Strangled Silence

by Oisin McGann

  And the more Ivor heard of the story, the more it made sense. Of course this was what had happened. He couldn't believe he'd forgotten. Why had he been denying it? He should have trusted the voice sooner. Every now and then, he bit down too hard and the roots of his loose tooth dug into his gum, making him wince. When that happened, he had moments of doubt about what was happening – but they were just moments. He was comfortable here, listening to this man's voice telling him what was what.

  The voice told him they were going to take him out of the tank. It told him he would not remember any of this. It continued talking to him as the top of the tank lifted off and light turned the water around him into white fire. He was lifted from the tank, the rigging taken off him, his eyelids sticky against his eyes after being held in place for so long. Clenching his eyes shut against the light, he was already forgetting what it had been like in there.

  'He really hung in there,' someone said. 'That one took nearly six hours.'

  'Well, he's done now,' another one replied, as they started to ease him onto a trolley. 'Let's get him into the OR. Shang's going to throw a hissy fit if he misses dinner.'

  Ivor retched, leaning over the tank, but nothing came out. The water was starting to drain away. He spat into it, and felt his tooth fall from his mouth. Watching it sink to the bottom of the tank, he wondered how it had come out. A minute later, as he was led out of the room, he had forgotten about the tooth. A few minutes after that, he had forgotten about the room.

  17

  Chi spent the Sunday morning online, catching up with his posse and trading information. He couldn't go and check Nexus's safety deposit box until the following morning, so he could only guess at what Nex had done to get himself nobbled. Although knowing Nexus, that could have been anything.

  Chi finished up his online liaisons and then picked up Shang's book. Ros appeared and jumped onto his lap, curling up in the warmth as he read. Shang had led an extraordinary life, if you were to believe everything he wrote. This was difficult because he wrote with such opinionated smugness that you didn't want to believe anything he said.

  His career in intelligence had begun while he was studying medicine in Boston, where he had been tasked with gathering information on bioengineering research at the world famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From there, he went on to study at Queen's University in Belfast, learning under some of the most experienced plastic surgeons in the world, who had honed their skills during nearly thirty years of the 'Troubles'. His Chinese masters had little interest in Northern Ireland, however, and once he qualified as a surgeon, he was persuaded to take a post in London, where he continued getting involved in research programmes and feeding the information back to his government.

  Most of the beginning of the book, Making Faces: How China's Leading Plastic Surgeon Became a Secret Weapon in the World of Espionage, consisted of one boasted achievement after another. Shang's career went from strength to strength until the day he tried to carry out the world's first face transplant on a burns victim and it went horribly wrong. He was sued by the unfortunate patient, hounded by the media and ostracized by the medical establishment, accused of suffering from 'God Syndrome'. In the book, he described all this with suitable outrage and not a hint of remorse, pointing out that if he had succeeded he would have been hailed as a hero. He returned to China and built up a successful practice making the country's new generation of millionaires beautiful. Soon, he began working on key government figures too.

  By late afternoon Chi was suffering from ego overload and in need of some food. His cooking skills did not extend much beyond putting a plastic container in the microwave or sticking a breadcrumbed something under the grill, and he felt like he should get some proper nutrition, so he decided to go out for dinner.

  There were only a few places where Chi felt it was safe to eat. It would be all too easy for someone to slip him some kind of drug in his food – a move that could lead to all sorts of compromising situations. One of these places was Kato's, a Japanese sashimi restaurant where you could choose dishes from a conveyor that glided around the oval-shaped counter. Chi made a point of picking dishes at random, just to be on the safe side.

  Chi sat alone at one end of the counter, as he usually did, watching the other punters watch the chefs. There were a lot of couples, and he felt pangs of loneliness as he observed the little affectionate touches they shared, the way some pairs looked comfortable together, talking casually, while others were obviously new to each other, self-conscious and attentive. They all looked so blissfully unaware of the kind of world they were really living in.

