Revolution (34 page)

President Akim read the brief report sent from the French government, detailing the nature of Sophie D’Aoust’s crimes and an immediate request for her repatriation to stand trial for them.

‘How do you intend to break this news to the public?’ the president asked.

‘We have another correspondent who has completed a report in Martin Sigby’s place.’

‘Why does Sigby not do the report himself? And what of Megan Mitchell?’

‘Martin Sigby refuses to retract his story. He’s insisting that Miss Vernoux’s – D’Aoust’s, word is true. As for Megan Mitchell, we have heard nothing.’

‘What do you suggest we do with Miss D’Aoust?’

‘She should be arrested and returned to her native France with all possible haste. Sir.’

The president looked again at the image, and then at Severov.

‘And Sigby? Should we let him travel to General Rameron’s camp?’

‘Absolutely not,’ Severov muttered. ‘He is a liability to our cause and has proven himself both contemptuous of the truth and lacking in his judgement. He may himself be open to bribery from the rebel forces. We cannot predict what propaganda he may report to the world at large and we can’t afford further bad press at his hands. It would be better to keep him here, under our control.’

The president nodded slowly and gestured to the commander.

‘Thank you, Alexei, you may leave now.’

Severov saluted crisply and marched from the room to leave Akim and Wilkins alone.

President Akim turned away from the attache and looked again out of his windows to the distant, mighty mountains. They had stood resolute for the countless procession of the ages, had not withered even before the power of nature herself. Akim felt new strength surge through him as he looked at them, as he thought of all of the great heroes of Mordania’s past, of Balthazaar and of Verlin and of the countless thousands who had stood against the Tsars with guns, or against the Mongols in the freezing mountains with swords in their hands. Compared to their trials Mukhari’s concerns were petty, trivial. There was new conviction and confidence in his voice when he finally spoke.

‘You say that this woman, Sophie D’Aoust, is a fugitive who faces prison if she returns to France, and a liar in her claims.’

‘It is clear, sir, that she has fabricated the whole thing,’ Wilkins replied.

‘Then why? If she is lying, why would she expose herself on television? She has doomed herself to jail in France for nothing.’

Wilkins hesitated before giving a non–commital shrug.

‘I have no idea, sir. There’s simply no telling with these kinds of people. Some are so vain that they’ll do anything for their miniscule moment of fame and…’

‘I think not,’ President Akim murmured. ‘The only logical conclusion is that she is in fact telling the truth, and in doing so has made a great sacrifice. In which case, not only were our own people responsible for the massacre but they deliberately misled investigators and tampered with the evidence to cover their crimes.’

Wilkins stood in silence before the president, who suddenly turned and loomed before him, one huge fist crushing the sheet of paper into a ball and his face turning stormy with rage.

‘And we intend this country to become a true
democracy
!!?’

The president’s voice boomed through the building, seeming almost to echo away into the distance. Sir Wilkins shook his head in apparent pity but his eyes wobbled with restrained panic.

‘What your country becomes, sir, is what you make of it.’

Wilkins turned on his heel and walked out of the room. Akim followed him out onto the balcony that overlooked the entrance hall of government house. Below him, dozens of diplomats mingled and talked, United Nations soldiers and Mordanian police guarded the corridors, whilst American businessmen chattered to each other in animated ways. As he watched, President Akim realised that all of the Mordanians had worried, concerned expressions as they carried out their duties. Only the American businessmen were smiling.

As he watched, he saw Alexei Severov talking with a small group of those businessmen. The president caught the commander’s eye for a long moment, and the feeling that the country was slipping from his grasp returned to ache in the president’s chest.

***

Bolav sat on an old wooden crate beside the fire in the kitchen, fiddling with the battery of the satellite phone as he rewired it internally. It hadn’t taken a great deal of expertise to adapt the charger unit from Megan Mitchell’s cell phone to provide power to the satellite phone’s battery. Left for several hours on a trickle–charge from the mains, Bolav had disconnected it from the socket and plugged it back into the phone.

‘I didn’t know you were an electrician,’ Callum said from one side of the room, where he sat cradling his arm and drinking coffee.

