life-giving gulps
of it.

Rolling his eyes back, he stared up at the bank.
The three men were gone. Or were they? Was this
part of their game? He didn't think so. He should
have been thrown from the bridge, but they had
taken him to a part of the River Sliney they didn't
know instead. They thought it was all as deep as
the section under the bridge. Their mistake. Now
he had a chance – however small a chance that
might be. The cold seeped through his flesh, his
muscles, his bones, his marrow.

Doing his best to keep himself on his back,
using his pinned arms to brace himself, he bent his
knees, dug his heels in and pushed himself up
towards the bank. He managed to move about
twenty centimetres. The plastic was slippery on the
mud of the riverbed, making it hard to stay in
position. Every movement risked dipping his head
under the water.

He jammed his heels in and pushed again. His
feet just slipped in the mud and ducked his head
under the surface. He panicked for a moment but
then regained the air. Blowing water from his
nostrils, he took a few more panting breaths and
tried again. Another twenty centimetres or so. The
water was a little lower around his head. Its edge
encircled his face, reaching just over his plastic-wrapped
chin and around to his cheekbones.

After a few more pushes, he hit something
metallic. The water was just shallow enough for him
to look round. His head was resting against a large
cylindrical shape angled down into the mud. A
rusty barrel. Beyond it was the riverbank. One look
at the mud bank told him he hadn't a hope of going
any further. As he peered through the gloom on
either side, it looked as steep in both directions.
Resting his head against the crumbling rust of the
barrel's side, he felt his heart sink. The Sliney was a
tidal river. Judging by the height of the waterline on
the bank, the river was due to get a lot deeper. But
even that didn't matter, because Chi could barely
feel his hands or feet. Hypothermia was setting in.
He was shivering violently now and he knew that
when he stopped shivering – when his body no
longer had the strength to generate warmth – then
he would pass out and drown.