  Chi was not a typical conspiracy nerd. A mixture of wealthy upbringing and cosmopolitan parents had given him the kind of social confidence sadly lacking in many of his comrades, and his journalism work meant he got enough chances to meet people. He had broken up with his last girlfriend a few months ago, for the usual reason: his obsession was too much for her. She told him he needed to get a life.

  His thoughts turned to Amina. There was a girl who shared his obsessive nature, but he'd seen the way she had been looking at Ivor lately. It didn't really surprise him; Ivor had the appeal of being a more . . . experienced man, as well as having that sadness, that haunted quality that girls seemed to swoon over. It didn't hurt that he was loaded too, of course. None of this stopped Chi from daydreaming about her; a selfish part of him assured him that her attraction for Ivor would end the first time she saw him without his glass eye. The fact that she was a social girl and was probably surrounded by admirers did little to subdue Chi's fantasies.

  By the time he left the restaurant, it was after eight and an overcast sky meant it was already quite dark. As he walked home, his eyes moved ceaselessly, ever watchful for anything suspicious. Once again, he felt lonely. He was tired of all this. There were times he wished he was unaware of all the games that were being played beyond the public eye. He could be living a much more peaceful life if only he'd grown up a little less suspicious.

  It was his father's fault. Back when Chi was only ten and his parents were still together, his father – then only a talented programmer yet to make his fortune – had told him about a database he was debugging for the Royal Air Force. The information stored on it included UFO reports by air force pilots. There were hundreds of them. Chi's father, in direct violation of his contract and the Official Secrets Act, had brought a few of these reports home to show his son. After one night of reading, Chi was hooked. Four years later, he was able to hack into the systems at RAF Headquarters in High Wycombe and have a look around for himself.

  Trudging along the road towards his house, Chi thought about those first reports he read, years ago. He could explain a lot of them now, having become something of an expert on the subject. Most UFOs were cases of mistaken identity, misinterpretation, hallucinations or drugs. But there were a few – a fraction of a percentage – that defied explanation no matter what way you looked at them. The RAF pilots' reports still impressed him the most. These were men and women who had to keep cool heads while flying at high speeds with jet engines roaring behind them. They were trained to observe and report accurately. They could identify the shapes of other aircraft, judge their speed and bearing, track them on radar – if possible – and even chase after them if they chose to. They were not given to making sensationalist claims. Most did not want to be associated with UFO sightings and were reluctant to call them in. Those were the reports that had changed Chi's life.

  A movement near the roof of a house caught his eye and he looked up . . . just in time to see something flicker out of sight behind the roof 's gable. The sky was a gunmetal grey, mottled with black, and Chi stared for a minute or two, searching for the source of the movement. There was a line of trees silhouetted against the house lights from the next street and he was just about to turn away when he spotted something gliding along just beyond and below the tops of the trees. Then, in a sudden spiralling motion, it rose straight up into the sky and disappear
ed.

  Chi stood motionless for some time, willing the thing to come back. Strangely, he felt inclined not to believe what he had just seen. He tried to rationalize it, to work out what ordinary, everyday sight he could have misinterpreted. After all, hadn't he just been thinking of UFOs? Was there some part of him that wanted to see one so badly it would twist his own perceptions to fool him? Had he been chasing shadows for so long he was actually starting to see them?

  In a state of disappointed confusion, he made his way home.

  It took some time to convince Ivor, once the sedative wore off, that he was in a normal, overcrowded, understaffed NHS accident and emergency ward and not some secret military installation. And even then, he insisted on hobbling outside to take a look around and satisfy himself that the doctors and nurses were telling the truth.

  They were equally bemused by the fact that he was more concerned about the loss of a ceramic tooth implant than the danger that his glass eye might have been damaged, or indeed, the bullet wound in his side. There were two police officers waiting to take his statement – bullet wounds had to be reported – but they were forced to humour him first by escorting him to the exit while he carried out his confirmation of the staff 's claims about their so-called hospital.

