by Oisin McGann
She didn't spot the envelope until she was opening the bedroom door.
It was a plain white square, leaning against the base of the lamp on her bedside table. Her parents were usually up before her, but they left any post for her on the kitchen counter. One of them must have left it in here while she was asleep. She wasn't mad about the idea that her parents were still sneaking into her room; apart from the fact that she was old enough to demand her privacy, she had been bringing boyfriends home for some time now. Having her latest romantic endeavour interrupted by one of her parents – particularly her overprotective dad – was a scene she could really do without.
For a moment, Ivor flickered into her thoughts. She could only imagine what her dad would make of him. He was only a few years older than her, but a far cry from the jack-the-lads who'd had the misfortune of running into Martin Mir. And her dad had never been keen on her dating soldiers – even ex-soldiers. 'They're dogs,' he would say simply. When asked what that made him, his reply was always the same:'An old dog.'
Picking up the envelope, she noticed that although it had her name and address written on it, it didn't have a stamp or postmark. It must have been hand-delivered. She slit it open with a nail file and pulled out the card within. It was a funeral card. Frowning, she opened it. There was no inscription inside, just a couple of lines printed in fake handwriting:
Sending you our deepest condolences on the loss of your mother, Our thoughts are with you and your family at this difficult time.
With a start, Amina dropped the card on the bed and stepped away from it, her hand covering her mouth. It was a threat. Somebody was threatening her mother. No – they were threatening her with the death of her mother. But it couldn't be. Surely it was a mistake or . . . or maybe a joke . . .
It wasn't a mistake and it wasn't any joke. With trembling hands, Amina picked up the card and slid it back into the envelope, holding it by the edges in case it might have the perpetrator's fingerprints on it. What was the name of that detective from CTC? Sykes, that was it. She would take it to him and explain about the story she was working on . . .
No, she wouldn't. Feeling suddenly cold, she sat down on the edge of the bed. For the first time, she realized what this story they were working on could actually mean. If they really were scratching the surface of a criminal conspiracy, they were interfering with some very serious people. People who would do serious harm to anyone who got in their way. People who might have powerful influence in the police force, or the courts, or the intelligence services. The fact that Sinnostan was thousands of miles away had made all of this something of a fantasy. She had never considered that she might not be safe here, in nice, civilized London.
This was why Ivor was scared and Chi was paranoid, but she had completely failed to appreciate the risks they were taking. It had all seemed like an adventure. She felt suddenly sick. Had somebody come into their house – into her room – to deliver it? Somebody who stood over her while she lay there in a deep sleep? Maybe they had even prowled through the house unseen in the night, peering into the bedrooms of her parents and her brother; noting where they slept. The house had an alarm, but that wouldn't matter to people like this, would it?
Amina looked around her room to see if anything had been disturbed, but it all seemed the same. What about bugs? Was she under surveillance now? She cursed her own stupidity. Of course she was being watched. Chi had shown her the bugs in Ivor's flat. She remembered being excited by the whole thing – like a bloody idiot. She was only ever careful of what she said around Ivor and Chi because they were careful. When she was alone, she brushed off their suspicious tendencies and acted like she didn't have a care in the world. She'd never taken any of it that seriously. Were the watchers tapping the phones here? What about the phones and emails at the newspaper? Mobiles were easy to listen in to – she had to assume anything she'd said on hers had been picked up.
Just as the thought crossed her mind, her phone rang, making her jump. God, this was it. This was where some deep, garbled voice on the phone told her to stop asking questions if she knew what was good for her.
But it was Dani. Amina answered, relief flooding through her.
'Hi . . . hiya. What? Sorry, no . . . no . . . I forgot we were going out tonight. Listen, I don't think I'll be able to make it. No. I . . . I just can't at the moment. Look, I'll call you back, OK?'
Dani had hardly replied before Amina rang off. The more she thought about the funeral card, the more anxious she became that she might already have dug herself too deep a hole. She needed to talk to Ivor and Chi – show them the card and see what they thought.
First, though, she needed to see her family and find out if any of them had left the card in her room. If not, her whole life had just changed.
26
Chi woke to the sound of the doorbell ringing. It rang again impatiently as he slowly registered that he had fallen asleep at his desk again. Lifting his head from his folded arms, his elbow nudged the mouse on the pad beside him and the PC woke up with him – but considerably faster. He reflected that it was time he got himself a new girlfriend; he didn't want to end up as one of those guys who only had a relationship with their computer.
The doorbell rang again. It sounded louder this time, even though he knew it couldn't be. His clothes had that constricting, crumpled feel to them from having been slept in. Standing up stiffly, he stretched and started for the door.
'OK! OK, I'm coming!'
Most people gave up after the first four or five rings; these guys must be pretty sure he was here . . .
That made him stop for a moment, but he shook his head and hurried out to the hall and down to the front door. He wasn't so uptight yet that he was afraid to answer the door. Not yet. He was in his bare feet, and for some irrational reason he wished he'd put on his boots. There was something about being barefoot that made you feel vulnerable.
