by Oisin McGann
Now she and her mother were sitting at the kitchen table with their cups of coffee, having divided up the Sunday paper; Amina was doing sudoku while her mother browsed the headlines and worked her way through the crossword. They would read the paper through afterwards, passing pages back and forth. This was one of the few rituals they still shared together, mostly on Sunday afternoons, and even though there might be hardly any conversation at all, they both made an effort to keep it up.
'No,' her mother replied with a patient tone. 'I mean he knew how to use information. He could convince ordinary people to commit acts of extraordinary evil.'
'And that's exactly why I want to be a reporter,' Amina said.
'My, aren't we feeling sarky today!'
'Well, I didn't catch it from the water. Can I read that after you?'
Helena slid the folded page over to her. Half the articles in the paper were related to Sinnostan. Amina thought about Ivor and his claims that the army – or somebody connected with it – had brainwashed him. She had dipped into the archives to search for similar claims and had found a few, none of which had offered any more evidence than Ivor could himself. Amina idly wondered if there might be something to Ivor's story, but she was sure the truth would turn out to be something far more mundane. The human mind had limits, and there was no shortage of people who snapped because of the things they'd seen, or done, or had done to them.
Ivor McMorris. She found herself thinking of his sad smile, and those slightly haunted eyes. Haunted eye, she corrected herself. Could a glass eye have an expression? She reminded herself that her interest was in the story, not the man. Although he was in another league compared to all the boys who had been vying for her attention the evening before in the club.
She felt a tingle of excitement as she thought about her article again. She hoped they wouldn't edit it too much. It was still part of the whole journalism thing that grated on her nerves. You could write what you thought was a brilliant piece and then someone came along and told you it was too long, or too subjective or not what the paper was looking for, so they changed it.
Helena Jessop, renowned for her work as a war correspondent and later for her investigative journalism, had famously decided to become a journalist after watching a single documentary about the Holocaust. The turning point in her career had come in Bosnia during the break-up of Yugoslavia. She had made a report on the discovery of a mass grave: twenty-two men, women and children butchered by Serbian soldiers. An elderly imam had led her through Serbian-held territory to show her the site.
Despite the horrors she had seen – and some considered these genocidal maniacs to be the Nazis of the nineties – Helena still considered Serbia's people to be no better or worse than anyone else.
'We make decisions about our lives based not on the world around us, but on our perception of that world,' she said, putting down her pen and cupping her hands around her coffee mug. 'Hitler understood this. Every leader does. Control all the information and you control how people make decisions. If you can control it well enough to convince the majority that a certain action is necessary – even a monstrous one – then you can carry out that action and the people will not only let it happen, they will enthusiastically support you. And all it takes are the right words and maybe some pictures to help them along.
'Hitler and the war he started are perfect examples of the power of words. He was a master of propaganda and he knew the importance of influencing education too. Get 'em young. That was why he started the Hitler Youth. Start persuading them as soon as they're able to understand your words. Empower the kids – make them feel part of the fight.
'Millions of people were executed, not because he was an evil mastermind or a madman – but because he had the power to convince. He could turn a nation's fear into hysteria with his rousing speeches. He made ordinary Germans feel as if they were under attack – not just from enemies in other countries, but also from the Jews he claimed were seizing power from within.
'In fact, by portraying him as an evil monster, we do people like him a favour. We kid ourselves that if another Hitler turned up, we'd spot him long before he could commit the same sort of horrors again. I mean, it'd be obvious he was a monster, right? Which is why this shit keeps happening. It's more likely that the next Hitler will manage to convince us we are under attack from someone else long before we realize what he really is.
'That's why a good journalist can learn a lot from Hitler. He wasn't the devil in human form, he was just a man. But he was a superb manipulator, and that's what journalism is up against. And it's why a country's most important defence is not the armed forces or a nuclear deterrent or even diplomacy; it's a free press – a bunch of bloody-minded journalists who are determined to tell people what's really going on, so we know the real enemies from the false ones. They are the first line of defence against tyranny.'
Helena did not need to point out that she was one of these and took her position as defender of the nation's freedom extremely seriously. She and Amina had versions of this conversation on a regular basis, with just enough variation to avoid completely repeating themselves. It was a grown-up equivalent of her mother sitting beside her in bed and reading a favourite storybook to her night after night.
'And what about all the other journalists?' Amina asked. 'The ones who don't agree with your point of view?'
'They should all be shot,' Helena responded. 'Failing that, well . . . I suppose they have to have their say too. Though frankly, the world would be a better place if only everyone would just listen to me.'
Amina suspected she was only half-joking.
35
Ivor had endured this nightmare many times. He knew there was nothing about it that should have scared him and yet the terror set in again as soon as he recognized the spinning numbers over their alternating red and black backgrounds.
There should have been nothing frightening about a roulette wheel, even if this one was dazzlingly ornate and swung with the gravity of a merry-go-round, the numbered slots flashing past with dizzying speed. There was something about the numbers themselves that filled him with a sense of horror, but he could not say why. He was looking across the top from a low angle, suddenly riding in one of the slots, when the little white ball fell in and started to bounce around the wheel.