  When he gave his statement, he kept it vague, being careful not to mention the fact that he had started the fight, or that the assailants' faces were invisible, saying instead that they had been wearing tights on their heads. The constables did not seem satisfied, but they took his details and said they'd be in touch if they had any more questions.

  His wound had been dressed; the grazes down his face where it had hit the ground were too minor to need bandaging. One of the junior doctors – a round-faced Indian woman with a cute, gurgling voice – sat him down and asked to take a look at his glass eye and the eye socket, to ensure that the impact had not caused any damage. Ivor took the eye out, examined it carefully and declared that it was fine. With everything that was going on in his mind, the mash of images, memories and sensations, he found it hard to concentrate on what the woman was saying:

  'Sorry, what?'

  'Can you hold back the lids for me, so I can have a look inside?'

  'Oh, right.'

  Ivor obliged, pulling the lids open so the doctor could point the light of her examination lens into the socket. She rotated the light from one side to the other, tilting it to examine the roof and floor of the empty hollow in Ivor's head. She frowned and leaned in closer.

  'There doesn't seem to be any recent damage,' she told him. 'And there's no sign of infection. But there's a mark here that looks a bit odd to me. It could just be part of the original scarring, but . . .'

  Grabbing a piece of paper and a pen, she drew something on it. Then she stared at her own drawing for a minute.

  'It looks almost like . . . Hang on a second.' She called over to another doctor on the far side of the room, an oriental man who looked about fifteen and had a haircut that would have looked more appropriate on a skateboarder. 'Joe? Can you have a look at this for me?'

  'Anything for you, Immy,' he replied with mock gusto as he came over. 'What's up?'

  'Does this look like a Chinese character to you?'

  He studied the drawing for a moment.

  'Could be. Could be,' he mused. 'It's hard to tell – your penmanship sucks, baby. Where'd you get it?'

  'It's in here,' Ivor told him, pointing towards his empty socket.

  Joe picked up the examination lens and peered into the socket.

  'Yeah,' he chuckled. 'That's the weirdest thing. Like seeing Christ's face on a mossy wall, huh? It's a word all right. Could mean a few things, but . . .'

  'Does it say "Shang"?' Ivor asked.

  Joe leaned back, lowering the lens.

  'Yeah. That's what it could be. How did you know?'

  Ivor thought about what the Filipino nurse had heard Shang saying once, some time ago: 'It's nice to know they'll all be taking a little bit of China back home with them.' Ivor shook his head at the arrogance of the man.

  'The bastard signs his work,' he said.

  31

  It was Monday morning, and Amina sat in abject misery while Goldbloom listened to all of her recordings and read her notes. His face was impassive, but she knew her mother had been on to him and Amina doubted it had been a pleasant phone call.

  'This was supposed to be a mental health piece,' he said at last.

  'I followed it where it led,' she replied.

  'Following doesn't mean going around with your eyes closed,' he snapped. 'You've got nothing here except conjecture and wild leaps of imagination. You can't print anything without some kind of evidence and—'

  'That's why I didn't want to show it to you!' Amina retorted. 'I know it's not ready.'

  'I rang some of my contacts in the Ministry of Defence this morning,' Goldbloom told her. 'I asked them if the army or the intelligence services had ever carried out mind control experiments and they laughed. They laughed! You see, it's not that nobody's tried it – hell, everybody's tried it in one form or other – it's just that it never works. It's the stuff of movies and spy novels and conspiracy theories.'

  This was becoming a sensitive subject for Amina. She was starting to worry that even if she did find some evidence to back up Ivor's suspicions, nobody would believe it because of Chi's fanatical conspiracy network. If their story got lumped together with the likes of Area 51 or the Princess Diana 'assassination', it would never make it to print. She'd have to talk to Chi and Ivor about that.