He opened the door to find a man and a woman standing there. He could tell immediately that they were old bill. The man was thin and freckly with pale brown hair and a slightly superior, but absent-minded air about him. The woman had 'career' written all over her. She was black, with her dark hair cut short, her navy blue suit and pin-stripe shirt carefully pressed – unlike her partner's – and a look on her face that said 'Go ahead . . . make my day'.
'Come on in,' Chi said, before they had even raised their IDs. 'Coffee?'
The man's name was Detective Sergeant Sykes, the woman's was Detective Superintendent Atkinson, and they were from Counter Terrorism Command. They were here to investigate a tip-off that Chi had been involved in the recent anthrax scare at the Chronicle building. He had been spotted on CCTV footage recorded a few days before the incident and had made scathing references to the paper's political ties in his weblog, EyesWideSideways.
'And where did this tip-off come from, exactly?' Chi asked as he gestured at them to sit down at the kitchen table and waited for the kettle to boil.
'We're not at liberty to say at the moment, sir,' Atkinson replied.
'Anonymous, huh? Or intelligence sources maybe? Come on, give me a clue.'
'We'd appreciate it if you would just answer our questions, sir,' Sykes told him. 'It's just a formality, you understand. We have to follow up every lead, even if it's to eliminate you from our enquiries.'
'Of course.' Chi filled three mugs with coffee and set out sugar and milk.
The mundane act of making the drinks gave him time to think and helped hide his nervousness. Somebody had decided to turn up the heat on him, and heat didn't come any more serious than the CTC.
If they decided they had enough evidence to arrest him, they could hold him for weeks without charging him. Even if they didn't have enough evidence to charge him, they might still be able to get a restraining order and put him under indefinite house arrest. They could hold him like that for years, or put an electronic tag on him, take his computer gear, his files, all without a trial. The only question was, what had they been fe
d to bring them to his door?
All the phone calls he made to Nexus and his other mates were encrypted. He was very careful about what he said on any other calls and he hardly ever used his mobile. But then there were all the sites he'd visited on the web. They could be traced. The police and intelligence services were permitted remote access to any server or database in the country. The new Drawbridge Act gave them power to do all of these things and much more.
Even so, the police had to play by the rules. One of the advantages of having wealthy parents was that he had lawyers ready and waiting to defend him against any trumped-up charges that came his way. But if the intelligence services were involved, then the gloves came off. They could feed the police information that Chi and his lawyers would never be allowed see. After all, if you had a spy in a terrorist organization, you could hardly go around telling everyone who they were. He could be put under house arrest without ever knowing what they had on him.
Sitting down at the table, facing the two detectives, he readied himself for what was to come. But all the while, he was itching to get back to his PC, contact his network and have them start stretching out their feelers. He needed to know what was coming.
The detectives' questions were direct and to the point, and he answered them without expression. No, he had nothing to do with the anthrax scare at the Chronicle or anywhere else. No, he did not have any medical or laboratory training. No, he did not have a grudge of any kind against the newspaper or any of the other targets of the anthrax scare. As he was questioned, Chi's mind raced. He knew that if they got a warrant to search his house they would find all his files. With all the information he had gathered over the years, they were bound to dig up something to make them suspicious. One wrong connection and he was stuffed. And his files were full of all kinds of connections to suspicious activity. That was the whole point.
No, he did not support, nor have any affiliation with, any of the groups on the terrorist watch list. No, he had never received any training in weapons or explosives. No, he had never searched for information on these subjects on the web (which wasn't exactly true – he had just never been stupid enough to do so from his own computer. He couldn't help being curious). No, he had never subscribed to any of the publications on the list Atkinson showed him. No . . . no . . . no . . .
'Do you know this man?' Atkinson held up a photo.
'He's been on the telly,' Chi replied. 'Chinese guy. They say he's into biological weapons or something. Don't know him personally, no.'
This was all fishing. They didn't expect him to admit to any of these things, they just wanted to provoke a reaction, to size him up. He clasped his hands around the coffee mug to stop them trembling. Tension tightened around his shoulders and neck. His jaw clenched and unclenched and he tried to relax, conscious that they would be reading all of this.
'What were you doing at the Chronicle building?' Atkinson asked then.
Chi hesitated. If he had been caught on CCTV, they probably knew he had met Amina. It didn't make sense to lie about it anyway.
'I'm working on a story with one of the junior reporters there; a girl named Amina Mir.'
The two detectives exchanged looks but didn't make any comment. Chi knew she had been questioned after the anthrax scare; they probably remembered her.
'What's the story?' Sykes enquired.
Chi's first instinct was to give the line that he and Amina had agreed on: that they were investigating a pattern of mental-health problems in Sinnostan veterans. But then he realized that he had a chance here to divert the detectives' suspicion from him. Better to be a harmless nut than a subversive terrorist suspect.
'Actually, it's part of an ongoing investigation I'm carrying out,' he said with fake enthusiasm.
