Revolution (12 page)

‘Tomorrow, there is something that I want to show you. You will need Callum to come with you, with his camera.’

‘Where?’

‘Outside Thessalia, maybe ten miles north–west of here, near the mountains.’ Sophie’s expression darkened slightly. ‘It needs to be seen by the world.’

Megan nodded slowly.

‘We’ll be there.’

*

‘How did this happen?’

President Mukhari Akim stood before the broad windows of his personal chambers in Government House, watching the snow falling like myriad stars through the sparsely twinkling lights of the city.

‘I do not know, sir,’ Severov said, standing just behind his president. ‘The MSF aid column must have harboured a journalist, or perhaps someone with a simple camera. The volunteers know the rules and they have broken them.’

President Akim turned away from the blackened windows to face his chief of police.

‘This Martin Sigby – he knows who supplied him with the footage?’

Severov’s expression turned as dark and cold as the night outside. ‘I can find out.’

The president dismissed Severov’s insinuation with a wave of his hand.

‘These are western reporters, Alexei, and they cannot be harmed in such ways. Besides, this is not the time of the Tsars or the Kremlin. I will not use coercion as a weapon as they did. Fear and oppression do not instill loyalty in people, only resentment and hatred.’

‘His informant,’ Severov suggested, ‘may not possess the same immunity.’

President Akim’s jaw hardened as he ground his teeth in his skull.

‘Enough, Alexei, if you value your service to me.’

Severov stared silently past the president, who calmed himself with a visible force of will, rubbing his tempes wearily before speaking again.

‘This man’s work is exactly the kind of news that our enemies wish to hear. If they believe that we are unable to hold our position here it will embolden them further and the fall of the city will be hastened. I cannot allow that to happen. I
will
not allow that to happen.’

‘What would you have me do, sir?’

‘I want you to ensure that no further footage of Mordania reaches the national press. We must gain military support from NATO or the Americans before the rebels reach the walls of the city, or it is all over.
We
are all over. Is that understood?’

Severov bowed deeply.

‘It will be so.’

The Chief of Police walked away to do his duty, leaving the president alone to mull over his rapidly shrinking country.

***

‘Did she tell you what we’re going to see?’

Callum’s voice sounded hollow in the cold morning air as he walked with Megan toward the sprawling refugee camp.

‘No, but she seemed convinced that it was important enough to take the risk.’

The refugee camp was never, ever entirely silent – a quarter of a million people made a lot of noise even when asleep, but now, at seven o’clock on a gloomy morning, it was almost quiet.

Megan and Callum picked their way through the camp toward the MSF tents, seeing Sophie waiting for them, wrapped in a thick coat. Her voice was a whisper as she spoke.

‘We’ll use our pick–up. It’s parked on the edge of the camp.’

They followed Sophie to the northern edge of the sea of tents, where a small truck was being guarded by two bored–looking British soldiers cradling their rifles. They looked up as Sophie approached the vehicle with her keys.

‘That’s our escort?’ Callum asked, looking at the two soldiers.

‘Two men was all Lieutenant Kelsey was willing to spare,’ Sophie explained. ‘He’s already got his hands full covering the perimeter of the camp.’

Megan tossed her rucksack into the back of the truck, and was about to walk around to the passenger side of the vehicle when the sudden clattering of an approaching diesel engine caused them all to turn.

Through the centre of the camp a large troop–carrier bumped and weaved its way toward them, headlights bright in the gloom, the smoky engine deafening in the relative quiet of dawn. Sophie grimaced as the vehicle drew level with the pick–up, its back filled with military police troopers looking down upon them.

The cab door opened and Alexei Severov dropped athletically to the ground, a cigarette smouldering between his teeth as he looked at Sophie’s truck.

‘What is happening here?’ he demanded.

‘Distributing supplies,’ Sophie replied, not intimidated by the Mordanian’s accusing glare.

Severov glanced at Megan and Callum. ‘And why do you need these two with you?’

‘They volunteered,’ Sophie said. ‘It’s known as charity.’

