Strangled Silence

by Oisin McGann

  His eyes were on her, watching for her response. Amina remembered the piece of film taken by the camera in Stefan Gierek's helmet; the flashing light just before he blacked out.

  'Not as weird as you'd think,' she replied, as she decided to tell Donghu what she and the others had discovered so far.

  The alert at the airport resulted in increased traffic on the Underground. It was starting to look like another false alarm, but that was little comfort to the people whose flights had been cancelled and were forced to make their way home again as rush hour began. A number of bodies had brushed against Ivor's as he travelled home and in his distracted state, he had taken little notice. So it was impossible to tell who had slipped the note into his jacket pocket.

  He discovered it as he tucked his hands into his pockets on exiting the station, walking down the road towards his flat. Pulling out the folded piece of paper, he read the words written in a looping, perfectionist handwriting:

  I hear you are willing to pay for information on your injury. I can supply a full explanation, with documentary proof and the names of the people responsible. This will cost you £1 million. If you are willing to pay this amount, contact me at the number below at 9 p. M. tonight. Call from a phone box you have never used before. If you say a word to anybody else, or if I think you are going to cheat me out of my money, you will never hear from me again.

  Ivor read the number, his heart thudding against his ribs. Was it a trick? Were they playing with him? Were they setting him up? He felt overcome with a sickening fear. It couldn't be this easy. The price meant nothing to him if it could provide him with the answers he was after. He already knew he was going to make the call. But if this person wanted payment, there would be some kind of trade involved and that could mean exposing himself.

  Wasn't he already exposing himself ? Just returning home after he had been attacked was a risk in itself. He should be avoiding his flat, staying where there were crowds . . .

  He shook his head. Whatever this was, he would go along with it. It was too good a chance to turn down. He would worry about the risks when they came up. In the meantime, he had a phone call to make.

  Chi had already started rooting through Nexus's back-ups, but had not come up with anything really new. He emailed the others in the network to see if there was any news on Nexus. Then he continued his trawl through the back-ups. One disk was labelled 'The Triumvirate' and was full of surveillance photos. They were badly composed enough to have been taken by Nexus himself. Nex was not a great one for fieldwork. He could disassemble a digital camera and put it back together with his eyes closed, but even with them open, he still couldn't take a decent picture.

  Chi checked the dates on the files. The most recent ones were of a nondescript office building on what looked like a London street. He clicked them to enlarge each one in turn. There were a number of people on the street, but the photos were centred on three figures leaving the building, one after the other. There was a lean, sallow-faced man with a grey military-style haircut, dressed in a khaki trench coat. The second figure was a shorthaired woman dressed in a brown woollen sweater and slacks who resembled a university lecturer. The third person was a tall, stocky man with the appearance of a politician but the eyes of a wary animal.

  The three subjects had left the building separately, but the way Nexus had photographed them linked them together. He had definitely been interested in these people. Flicking back to the woman, Chi thought he recognized her, but he couldn't remember where he had seen her before. 'The Triumvirate'. Nex had mentioned that term a few times; supposedly it was a group of three conspirators who were running some operation he was interested in. Something to do with smuggling weapons. Was this them?

  Not that it mattered. He closed the files and ejected the disk. Chi didn't have time to take on any more projects. Ivor's revelations had given him a definite direction and unless Nex had information that was relevant to this investigation, he'd have to wait his turn.

  Ivor had told Chi to keep Amina out of the loop for now. They were both uneasy about involving her any further, even though she had already done a lot of the legwork. The fight with the Scalps men had shaken Ivor and convinced him that any threat was to be taken seriously. Chi still felt an urge to call her and tell her what was going on. They couldn't keep her out of it for ever, so how could they protect her? And even if they could, he knew she'd be outraged at the idea. The very thought of it made him smile.

  He checked his emails, half hoping that she'd got in touch, but there was nothing from her. In fact, hardly anybody in the network had responded to his emails either. They were normally more prompt than that. Chi wondered if there was a reason for their silence.

