She felt movement by her hair. At last, they were taking off this blindfold. Who was this man who was coming to help her? But it didn’t matter, so long as he helped her. The muscles in her legs and thighs seemed to be tearing; she could almost see it happening. She didn’t know how much longer she could bear it.
Except the blindfold was not off. Instead something was happening to her ears. They were becoming enclosed, wrapped in some kind of hot fabric. And now she could feel a strap tightening around her head. Were they planning to strangle her? Or was this a noose and they planned to hang her, right here in this dungeon? With horror she realized the Treaty might even allow it. If she had committed a crime – they’d probably call her botched blood test an assault on a member of the People’s Liberation Army – she had done it here, on what was Chinese territory in all but name. They could do what they liked.
But the strap was not placed horizontally around her neck but vertically around her skull, beginning under her chin. It clamped her mouth shut but also, she now realized, kept in place a pair of headphones that had been placed on her head and which could now not be shaken off. In a second or two, she understood why.
Instantly, her brain was filled with the loudest noise she had ever heard, a high piercing tone, combined with static and the sound of crashing metal, all at once. The urge to block her ears was intense, but her hands remained immobile. She screamed but it made no difference. It was as if someone had placed a jackhammer into the side of her head and was now using it to drill inside her skull. She wondered if her ears were bleeding.
It was impossible to differentiate the sounds. There might have been an electric guitar, perhaps a howl of electronic feedback. In truth she could hear nothing. The circuits of her brain were flooded and all they could register was pain, pain, pain.
And then it was gone. The sound was turned off as suddenly as it had been turned on, though the ghost of it lingered, ringing inside her head. The memory of it seemed to wax and wane audibly in her ears, still producing different frequencies. Now the second voice spoke to her again, directly to her, inside her brain. It was coming through the headphones.
‘Are you ready to talk now?’
She nodded reflexively, ready to do anything rather than be subjected to that hellish noise ever again. She wondered if they were still here or whether they were speaking to her from some distant control room. Maybe they had never been here. Maybe she had only ever heard voices on a loudspeaker. Perhaps that smell of male and sound of fabric had been a hallucination. She had no idea.
‘So tell me again. Why did you come here?’
She did not sigh or show exasperation. Partly, she did not want to anger them. And partly she did not feel it. She was relieved to talk. Every second she spent telling her story was another second they were not hurting her.
‘And this drug that killed the last girl. You say that drug is here on this base? Who tells you that?’
‘I read it. In an article about the base.’ Her words were slurring. Her head wanted to loll forward, but the tension of her wrists tied behind her back would not let it. ‘I checked it out. Online. The only mention of that drug is in China. It’s never come to the US. Except at the garrison.’
There was a silence. Her body stiffened, the muscles in her legs becoming taut and cramped. The silence was alarming. She was bracing herself for more pain.
‘And you’re certain that the killer is on this base?’
She gave a small, painful nod. ‘I believe so, yes.’
‘And you know who it is?’
‘No. I don’t know who it is. That’s why I came here.’
‘You have a suspect though, yes? One person you suspect, more than any others?’
‘I wish I did. I don’t know one person on this base …’ She was running out of breath. ‘From another.’
With no warning, the noise came again, as loud as before, making her brain seem to judder in its skull, like a hazelnut inside a shell. This time she saw it more than she heard it, bolts of harsh white light behind her eyes, like an electrical storm. For the first time, she believed that it would be easier to die than to endure any more of this. She began wishing it would happen.
And then it was over. And the second voice was back inside her head, delivered via the headphones or in person, she could no longer tell. ‘Now I ask you again. Why did you come here?’
Automatically, surrendering to the pain and to their command, she went through it all one more time. When she was finished, she braced as best she could for the sound that would rip her head off.
But it did not come. Instead, the voice spoke one last time. ‘Your story remained consistent, even under extreme stress. I am satisfied that you are telling the truth. I am letting you go. Dr Lei will take matters forward from here.’
The first man now spoke again. ‘Thank you, Colonel. Miss Webb, in a moment I shall remove these restraints. This will mark the end of the interview.’
‘Interview?’ she said mirthlessly, immediately regretting her show of disrespect.
‘Yes. Our interview. That is how, if asked, we shall describe it. We shall say nothing of these … techniques.’
‘And if I do? If I tell the world what you did here, to an American citizen?’
‘We shall say you are a liar. That you make up stories. Fantasies. You will have no proof. Yes, it’s true that you’re bruised here and there. That’s most unfortunate.’
‘“Most unfortunate!” Like you had nothing to do with it!’ Maddy couldn’t help herself.
‘My point is,’ the voice continued, ignoring her. ‘You looked like this before you came here: there are medical records from your stay at the Long Beach Memorial hospital that prove that. There is not an additional mark on you. Remember, we are not like you Americans. When we have to engage in an, um, enhanced interrogation we are careful. And we most certainly do not take photographs of the occasion. We do not need souvenirs.’
‘But I can show people the camera you fitted in my bathroom.’
‘You’ll find that that will be gone when you get home. Miss Webb, if I may. You have done all you could. You have earned a good rest. You need to let your body recover. If I were you, I would go to bed and have a good long sleep.’
