Revolution (3 page)

‘I worked hard,’ Megan said without looking at the American.

‘Jeez, well, if your papers pay as well as this I’m hot–tailing it over here right now.’

‘I earned it all freelance.’

‘Care to share?’

‘It’s a long story.’

‘Thought so.’

Megan gestured to the news prints that Frank had gathered together.

‘You say that she disappeared on the 14th?’

‘There or thereabouts – her last contact was the day before.’

‘Two days later, the ban on foreign journalists travelling in Mordania started.’

Frank nodded.

‘That’s what I thought – maybe she found something she shouldn’t have, got busted, and they decided to clamp down on people nosing around in Mordanian affairs.’

Megan frowned, looking at the different cuttings on the coffee table.

‘And you were prevented from broadcasting her disappearance?’

‘GNN told me that they’d look into it, but I’ve heard nothing. It’s unheard of for journalists to be abandoned in such a way by their employers – it’s as if they don’t want to know what’s happened to her.’

Megan nodded, but did not reply. She turned off the television and walked across to the broad windows of her apartment, looking south across the city at the afternoon sun reflecting off the densely packed rooftops. In the distance she could see the London Eye rotating slowly, the windows of the carriages sparkling in the sunlight. Everything was peaceful and calm, so far away from the horrific slaughter that Megan knew was occurring right at that very moment in any number of countries around the world. Megan rarely watched the news or read the papers any more. The ceaseless barrage of pain, loss, hardship, misery and then more misery still had long since dulled her senses until she cared no more. There was nothing out there, nothing that Megan wanted to be a part of, nothing that she wanted to see and nobody that she wanted to meet.
Nothing and nobody out there, love.
Megan, by careful planning and determination, had vacuum–sealed herself in a bubble of solitude.

She did not want the peace that she had finally found, after so long, to end.

She turned back to the coffee table and picked up the photograph of Amy O’Hara. The monochrome image could not conceal the buoyant, vibrant colour of her personality nor the tenacity of her spirit. Megan owed her, that much she knew. Amy had unfailingly assisted her through the darkest years of her life as she had scoured the jungle wilderness of Mexico, hunted through the ramshackle, sweltering alleys of cities, climbed mountains, forged rivers, bribed corrupt policemen – and all of it for a person she had never found.

Megan closed her eyes, her fist clenching the photograph and creasing it. She inhaled deeply, fighting off the nausea that infected her whenever she thought of those years and of the indescribable torment she had endured. Still endured. She forced herself to relinquish the pain, and slowly it faded back into some deep neural tract where it would no longer bother her.

‘Are you okay?’ Frank asked.

Megan had briefly forgotten that the American was there. She let the breath go. ‘Tell me everything that has happened in Mordania that might be of help. Amy must have travelled there for a reason.’

‘The country’s a former Soviet state that declared independence from Russia in 1996 after a peaceful “purple” revolution, as is the fashion these days. Although a quasi–Russian is the local dialect, the majority of the population are a mixture of ethnic Muslims and highland tribesmen, with complete allegiance to neither the Mother State nor Islam. The country has been governed by a democratically elected president since 1995, supported by a chamber of regional and ethnic representatives.’

‘So far, so normal,’ Megan observed.

‘Until late last year. The government announced a series of deals with American oil companies which were to invest in Mordania’s extensive fossil–fuel deposits and provide further access to the Caspian Sea, thus boosting the economy and creating more jobs as well as strengthening ties with the west. It was at that point that a senior military figure, General Mikhail Rameron, opposed the deals and suggested that the government had a corrupt agenda of some kind. Things went from bad to worse as the government tried to clamp down on the renegade general, who in response instigated an attempted military coup. Most of the army and air force came down on the general’s side, dominating the north of the country where the majority of their airbases are located. The secret–police fell in with the government in the south around the capital city, Thessalia.’

‘And that’s the state of play so far?’ Megan asked.