  It was getting late and he was growing hungry. Putting the PC to sleep, he wandered into the kitchen to find a little present from Roswell lying in the middle of the floor. A dead mouse.

  'Ah, Jesus, Ros! How many times do I have to tell you . . .'

  Picking it up by the tail, he was about to drop it into the bin when he spotted something sticking out of its mouth. With his fingernails, he pulled the tiny roll of paper out of the limp creature's throat as if drawing a joke from some macabre Christmas cracker. Unrolling it, he read the words that were written upon it:

  Knock knock!

  Who's there?

  Ike.

  Ike who?

  I could have killed your cat, but I thought it might be a bit predictable.

  Despite his trembling hands and chattering teeth, a grin spread across Chi's face. He had made it! He had been Targeted! Holding the dead mouse up like a trophy in one hand and the note in the other, he raised his face to the ceiling and let out a roar:

  'Yes! Yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes!'

  Then, realizing it was unlikely that it had in fact been Roswell who'd left the mouse in the middle of his kitchen, Chi ran back into his study and woke up his PC. From here he could monitor the status of his intruder alarm. It was still active. He opened up the software that controlled the cameras he had installed throughout the house and checked the one in the kitchen. He ran it backwards until he spotted the man opening the back door and calmly walking into the kitchen, holding the dead mouse by its tail. The man was wearing a tracksuit and a baseball cap that hid his face from the camera. Chi watched as the guy put the mouse on the floor and left again.

  That had been forty-five minutes ago, while Chi was sitting at his desk. He checked the alarm status again. It was working fine.

  'Jesus, they're good,' he said softly, suppressing the urge to be sick.

  His breath was coming in stops and starts. He felt dizzy and thrilled and terrified all at the same time. This was it – he was on the edge now. His thoughts went to Nexus and to other martyrs to the cause; all those who'd died in car accidents, or house fires or unlikely suicides – his particular favourite was the guy who'd shot himself in the back of the head . . . twice.

  Chi gazed at the man on the screen and his whole body went cold. His home had been broken into while he was right here in his study. He should have called the police, but he thought it might be a bit predictable.

  22

  Ivor finally found a phone box that was working. He thought he'd lost whoever was following, but he couldn't be sure. He would watch the street on either side of him so that he could at least check they weren't listening. Chi had warned him that he could be tracked by satellite surveillance, so he'd taken a route under as many trees and subways as possible. Holding the digital recorder to the earpiece, he checked it was on. He dialled the number on the piece of paper. The phone rang once.

  'Ivor McMorris?'

  'Yes. Who is this?'

  'That's none of your concern.' The voice was nasal, precise and had a slight American twang to it. 'All you need to know is how much I know. All I need to know is that you are willing to pay my price. Are you?'

  'Yes.'

  There was a pause and Ivor sensed the definite air of relief in the other man. Whoever this was, he had
his own problems. Ivor might be able to use that.

  'I need proof you can do what you say,' he said, his chest tight with pent-up breath. 'If you want this money, you're going to have to be pretty convincing. Tell me what's going on.'

  'I'll tell you what's going on,' the voice replied. 'But you're not going to believe some of it. You lost your eye in a bombing, but for a long time you've had the feeling that the memories of the event were too exact – too perfect, yes? That's because – as you've probably worked out – those memories are false. They were implanted by a process of conditioning known as strobe interruption.

  'Strobe interruption uses flashing lights to disrupt the brain's neural activity, causing you to black out. It can also be used to disorientate you, confuse you and ultimately leave you extremely vulnerable to hypnotic suggestion.'

  'I've heard about something like this,' Ivor said, almost to himself. 'The stories of epileptics having their fits set off by flashing lights.'

