Strangled Silence

by Oisin McGann

  She stopped short.

  Maybe she was looking at this the wrong way. What if his memories really were distorted? Maybe he had seen something, or done something that his mind couldn't deal with, and he had blocked it out. Some atrocity, a war crime – maybe even some barbaric act that his own troops had committed. People who had suffered trauma often suppressed the memories of it. Whatever horror he had experienced, his psyche had put a shield up around it. But he knew something wasn't right, so he had concocted this idea of being brainwashed to make sense of it.

  Once you started thinking along those lines, it was easy to convince yourself you were being watched. Amina nodded to herself, feeling an abrupt shiver of excitement. This could be a serious story after all.

  The first thing to do was to check his account of the bombing in Tarpan. Even if the Chronicle didn't do a piece on it, a report must have come in over the wire. There had to be something about it in the back issues of one of the papers, or even on the web. If she played this right, she might escape the horoscopes page a lot sooner than she'd hoped.

  All of a sudden, Ivor McMorris had become a much more interesting character.

  The meet was at a bench in front of the war memorial on Swift Square. But Chi Sandwith knew better than to take a direct route there. Getting a bus south from his street, he changed to another one going east and then hurried into an Underground station to take a train back into the centre of town. Once there, he mingled with the crowds, shuffling one way and then another, before catching another bus to Swift Square, all the while keeping an eye out for anything suspicious: maybe a face that appeared in two different places on his trip, somebody pointing a camera in his general direction, or somebody changing direction whenever he did.

  The meeting place was a square of urban greenery surrounded by purple-leaved maple trees. Chi had tried to dress so as not to stand out, but he was sufficiently ignorant of modern fashions to prevent him from doing this effectively. His long, frizzy blond hair was tied back in a ponytail and topped with a Metallica baseball cap. At six-foot four inches, he was noticeably tall, and the dark grey trench coat he wore emphasized this, while contrasting with his black combats and Doc Martens. The aviator sunglasses were the final touch in sabotaging his desire for anonymity.

  The square was crowded at this time of day, which was important for avoiding curious ears. The war memorial was a marble statue of some heroic mariner wearing a sailor's jacket and tri-cornered hat. Chi passed the bench twice, doing a circuit of the area before sitting down next to the young man who was already there.

  'Nexus,' Chi greeted him, without looking directly at him.

  'Hi, Chi, how's it hangin'? You got the thing?'

  'Sure. You got the goods?'

  'Course.'

  They both looked warily around the square, and then each of them cast an eye up at the sky as if it might offer more than a few clouds and a jet trail or two.

  Nexus was small, pale and skeletally thin, but similarly dressed. His mop of dark hair looked permanently greasy and unkempt. They both tried to move their lips as little as possible when they spoke. The square was surrounded by office buildings, from which any number of people could be watching with long-lens cameras, tracking what they were saying by reading their lips. There was also the chance of being listened to using parabolic microphones that could pick up sounds from a distance of over three hundred metres.

  But both young men were too experienced to discuss their business out loud.

  'I need to hear it before I make the trade,' Chi said gruffly.

  'No problem.'

  Nexus had a discreet pair of black earphones in his ears, the cord running into an MP3 player concealed in his hand. He took out one of the earphones and offered it to Chi, who took it and held it at arm's length in disgust. The nub-shaped piece of plastic was covered in earwax.

  'Jesus, Nex! Ever heard of cotton buds?'

  'What are you, my mother?'

  Chi wiped the earphone on the sleeve of Nexus's coat and then stuck it in his ear. Nexus pressed 'play' and Chi listened for a couple of minutes.

  'Sounds like the real deal,' he said with a nod.

  'That's what I've been tellin' you, my man,' Nexus said in a whisper, covering his mouth as he spoke.'And there's over an hour of it: names, places, dates. I swiped it straight off Counter Terrorist Command. Their security's a joke. They've an isolated server with the really hot stuff, but their administrative staff are accessing it all friggin' day. I got a program that pools all the references—'

  'Yeah, yeah, I hear you,' Chi said sourly.