The perspective yawned away from him. As the ball bounced into the distance, it retreated in size until it was little bigger than a grain of sand, then expanded to several metres in diameter as it neared him again, crashing down on the wheel at each bounce with the weight of marble. If it landed in his slot he would be crushed. He could not move, no matter how hard he tried. He was strapped into the slot by invisible bonds.
The ball crashed past, its passage blowing back his hair, its tremendous weight sending a jolt along the wheel and up the bones in Ivor's backside. Suddenly he was airborne, looking down on the wheel from above. He had played roulette just once, in a casino in Kurjong. In a normal wheel there were thirty-seven randomly placed numbers, including one slot labelled zero.
He remembered hearing the legend that one of the developers of the game of roulette had sold his soul to the devil to learn its system. This was why, if you added up all the numbers from one to thirtysix, you ended up with 666 – the Number of the Beast.
The wheel in his nightmare had 101 slots. He had no idea what this meant.
He always expected to feel pain from his empty eye socket in these dreams, but instead he still had his right eye. It was his teeth that began to come loose. He wailed, trying to keep his jaws still as his teeth split and crumbled like chalk, shards sliding down his throat and spilling from between his lips.
Even from the relative safety above the wheel, the ricocheting ball held him in a trance and his eyes followed it with a grinding feeling of inevitability. Don't let it fall on number twenty, he prayed. Not number twenty.
The wheel slowed. The ball lost momentum, its bounces getting shorter and lower. It clattered into its
final resting place with what sounded like a death rattle and Ivor screamed himself awake.
It always took a minute or two to realize that the dream was over. He slowly became aware that the sheet beneath him was damp and he sniffed it tentatively. It was just sweat. A couple of nights after arriving at the hospital in Kurjong, he had wet the bed. Chronically embarrassed, he had tried to steal away and wash the sheets, but was caught hurrying down the corridor to the bathroom cradling the urine-stained linen. The nurses had been sympathetic; they had seen it all before. Compared to some of the psychologically damaged cases they had on their hands, Ivor was an ideal patient.
He looked at the time: it was after five in the morning. His glass eye felt too big in its scarred socket – he normally left it in when he slept. The socket ached and he tenderly rubbed the skin around it. He wouldn't get back to sleep now. That was fine; he preferred going out first thing in the morning before the rest of the world was up. It made the watchers easier to spot and he had learned to amuse himself by wandering around aimlessly, changing direction at random and seeing them struggle to remain anonymous as they took turns following his antics.
It was Monday morning. Amina had said her article would be printed today. The early editions would be out soon. There was a twenty-four-hour shop down the road, so he could drop in and see if his story had been printed. Would they know already? They had to, if they were as powerful as he thought they were. And if not, they soon would. The online version of the paper would be up for sure; he'd check it out himself, but he needed the excuse for a walk.
Ivor dressed without turning on the light and, grabbing his jacket, he headed for the door. Going outside alone in the early hours of the morning was probably not the wisest thing to do, but after long sleepless nights of uncertainty, he just didn't give a damn about anything any more.
He checked the hallway through the spy-hole and then opened the door, but stopped before stepping outside. Leaning over to the side table behind the door, he pulled out the drawer, took out his stun-gun and slipped it into his jacket pocket. He already had the metal bar from a dumb-bell in his other pocket.
Just because he was verging on suicidal didn't mean he'd let himself be taken without doing somebody some serious harm.
Amina and Tariq were always up later than their parents and, as a result, had only to compete with each other to get to the bathroom. And compete they did. There was another bathroom downstairs, but it didn't have a power-shower. Tariq got there first this time and Amina had to wait impatiently for her turn.
'I have to go to work, y'know!' she called through the door.
'I have to go to school, y'know!' he sang back.
He was going through a goth phase and spent ages every morning working his black hair into a carefully arranged untidiness. Looking at her watch, Amina was almost ready to give up on the shower when he finally unbolted the door and came out, his gothic look contrasting with his prissy blue-and-grey school uniform. She emerged from her room and stopped dead when she saw him.
'Are you wearing eyeliner?' she asked.
'No,' he replied, bowing his head as he strode past her.
'You are!' she gasped, grabbing him by his jaggedly spiked hair and holding his head up. 'Ha! My little brother – the new Marilyn Manson! It'll be white face-paint next. You could cover up those spots. Or . . . no! Black lipstick!'
He brushed her off with a petulant gesture and hurriedly made for the stairs.
'Hey, wait a minute.' She turned to follow him, her smile disappearing. 'Is that my eyeliner? Oi! Do you know how much that stuff costs?'
He was already down the stairs, pulling on his jacket and grabbing his school bag, its grey canvas daubed with the hand-drawn logos of half a dozen death-metal bands.
'Get your own bloody make-up!' she yelled as he slammed the front door after him.
