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  The Need for Fear

  A Companion to Strangled Silence

  Oisín McGann

  Chapter 1: Evasive Maneuvers

  The moment Chi realized he was being followed, he started taking measures to lose the tail. But that realization didn’t happen all at once. He spotted the old man for the first time on Charing Cross Road. The rigid figure wore square-framed glasses on his dour, creased face. His upright, almost military poise was emphasized by his dull-gray trench coat. He was entirely unremarkable, except for where he was standing: in front of the street display of a shop that sold accessories aimed at people who wanted to dress like art students. The guy looked like he was in his sixties. Chi would have bet money that the old geezer had never in his life worn an eyebrow ring or a pair of multicolored Doc Martens. There could have been all sorts of reasons he was standing there, yet it ticked the “Odd-But-Not-Yet-Suspicious” box in Chi’s brain. His well-trained memory filed it away.

  Chi was coming out of a shop that specialized in books about the Truth. It was a gnarly old place, full of indie publications by writers who questioned the blinkered perception of the masses. On the dusty old shelves, you could find works by visionaries, real investigative journalists. Not the puppets who worked for the mainstream media and were controlled by the military-industrial complex; no, here, you could find writers like Chi himself. Conspiracies were his passion and it had made him somewhat paranoid, his senses more attuned to his surroundings than the average Londoner—which was why he noted the old man who appeared to be minding his own business in the wrong kind of place.

  Chi’s own attempts to avoid attention were foiled by his eye-catching appearance. His wire-wool fair hair was pulled back from his pasty, babyish face into an untidy ponytail. That face sat atop a stocky frame that was over six feet tall. His wraparound prescription shades and knee-length leather coat spoke of someone who craved a cool image but wasn’t sure how it was done, and had nothing but contempt for anyone who followed contemporary trends.

  Chi saw the old guy for the second time when he was sitting outside a café on St. Martin’s Lane, reading on his laptop. The man walked right past him and sat down at a table at another café across the street. He opened up a newspaper, shook it out, folded it back to his chosen section and started reading. This ticked the “Coincidence?” box in Chi’s brain and he filed that away, too. A newspaper—yeah right. He snorted to himself in derision. As if any news in mainstream print was worth reading. The center of London was a busy place, but it wasn’t unusual to see the same person more than once as you went about your business. People often followed parallel routes through town; the human mind was prone to accepting established patterns. Two ticked boxes was not enough reason to get worked up, but it did cause Chi to pay a bit more attention to the stranger.

  Half an hour later, as he was crossing Trafalgar Square in front of the National Gallery, Chi held up his phone as if looking up a location on a map, but instead he used the camera over the screen to look at what was behind him. And there he was: the same old man, walking at a leisurely gait about thirty paces behind him. Chi felt his heart thud in his chest as he realized that it had finally happened. This was it. He was being watched. Perhaps he’d even been Targeted. His breathing quickened and he had to suppress a nervous smile. He was where every writer of the Truth aspired to be: He’d finally pissed someone off enough to make the big time. They were paying attention to him now.

  Well, he wasn’t some chump who walked around with his eyes closed. Let them try and keep up. Gripping the shoulder strap of his laptop case, he crossed Haymarket and Regent Street; strode down the wide, busy stretch of Pall Mall; then darted left into St. James’s Square, veering off the path, following the shadows of the trees and jogging across the small park. It was a warm day, the bright sunshine tempered slightly by an easy breeze, and he was already starting to sweat.

  Out on the road again, he waved down a cab, jumped in, had it drive around the block to Piccadilly Circus, then paid the cabbie the minimum fare. He wrapped up the shoulder strap of his case and tucked it under the handle so he was holding the bag like a briefcase. He took off his coat, draped it over the arm holding the case, then, putting on an AC/DC baseball cap, he jumped out of the taxi, and hurried down a couple of backstreets, using windows and mirrors to check for his pursuer. It looked like he was in the clear.

  Doubling back on himself, he followed St. James’s Street back out to Piccadilly, made his way to Green Park, turned his coat inside out so it showed the tan-colored lining on the outside, and put it back on. He changed his sunglasses for his normal glasses, taking off his hat again. Mingling, rather incongruously, with a group of Spanish students wandering through the park, he finally flopped, wheezing and out of breath, on a park bench, beneath some trees, that offered an almost three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the space around him.

  There was nobody suspicious in sight. He sat there, starting to feel secure and allowed himself a relieved grin of satisfaction. The long days spent preparing for a moment like this had finally paid off.

  Then the old man came up from behind him, sat down on the bench and turned to look at him with an expression of bored contempt. He wasn’t even breathing hard.

  “If you’re done screwing around,” the stranger grunted, “mind if I have a word?”

  Chapter 2: Raising Flags

  The old man’s face was not quite gaunt, but had the hard, cracked look of a dried-out riverbed. His glasses were the type with thick square frames that belonged in the last century—way back in the last century. He was gazing at Chi with an expression that reminded him of one of his former teachers. The one who’d assured him that, despite Chi’s apparent intelligence, he would never amount to anything.

