by Oisin McGann
'Smoke and mirrors,' he said, almost to himself, as he stroked Roswell's ginger fur. 'There is no war. Jesus, this is bigger than Kennedy, bigger than September the eleventh . . . this is bigger than anything. We've gotta be careful here. Wow . . . Wow! This testimony is going to blow things wide open. We have to assume that they're already out to nail Shang before he talks, and the same goes for us if they find out we've heard this. You're meeting him the day after tomorrow?'
'Nine a. M. in Liverpool Street station,' Ivor told him.
'Smart,' Chi said, nodding. 'Crowds and lots of escape routes. Still, you know that's where it could all go wrong, don't you?'
Ivor shrugged.
'What else can I do? I have to know.'
'Tell me about it,' Chi chuckled. 'We all have to know. There is no war. Jesus – how did I not see this one coming? And this stuff he talked about . . . strobe interruption. That's—'
His face went blank for a moment. His fingers drummed against the edge of the desk and his lips moved but no words came out.
'Aawwgh!' he yelled suddenly, making Ivor jump. Roswell bounded out of her master's lap and turned to give him a hostile glare. 'That's where I've heard of it before! The bloody woman . . .' He stood up and strode over to a shelf full of disks. Pulling several out, he examined the indexes, before choosing one and taking it from its case. Slotting it into a disk drive, he closed the drawer and brought some folders up on-screen. Ivor wheeled his chair in behind him to get a closer look. Chi had opened up a series of scans of magazine articles. Most of them were about experimental technology: things like unmanned reconnaissance planes, microwave weapons, remote-control machine-gun posts and lots on state-of-the-art surveillance devices.
'This is the problem with looking for conspiracies,' Chi said as he searched. 'You gather so much information that you can eventually find links from anything to anything. It's tough to keep any kind of perspective.'
He sifted through all of this until he found the article he was looking for:
'There was an American woman named . . let's see . . . yeah, Ellen Rosenstock, who pioneered this technique called strobe interruption, but she wanted to use it in schools. Claimed you could effectively implant facts into somebody's memory. She has incredible memory powers herself – some say she's borderline autistic – but she's very, very clever. Has almost perfect recall; can tell you what the weather was like on the twelfth of April ten years ago, or memorize a whole phone book. Rosenstock's devoted her life to studying how her own brain works and she claimed she could use this strobe interruption in the form of light pulses to bypass the conscious mind and write memories into the human brain the same way you can record stuff on a computer's hard drive. She designed a computer program to put it into practice and started using it on some of her university students but the tests went wrong. Two of the kids had epileptic fits and one suffered retinal burns . . .'
There was a photo of the woman with the article. Chi opened up the picture he had taken off Nexus's back-up disks, the one with the two men and one woman leaving the office building. The people Nexus called the Triumvirate. It was the same woman in both pictures.
'OK, so that's her,' Chi breathed. 'So who are these two guys? The brainwashing process connects her to the fake war, and she's involved with them somehow. But Nexus didn't know about the war thing – at least as far as I know – so why was he so interested in them? What were they up to?'
'One mystery at a time, man,' Ivor told him. 'First let's milk Shang for all he's worth. We can worry about these guys some other time.'
'These,' Chi muttered, pointing at the screen, 'these are the kinds of characters I worry about all the time.'
6
Amina spent the next couple of days after talking to Donghu finding out as much as she could about UFO sightings. She needed to talk to Ivor. It was easy to tell herself that it was so she could tell him about Donghu, but really she just needed to see him to . . . to see him. And besides, they had a lot to discuss.
She still did not buy Chi's alien abduction theory, but it wasn't unthinkable that the military were testing some new kind of weapon out in those isolated mountains. Something that could knock you out from a distance without leaving a mark.