  'So you asked them and they said "no" and you're leaving it at that, are you?' Amina snorted. 'Whatever happened to investigating a story?'

  'Don't take that tone with me, girl. You're on thin ice as it is.'

  'Did Mum tell you about the funeral card?'

  'Yes, and she doesn't believe for a second that it's for real. We've run into the likes of Chi Sandwith before. They have a tendency to get a bit caught up in their own stories.'

  'It was left in my room while I slept,' Amina said through gritted teeth.

  'And you couldn't have picked it up somewhere by mistake and dropped it there somehow? Somebody couldn't have slipped it into your bag, or into your pocket, without you seeing? You need to keep your wits about you in this game, Amina. There's a lot of sharks out there looking to pull a fast one on an inexperienced young girl.'

  Amina bridled at his tone. Could he have been any more patronizing?

  'I'm handing this story on to Rob. He'll follow up your leads and see where they take him, but I promise you this is all going to turn out to be the ravings of a few would-be mental patients. I'll make sure he keeps you informed – you've put a lot of work into this and you'll get a byline if it ever goes to print.'

  Amina scowled. Rob wasn't much older than her, and he'd be too precious with his new brief to let her get involved. Now, on top of the humiliation of having an investigation taken off her, she'd have to put up with him lording it over her in his wideboy way.

  This wasn't the end of it. She would call Ivor this afternoon. There was no way she was going to be left out of this now.

  'And don't think you're going to go it alone,' Goldbloom said, reading her thoughts. 'You're back on office duty full-time. If I catch you posing as a Chronicle reporter to anyone, you're out of a job, d'you understand me?'

  She glared at the floor, grinding her teeth.

  'Yes,' she said. 'I understand.'

  Despite Goldbloom's insistence that she return to her role of office temp, Amina discovered there was a lull in the need for coffee, photocopies or typing, so she was left to her own devices. She used the time to go back over the archives on the server, searching for stories on Sinnostan or any mention of Anthony Shang. There was a review of his book in a back-issue of the Sunday Literary Supplement: 'A self-satisfied, conceited and barely believable trip through the memoirs of one of this century's leading surgeons. Compulsive but cringe-inducing reading.'

  There wa
s also an article on his 'defection' to Britain, eleven years before. He had flown to London for a conference and then refused to go back. He claimed that the Chinese had tried to have him assassinated on a number of occasions, because of the sensitive information he had gained through his contacts with his nation's leaders. Apparently, he had only escaped these murderous attempts through sheer cunning. The Chinese had claimed he was a fantasist and naturally dismissed his claims as hogwash. Shang had gone into hiding and it was rumoured that he was now working with British intelligence.

  British intelligence? She sat back, staring at the screen. Amina remembered how the police had handed round Shang's name and photo to all the reporters in the paper, claiming he was a terrorist – some kind of bio-weapons expert. She wondered why nobody had recalled this article. Had they just forgotten, or were they inclined to believe the police over their own sources? If Shang had been working for British intelligence, could they be involved in whatever was going on in Sinnostan? Maybe some secretive little branch with their own agenda? Then, if the police were looking for Shang because the intelligence services were saying he was a terrorist . . . Amina tilted her head up and gazed up at the ceiling. Had Shang done a runner? Maybe he had and they were afraid he'd talk. He could be thinking about writing another book.

  But what she couldn't understand was why nobody else had picked up on this gap between his old story and the police's new one. Anybody could find out what she'd just discovered. Of course, they'd have to be looking—

  A two-inch-thick document slammed down on the desk, making her jump. Marie, one of the crime correspondents, was standing over her. She was a curiously asexual woman, with a short practical haircut, no make-up and a rumpled blue suit that hid her shape. Like many reporters, she always looked like she needed more sleep.

  'Sorry, did I wake you?' she said, smiling. 'Copy that for me, Amina? Drop two copies in to editorial and one into legal?'