Revolution (11 page)

Harrison Forbes’ voice crackled from his office as the large plasma screens along one wall above the operations room showed news broadcasts in several languages, all part of the GNN chain of news networks in different countries.

Harrison focused on the British television broadcast as the night’s anchor, a female presenter with a suitably sombre expression, spoke in a clear, cut–glass English accent.

‘The situation in Mordania has been one of confusion over the past few weeks, with a dearth of accurate information coming from the country’s interior. Despite two resolutions being passed within the United Nations, no clear path forward for either the humanitarian effort or the proposed military solution to the conflict have been put forward. However, in a ground–breaking exclusive report our correspondent in Mordania has successfully obtained footage from inside the country, giving a window into a secret world of suffering that nobody in the west has seen for months. Martin, can you hear me?’

‘Roll feed and link!’ Harrison snapped.

The screens split and an image of Martin Sigby appeared alongside that of the anchor, the city of Thessalia framing the night behind him, occasional forlorn street lights flickering weakly in the distance.

‘Hello Charlotte, yes I can hear you.’

‘What can you tell us about the extraordinary footage you have for us tonight?’

Martin Sigby cultivated a solemn expression.

‘Well, Charlotte, as you know there have been no reliable and authentic, neutral news reports from within Mordania for more than four months now, despite an abundance of rumours of heavy fighting and a severe humanitarian crises. The government here in Mordania has claimed that it has provided suitable resources for the population that remains within its reach, but our footage throws doubt upon those claims.’
Sigby’s face became deeply serious.
‘Some people may find the following images disturbing.’

Harrison Forbes’s eyes narrowed as he watched, and he became aware that the fifty or so people in the broadcast room had fallen silent.

An image of a grubby, rubble strewn village filled the screen, clearly shot from a moving vehicle. Martin Sigby’s voice intoned over the scenes.

‘The remains of what was once a beautiful town in rural Mordania, the jewel of a democratic state shattered by the hammer of civil war. The people here are starving despite living barely five miles from the government controlled capital city, Thessalia. The conflict has reached even here, the rage of a rebel force undiminished even this far from the centre of the conflict.’

A gunshot, and suddenly the vehicle is swerving off the road and screeching to a halt. Shouts, echoes, commands and heavy, nervous breathing.

‘This is not an attack on a military brigade,’
Sigby’s voice intoned.
‘This is an aid convoy en–route to a village in the mountains. No target is considered off–limits by the rebel forces.’

Harrison Forbes raised an eyebrow.

‘Well done, Mister Sigby.’ He turned to an associate sitting behind a computer terminal. ‘What are the viewing figures?’

The associate glanced at his screen.

‘Undetermined, but climbing rapidly.’

Forbes thought for a moment. Sigby had either developed a previously unknown sense of initiative and made contact with someone who could travel freely in the country, or had taken the risk and gone himself. Neither seemed likely to Forbes, and he smiled quietly to himself.

‘Megan.’

*

Principality of Monaco,

Cote D’azure

Sherman Kruger sat in a reclining chair in the main lounge of his yacht, a half eaten meal of lobster discarded before him on a glass–topped table rimmed with gold leaf. The lights from the city twinkled beautifully through the broad glass doors to one side of him, but he did not see them. All of his attention was focused upon the plasma screen before him and the correspondent speaking over the footage being beamed across the entire globe.

‘The aid convoy had only been in the tiny village of Anterik for a few minutes, distributing aid, when the rebels appeared over a hill to the north of the town, heavily armed, merciless and defiant.’

Kruger squinted as he watched the slightly unsteady camera footage, of an aid volunteer advancing toward the rebels.

‘It was only the quick thinking and courage of this unknown volunteer, who exchanged a handful of supply cartons for the safety of the aid convoy, that prevented a fire–fight between the rebels and the convoy’s British escort, or worse.’

The footage vanished to be replaced by Martin Sigby’s live feed and that of the presenter sitting in England, who adopted an expression of vague mirth.

‘For the benefit of the viewers at home, and for that matter the United Nations, what is your assessment of the situation inside Mordania right now?’