‘What do you think I did before the war?’ Bolav asked as he snapped the back of the phone in place. ‘There were no foreigners here before the war to translate, and when the fighting started the first thing that Rameron’s rebels did was to destroy or otherwise cut off much of the electricity supply to the south.’

Megan Mitchell, sitting on a chair nearby, looked up at the light above the table.

‘Where does Alexandre get his power from do you think, Bolav?’

The Mordanian looked up and around the room.

‘I don’t know,’ he admitted, ‘but it’s a very steady supply, little variation in current. Best I’ve ever seen. And with this cold he must be running the heating day and night, so the question is really where is he getting his
fuel
from?’

‘He didn’t pick any up from Thessalia when Sergei went there,’ Callum pointed out.

‘And the power’s out throughout the rest of this region,’ Megan added.

‘Ah–ha!’ Bolav said.

The satellite phone beeped triumphantly, and Bolav grinned as he showed the brightly glowing display to Megan.

‘Well done,’ Megan said, and was about to take the phone from the Mordanian when Alexandre walked into the kitchen and looked at her.

‘Amy is awake,’ he said. ‘She wants to talk to you.’

Megan stood from the table, the phone forgotten, and followed Alexandre hurriedly out of the room. Bolav watched them go and then glanced at Callum.

‘I’m going outside to see if I can get a signal,’ he said.

Callum nodded without any real interest, and Bolav put on a thick coat before stepping outside into the bitter night air. He walked a few paces away from the house, searching for the American soldiers guarding the property. He spotted them and moved away to a quite spot to dial a number from his memory.

There was a long pause, during which Bolav feared that the signal might not be strong enough to connect, but suddenly the line began to ring in his ear. He smiled to himself, proud of his work, and then the line picked up.

‘Severov.’

‘It is Bolav.’

‘Bolav?!’
Surprise was evident in the commander’s tone.
‘You are alive! I am overjoyed my friend.’

‘You threw me out of that truck to die,’ Bolav hissed.

‘I threw you out of the truck to do your job,’
Severov replied.
‘And you have succeeded. Tell me what you have found.’

‘I could have been killed. You betrayed me!’

‘Bolav, my friend, why would I do such a thing? I gave you only the chance to excel, and you have valiantly survived even the most dangerous assignment. I am nothing but proud of you.’

‘Is that so?’ Bolav said through gritted teeth. ‘Well, commander, I have news for you from the front lines, news that will displease you greatly.’

Severov’s tone changed completely.
‘What have you found?’

Bolav grinned devilishly, enjoying Severov’s discomfort.

‘It might just be the end of you.’

‘Bolav, tell me what you have found or I swear I shall find you, gut you and carve my name in your entrails.’

‘Really? And I thought you had my safety at heart?’

‘Tell me, you stinking, rabid, dog–mothered cretin!’

‘Alexei,’ Bolav taunted in a whisper, ‘the girl, she is alive.’

*

‘You’re lucky to be alive.’

Amy O’Hara smiled faintly. ‘Luck isn’t something that I’ve had a great deal of lately.’

Amy was still lying in bed, clearly fatigued and slightly hazy due to the morphine that Alexandre had administered, but her spirits seemed higher than before.

‘Why did you come for me?’ she asked Megan.

‘Surely you don’t need to ask me that?’

Amy smiled, and squeezed Megan’s hand in her own.

‘That was a long time ago, and I helped you in your search from the comfort of my Chicago office. I didn’t travel half way around the world and risk my life in the middle of a war zone.’

‘I guess I’m just a hero, then,’ Megan said with a shrug.

‘You are,’ Amy said, ‘to me.’

Megan smiled but did not respond for a few moments.

‘What brought you here Amy?’ she asked finally. ‘What the hell is all this about?’

Amy sighed to herself, shadows passing behind her eyes.

‘Petra,’ she said softly. ‘My uncle.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Petra worked as a mechanical engineer for the Mordanian government,’ Amy began. ‘His work involved managing a team who were investigating the properties of heat–exchange engines. The work they were doing was entirely conventional and involved devising ways of extracting energy from geo–thermic sources with high degrees of efficiency.’

Megan blinked. ‘You can say all of that on top of morphine?’