  'Yes,' the man said, sounding mildly irritated at being stopped in mid-flow. 'The US military learned a lot from helicopter crashes in Vietnam. The rotors spinning against the sun created strobing effects that caused pilots to black out. Strobe interruption has taken this to its most refined form. Used skilfully, pulsing light at the right frequencies can be used to flick switches in your brain for a variety of effects. Now it has been combined with sensory deprivation. They cut you off from the outside world, assault your senses with abrupt changes between silence and deafening noise, project manipulated imagery into your face and start telling you what they want you to think. It is devastatingly effective in reprogramming the human mind.'

  'I know,' Ivor muttered. 'But what's it all for? Why did they do it to me?'

  'You are only one of many, Mr McMorris. You are but the smallest pixel in a much bigger picture. It started off with one man. This man had to be convinced that he had seen something he had not.

  'Members of the government wanted to pass a law. They were after more power, more control. They wanted to introduce the Drawbridge Act. You know it?'

  'Of course,' Ivor said. 'All the . . . the antiterrorist powers. Searching without a warrant, holding somebody without trial . . . arresting someone for not having their ID card . . . all that stuff. It got passed.'

  'Yes. Lots of new powers. It got passed because of what one man saw. He was a reporter with an international reputation for honesty and objectivity, who was taken to interview a terrorist leader hiding out somewhere in Sinnostan. He was shown an arsenal of chemical weapons intended for Britain. But there was no interview and there were no chemical weapons. A few well-placed intelligence agents set the whole thing up; a group of "black ops" people you veterans have taken to calling the Scalps. That reporter was the first "civilian" victim of strobe interruption. Because of his report, nobody objected to a law aimed at fighting terrorism. They were protecting the country. The Drawbridge Act was passed. The government got more power over its people. Simple!'

  Ivor detected a tone of the lecturer in the man's voice. This guy was only getting into his stride. He was enjoying talking about this.

  'But the plan backfired. All of a sudden, people were asking why nothing was being done about these terrorists hiding in Sinnostan. They demanded action. These maniacs had to be stopped before they came to Britain! But nobody in the government wanted a war – everybody remembered what happened in Iraq. What a mess that was! Years of civil war, hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians dead – all to stop weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist. They couldn't afford to make that kind of mistake again. Sinnostan kept protesting that there were no terrorists, but who could trust them? Their leader was a tyrant and probably a sympathizer!

  'Most of the government did not know that the chemical weapons threat was fake, but a few more were told. They were all still convinced they were protecting their country. They concocted a plan to create another illusion to cancel out the first one: they would pretend to have the chemical weapons destroyed and the terrorists all killed by a team of SAS. Simple!

  'The politicians didn't ask how it would be done. They didn't want to know. An SAS unit boarded a plane. During the flight, the soldiers were gassed and then brainwashed into thinking they had carried out their raid. Two were even wounded to make it all the more realistic. The destruction of the 'chemical weapons' was filmed and released to the media. Simple!

  'But then people began asking how we could be sure that all the chemical weapons had been destroyed? It wasn't long before the conspiring politicians found themselves in an impossible position. They would have to send an invasion force into Sinnostan.'

  Listening to this absurd story, Ivor felt a sick sensation building in his stomach. He knew where this was leading; he just couldn't believe it.

  'So a force was assembled. The Sinnostanis protested some more. But they were a poor country with only a small army. They were ignored. Britain was backed up by America, Russia and China. In they went. Just a few thousand; enough to make a convincing show of searching the mountains, not enough to actually achieve anything. They had to find some terrorists – otherwise they'd look like fools and warmongers. The Scalps arranged for the occasional patrol to 'make contact with the enemy'. The soldiers came back raving about the terrorists they had seen. Sinnostan protested most vigorously.

  'The military felt overstretched in this big, mountainous region. They demanded more troops. The public demanded that all the terrorists be hunted down. While all this was going on overseas, the politicians discovered they could do pretty much whatever they wanted at home as long as it looked like they were protecting the country. Anybody who disagreed with them was branded unpatriotic, or even a traitor.