One cue, Martin Sigby smiled the presenter’s caustic wit before frowning as though considering a complex mathematical problem.

‘It’s my feeling, Charlotte, that the situation within Mordania is now beyond the control of the government in Thessalia. The sheer suffering of ordinary citizens so close to the capital suggests that they simply cannot maintain order, with the growing size of the refugee camps ample evidence of that. And let me just say that it is a fact that the rebel forces are advancing toward the capital day by day, as proven by recconaisance photographs recently taken by a Royal Air Force Tornado aircraft.’

‘So you’re saying that you think the capital is lost already?’
the presenter asked.

‘I’m saying only that without external assistance beyond the capital city, either in the form of bolstered UN defences or outright military action against the rebel forces ranged against them, the battle is over for the civilians and militia trying to guard their homes, and I have no confidence in the strength of the remaining government forces to effectively defend Thessalia. As you have seen from recent footage of the refugee camps and this footage of towns close to Thessalia, the government is not providing sufficiently for the remaining citizens under its protection, and the aid groups here can hardly be expected to support the population on their own.’

The presenter turned away from the image of the correspondent.

‘Martin Sigby, in Mordania, thank you for that astonishing footage.’

Sigby offered the camera a brief, modest smile.

Kruger shut off his television and smiled, the heavy lines in his face creasing with self–satisfaction.

‘It is time,’ he murmured to himself, ‘for Mordania to come in from the cold.’

***

‘That was most impressive, Martin.’

Harrison’s Forbes’s voice lost none of its potency over the laptop computer’s conference speaker in Martin Sigby’s room.

‘Thank you,’ Sigby replied, removing his heavy winter coat. ‘It will certainly spread awareness of the crisis here in Mordania.’

‘The networks are alive. There have been follow–up reports already all across the United States and Europe. Networks are queuing up to buy the rights to the reels you shot. To say that they are sensational would be something of an understatement.’

‘Just doing my job.’

‘Tell me,’
Harrison went on,
‘how did you get that footage? Who shot it?’

Sigby stiffened.

‘I have an associate who is prepared to move behind enemy lines and obtain the footage I require,’ he said.

‘I see,’
Harrison went on.
‘Somebody we know, perhaps?’

‘We have an agreement,’ Sigby muttered. ‘Why is Megan here at all? What’s her part in all this?’

‘None of my business and none of yours,’
Harrison said.
‘Give her what she wants and no doubt she’ll provide you with the footage that we need. Keep her sweet, Martin. Without her, there’s no story.’

‘Thank you for the vote of confidence,’ Sigby replied tartly as he shut the communication link down.

‘Pardon monsieur?

Sigby turned from the computer to see a young girl standing in the doorway of his room.

‘What is it?’

‘I am sorry, I am searching for Megan Mitchell.’

‘As is everybody, it would seem. She’s three rooms down the hall, on the right.’

Sophie Vernoux smiled a brief “thank you” and walked down the hall. From various rooms she could hear conversations, some that sounded like people recording themselves. Reporters and correspondents, she reflected with disdain, revelling in the misery that they conveyed to the world.

*

Megan sat on the edge of a bed in her damp little room, rifling through piles of papers that Frank Amonte had given to her in London. She took a long sip from a glass of whisky as she worked, acutely aware of Callum quietly watching her from the other side of the room.

‘You drink much more of that with all of these candles about,’ the Scotsman observed, ‘and you’ll be in danger of spontaneously combusting.’

‘Better to be warm than cold,’ Megan muttered without looking up.

Callum looked ready to continue pressuring Megan, but was interrupted by a voice from outside the door.

‘Miss Mitchell?’

Megan looked up. ‘This is she.’

‘J’voudrais parle moi, si’l vous plait?’

Callum’s right eyebrow flickered in amusement. Megan ignored him.

‘Pray, enter.’

Sophie opened the door and walked cautiously into the room. Callum smiled at her and took the door. ‘I was just leaving,’ he said cheerfully as he slipped out of the room and closed the door behind him.