Deciding to be late into work that morning, she took the train to Ivor's instead. The Underground station was busy when she disembarked from the train, and she pushed her way through the sleepy herd that shuffled around her to board the carriage. There were still enough people on the platform to prevent Ivor from spotting her as he got on at the next door up. Amina waved and called out to him but he didn't hear. He was carrying two small suitcases and with a jolt in her heart, she wondered where he was going. Was he leaving? Two cases meant he would be gone for some time.
She slipped back on board the train just as the tinny siren announced the doors were closing. Resisting the urge to make her way up to him, she decided instead to observe the people around him and see if she could spot anyone watching him. Maybe it was easier to catch the watchers out when their attention wasn't directed towards you.
Even at this time of the morning, the carriage was hot, stuffy and smelled of drowsy commuters. It was difficult to move without brushing up against somebody, but at least the full carriage meant that she could stay out of Ivor's line of sight. It was strange, following somebody without their knowing. Amina felt closer to him and, at the same time, slightly predatory. It struck her that even here, in this crowded train, she was invading his privacy somehow by watching him like this. Despite the fact that she meant him no harm – quite the opposite – she doubted that he'd be happy when he found out. She was stalking him like a crazed fan, studying his face, his clothes, his fidgeting hands, having feelings about him while he sat unawares only a few metres away. She wondered if those who carried out surveillance for a living formed a kind of relationship with their subjects. It must be hard not to – a one-sided relationship where the watcher enjoyed a detached kind of power. The subject's life gave you purpose; you could know everything about them while they knew nothing about you. You were untouchable. Their problems were not yours unless you chose to make them yours.
Her phone rang. It was one of her friends. She let it ring out. She'd been doing that a lot lately. Amina gazed at Ivor's scarred face, framed by his untidy brown hair. He needed a haircut and he hadn't shaved. The pressing of his hand against his side told her that he was in pain from something. She loved his sad expression and even with his face set in that mask people wear on the train, she could see that calm resolve in his eyes. He was a man who would see things through.
The urge to touch him came over her – to get closer and reach out and brush her fingers across his back or his arm without him knowing. This must be how stalkers felt, she supposed. To be close enough to share someone's life, but never taking the risk of getting intimate, of being rejected. Amina could see the attraction in it.
In a way, this was what journalism was like: to watch with detachment – to be a witness and never get involved. There was something creepy about it, when she thought about it like that.
She could make nothing of the people sitting or standing around Ivor. If anyone was observing him, she couldn't spot them. But then, they were professionals after all.
Ivor got off at Liverpool Street and she followed at a safe distance. It was hard to keep track of him in the throng of commuters, some hurrying to make connections as they all squeezed onto the escalators, a few pushing past on the left side in polite haste. Ivor struggled with his suitcases. They were heavy and bulky and his fellow travellers were intolerant of luggage at this time of the morning when they had jobs to get to.
The Scalps were here somewhere, she was sure of it. They could be beside her, behind her. They could be anywhere. Something was going on here and they would be assessing it, judging the threat. If Ivor was acting in any way to compromise them . . .
That's it, she thought. He's making a break for it because he's got something on them he can use
. Wouldn't he have told me? No, he wanted me safe. He wanted me out of it. If he's leaving now he's scared. Suddenly everyone she looked at seemed to be looking at Ivor. She became convinced he was surrounded by hostile eyes. They reached the main concourse, swiping their cards through the ticket barriers and emerging into the open space dominated by the information board hanging from the centre of the ceiling. On the right were the lines of platforms for the mainline trains, on the left, in front and behind, the ticket offices, shops, cafés and ways out. Ivor looked around, but Amina stepped behind a pillar in time to stay out of sight. Then he made his way over to the line of boards in front of the ticket offices, the ones holding the timetables. There was a bench next to them. Sitting on the seat with his chin on his chest was a man wearing a bulky Barbour jacket over an expensive, but rumpled, suit. There was a bottle of whiskey tucked into the crook of his arm. The bottle was half empty.