‘Rameron has led his troops south against the government’s forces and has bested them at every turn, occupying towns and advancing toward the capital with the usual stories of bloodlust and massacre following him. The government is in dire need of military assistance from the UN or America but right now nobody knows how to help, save for protecting Thessalia itself and several large refugee camps. After the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan, nobody wants to intervene. It’s Syria all over again.’

Megan nodded, absorbing the information. She closed her eyes.

‘You can help me, from New York? Information, research, anything that I need?’

‘You got it,’ Frank promised. ‘Anything, any time.’

Megan opened her eyes.

‘You said that Amy’s folks in Oklahoma wanted to pay? What’s their account number?’

Frank Amonte frowned before fishing a contact card from his pocket, a bank name and account number written on the reverse side.

‘They don’t have much money,’ he said quietly as he handed the card over.

‘I don’t want their money,’ Megan assured the American before picking up her cell phone from the coffee table, selecting a number from the call list and letting the phone speed–dial.

‘GNN UK, how may I help?’

‘Harrison Forbes, please.’

‘He’s in a meeting right now, may I help?’

‘Tell him that Megan Mitchell got his call and is coming in to see him.’

***

Global News Network (UK)

London

Megan had never much liked working in an office, having spent the better part of two decades plying her trade in the field. Things were much worse now, since everyone was staring at her with jaws agape, whispers flitting like live current around the operations room.

She walked between the ranks of desks, nodding in response to some of the guarded smiles offered and ignoring the more gormless expressions as she worked her way toward a row of offices that looked out over the operations room. A series of large plasma screens high on one wall showed live–news feeds from around the world.

‘Hey Meg, how’s it going?’

The voice belonged to Tom Abbot, a former soldier, capable investigative journalist and one of the few people in the office that Megan could talk to without feeling as though she were bleeding from the ears.

‘Fine, thanks Tom. Is the boss in?’

‘Go right ahead,’ Tom pointed, and then added: ‘Did you get my message? I called the other day.’

‘I got your message,’ she replied as she swept past him.

‘You can’t play hard–to–get forever. I won’t stop calling,’ Tom called after her.

‘I won’t start replying.’

Megan headed in the indicated direction and at once saw the stocky figure of Harrison Forbes in his office, staring down with a cold, piercing gaze at what looked like a junior member of staff who cowered with his back to the windows. Forbes finished his oratory and pointed abruptly at his own office door. The junior staffer whirled, yanked open the door and shot through it as though fired from a catapult.

Megan dodged neatly to one side as the teenager bolted past her, and then moved to stand in the editor’s doorway.

‘The anger management classes weren’t a great hit then,’ Megan said.

Harrison’s icy glare locked onto Megan and then the merest hint of a thaw crept into his expression, concealed as quickly as it had emerged.

‘Well, it’s about time Mitchell. I wondered when you’d manage to haul your lazy backside up here from that opulent little pad you’ve nested in. Close the damn door.’

Megan shut the door behind her as Harrison moved around his desk. Megan was about six inches shorter than Harrison, who had receding grey hair and bright blue eyes but remained as sturdy as solid oak. Harrison was surrounded by an tangible aura of competence that intimidated younger members of staff at GNN. He stood before Megan in contemplative silence for a moment before shaking her hand firmly.

‘Good to see you, how have you been?’

‘I’m good. How’s the family?’

‘In order,’ Forbes reported, and offered Megan a seat. The editor retook his own ancient swivel chair and regarded Megan curiously.

‘So, you finally managed to respond to one of my calls, the seventeenth in fact.’

‘I’ve been busy.’

‘Really? What could you have been up to? Sitting? Standing? Sleeping? Eating?’

‘All the above.’

‘From what I hear you’ve done nothing but jog around the city, eat in cafes and generally let yourself degenerate into an inert bag of under–employed chemicals.’

‘You’ve been watching me?’ Megan raised an eyebrow.

‘We’re investigative reporters. Besides, it’s not hard to keep track of a woman who doesn’t go anywhere.’

‘I’ve travelled enough, recently,’ Megan replied quietly.

Harrison Forbes nodded, his features becoming slightly taut as though the skin were being stretched across his bones.

