Strangled Silence (9 page)

Ivor sat in his black-leather lounger and
watched the reports. They didn't tell half the story.
For a start, you couldn't get into the damn place.
Half the roads were only passable by mule or
packhorse. Making an assault on any of these camps
meant hauling troops hundreds of miles across
formidable terrain, which made them vulnerable to
ambushes. Flying was a risky business too. Nowadays,
every self-respecting mountain fighter carried
a surface-to-air missile launcher or two.

The mountains roasted you in summer and
froze you in winter. The wind up there had to be
experienced to be believed. Ivor still shivered at the
memory of it cutting like knives through his parka
on the rocky slopes of Myapin. It did have its
advantages: apparently the cold could help keep
casualties alive – they lost less blood when they
were hypothermic.

And there were plenty of casualties, but not so
many that the politicians had to call it an all-out
'war'. With the fighting happening in small, savage,
isolated clusters, less than a thousand soldiers had
been flown home in body bags. Body armour that
protected the torso meant there were more
amputations than deaths – not that you saw much
of that on the news. The government was a bit
sensitive about images of men and women with
missing limbs and many of the news agencies
voluntarily censored their own footage. Ivor's hand
went up to his right eye, touching the hard glass
beneath his eyelids.

One of the reasons the news organizations
were so helpful was that it was almost impossible to
get reporters into the areas where the fighting was
taking place. They had to have a military escort,
because killing reporters – or better yet, taking
them hostage, releasing video footage on a website
and
then
killing them – was a sure way to get
headlines. And terrorists loved headlines. Like
everyone said, there was no such thing as bad
publicity.

Reporters who tagged along with the troops
had to behave themselves. Anyone who filed a story
that was too critical of their hosts didn't get to ride
in any more helicopters.

It was easier still to let literate soldiers like Ivor
do all the 'investigating' and then the real reporters
could just sit and wait for the military press briefings.
Why risk your life going looking for a story
when it could be delivered straight to you? Besides,
it was expensive to send someone halfway around
the world.

But Ivor knew how accurate his stories had
been once the top brass had filtered out all the juicy
stuff.

It felt good to despair at the poor quality of the
news; it took his mind off his mind. Ben's visit had
shaken him up more than he wanted to admit. Ivor
had been absolutely sure, he had known with
concrete certainty, that somebody had screwed
with his head. Now, he was plagued by doubts.

If Ben was right, there was no conspiracy. If
there was no conspiracy, then Ivor really was out of
his mind. He had turned it over and over in his
head, trying to make sense of it. But the more he
thought about it, the more confused he became.
Suspicions, questions and paranoia fed on each
other, breeding new and more complicated forms
of themselves.

Was he really being watched, or was it all in his
imagination? What about the things he'd seen: the
faceless people, the vehicles following him down
the street? He was never able to get close enough
to these watchers to talk to them, but was that just
his mind making excuses so that it could prolong
the delusion? He didn't even know why they were
watching him. If somebody had him under
surveillance, why did he assume that they meant
him harm? Maybe they were just studying him, or
even wanted to protect him from . . . well, anything.
Protect him from himself, perhaps.

He was sure of what he had seen, and of the
sense of menace that sent prickles of tension across
his skin. But wasn't that the whole thing with
delusions? Your brain interpreted your perceptions,
so if something went wrong with it, you might be
the last person to know. The human brain was not
designed to diagnose its own illness. It was like trying
to look down your own throat.

The worst part about this was that there was no
way to know for sure if he was mad or not. But if
the mental kaleidoscope he was experiencing was
sanity, he didn't feel much better about it.

Ivor held his head in his hands, swearing
violently and pulling at his hair. He found himself
crying again. He was exhausted from all this. With
few friends and no job to keep him busy, he was
in danger of losing it completely if he didn't do
something.

Lifting his head, his gaze fell on a scrap of
notepaper lying on the coffee table. Amina Mir's
number was written on it. He had stopped wearing
a watch, so he looked at the clock on the wall in the
kitchen; it was after midnight.

Tomorrow. He'd call her tomorrow.