Ivor sat down on the bench facing the other way, sliding the two suitcases in under the seat between them. Gaping at this move, she had to suppress a smile. Ivor was having a clandestine rendezvous, complete with secret trade-off! She wondered what business he could be conducting with a drunk first thing in the morning. Or maybe the other guy's alcoholism was part of the theatre. If that was the case, the whole thing was priceless. Amina was moving in for a closer look when her arm was grabbed and she was dragged back behind the pillar.
Torn between outrage and fear, she spun to face a tall young man with dark dreadlocks and a beard, wearing a multi-coloured woollen hat.
'What are you doing here?' he demanded in a hushed voice.
'Who the hell are . . . ?' Her voice trailed off as she looked closer. 'Chi? Is that you?' She almost laughed at the absurd picture before her. 'Are you in disguise?'
'I'm not supposed to be here,' Chi muttered, looking a little disgruntled that she'd seen through his façade so easily. 'And neither are you. That's Shang over there. Ivor's about to get all our questions answered. Damn it! You're not supposed to be involved in this any more!'
'Blow it out your ass!' she snapped at him, loud enough to make people look round. 'I'm in this thing as much as you are. Have you two been going behind my back? Where do you get off—'
Chi cut her off by putting a finger to his lips while his other hand went to his ear. He was obviously listening to something. She turned to look over at the two figures on the bench as the colour drained from his face.
'Oh Christ,' he whispered.
Ivor thought Shang was just pretending to ignore him when he sat down. There was no mistaking the surgeon's face even with his head hanging down like that.
'I've got your money,' he said, not looking at the other man, but speaking in a normal tone to be heard over the noise in the station. 'Do we need to go somewhere so you can check it?'
There was no response. Ivor knew Chi would be listening on the mic he had secreted under Ivor's collar. A tiny flesh-coloured earpiece hidden in Ivor's left ear would let Chi talk to him if he spotted anything suspicious.
'Don't mess me about,' Ivor hissed at the surgeon. 'Are you drunk? Are you listening to me—'
He turned to glare at the other man, but from this angle he saw just the back and side of Shang's head. The collar of the jacket was up, but it was still possible to see the thin red line of fresh blood leading up the back of his neck to the small hole just inside the hairline. Ivor felt suddenly numb, the skin tightening on the back of his own neck as he stared at the surgeon. The hole was too small to be a bullet-wound – more likely a stiletto, or one of those ice picks you saw in the US. The ghost of Ivor's missing eye began to ache.
He checked Shang's neck for a pulse, knowing he wouldn't find one. He suspected there would be no alcohol in the surgeon's blood either. The whiskey bottle was just to keep people away from the corpse until Ivor got here. He was trembling now, though he would have sworn he was still devoid of emotion. His missing eye burned in its socket. They had killed Shang in a crowded train station – stabbed him where the spine met the skull, tucked a bottle under his arm and left him slumped on this bench as if he'd simply fallen asleep. How did they do that? How could nobody have seen it happen? It didn't matter. What mattered was why. They were sending a message. Crowds didn't make any difference. Public places didn't make any difference. The Scalps could get to you anywhere.
'No, no, no. No, no, no!' a voice sobbed in despair. It was his voice. 'Not now. No! You're not going to do this to me now!'
Ivor jammed his hands into Shang's pockets, frantically searching for the proof the surgeon had claimed to be carrying. There was nothing in the jacket pockets. He pulled open the buttons and began rifling through the man's suit. People passed, glancing down at him in disgust. But they did not stop. They should have tried to stop him, or at least said something to him. But they just kept walking. Others paused long enough to look around and see if anyone else was going to take action, before continuing on their way, eyes carefully averted as if Ivor was some homeless guy begging for change . . . or a nutter who might be carrying a machete or worse. For once he was grateful for all these obtuse, blinkered people living in their own detached little worlds.
'Shang's dead,' he told Chi. 'Everything's gone pear-shaped. Get out of here!'
His searching became more panicked. There was nothing in Shang's trouser pockets. Where else could it be? Nothing else mattered now, only the truth – the proof. Ivor snarled in frustration, barking out a string of curses, sounding even more like a madman.