  Nexus was the better hacker and he took every opportunity to rub it in. But Chi had the savvy and the contacts to use the information his friend dug out of all those high-security databases.

  He palmed the MP3 player, disconnected the earphone cords and stuck it in his pocket. With an equally furtive movement, he attached an identical player to the earphones and slipped it back into Nexus's hand.

  'Here's what you want. Use it wisely.'

  'I'm going after the military next,' Nexus muttered. 'I think I've got a lead on a bunch called the Triumvirate. I think they're trying to smuggle a weapon—'

  'Enough,' Chi cut him off. 'You're talking too much . . . again. You've got to be more careful, man, or you're gonna end up as just one more chump on Suicide Beach. Just get on with it and keep it quiet. Let me know if you get anything I can use.'

  'Will do. Watch the skies, man. Catch you later.'

  'Stay safe, brother. Watch those skies.'

  Chi took another careful look around and then got up and left. A minute later, Nexus walked off in the opposite direction.

  Amina sat in front of Goldbloom's desk, waiting for his reaction. She had done what he'd asked: she'd written the story up and handed it in. But she'd also checked out the news reports of the bombing that had injured Ivor McMorris's crew and it had happened just as he described – despite his claims to the contrary. Now she wanted to make more of the story and that meant asking for a new deadline, which would give her time to root through Ivor's past. Goldbloom was sitting staring through the glass wall at the newsroom beyond.

  He had asked to listen to the recording and had remained expressionless as it played. Now Amina waited for his decision. Part of her hated this, having to await judgement, but she also knew that office temps didn't normally get this level of attention from the managing editor and she was going to make the most of it.

  'He didn't offer any proof for what he thinks might have happened,' Goldbloom said at last.

  It wasn't a question.

  'I don't think he has any,' Amina replied. 'But it might be worth digging up some facts on this. Even with what I've got, I—'

  'I don't think so,' Goldbloom sighed, shaking his head. 'We could get into serious hot water making allegations like this against the military. Believe me, I've been there. So has your mother – ask her to tell you about the Harding story some day. Without concrete proof we'd just be setting ourselves up to be sued for libel. Even if McMorris had offered something, some kind of documentary evidence, other witnesses . . . but he's got nothing.

  'No, it's got no legs. Leave the text with me – I'll have to cut it down a bit, take out the most contentious bits. It's too long anyway.'

  Seeing her disappointment, he gave her an encouraging smile.

  'You did a good job, Amina. It's well written and there's no harm in pushing a bit sometimes, but you'll have to let this one go. And don't worry, we'll find you something else to work on. In the meantime, get me a coffee, will you? You know how I take it.'

  Amina left the office feeling utterly deflated. Too long? The article was barely two hundred words – there was no room to cut anything out. Making her way over to the newsroom's canteen, she yanked the jug out of the coffee machine reserved for the senior staff. Pouring out the stale brown remains at the bottom, she rinsed it and put it back in the machine. She took a new pack of filters and some freshly ground coffee from
a cupboard, slamming the door closed. Then she set about making a fresh brew. Her anger percolated along with the gurgling machine.

  'Too bloody long, my arse!' she shouted at the top of her voice to the empty canteen. 'If I can't fit the whole goddamned story in, what's the point of writing the bloody thing at all?'

  'That's the spirit!' a woman's laughing voice called from somewhere outside. 'We'll make a reporter out of you yet!'

  4

  She should have left it until later before taking the train home. There were hundreds of thousands more people than usual on the Underground system that Friday afternoon because of the peace marches and she had to jostle for a place on the train when it pulled up to the overcrowded platform. The doors beeped as they slid shut, people pressing up against the windows as if they had been vacuum-packed.