He must have given some kind of signal, because a moment later there were hands at her wrists, untying her and lifting her to her feet. They unbuckled the strap and removed the headphones. Supported on both sides by guards or nurses, she couldn’t tell, she hobbled out of the room. Her eyes remained covered.
They remained that way even as they put her in the back of a vehicle, perhaps one of those buggies. The blindfold was only removed once their journey was over. In a flood of daylight, she discovered that the earth had carried on spinning while she had been deep in the underworld. She was back at the security hut at the main gate. By the time she had blinked and adjusted, her escorts had disappeared. She was wearing a nurse’s uniform, similar to the one she wore before – but this one carried no trace of blood.
The guard behind the central counter presented her with her phone. ‘Thank you for visiting us,’ he said, in heavily accented English. ‘Goodbye.’
And with that she was suddenly on the other side of the gate. She looked at her phone, dead and dumb with no SIM or media card. They were, she assumed, where she had left them, unseen among the detritus at the bottom of Charlie Hughes’s bag, their presence unknown even to him. As for her purse, containing all her cash, credit cards and ID, that was hidden under the passenger seat of Charlie’s car. She had nothing. Except for the single, tiny morsel her torturers had, without knowing, given her.
Chapter 43
There was a back elevator and she took it. She could not face walking through the newsroom, not like this, not today. She had discovered this route by accident a year or so ago, after happening to share the elevator with her boss one morning. This was Jane Goldstein’s way of getting to her office without running into any needy colleagues.
Madison left the cab she had eventually flagged down – a mile’s painful walk from the base – idling outside. She had no cash to pay the driver and she owed him a lot. She had got him to drive first to Katharine’s, but nobody was home. With no money, no cards and no phone, she didn’t have many choices. She had thought about Quincy but rejected it: her sister would not understand any of this or, if she did, she would only be angry.
Besides, coming here made sense. She needed to see someone who knew from the inside what it was to pursue the truth, someone who at the start of her own career had also been regarded by colleagues as obsessive, if not outright nuts. She needed to see a true journalist, someone who, unlike Howard Burke, had balls.
Madison raised a hand in greeting to the assistant whose desk was supposed to deter visitors from approaching the editor-in-chief and, registering the aghast look on the woman’s face, walked right past her and into the office. Jane Goldstein, who had been standing by her desk, stabbing at her keyboard, all but fell into her chair with surprise. ‘Madison?’
‘Hi.’
‘What’s happened to you? What’s going on? Why are you—’
‘Not sure I can do it in one hundred and forty characters, but I’ll try.’
She went through it all, naming Dr Lei and adding her strong conviction that ‘the Colonel’ he had referred to, in perhaps his only slip-up, must have been the garrison commander, Chen Jun. ‘There’s only one person of that rank on that base,’ she explained. ‘And he’s the man in charge.’
Goldstein sat throughout, nodding at intervals, utterly absorbed in the tale Madison was telling. Her reaction gave Maddy the confidence known to any reporter who pitches a story and senses their editor is buying it.
‘Everything about their reaction suggests the Chinese know they have something to hide. They’re not stupid. They know what we know. The first three victims all had links to the garrison; the fourth was killed by heroin you can only get on that base.’
‘Sheesh,’ Jane said, shaking her head in shock at the whole thing and scribbling a note. ‘And they said that to you? “We’ll deny everything?” After this … this torture, had stopped, that’s what they said?’
Maddy nodded.
‘Do you think they know who it is, Maddy? The actual individual?’
She paused at that. Her interrogators had put a version of the same question to her. ‘I don’t know. They released me as soon as they realized I didn’t know. Maybe they were relieved. Now they’ve got more time to spirit him out of the country.’
‘If they know.’
‘Yes, if.’
‘And you were telling them the truth? You really don’t know who the killer is?’
Maddy shook her head.
Goldstein glanced at her computer, distracted for a second. ‘And why didn’t they just keep you there, in that cell you described, the one that could have been tiny or could have been huge?’
‘Harder to explain why a US citizen, who was last seen entering the garrison, goes missing for a few days than one who’s gone a few hours, I suppose. That would be hard to explain, wouldn’t it? Isn’t that abduction?’
‘Hmm.’ Goldstein looked towards her bookshelves, as if she were considering the legal definition of the term. ‘You certainly look like you’ve been through a helluva’n ordeal. But you say you had all these cuts and marks before you went to the base. From when you got beaten up at the rally, am I right?’
‘Yes, but that’s the whole point of these stress positions, Jane. They don’t leave a mark, that’s why they’re so clever. Remember that story years ago about the LAPD … Listen, I don’t know how they do it. I just know that I’m tired of doing this on my own, Jane. I need the back-up of this place to complete the story, to nail this. I need other reporters, I need editors, I need Howard. I need you.’ The pain in her leg and thigh muscles was total.
‘And this nurse’s uniform: they gave you that?’
‘Yes. The one I was wearing got splattered with blood. This one was clean.’
‘But you’re not quite clear when. Or how they got you dressed.’