  “Turn off your phone and take the battery out,” the man instructed him. He had a neutral accent: English with what sounded like some Northern Irish or possibly American in it. “Do the same with your laptop. I don’t want any recording of this.”

  Chi hesitated but then did as he was told.

  “Right, you’re Chi Sandwith,” the man said, once he was sure the devices had been disabled. “A name that suggests your parents had more spiritualism than sense. You’re a college drop-out, a conspiracy theorist, and a blogger, which makes you one of a few million deluded nobodies in the world—”

  “I’m a journalist,” Chi interrupted.

  “Whatever,” the man snapped back. “Most journalists aren’t worthy of the term nowadays anyway. Call yourself what you like, just shut up and listen.”

  He reached into his pocket. Chi flinched, scared that it might be a weapon. The stranger saw the movement and shook his head in disdain. He took out a folded sheet of paper and opened it out.

  “You wrote this?”

  It was phrased as a question, but the guy already seemed pretty sure of the answer. He was right to be; the sheet showed a page from Chi’s blog, EyesWideSideways. The headline read: “Now Our Alien Masters Are Using Direct Mind Control.” It was a recent piece Chi had written, arguing that the world’s major governments were being controlled by an extraterrestrial intelligence. He still wasn’t entirely sure about the whole alien thing—it seemed a bit of a reach, even considering all the things he’d heard—but there was a big audience for it. The blog had enjoyed a lot of traffic over that piece.

  “Yeah, that’s mine,” he said cautiously. “What about it? Who are you anyway?”

  “I’m one of those guys you’re always writing about, sonny.” The man leaned in
and added in a low, theatrical voice: “I’m a spook.”

  Chi frowned, opened his mouth to say something, then closed it, unable to get any words out. He tried again. “Really? You’re admitting that? Are you having me on?”

  “No. I’m dead serious,” the man assured him.

  “I thought you guys weren’t allowed to … y’know … tell people what you did?”

  “We’re not. There’s a lot about this meeting that I’m not supposed to be doing.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Call me what you like. I’m not telling you my name and it’s not important. What is important—”

  “Can I call you Robert?”

  “What? Why ‘Robert?’”

  “I dunno,” Chi shrugged. “I have to call you something. You look like a Robert.”

  “Fine—call me Robert then. Anyway, what is important is why you used this particular combination of words in your article.”

  He pointed to the sheet, where several words were circled in red pen. The paragraph was about how the black ops teams, aka “the Scalps,” were running an experimental brainwashing operation on captured terrorists in the mountains of Sinnostan. “Robert” had circled brainwashing, Scalps, and Sinnostan.

  Chi said nothing for a minute. That bit had only got a brief mention, because he’d been fishing. The information came from one—slightly unreliable—source and he hadn’t been able to corroborate it. He knew next to nothing about Sinnostan and had been forced to look it up on a map just to find out where it was. He’d been hoping someone would get in touch with more information. Instead, here was a guy claiming to be an intelligence agent, showing up asking questions. I’ve got your attention now, haven’t I, you bastards? Chi thought. He glanced at the paper, then sat back, folding his arms.

  “What, did I throw up some flags during all your data surveillance?” he asked smugly.

  He knew GCHQ, Government Communications Headquarters, could now monitor all phone and online traffic in the UK and Ireland. Massive processing power went into analyzing all that data for anything suspicious—a deeply invasive, and hopelessly ham-handed, approach to gathering intelligence.

  “Sonny, you’ve raised so many stupid flags over the last few years, even the computers are bored,” Robert told him. “I just want to know what made you connect those three terms.”

  “Are you kidding?” Chi exclaimed. “I’m not revealing my sources.”

  He’d always wanted to say that.

  Robert rolled his eyes and folded up the page again, slipping it back in his pocket.

  “I’m not trying to stitch you up,” he said. “Believe it or not, I actually want to help you.”

  “Why would you want to do that?”

  “I have my reasons—which are none of are your business.”

  “Yeah, right. And why should I trust you? You need to give me something solid if I’m going to believe this is for real. You wanna help me? So tell me about the aliens.”

  “There are no aliens, you moron! There have never been any bloody aliens!”

  “Well, of course you’d deny it… .”

  “Christ on a bike, will you forget about the aliens? But what you are right about is the brainwashing. That’s something that’s really happening … or at least, it’s about to happen. And I’m going to help you blow the story wide open.”

  “Oh yeah? How?”

  “If you’ll shut your trap and listen, you’ll find out, won’t you? Jesus …”

  Robert took a thumb drive from the same pocket and handed it to Chi, who took it tentatively, as if it might contain an explosive charge. It had occurred to him that this could be an assassination attempt. You can’t be too careful.

  “There’s a woman named Sharon Monk,” Robert said. “A real journalist, who’s been investigating the involvement of the intelligence services in illegal mind-control experiments. She’s just been nibbling around the edges of this thing, but she’s started to make some headway and is bound to publish something soon. I’ve got hold of some of her research.”