  Amina heaved a sigh and opened her book in the cramped space, trying to read it without leaning it against the back of the business-suited man in front of her. Her station was near the end of the line and she'd probably be standing for most of the halfhour journey.

  By all accounts, the marches around the country had been uneventful. There had been a few anarchists – she hated the perversion of that term – breaking windows, throwing things and trying their luck with the police, but the crowds had been pretty docile for the most part. The police had blocked off any access to streets with government buildings and channelled the protestors along smaller streets so that they could be dissected into manageable groups.

  Some of the people on the train had been on the marches; there were crudely designed placards banging against the ceiling, silly costumes and painted faces. A good-natured chatter filtered down the carriage and at the far end, a few hoarse voices were chanting protest songs with more beat than melody.

  The train rocked slightly, vibrating with the movement of the wheels on the rails. There was the occasional screech audible from beneath the floor where the fit of metal against metal wasn't perfect on the turns. The darkness outside in the tunnel meant that the lighted interior was reflected in the windows, showing people how they looked on their way home.

  Amina could smell body odour and half a dozen different perfumes and aftershaves. She tried to keep her attention on the page in front of her – a chick-lit paperback, the kind she could read in a day or two and dump in a second-hand bookshop – but her mind kept coming back to Ivor McMorris. She felt sorry that she couldn't make more of his story. He seemed so desperate to get it out in the open. It wasn't her fault he was going to get such a brief airing, but she felt responsible anyway. She supposed it was like this all the time: striking the balance between how much space a story demanded and how many valuable column inches the editors were willing to give it. Her mother said it was worse in television, where reports were often measured in seconds.

  Amina's left shoulder was leaning against one of the poles. The train slowed abruptly, and as it did so, the weight of the passengers shifted, the movement passing through the carriage like a swell through water. Bodies pressed her against the pole, making her wince with discomfort, and then the pressure eased again as everyone righted themselves. She shifted her bag up higher onto her shoulder and patted it to check the clasp was still closed.

  The train was still deep in the tunnel. Outside the windows, there was nothing but a grey expanse of concrete wall. They came to a gradual stop, no doubt waiting for another train to clear the station ahead of them. She rolled her eyes, impatient for the journey to be over so she could get out of this stuffy, muggy carriage.

  At times like this, Amina's mind sometimes turned morbidly to thoughts of the trains that had taken people to the concentration camps during the Holocaust. She often imagined herself back in dramatic periods of history, daydreaming about what it would have been like to be a reporter covering those stories. She had long been fascinated by reports of war atrocities. And the Nazis were the ultimate bad guys.

  They had herded whole families, whole communities, up ramps into stock wagons like cattle. Thousands were transported at a time, packed so close that they could not sit down, often travelling day and night without food or water; there were no toilets, no drains, so the prisoners would have had to make do with a bucket or nothing at all, with only the draughts to feed fresh air into the wagon.

  Pressed in as she was among all these bodies, Amina could imagine how it might feel to be trapped like that for hours on end. In summer it would have been unbearably hot, airless and probably stinking to high heaven. In winter, it would have been freezing cold and damp. People died on those journeys, but there was no way of disposing of the corpses – not until the train stopped at its destination and the soldiers unlocked the doors. Amina wondered what it would be like to spend hours, even days, pressed against a dead body. How long did it take before a corpse started to smell? And what if it was your best friend . . . or one of your parents? How did people deal with that? Amina had a tough time handling an overcrowded Tube train. She felt guilty sometimes for not having endured some great trauma of her own.

  And none of the prisoners would have known where they were being taken, but there would have been rumours. Rumours of vast camps surrounded by fences and armed guards. And yet, somehow, millions of decent, ordinary Germans had remained blissfully ignorant.

  Amina stared out of the window at the concrete wall beyond. She was sure she would have stood up, if she'd been alive back then. She wouldn't have fallen for the lies. But there were no Hitlers around any more. The Western world wouldn't tolerate that kind of thing. Politics was a lot more complicated nowadays.