  'But to maintain the illusion of a war, there had to be casualties. The Scalps were tasked with keeping up the pretence, but the politicians didn't want to know how. Most of them managed to convince themselves that there really was a war going on out there. The strobe interruption process went into overdrive, with its own base in Sinnostan. A surgical team was brought in to mimic wounds to fake the effects of battle.'

  Ivor's stomach gave a heave. His right eye was starting to ache. He swallowed, taking a deep breath. There was no war. There was no war. It was too much for him to grasp.

  'But . . . but how could the soldiers just disappear for days?'

  'Most didn't, officially. The patrols would be incountry for at least that amount of time. The Scalps called their reports in over the radio whenever it was required.'

  'The roulette wheel,' Ivor rasped. 'That was for—'

  'A bit of vanity, really. It was imperative that we keep the choice of wounds random, so we used the roulette wheel. A spin of the wheel decided who got what. Each wound had a number – sometimes more than one. Increased odds were given to the most common injuries, some you see in battle more than others. Number thirteen was a head wound, fifty was abdominal. Each casualty got three spins of the wheel. The mind-control process took the spins into account too. Numbers eight or twenty-two were extreme post-traumatic stress, for instance. And twenty . . . Well, twenty was the loss of an eye.'

  Pain lanced through Ivor's scarred eye socket. His dead eye felt alive; it pulsed with an agonizing heat, but it felt alive. Ghost pain, the torment of a missing body part. It started to spread through the right side of his head.

  'You said "we",' he wheezed.

  'What?' the man replied uneasily.

  'You said "we used the roulette wheel". You're Shang, aren't you?'

  There was silence on the other end of the line. Ivor gritted his teeth, trying to suppress the overwhelming rage he felt towards this man.

  'You took my eye. For . . . for what? For a fucking PR stunt. How many soldiers have you operated on in this "war". How many have you killed?'

  'I didn't kill anyone,' Shang retorted. 'That wasn't my job.'

  'You bastard! YOU UNBELIEVABLE SADISTIC BASTARD!' Ivor screamed down the phone. 'You took out my eye, you fucking monster! You—'
>
  'I was just following orders,' Shang told him calmly. 'You can shriek all you want, I don't care. Frankly, you're the least of my problems. By talking to you, I'm signing my own death warrant. If you want the people responsible for this, I can give them to you. But it's going to cost you one million pounds . . . in cash, of course.'

  Ivor slumped against the inside of the booth, exhaustion overwhelming him.

  'How could they do it?' he said in a voice that was barely more than a whisper. 'Were they out of their minds? Were they completely bloody mad?'

  'Grow up,' Shang snapped at him. 'The politicians got an enemy that keeps the public scared and obedient. That gives them power. And they achieved this by having a war where there are few soldiers killed and almost no civilians . . . Or at least that's what they had – it's started heating up a bit over there. That's why I quit. The military is hunting a threat they believe to be real . . . or rather, they can't admit they're hunting a threat that isn't real. And the Scalps? They're doing what they do best – screwing with people's minds. And they're loving it – they're getting to test all kinds of new toys out there. And all concerned firmly believe they're doing their best to protect their nation.

  'But it's all a mess now. It's completely out of control, and the Sinnostanis? We invaded their country. It was only a matter of time before the terrorists we claimed were there would turn up for real. There was no war, but there's one there now.

  'Anyway, we're getting off the point,' he said abruptly. 'Let's talk money.'

  Chi sat listening to the recording of Shang's confession with a rapt expression. When it was finished, he played it again. Ivor sat waiting for his reaction. He had informed the bank he'd be withdrawing the money before he'd even made the call to Shang the previous evening, but he still had to wait for that much cash to be prepared. In the meantime, he had come back to Chi to keep him in the loop. After listening to the recording for a third time, Chi pursed his lips and hissed for his cat, who wandered into the study and jumped up into his lap.