But twenty minutes later, she was still smiling about his new look as she waited for her train. She had gone through her own rake of rebel fashions, but working in an office had put a stop to that. Now she was wearing a smart black trouser-suit over a pin-striped white shirt, eager to be taken seriously by the professionals in the newsroom. Her long dark hair was still a bit damp, so she had left it down to let it dry. She would pin it up before she got to the office.
The first thing she did when she arrived at work was grab a copy of the morning edition. It was available online of course, but she got a particular thrill from seeing her work in print. It took her a couple of minutes to find her article, tucked into the side of a page halfway into the paper.
On reading it, she wondered if her mother's philosophy regarding swearing at one's leaders applied in this case. The story had been cut to ribbons:
LOTTERY WINNER AFRAID TO SPEND HIS MILLION
by Amina Mir
Jackpot winner Ivor McMorris claims that he has hardly spent a penny of the 2.4 million pounds lottery prize. One of three winners, McMorris is the only one still living a modest lifestyle. Apparently, he is worried about what people might think of him. Speaking yesterday, he said: 'I'm afraid to spend the money. I don't want to make anyone angry.' A veteran of the conflict in Sinnostan, McMorris has since become a recluse and now resents the attention his winnings have brought him.
Amina ground her teeth as she read the article. Ninety-four words; that was all Goldbloom had given her in the end. And half of them weren't even hers. She wouldn't have minded if he had kept the essential elements of the article. The whole reason Ivor had come to them – the reason he was afraid to spend any of his money – was because of his suspicions about the events leading up to his injuries in Sinnostan, and they had been completely removed from the story.
Throwing down the paper, she stormed up to the copy-room. There was photocopying to be done. One of the entertainment correspondents had given her a set of listings to copy and bind, but she was still getting her head around the state-of-the-art, multi-functional copy machines. Any one of these monsters could do two-sided copying, automatic loading, automatic resizing, sorting, stapling and – so she had been told – had a shatterproof glass top in case you fancied photocopying your backside.
As she jabbed aggressively at the little touch-screen, trying to get it to do a simple bloody photocopy, her mind seethed with the unfairness of it all.
Helena had warned her that this kind of thing happened all the time, but this was the first time it had happened to her. It wasn't right! Even if Ivor was a bit of a crackpot, she'd promised to do her best and he had trusted her. She would have felt better if Goldbloom had just shelved the story altogether – at least that way he wouldn't have made a liar out of her.
For some reason, the copier seemed determined to print her A4 copies out on A3 paper. She shoved the sabotaged copies into the recycle bin, changed the paper setting back again and pressed the green button. The copies came out on A3 for a third time.
Amina was not a complete turnip when it came to technology. She could deal with all manner of problems with her PC at home. She could programme the DVD recorder and use every function on her mobile phone. But this machine seemed determined to disobey her instructions.
'Bugger this!' she growled, resisting the urge to kick it.
Goldbloom should have told her he was going to change the whole context of the piece. It was still her story. Even if she was just starting off, she had the right to know what was going on. As the copier started to spit out copies printed in mirror image, she swore again.
'Problem?' a voice asked behind her.
It was Rob, one of the paper's youngest reporters, a West Indian wide boy with big aspirations.
'Nothing in this bloody building prints the way you want it to!' she told him, folding her arms as if daring him to argue.
'Yeah, it's like a big conspiracy, innit?'
He walked up to her, leaned past, giving her a patronizing smile, and reset the copier. Then he touched the screen twice. The pages started sliding out the right way up, the right way round and on the ri
ght paper.
'Yah just gotta know which buttons to press, girlie!' he said in his best Yardie accent.
By the time she had delivered the bound copies to the boardroom, the editors were all getting settled and looking for teas and coffees. Amina dutifully took their orders and hurried off to fill them. She reminded herself that noting down all the various combinations of lattes, cappuccinos, espressos, decafs, half-cafs, sugars, sweeteners, soya milks, along with the confusing arrays of herbal teas, was excellent practice for her shorthand. Her mother said it was vital to have the old skills. Some day she might get caught without a recorder and have to take notes fast.
And if the whole reporting thing didn't work out, at least she could turn to waiting tables.
She was halfway through preparing all the various beverages when Judy on reception buzzed her to tell her there was an Ivor McMorris on the phone for her.
'Bugger,' she said with a resigned expression.
She had barely picked up the phone at a free desk when Ivor's irate voice blared out at her.
'I'm "afraid to spend the money because I don't want to make anyone angry!"?' he snapped. 'Is this what you call reporting? What the hell happened to everything I told you about my memories? You didn't even mention the bombing! Put Goldbloom on the phone, I want to speak to him. Do you know the risk I took in talking to you? Have you any idea what that meant?'
Amina winced, letting him run out of steam before she replied. She knew some journalists who made it a policy not to speak to the subjects of their stories after the articles were written. Sometimes it just wasn't worth the hassle. But she thought it was a crap thing to do to somebody, even if the mistakes in the article weren't hers.
'I'm really sorry you're not happy with it, Ivor,' she told him. 'But it was felt that we couldn't print the kinds of allegations you were making without some kind of evidence. Maybe if you had some way of proving—'
'Let me talk to Goldbloom!' he cut in.