Severov’s eyes narrowed as he sensed the subtle insult, his heavy eyebrows knitting together thoughtfully. He looked at the two British troopers standing forlornly nearby.

‘Then let me assist. Two soldiers are not sufficient to protect you in the interior of the country. My men and I shall accompany you.’

Sophie smiled non–commitally.

‘That won’t be necessary,’ she said. ‘We’re not going far.’

‘Then it will be no problem for us,’ Severov replied. ‘We are happy to help.’

‘We don’t need a large escort,’ Megan said.

Severov’s smile did not slip but his eyes darkened even further and his words grated in his throat.

‘I am responsible for all civilian movements inside Thessalia and beyond its borders, right out to the front line. If you’re going out there, I’m coming with you whether you like it or not.’

Before anybody else could protest, Severov launched himself back into the cab of the troop transporter, slammed the door and waited expectantly. Megan and Callum exchanged a glance before climbing into the pick–up, and the little convoy began its journey through the gloomy dawn.

*

It took almost an hour to cover the distance between Thessalia and Sophie’s destination. Megan became uncomfortable when they deliberately left the road and began driving along an old track that wound between thick pine forests, the tips of the trees lost in the ghostly grey mist above.

‘Are you sure you know where you’re going?’ Megan asked.

Sophie nodded, concentrating on driving along the rugged track as she spoke.

‘We were called out here a month or more ago by some locals who turned up at the refugee camp. At that time there were only half as many people in the tents. These locals claimed that people had stumbled into their farms in the dead of night, badly injured and incoherent with terror.’

Callum looked at her, his expression concerned.

‘They led you out here, didn’t they,’ he said.

Sophie nodded. ‘They were survivors.’

‘Survivors of what?’

Sophie did not reply, driving instead deeper into the dense forests, the trees packed together so tightly that they seemed to hem the truck in from each side, reducing the pale dawn light even further. Branches and twigs brushed and snapped against the truck’s windows like skeletal limbs probing for the vehicle as it passed, and Megan could see in her wing–mirror the following troop transporter struggling to make its way through.

‘This is a bad place to be,’ Callum said anxiously. ‘It’s perfect for a small–arms ambush.’

Sophie shook her head.

‘Nobody comes here any more, ever,’ she said.

The forest ahead slowly gave way to a clearing several hundred meters long and almost as wide, ringed entirely by the dense forest and with the brooding white–capped mountains rising above it into the dull sky. Sophie drove a short distance into the clearing, the truck’s tyres crunching on the thick snow, before she pulled up and switched off the engine.

Megan climbed out of the truck as the troop transporter arrived nearby and the driver also turned off its engine. The sudden silence of the wilderness was deep, like something alive in the air and yet without a soul. Callum stood motionless, surveying the clearing with an uncomfortable expression.

‘Bad vibes,’ Megan murmured, and Callum nodded in response.

Alexei Severov stormed across to them from his troop transporter, his voice stark in the otherwise silent forest.

‘This is not where you said you were going!’ he snapped.

‘I lied,’ Sophie replied laconically. ‘What are you going to do about it? Shoot me?’

Severov fumed but had no suitable retort. Megan smiled as Sophie turned her back on the commander and began walking out into the clearing. Megan followed her, with Callum close behind.

‘What are we looking for?’ she asked Sophie as they walked across the thickly snow–carpeted earth.

‘A building,’ Sophie replied.

Megan felt a chill run down her spine as Sophie stopped at a slight mound beneath the snow. Megan would not have recognised it as anything unusual until Sophie began scraping at the snow with her hands, brushing thick chunks of ice aside to reveal dark soil, almost black. There, laying on the earth were layers of scorched timber, damp and crumbling now beneath the snow.

Megan knelt down beside Sophie and lifted a sodden lump of carbonised wood in her hands, flakes of blackened charcoal crumbling in her grasp.

‘Burned to the ground,’ she said. ‘What was here?’

‘I don’t know,’ Sophie admitted. ‘There’s more.’

As Callum followed them, watching and discreetly filming as he went, Megan scanned the ground again and began to see features that she had not noticed before: long, low humps beneath the snow, too regularly positioned to be natural formations. Buildings had once stood here, and all of them had been destroyed.