  The train still hadn't moved. People were starting to talk about it now. They had all waited in tunnels before, but this was taking too long. The carriage's speakers clicked and the driver asked for their attention:

  'Ladies and gentlemen, apologies for this delay,' he said in a halting voice. 'But there's been an incident on the track ahead of us and we've been asked to hold here until further notice. Once again, we're sorry for the delay.'

  Amina heard some anxious voices further down the carriage; word about something was being passed along. She heard somebody gasp in alarm. A middle-aged businesswoman close to Amina leaned over to listen to what was being said and then relayed it to those further up.

  'Somebody was on the phone to their friend . . . before we went into the tunnel and lost the signal,' the woman said. 'He said there's been a bomb scare, but it wasn't specific. All they know is that it's in one of the stations in the south-west. All the stations ahead of us are being closed and searched. We could be here for hours.'

  The tall man in the suit in front of Amina swore under his breath. Others started to talk excitedly.

  'Did they say who planted the bomb?'

  'How many bombs are there? Does anybody know?'

  'Are they just going to leave us down here?'

  'What if the bomb's on one of the trains?'

  'Don't you remember the bombings a few years ago? Nobody knew anything until it happened. And then when people tried to escape from the trains, the fires spread through the tunnels. I heard the firemen couldn't even get into some of the tunnels it was so hot.'

  'But there's nothing in the tunnels that would burn!'

  'There's us. We'd burn.'

  'Oh my God!'

  Amina felt her pulse quicken. It was an ideal time to bomb the Underground if you wanted to make headlines – the rush-hour crowds were swollen with peace protestors. If you were aiming for a high body-count, this was the time to do it. It didn't matter that the protestors were demanding some of the things the terrorists wanted. Terrorists were lunatics; they didn't care who died, as long as it made shocking headlines and gruesome television. Terrorists wanted publicity.

  Her piqued imagination was already cramming her mind with morbid thoughts. If a bomb went off on the train, the emergency services could take hours to reach them. Aside from the blast, the biggest killer would be the smoke; more people died from fumes in fires underground than from the flames
themselves. Even if a bomb went off in a tunnel nearby, the smoke might be enough to choke them before they could escape to the surface.

  Amina tried to make more of a space around her. At five foot five inches tall, she was smaller than most of the people surrounding her and she was beginning to feel penned in. Everyone was restless now; there was a sharp smell of fresh sweat in the air, feet shuffled on the floor. Was it getting warmer in here too? Amina leaned back against the couple behind her to try and get them to shift a bit, but they were against the door and had nowhere to go. There seemed to be less air in the carriage now. She was finding breathing more difficult. That was to be expected; everyone was anxious, so their breathing would be faster.

  'Does anybody smell smoke?' the middle-aged woman asked. 'I think I smell smoke.'

  'I don't smell anything,' the man in front of Amina replied. 'Let's not get worked up about nothing here.'

  'I'm not worked up, I just think I smell smoke.'

  'I think I smell something too,' a shabbily dressed teenage boy spoke up.

  A debate began about whether there was or was not a smell of smoke in the air. Amina craned her neck to peer over people's shoulders. She just wanted to see everyone's faces as they talked. It was frustrating not being able to see who was speaking. Her hands were pressed against the back of the man in front of her and she pushed a bit too hard. He stumbled forward and looked back at her, a Roman-nosed horse of a face with fair hair and reddening ears.

  'Whoa there, young lady! Easy.'

  'Can people make room, please!' a concerned voice called from further down the carriage. 'There's a woman who can't breathe, here. I think she's hyperventilating, or got asthma or something.'

  'Where are we going to make room to, may I ask?' someone else snorted.

  'Everybody just calm down!' the horse-faced man cried.

  'You calm down!' the middle-aged woman retorted. 'You're the only one shouting!'