‘It’s just what Petra told me,’ Amy smiled, ‘spoken from memory. Anyway, a few weeks ago Petra contacted me urgently at my Chicago office. He said that he needed me, that I should come to Mordania as quickly as I could, that it was important and that I should tell nobody about it.’

‘So far, so mysterious,’ Megan said in the candlelight. ‘So you came here.’

‘Petra was a really nice guy,’ Amy said softly. ‘But his animosity toward my father’s emigration meant that he had little contact with my family. That, as it turned out, became the problem.’

‘Problem?’

‘Yes. Petra’s team had managed to do something extraordinary with these engines, and it seemed as though somebody did not want anybody else to find out. What Petra wanted me to do was document the engines and what they were doing with them, and then get out of the country. Petra told me that he was afraid that if someone did not tell the world about what they had achieved, nobody would ever know. Megan, Petra feared for his life even then, and he felt that he had nobody in the west he could contact except me.’

‘What happened?’

‘We documented the work and it was amazing, really earth–shattering stuff. But before we could get everything organised and before I could leave the country, all hell broke loose. The senior commander of the Mordanian Army and Air Force broke with the government in an attempted military coup. Suddenly everyone was fighting. It happened almost overnight.’

‘Rameron,’ Megan murmured.

‘Yes,’ Amy said. ‘The Mordanian Secret Police moved out of Thessalia headed north, and General Rameron’s men headed south from the major bases they controlled. They met and fought several times. During the fighting, my uncle and his team were arrested one morning at dawn in their laboratory. Petra had tried to get me away into the forest, disguised as a peasant girl, before the troops came.’

Amy’s voice wavered slightly.

‘I managed to find somewhere to hide, and watched as Petra and his people were led outside the laboratory and lined up against a wall. There was no trial.’ She shuddered beneath her covers. ‘They were all executed. The soldiers burned the buildings to the ground, smashed up the machines and instruments with explosives, and buried the bodies of my uncle and his colleagues in the ground.’

Megan closed her eyes.

‘We found their remains, Amy,’ she said. ‘The world knows what happened, or at least some of it. General Rameron and his men will pay for their crimes – I’ll make sure of that.’

Amy shook her head.

‘But Megan, it was not General Rameron’s men who executed those scientists. It was the Mordanian Secret Police.’

***

‘What?’

Megan sat stock still, a sudden dread filling her chest like icy water flooding a doomed ship.

‘It was the secret police who killed my uncle,’ Amy repeated.

‘It can’t be,’ Megan said. ‘General Rameron’s men have committed crimes against humanity across the region.’

Amy shook her head sadly.

‘No, Megan. That’s not the way it has been. I know what you’ve heard but it’s all a lie. And I have it all on video.’

Megan stared at her in amazement. ‘You filmed it?!’

Amy nodded slowly.

‘When Petra got me out of the laboratories, before the police arrived, I grabbed my camera and the files that I had shot of everything. I ran with them until I could go no further. I thought my hiding place was far away enough to be safe.’

‘But it wasn’t.’

‘Not for long. I was on higher ground, and used the zoom on my camera to see what was happening. I recorded everything. They singled Petra out, you see, because he had family in the United States. They must have known that I was here, because they were showing him a photograph. It was too small to see from where I was, but I knew that it must have been of me. They were still searching the buildings, even though all of the scientists were standing in the yard.’

‘And then they shot them?’ Megan pressed.

‘Yes, all of them. When the gunfire had passed away, I kept filming. All of it. When it was over, and the buildings were burning and the bodies were being buried, I decided that the best place to run was here. Alexandre and Petra were good friends, although they had little formal contact. They went to school together in Thessalia. I felt that the authorities would not connect the two men.’

‘How did they find you?’

‘Bad luck,’ Amy said. ‘I was walking uphill and away from the fires when one of their men must have spotted me. It was stupid of me, really stupid to let myself be seen so easily, but I was in tears and shock. I just wanted to get away. They came after me then, chased me for almost two hours with dogs, those big Mastiff things. I might have made it here, but I realised that it was no use. They would catch me eventually, and if I was here they would kill Alexandre and his wife and family too. I couldn’t let that happen.’