He decided to go to bed. He knew that even if
he slept, he would have the nightmares again, but
he was too tired to worry about it. Let them come;
tomorrow, he was going to start asking some
serious questions. After all, if he was insane, what
harm could it do?

Contrary to the belief held among the newsroom
staff, Amina did not have a problem with changing
the cartridge in the photocopier. Any idiot
could change a photocopier cartridge, even if they
couldn't read the cartoon symbols printed both on
the inside of the copier door and on the cartridge
itself. That bit was easy.

She did have a problem with paper jams. For a
start, she was amazed that a machine that cost a few
thousand quid and weighed almost as much as a small
car could be thwarted by a simple sheet of A4. She
was also bothered by the fact that she couldn't reach
the plug to disconnect it before she stuck her hand
into the machine. Most people just left it running, but
she was unnerved at the way it sat and hummed at
her as she reached her slim hands in between those
heavy rollers. So she always turned it off first.

Sometimes, you could wind the paper out by
turning the rollers' handles, but other times you had
to get your fingers right in and just wrench it out,
hoping it didn't tear.

This time it tore, and Amina sighed to herself
as she got down on her knees and pulled the pieces
out one by one, careful to avoid the heated rollers
and shaking her head as she got carbon dust all over
her fingers.

When she'd finished wrestling with the copier,
she returned to the desk where her next job was
waiting: a pile of readers' complaints letters. There
was also a message in her inbox telling her to call
Ivor McMorris when she got a chance. She took
one look at the complaints pile and decided that
this seemed like the perfect time.

As it turned out, he was very apologetic about
their last conversation and she found herself
apologizing in turn.

'I'm really sorry about the article,' she told him
in a low voice. 'They edited it to death. I mean, I
suppose they had to, but I hated—'

'It's OK, it's OK,' Ivor assured her. 'To be
honest, I'm glad in a way. I think . . . I think there
might be another angle to the whole thing . . . if
you're still interested.'

Amina settled back in her chair as he related
the conversation he had had with his friend, Ben
Considine, and how it had caused the doubts he
was having now. Ivor wanted to know if there was
any way she could use the resources at the paper to
see if there were any other Sinnostan veterans
suffering the same symptoms as he was. Perhaps
there was more to this than just post-traumatic
stress? Amina nodded to herself, thinking of the
Agent Orange controversy in Vietnam. The health
of thousands of US soldiers (and presumably one or
two Vietnamese) had been affected by chemicals –
particularly one called Agent Orange that had been
used to clear the leaves from jungles, which could
hide those pesky Vietcong.

There had also been stories about chemicals
tested on soldiers in the Gulf War in the 1990s that
had caused all kinds of side effects. Amina breathed
out softly at the thought that Ivor might have
something along the same lines. This could be the
making of her . . . if only she could come up with
some hard evidence.

'Is there anything you haven't told me?' she
asked. 'Maybe something you might have left out
before.'

'I don't think so,' he said. There was a pause and
then: 'Did I mention my tooth?'

'No – what about it?'

'Somewhere between the bombing and waking
up in the hospital, I lost a tooth—'

'Well . . . you were caught in an explosion,'
Amina pointed out gently.

'Yes, but I'm sure that the tooth was still solidly
in place when I was in the helicopter. Like I said,
the memory is absolutely vivid. I tasted blood, but
all my teeth were still there.'

'Maybe it was loose, and it came out
afterwards?'

'I dunno. I was lying on my back the whole
time. If I'd been unconscious, I would have choked
on it. And I'm sure if I'd felt it coming out, I'd
remember, y'know? I mean, losing an adult tooth is
a serious thing.'

'Yes, but you had just lost an eye. I'd say that
would be quite a distraction.'

'Even so, I'm sure I'd remember. So that could
mean one of two things: either these vividly real
memories I have are my mind's way of blocking out
some other trauma, or . . .' His voice trailed off.

'Or what?'

'Or if these are . . . are implanted memories –
and I'm only saying "if " – then maybe I can't
remember losing the tooth because I lost it during
the process and they didn't know, so they didn't
account for it when they manufactured the
memories. They didn't know to add a scene to
explain why I was missing a tooth.'

