Strangled Silence Read Online Free Page A

seen the strongest men, battle-hardened
men, reduced to shadows of themselves;
constantly trembling, sick and unable to sleep.
Paranoia was common, as well as hallucinations,
unpredictable aggression and other psychotic
behaviour. War could drive you insane.
    As she walked, Amina became aware of people
walking past her carrying placards; protestors on
their way to the march in the city centre. She
played with the idea of following them, but knew
she had to get back to the newsroom to start working
on her story . . . whatever it was going to be. It
was easy to dismiss Ivor's theories as lunacy, but
Amina found herself feeling sorry for him. In other
circumstances, she might have found him quite
attractive, what with that worldly look and the sad
smile. She wasn't as freaked out by the whole oneeye
thing as most girls would have been. Whatever
had happened to him, its effects were real enough.
Something really had blown his mind.
    She stopped short.
    Maybe she was looking at this the wrong way.
What if his memories really were distorted? Maybe
he had seen something, or done something that his
mind couldn't deal with, and he had blocked it out.
Some atrocity, a war crime – maybe even some
barbaric act that his own troops had committed.
People who had suffered trauma often suppressed
the memories of it. Whatever horror he had
experienced, his psyche had put a shield up around
it. But he knew something wasn't right, so he had
concocted this idea of being brainwashed to make
sense of it.
    Once you started thinking along those lines, it
was easy to convince yourself you were being
watched. Amina nodded to herself, feeling an
abrupt shiver of excitement. This could be a serious
story after all.
    The first thing to do was to check his account
of the bombing in Tarpan. Even if the Chronicle didn't do a piece on it, a report must have come in
over the wire. There had to be something about it
in the back issues of one of the papers, or even
on the web. If she played this right, she might
escape the horoscopes page a lot sooner than she'd
hoped.
    All of a sudden, Ivor McMorris had become a
much more interesting character.
    The meet was at a bench in front of the war
memorial on Swift Square. But Chi Sandwith knew
better than to take a direct route there. Getting a
bus south from his street, he changed to another
one going east and then hurried into an
Underground station to take a train back into the
centre of town. Once there, he mingled with
the crowds, shuffling one way and then another,
before catching another bus to Swift Square, all the
while keeping an eye out for anything suspicious:
maybe a face that appeared in two different places
on his trip, somebody pointing a camera in his
general direction, or somebody changing direction
whenever he did.
    The meeting place was a square of urban
greenery surrounded by purple-leaved maple trees.
Chi had tried to dress so as not to stand out, but he
was sufficiently ignorant of modern fashions to
prevent him from doing this effectively. His long,
frizzy blond hair was tied back in a ponytail and
topped with a Metallica baseball cap. At six-foot
four inches, he was noticeably tall, and the dark
grey trench coat he wore emphasized this, while
contrasting with his black combats and Doc
Martens. The aviator sunglasses were the final touch
in sabotaging his desire for anonymity.
    The square was crowded at this time of day,
which was important for avoiding curious ears. The
war memorial was a marble statue of some heroic
mariner wearing a sailor's jacket and tri-cornered
hat. Chi passed the bench twice, doing a circuit of
the area before sitting down next to the young man
who was already there.
    'Nexus,' Chi greeted him, without looking
directly at him.
    'Hi, Chi, how's it hangin'? You got the thing?'
    'Sure. You got the goods?'
    'Course.'
    They both looked warily around the square,
and then each of them cast an eye up at the sky as
if it might offer more than a few clouds and a jet
trail or