  “How’d you do that?”

  “How d’you think, you fool? I told you what I do for a living—and she’s starting to attract a dangerous kind of attention. Now listen, what she’s got so far is on this drive. It’s all there, along with her contact details. Have a look at it, see how an expert reporter goes about things.”

  Chi resisted the urge to respond to the insult. Obviously, it was just the way this old jerk related to people.

  “Why are you giving this to me?” he asked.

  “Because I can’t get too close to her,” Robert replied. “Monk’s under surveillance. Nothing too serious at the moment, just spyware on her phone and computer, a track-and-trace. The basics. But it’s enough that I know she’ll be at home until three-thirty today, so you can find her there. She has a meeting with an editor at The Chronicle and you need to meet her before she leaves.”

  Chi had checked the time on his phone before switching it off. It was just coming up to quarter past twelve now.

  “That surveillance means I have to keep clear of her,” Robert went on. “She’s also living with her girlfriend, who’s a copper. That one is very sharp and very suspicious. You need to stay well clear of her, and so do I. Between the copper and the surveillance, I’d be taking too big a chance.”

  “Right, so you want me to take the chance for you?” Chi scoffed.

  “You’re already taking chances with the stuff you’re writing,” Robert growled. “A lot of it might be nonsense, but you’ve got a knack for digging around in places other people don’t think to look. With the Sinnostan thing, you’ve uncovered more than you know. Monk has facts and, unlike you, people take her seriously. She has a line into the major news outlets, but she needs to be pointed in the right direction. You’ve found the direction, but you don’t have any facts. I’m hooking you both up, so maybe between the pair of you, you can tear the skin off this thing.”

  “I still don’t understand what you’re getting out of this,” Chi persisted.

  “I work in a shitty business, sonny, and I’ve done more than my fair share of damage to people along the way. But even I’ve got limits. And I just reached them.”

  He stood up, sticking his hands in his pockets.

  “Read the stuff on the drive. Get in touch with Monk, before three-thirty, and tell her what you know. See if you can get any more out of that source of yours—somebody knows more about this thing than they should and you can use that. And be careful; you’re not in the land of make-believe anymore.”

  “One more question,” Chi piped up. “How did you keep up with me back there?”

  “You’re an amateur and an idiot,” Robert replied. “And I’ve been doing this for twice as long as you’ve been alive. Read the stuff on the bloody drive. Get in touch with Sharon before three-thirty this afternoon.”

  With that, he turned and walked away. Chi grabbed his phone, urgently slipping the battery back into the slot and switching it on. He tapped a recently dialed number and listened anxiously to the ringing tone.

  “Yeah, wot?” a voice answered.

  “Have you still got that fridge?” Chi asked.

  “Of course we ’ave,” the woman replied. “It’s right ’ere, pride of the place. We’re never gettin’ rid of it. It makes crushed ice an’ everyfing. What’s up wiv you?”

  “Don’t go anywhere, we need to talk,” Chi muttered, eyes flicking around as he spoke. “I’m coming over. Something’s going down and we need to move on it.”

  He winced as he hung up. He wasn’t looking forward to that meeting. The woman and her gang were a volatile lot at the best of times—and this was just the kind of thing that could set them off. He took the battery out of his phone again, put both in his pocket, then gazed at the thumb drive Robert had given him. Peering into the trash c
an beside the bench, he found an empty peanut packet, the foil type. He wrapped it around the key, in case the device was transmitting anything, and stuck the little bundle in his pocket, too. Then he took a deep, shaky breath.

  Enough was enough … he needed to find the toilet.

  Chapter 3: Anarchy in the UK

  It wouldn’t normally have taken an hour to get from Green Park to Hackney, but Chi took the most deceptive route he could conceive while still moving in the right direction. If he’d been cautious before, he was positively paranoid now, seeing suspicious figures everywhere he looked. When he finally reached the rundown tower block, he was reasonably sure he hadn’t been followed. But then with all the resources at the disposal of the security services, including London’s all-pervasive street cameras and possibly even surveillance satellites, it was impossible to be certain. Also, there was the risk of more unearthly eyes to worry about.

  The elevator still wasn’t working, so he climbed to the twelfth floor of the fourteen-story building, his calves and thighs burning, his lungs depleted of air. He swore, not for the first time, that he would get himself into better shape. He took a minute to compose himself at the top of the stairs before walking along the corridor and stopping at a door that was almost indistinguishable from all the other scuffed, battered entrances along the hall. The number was missing, but in its place was a sticker printed in bold white on black, with the words: “Capitalism is Theft.”

  Nothing like putting your philosophy on the door when you’re trying to keep a low profile, Chi mused as he rapped on the old painted wood. There came the sound of furtive movements from inside, as if the occupants were hiding something before answering, which was entirely possible. Then a woman’s voice spoke warily from behind the door:

  “Who’s there?”

  “It’s Chi; open up.”

  “You alone?”

  “No, I’ve brought the SAS to nobble you. Of course I’m alone—open the bloody door!”