'But who are "they"?'

'Well, obviously I don't know. That's the whole
point with conspiracies. No doubt it's army intelligence,
some shadowy government department or a
cabal of power-hungry fiends from the militaryindustrial
complex – you know the way.'

'Yeah; goes without saying really.' Amina
smirked.

He told her about the people he thought were
following him, and how he could never get a look
at their faces.

'You mean, you can't see them? Like they're
wearing masks?' she pressed him.

'No. It's more like . . . it's like I can't focus on
their faces,' he said, struggling to describe it. 'In fact,
that doesn't even . . .' He paused for a moment. 'It's
like their faces are blurred – the same way they do
on TV when they're hiding somebody's identity,
y'know . . .'

'Yeah, I get it.' She nodded to herself. 'Like
when they're keeping a reporter's source
anonymous.'

'Yeah, like that,' Ivor said. 'Except I can see their
eyes staring out at me. Just their eyes.'

Amina was already writing all this down. He
told her about his nightmares then too, but neither
of them could understand the significance of the
roulette wheel, unless it symbolized the arbitrary
nature of death or something like that. Amina said
she'd look it up in a book about interpreting
dreams, but he said he'd tried that and it got him
nowhere. And besides, he thought most of the
people writing those books were talking out of
their arses.

He'd done a lot of reading up on memory loss
as well. Apart from amnesia caused by physical
trauma, there was psychogenic amnesia, which
came about through psychological factors. Either
could apply in his case. He had also learned that
your 'episodic' memory could be affected, causing
you to forget certain events, or even things
like your name, your friends and family, while leaving
your 'semantic' memory intact, so you could
still remember how to read and write, and that Paris
was the capital of France.

With some reluctance, Ivor told Amina that he
had also done extensive reading on mind control:
everything from the Chinese attempts to brainwash
US prisoners of war in North Korea and the CIA's
MK-ULTRA programme in the 1950s to modernday
subliminal advertising. But the biggest culprits
these days were thought to be religious cults who
indoctrinated naïve new converts.

None of what he had read could explain the
vivid memories he was so convinced were false.
People could be coerced through a variety of ways
into saying and doing things that were completely
out of character, but it always depended on what
they believed. As soon as they started questioning
these beliefs themselves, the programming's hold
over them began to weaken.

Ivor had been questioning his memory for
nearly a year and the events surrounding his injury
were still sharp, fresh and exact in his mind.

When Amina finally put down the phone, her
head was spinning. For the first time, she thought
there might be some truth in what Ivor had said
about his memories, and her conversion had
nothing to do with all his research or reasoning. It
was his tooth that had changed her mind.

Her hand went up to the right side of her
mouth, rubbing her bottom lip and the incisor that
lay beneath. It was an implant – the original tooth
had been knocked out in a hockey game in school.
She remembered how she had felt at the time. Ivor
was right; it was serious. For the first time in her life
she had felt truly vulnerable, aware of how badly
she could be hurt. There was something deeply
personal about losing an adult tooth. The fact that
she had been permanently damaged – if only in this
small way – caused her to cry on several occasions
afterwards. It just wasn't like losing your baby teeth,
those rootless little white nubs you put under your
pillow for the tooth fairy; teeth that you knew
would be replaced by stronger, adult versions.

Having an adult tooth knocked out left its
mark . . . and not just as an empty hollow in your
jaw. Ivor was right. You would remember.

The phone rang again, making her jump. She
picked it up:

'Hello?'

'Amina? That Chi Sandwith guy is looking for
you again.'

'Oh, sorry, Glenda, could you tell him I'm out?'

'I've told him that twice already, dear. He's been
very persistent . . . and I'm afraid I only normally
field crank calls for anyone of editor level and
above.'

Glenda was the suit-clad godmother in charge
of reception and Amina had been warned not to get
on her bad side.

'Right, sorry.'

'Just this last time, then. I'll tell him you're in an
editorial meeting. We can all dream, eh?'

'Great, thanks.'