Megan got to her feet.

‘I’m honoured,’ she said, bowing grandly. ‘To what do I owe this pleasure, madamoiselle?’

‘We don’t really use that word. Madame is more usual.’

‘I beg forgiveness,’ Megan chanted.

‘You mock me?’ Sophie asked, a little of the indignance returning.

Megan dropped the act.

‘No. Please, come in, sit down. Make yourself at home. Coffee?’

Sophie sat down on the bed opposite Megan as she poured her a mug of coffee from a flask on a desk nearby. The unheated hotel was bitterly cold, their breath fogging in the light of the flickering candles that were placed around the room. Megan refilled her own glass.

Sophie sipped her coffee gratefully and scanned the papers on Megan’s bed as she sat back down.

‘You are researching something?’ she asked.

Megan nodded, rearranging the papers.

‘I’m trying to understand what would have brought my friend here to Mordania, why she had taken such risks to enter a country at war.’

Sophie shrugged as though it were obvious.

‘To find her story, that’s what you people do, non?’

‘Yes, but this is different. She wasn’t just covering the conflict – she could have done that from Thessalia or the surrounding areas. It’s as if she had a goal, a purpose here. She was chasing something.’

‘As are you,’ Sophie said quietly. ‘You take risks in your search for your friend. Maybe she too was searching for someone.’

Megan smiled.

‘You’d have made a good investigator. I think that she was too. I’ve got people looking into it, but until they get back to me there’s nothing much to go on.’

‘In Anterik,’ Sophie said quietly, ‘you were very brave and your bodyguard filmed it, but they did not mention your name on the reports.’

‘Callum’s not my bodyguard,’ Megan laughed. ‘He’s my cameraman.’

‘How do you know him so well?’

‘Well, after leaving university I was a journalist, a rookie, and like so many I was despatched to Kuwait when Iraq invaded in 1990. When the Coalition gathered I got lucky and was embedded with a company of soldiers from the Royal Green Jackets regiment. Callum was a sergeant at that time.’ Megan gathered her papers together and closed them inside the folder. ‘When he left the army, we teamed up.’

Sophie seemed troubled.

‘He does not want to be here or take risks like you do.’

‘Callum has a family and a future in England. He’s only here because he owed me a favour. He wants to go home and so do I.’

‘And where is your home, Megan?’

‘London, near Tower Bridge.’

‘And you don’t want to be here either.’

Megan’s mind emptied briefly of thoughts at the direct nature of Sophie’s comment.

‘What makes you say that?’

Sophie sighed softly, but Megan saw her glance at the bottle beside Megan’s table.

‘I did not know that you came here to find someone, to rescue them. I thought that you were here to make your name on television. Now I think that you are an honest person.’ She hesitated. ‘The news broadcast that the other man made, Simby?’

Megan managed to refrain from smiling.

‘Yes, Simby. Marvin Simby.’

‘Oui, Simby. You were not mentioned, even though it was you who confronted an entire platoon of rebel soldiers.’

‘I didn’t confront them,’ Megan said. ‘I walked up to them to ask for help.’

‘It was a very brave thing to do,’ Sophie insisted. ‘Why do you not want to be the one who tells the world what is happening here?’

Megan shrugged.

‘I’m not interested in fame,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to be recognised. I’m here to do my job and go home.’

Sophie nodded as though understanding completely.

‘Me too,’ she whispered softly. ‘You are not a reporter any more, are you.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘That watch you wear is expensive, and you live in an exclusive part of Central London. You should not be able to afford all of that. And you are in pain, I can tell. People always seem distant to others, when they are suffering.’

Megan throat suddenly felt constricted.

‘I’m self employed,’ she said, ‘and I like to live alone.’

‘Why?’

Megan stood up and carried her folder across the room to the desk, just for something to do.

‘Because that’s what I like to do.’

She could feel Sophie watching her, sensing her discomfort. Sophie finished her coffee and stood, approaching Megan until she was standing directly in front of her, her green eyes like pools of water shimmering in the candlelight.