‘There was one large central building,’ Sophie said, ‘or so we were told by the survivors before they died. There were also smaller adjacent buildings and living quarters.’

Sophie walked out to an area of flat earth, and from her pocket produced latex gloves that she pulled over her hands. Megan had a sudden premonition of what was coming, but still she watched as Sophie brushed the snow away from the earth once more, this time using a biro from her pocket to prod into the soft, black soil. After a few pokes the pen touched on something. Grimacing, Sophie fumbled slightly with her gloved hand and with an effort heaved something out of the soil.

It took a moment for Megan’s brain to comprehend what she was looking at. Sophie had lifted what looked like a piece of dirty fabric from the soil, but the effort she expended was too great for such a small fragment of material. It was only a moment later that she realised that the fabric was part of a pair of trousers, and that the trousers still adorned the leg of a body buried beneath the soil, the flesh wrinkled, pale white and flecked with an ugly kaleidoscope of purple and yellow blotches.

‘Oh no,’ Megan murmured.

Sophie rested the partially exposed leg on the ground. ‘The snow and the timbers cover most of the remains.’

‘How many?’ Callum asked.

‘Not less than eighty, so they said, but there’s no way to know for sure.’

‘Why wasn’t this reported before?’ Megan asked.

‘The media ban,’ Sophie said in a whisper, glancing over her shoulder. ‘The government insists it has everything under control and will not allow negative press on the situation.’

Sophie fell silent. The two British soldiers and the military police had followed them out into the clearing. At their head, Alexei Severov moved forward and went down on one knee beside the remains.

‘The rebels must have advanced further than we had thought,’ he said, scanning the surrounding forests before standing again. ‘We must pull back from this place and let them lie in peace.’

Megan ignored Severov and moved forward, gripping the trouser and pulling hard. The sodden, heavy earth lurched and sucked as Megan heaved with all of her strength. Callum grabbed the fabric of a jacket poking from the snow nearby and with a grunt of effort the body was sucked from the mud to lay on the snow.

‘What are you doing?!’ Severov snapped. ‘These people were my countrymen, Mordanians! They deserve better!’

Megan dropped the leg onto the snow and turned to face Severov.

‘They deserved better than murder, too, and they deserve not to have died without their cause of death being known. If you care about your countrymen, surely you would want to know who did this to them?’

Severov looked down at the body, clearly torn between his duty as a soldier and a superstitious fear of the dead. A waft of putrid odours roiled on the cold air, causing several of the soldiers to turn away, their complexions paling. Severov did not move. Megan held her breath for a moment and moved closer to the body.

The man had been in his fifties, as far as Megan could tell through the dirt and the decomposition. Bearded and with receding grey hair, he wore a check shirt and brown slacks. It took no genius to determine the cause of death. The man’s chest and abdomen were peppered with bullet holes that had ripped the fabric of his clothes. Megan did not bother to look at the man’s back, knowing that it would have been shredded by the exit wounds.

‘Kalashnikovs, most liklely,’ Callum said, examining the wounds, ‘from close range.’

Megan turned to Sophie. ‘Eighty of them?’

‘Something like that,’ Sophie nodded.

Megan looked at Severov.

‘Have your men help us uncover the bodies, and put a call back to the Red Cross Headquarters in Thessalia. They’ll need teams to come down here.’

Severov’s fists clenched by his sides.

‘This is a grave,’ he hissed.

‘This is a murder scene,’ Megan snapped back, ‘evidence of genocide, war crimes. If you do not help to protect this evidence it will be considered during any trials at the Hague. Do you understand?’

Severov struggled with himself for a moment longer.

‘We cannot move them. It is already obvious what has happened here. I do not want forensic teams tearing up the ground!’

Sophie spoke from one side. ‘We know nothing about what happened here.’

‘What do you mean? Is it not obvious?’ Severov demanded, turning to face her.

‘We don’t know who did this, nor why,’ Sophie replied. ‘You’re assuming too much without evidence. For all you know it could have been men from Thessalia who did this.’

Severov took a threatening pace toward her.