‘Look, I want to say that I’m sorry for what happened.’ He hesitated. ‘You know.’

Megan kept her features impassive, and gave Forbes his escape. ‘I know.’

The editor nodded briskly, grateful to let the moment pass. He stood up and walked across to a worn map of the globe tacked across one wall of the office, as it had been for the last ten years. Brightly coloured pins denoted ‘areas of interest’, as Forbes referred to them.

‘I promised you any assignment you wanted. You’re possibly the best investigative reporter whose life I’ve ever had the privilege of endangering, so this one’s a freebie, a milk–run. Democratic elections in Prague? Gay marriage rights in California? The state of the waterways in Venice? Climate change in Bali?’

Harrison Forbes turned from the map and regarded Megan expectantly.

‘I’ll take Mordania.’

Harrison’s carefully cultivated expression experienced a transient slippage. He looked as though he’d been slapped.

‘Mordania?’

‘There’s a story in there somewhere and I want to cover it.’

‘I give you an island in the South Pacific and you ask for an illiterate former–Soviet backwater in the grip of a civil war.’

‘You said I could have any assignment I wanted.’

The editor’s eyes flickered as a thousand calculations whipped past behind them in the time it took Megan to inhale a tentative breath.

‘You don’t return my calls for months, never visit the office and then suddenly you’re here demanding coverage rights to a story about the boil on the arse of the world. What’s going on?’

Megan took another breath, just to be sure, before speaking.

‘I was approached today by a man from New York. He told me that one of his associates had vanished whilst working in Mordania and hasn’t been heard from for over a week. The missing person is Amy O’Hara, a journalist from Chicago and a friend of mine. I’m going to go and find out what happened to her.’

The skin stretched once again on Forbes’ features, and Megan could sense that he was choosing his words with care.

‘Look, I know all about what happened in Mexico and afterward, but I can’t let you go running around searching for lost souls on company time.’

‘This isn’t about lost souls, Harry. This is about someone I know being in danger.’

‘And the last time it happened you spent five years and your entire life savings searching for them.’ Harrison pointed out. ‘You quit your job, you lost everything and half of this office thinks that you’re a recovering alcoholic who went insane.’

Megan blinked, then remembered that everyone had been staring at her when she had walked through the operations room.

‘I didn’t go insane, Harry.’

‘Maybe not, and I’ve got sympathy for your cause here Megan, but think about how this looks. Having apparently wrecked your life and gone off the rails you’re now back here, bold as brass, living the high life in a place that the entire staff here couldn’t afford if they pooled their salaries, and asking for help to do it all over again.’ Harrison paused. ‘I need some kind of assurance that you’re not going to.., disappear.’

Megan stood up, walking across to the map and gesturing to the small country marked on the west coast of the Caspian Sea by a red pin.

‘Of all the democratically governed countries on our planet, only a single one has proved resistant to access from the world’s press. It is considered too dangerous for civilian reporters to engage with the populace. Nobody, anywhere on earth, is reporting from beyond the country’s capital, Thessalia.’ Megan turned to the editor. ‘I’ll change that for you, and give you the scoop you need to put GNN UK back on the map.’

Harrison shook his head.

‘We’ve already got somebody on the ground in Thessalia.’

‘Who?’

‘Martin Sigby.’

‘Oh, right,’ Megan muttered, ‘well I might just as well go home and give up right now then.’

‘Martin Sigby is a rock–solid, reliable correspondent.’

‘Yes he is,’ Megan agreed, ‘he’s by the book, by the numbers and bypassed by the entire population as sinfully boring. He won’t get you what I can.’

‘And the small matter of
how
?’

‘Leave that to me. Will you get me in under the GNN press corps? Once there, I’ll be on my own.’

‘I can’t say that I will,’ Harrison snapped.

‘Fine, I’ll go across to NCN, or the CCB, or maybe the Murich Corporation.’

‘Pah!’ Harrison Forbes raised his right hand as though taking the oath in a court of law. ‘Here at Murich we do solemnly swear to report crap, all crap and nothing but crap!’ He shot Megan a pitying look. ‘Please.’