'Goddamn it! Goddamn it, it's got to be here!'
But they wouldn't have left proof sitting in Liverpool Street station for everyone to find. They didn't leave proof anywhere. Ivor was going through the suit jacket again when police officers in body armour, armed with sub-machine guns, came running from all directions. He didn't hear the consternation as travel-doped commuters suddenly found themselves in the middle of a potential fire-fight. He barely heard the voices as they shouted 'Police!' calling for people to get down, to be calm. When they were roaring at him to lie down on the ground and put his hands behind his head, he continued to search. Nothing else mattered now.
'Ivor!' Chi's voice burst into his ear. 'They're going to bloody shoot you! Get on the ground, man!'
Ivor finally woke up to what was going on around him. There were over a dozen weapons pointed in his direction. He sank off the bench onto his knees, raising his hands as he did so. As soon as he was on the floor, four officers pinned him down roughly as his hands were cuffed behind him. A spear-thrust of agony punched through his side from the bullet wound and he cried out in pain. He had to be careful about that. A bullet wound would take some explaining if they discovered it. A man identified himself as Detective Sergeant Sykes and cautioned Ivor:
'I must inform you that you do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.'
His tone implied that he expected Ivor to do plenty of talking over the next while. Ivor ground his teeth together, clenching his eyes shut. They were going to do him for Shang's murder. Sykes – the name was familiar. He was the one who had questioned Amina and Chi after the anthrax scare at the Chronicle. The one from Counter Terrorism Command. The only way he could be here now was if he'd been tipped off. Ivor was being set up.
'For Christ's sake!' he bellowed, tears of frustration streaming down his face. 'This is such a fucking cliché!'
The police cordon was tightening on the main thoroughfare, but it would take several minutes for them to close down all the exits and keep the thousands of potential witnesses contained. Chi and Amina slipped onto the escalators to the Underground station, trying to look as if they weren't fleeing the scene of a murder.
'We can't leave him!' Amina was saying under her breath.
'We can't help him!' Chi retorted. 'What use are we to him if we get arrested too? We're accomplices now and as soon as they find the mic and ea
rpiece he was wearing, they'll be looking for whoever was at the other end of the line.'
He was still listening to Ivor's microphone, but there wasn't much being said now. The crime scene was being secured. London's transport system had slow reflexes; Amina didn't know if the Transport Police would stop the trains leaving the station or not, but what was important was that she and Chi got lost in the crowd. Chi told her it was Sykes who had arrested Ivor and if he spotted the two of them as well, he couldn't help but be suspicious. They reached a Central Line platform just as a train was about to leave. Jumping on board, they waited for what seemed like an age until the doors closed and the train started moving.
'You need to get to work,' Chi whispered to her. 'Turn this back into a normal day.'
She nodded, irritated at having him tell her what to do. She knew what to do. But she couldn't help thinking of Ivor and how they were deserting him. Chi was right, there was no way they could help – at least not yet. Their best hope was making this story as public as possible and quickly. She had to convince Goldbloom to take this on . . . and if he wouldn't, then she'd find someone who would.
'Listen,' Chi said softly as the train rolled into Bank station. 'Come over to my place tonight. Shang spilled the beans over the phone. We've no evidence, but we've got what are almost his dying words. We need to sort out what we're going to do with them. Don't do anything until then, OK? And stay safe, Amina. We're all marked now. They could come for us anytime.'
The doors opened and he slipped onto the platform without looking back. In seconds he was out of sight along the tiled corridor leading to the surface. Amina decided to get off at the next station. She needed to get above ground again, to breathe the open air, no matter how grimy or polluted. Her nerves were on edge, she flinched when anyone brushed against her. Her hands clasped and unclasped and her jaw was tight and tense. Her pulse thudded in her ears. She couldn't go on this way. If she ever hoped to survive this, she was going to need some protection.