‘No. They blindfolded me, they took me somewhere on the base. It’s possible I blacked out for a minute or two. I can do that sometimes.’
‘Black out?’
‘Yes. It’s a long … you don’t want to know … I have trouble sleeping. Nothing to do with this, I’ve had it for years.’
‘Oh, my ex-husband used to have that. And you sometimes fall asleep at weird times, right?’
‘Right. So listen, Jane. I’d really like to work alongside Katharine Hu on this one. And Howard to edit. I know he’s been sceptical, but that’s good. That’ll only make the story better. And if perhaps—’
‘Look, Madison. This is one helluva story. It really is. But a story this big, you can’t afford to slip up. I mean, every last detail has to be one hundred per cent iron-clad. One t that’s not crossed, one i that’s not dotted, and it’s my tit that’s in the wringer. And this paper with it.’
‘I get that, Jane, of course I do. That’s what Howard can—’
‘I don’t mean the words on the page, Madison. We need to make sure the source of this information is completely, wholly reliable.’
‘But I’m the source of this information, this happened to me.’ Maddy paused a moment. ‘Oh.’
‘Here’s what I’m going to do,’ Goldstein said, nodding as she spoke. She reached for her purse, on the floor by her chair. ‘First, I’m going to give you five hundred dollars to pay for that taxi outside and to get you some clothes and back into your apartment.’ She handed her five notes. ‘And next I want you to take this.’
She handed Maddy a scribbled note. It read Dr Alex Katzman, Analyst together with an LA phone number. ‘What’s this?’
‘Alex Katzman is my brother. He’s also the best therapist in LA. I think you need to see him.’
‘Christ, Jane. I don’t need a fucking shrink. I’ve just been held in a dungeon by the P-L-fucking-A. I need you to help me on that.’
‘I think the loss of your sister has left you very disturbed indeed. I know from experience that people with extreme insomnia can suffer from hallucinations which—’
‘This wasn’t a fucking hallucination!’
‘—which feel very real. And I’m not saying this wasn’t real. But we need to be sure – entirely, comprehensively sure. Now, please, Madison, let Alex help you. He’s a good man and you’re a talented, beautiful young woman who has suffered a terrible trauma.’
‘I don’t believe it. They’ve fucking got you too.’
‘Madison.’
‘I always knew Howard’s nuts shrank at the first fucking mention of the garrison. But I thought you were … I thought you were stronger.’
Madison stood up, desperate to throw the five hundred-dollar bills back in her boss’s face. But she resisted that urge: she had no other way home.
Instead, she quietly turned and walked out – of Goldstein’s office and out of the building. The editor’s message could not have been clearer: Madison was on her own.
Except she wasn’t, not completely. There was one last place to turn.
Chapter 44
Bill Doran had given up on the ‘ideas memo’ years ago. As a form, it was badly flawed. They only ever leaked, they only ever gave you trouble. Better to do what he was doing now. Grab ten minutes with the candidate, then write up what had been agreed and circulate it. The good memo was not a tactic for victory, but a proof of it.
Which is why he was here now, in the back of the car with Elena Sigurdsson. He had spent the first three minutes preparing the ground, explaining that her numbers were ‘softening’. The freak lead she had gained over Berger had stalled and was now beginning to roll backwards.
‘It’s not rocket science,’ he explained. ‘You pulled ahead when the China thing was front and centre. When it fell away, with the arrest and all, the lead went with it.’
‘So I need the China story back in the news
?’
‘Exactly.’
‘How do I do that? They arrested that guy.’
‘They did. But that story’s unravelling, as you know. As soon as he was in custody there was another victim. Within hours actually.’
‘So it should be back up and running, “the heroin killer” and all that?’
‘It should, Elena. It definitely should. But the activistas are holding back. Padilla’s not out there, no one’s heard from the reporter who’d been leading on it, there are no rallies planned.’
‘How come?’
‘Our intel on Padilla says he felt he got his fingers burned with the arrest. He was on TV saying we’re suspending the campaign, blah blah. Now he loses face if he goes back out there five minutes later. He wants to see how events pan out, hang fire till he knows what’s happening.’
‘Smart boy.’
‘For him, sure. Very smart. Not so great for us.’
She sighed and looked out of the window, one of those fleeting moments when the TV face of a politician vanishes and you can imagine them as a regular person. He and his fellow consultants always talked of trying to bottle those moments, the ones they saw backstage, when the candidate was real, and showing them to the voters. That was the holy grail of every TV spot, every interview. But it almost never happened. And after a while, those moments became rarer. The mask eats into the face and all that.
‘So what can we do, Bill?’
‘I suggest that if the story doesn’t come back all by itself, organically, as Berger would probably put it, then we help it along.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘The outgoing Chinese president is visiting Washington next week, which is a very big hook. You could tie the issue to that.’
‘Make some demands.’
‘Precisely. Very specific information the people of California need to hear.’
‘Kind of, “The questions he needs to answer before he comes to America.”’
‘Yes, Elena. I love that. That’s great. Ted Norman’s volunteers will lap that up. The questions he needs to answer. Shall I get one of the guys to draft an op-ed on those lines?’
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