'I've been following up reports of mysterious abductions in battle zones in Sinnostan and places like that – and the subsequent stories of mindcontrol experiments related by the abducted soldiers after they return. It's all in conjunction with the increasing reports of UFOs over the UK and the US, as well as over Sinnostan itself. I'm playing with a theory that the soldiers are being abducted, experimented on and maybe even replaced with alien doppelgängers in preparation for the seeding of an alien population on Earth. I can see you're sceptical, but the evidence is extremely compelling. Would you like to have a look at some of it?'
This time the detectives were less subtle in their exchange. Chi knew that look too well. The sidelong glance, the raised eyebrows, the carefully suppressed smile.
'Sure,' Atkinson said. 'Let's have a look.'
They wanted any chance to see his place without having to get a search warrant. That was to be expected. He took them down to his study, glad of the big WATCH THE SKIES poster on the wall. He sat down at his PC and clicked on a blank folder. This was his 'Completely Bonkers' file. He kept it for laughs, but now he could pretend it formed the backbone of his work. A few more clicks and a range of articles filled the screens.
'These kinds of abductions and experimentation have been going on since Roswell in 'forty-seven,' he explained, flicking at speed through the outlandish collection of documents. 'You think our governments are running things? Think again. There's a network of dark agencies working in a global conspiracy to undermine the human race and create ties with an alien race that's desperate to colonize our planet. These men see the future and they know it's not human. And they want to be part of the ruling class, rather than be consigned to slavery like the rest of us.'
Chi had to be careful here. He had to come across as crazy, but not unbelievably crazy.
'Look at all the key figures of the second half of the last century – the icons who could have really unified the world with their ideas. John F. Kennedy: assassinated. Martin Luther King: assassinated. John Lennon: assassinated. Mikhail Gorbachev: overthrown. Bob Geldof: accused of selling out. And do you really think the South African government would ever have let the real Nelson Mandela out of prison? Like hell! They were all working for a unified Earth and were therefore a threat to the aliens' plans. The invaders needed us to be divided and weak so they could take over our governments one at a time. You know they have weapons that can duplicate the effects of natural disasters? A few signals to a satellite and they can create earthquakes, tidal waves, forest fires, avalanches, volcanoes . . . OK, maybe not volcanoes . . .
'Then there's the documentary proof that George W. Bush never actually existed, that he was in fact an animatronic puppet—'
'We get the idea,' Atkinson interrupted from behind him. 'I think we've seen everything we need to, don't you, Sykes?'
'I think Mr Sandwith has important work to get back to,' Sykes replied. 'Thanks for your time, sir. And good luck with your story.'
Chi nodded and walked them out to the door. When he closed it after them, he pressed his ear against it and heard their chuckles on the other side. He turned and leaned back against the wood, heaving a sigh of relief. They were gone, for now, but he was sure that those who had sent the police had more moves to make. And unlike the two detectives, they couldn't be fooled into thinking he was harmless.
30
Nobody in the house had left the envelope in Amina's room. Each of them assumed one of the others had dropped it in and she let them go on thinking that. She resisted the urge to tell her parents her suspicions; like all of the leads she had gathered with Chi and Ivor for their story, there was no solid evidence to prove that somebody had come into the house during the night. They would say she was imagining things, or that she must have picked up the envelope inside the door and carried it up with the rest of her post. Or something like that.
It was hard to know which was scarier: the thought that an intruder had come into her room while she slept, or the fact that after all the time she had spent working on this story, there was still not a scrap of proof to show that anything was actually happening. It was as if the more she tried to get a grasp on what was going on, the more it slipped through her fingers. When she turned it all
around in her head, she wasn't even sure what the story was. Ivor had his implanted memories and his nightmares and the disturbing Scalps people who were watching his every move. Chi had been investigating for a couple of years and had plenty of . . . material, but no sense of the true nature of the conspiracy – if that's what it even was. When she really thought about it, they had nothing tangible. Maybe they never would. Maybe there was no great conspiracy, just a bunch of mentally disturbed war veterans and the theories of some over-imaginative conspiracy nuts.
But then there was the card that had been left on her bedside table. Sitting down on her bed, she looked at it again.
Sending you our deepest condolences on the loss of your mother, Our thoughts are with you and your family at this difficult time.
A shiver ran through her and she crumpled up the funeral card, tossing it into her wastepaper basket. She needed to talk. Her first thought was to call Dani or one of the other girls; but it would be too hard to explain, to make them take it seriously. Then she considered Ivor, who would understand what was going through her mind at least, but . . . no. It would be a bit weird. And she was in danger of crying and she didn't want to seem weak to him; she didn't want to lose his respect. For a moment, she thought about calling Chi – and rejected that idea immediately.
Deciding she didn't want to be on her own, she went next door to Tariq's room.
The nihilistic phase he was currently exploring had taken its toll on his decor. The walls were painted a dark red, almost black, and were marked with scrawled graffiti in marker, chalk and even some scratched into the plaster with the point of a compass.