The Killing Files

The woman lifts her head from her slump on the floor. Her gaze is raised to me but I do not look at her. The lump in my throat tightens.

‘Detainees are not permitted to talk,’ I say, eyes front.

‘It is you, isn’t it? Maria? You … you cut your hair.’ She coughs. Blood speckles the white tiles, and her eyes dart left and right then settle back on me. ‘I know you think I am the enemy, but I am not. That’s just what they made you believe.’ She heaves in oxygen. ‘They set me up, Maria—you have to believe me. They’ll do it to you, too, if they have to. I’m not a terrorist …’ She coughs again, wipes her mouth. ‘They’ll be back soon, so you must listen. There … there is a file. It’s encrypted.’ She licks her cracked lips. ‘It’s on a file within a computer that’s not … that’s not attached to anything, a standalone device. No server is linked to it, but it contains a file that you created, a hidden file, away from the Project. Do you understand? Do you understand what that means?’

‘Detainees are not permitted to talk.’ I strain not to look at her. She is the enemy, and yet her words, her injured presence—they bother me.

‘It has details, the file,’ she continues, ‘ones they cannot track. It will give you what you need—confidential data, who the Project has tested on, the files and names of who they’ve killed. What they’re doing is wrong, Maria. They can’t treat people like this, they can’t act like gods of the world, and yet that’s what they do. Give man power and I give you an eternity of pain.’ She spits out some blood and I fight the urge to wipe it away because, for some reason, I feel connected to this woman but I don’t know why.

‘Maria?’

‘Detainees are not permitted to …’ I trail off, confused, unsure which side she is really on.

‘You are struggling, I know,’ she says now, low, laboured, ‘struggling with who I am … but we were in the field together. Maria, I helped you and you helped me. They’ll mess with your memory after they’ve done with me, like they always do. The file will give you what you need, tell you what you’ve done—the truth! Find out who you really are, Maria! I know you, I do. We were … we were friends.’

My eyes briefly flicker to her then, snapping back into position, I look away. ‘I have no friends.’

The door bolts open and the officer with the H on his shirt returns accompanied by two other, higher ranking officers. They stride to Raven, haul her up, but as they pull her away, she digs in her feet. ‘The file,’ she whispers. ‘Find it!’

They yank her forwards and as they do she shouts, ‘They will make you complete it, Maria! Prepare, they told us. Wait. Engage! Eliminate the threat. They will make you kill me! You know this, Maria, I know you do. Fight it,’ she says, her feet leaving trails of blood in their wake, ‘fight the Project! Help!’

But I do nothing, instead watch her go and as she does, as she is dragged screaming away past the cold, pale doors of the Project walkways, what bothers me about her so much comes to me, slapping me hard on the face.

‘I never knew your name,’ I say aloud to the now empty room, the words echoing in a void that can never be filled. ‘I never knew your name.’

The image begins to swirl away, soft at first then faster downwards as a noise vibrates in my ears and I realise it’s the radio alarm clock clicking on, blasting a newscaster’s voice into the kitchen.

I intake a sharp breath and my eyes fly open taking in a woozy, hazy view of my warm, sun-drenched kitchen. I touch my head with a shaking hand then, falling forward, grab a glass, fill it from the tap and drain the water until it is sliding down my chin, fangs of liquid on my shocked skin. I slap the glass down, slam back into the wall, smear my lips with the back of my hand and try to steady my breath. The memory, the subconscious dream still fresh in my mind—these have happened before, but not this strong, not with her so vividly in them. I throw my hand to the side, feel my way forward, the image of the hijab throwing me off centre. What she said about the files—was that true? Did she store a data file at the Project? Did that actually happen? I spin round, brain firing left and right. My notebook. I need my notebook, need to write it all down, record it so I can track it and try to make sense of what is hidden in my head.

The news piece on the radio is talking about the American national security agency, how Edward Snowden has revealed more information and is in hiding now. I try to pay attention. I try to press it all to my mind so I can lose myself and record it all on my wall, but the words are too much, the noise all too loud and I can’t think straight, the dream of the woman and her screams still lingering in my mind even in the bright glare of the summer sun. A dull moan slips from my mouth and I slap my hand down on the radio, silencing it as I count the steps that I now stumble into the lounge.

My eyes automatically scan the solitary armchair, the old brown piano with its back against the wall, the towers of books that sky-scrape their way across the room, the thousands of newspaper articles plastered to the wall, covered in scrawled notes of black pen and pin tacks and sketches of blank faces of people I don’t remember. I look at it all, my sight hazy, struggling to focus until, finally, I spot my notebook on the cabinet island by the far wall.

I immediately go to it, flip past the pages of algorithms and codes and sketches of Project facility buildings, all vague memories of events and details, and scratch out what I have just seen. Done, I slam the book shut. I stare at the cracked brown leather cover that curls at the corners. My memories, my nightmares are in there, the ones I don’t know about, the details and facts I cannot even recall occurring and yet, somehow they are in my head. Somehow, despite the drugs, I recall them. But why?

I think of Raven. What if there is a file? What if I have just recalled something that happened a decade ago despite the drugs Black Eyes gave me? If the file the woman stowed away is at the Project, does that mean it is still there, now, after all these years? I hold out my hands, look at my fingers, long slim trained doctor hands, a plastic surgeon’s, helping to reconstruct faces and injuries and a mix of disgust and sadness hits me. The Project made me become a doctor. It was not my choice or conscious will, instead it was a foregone conclusion, a fait accompli. But what are we when we are not in control of our own choices and life? What does that eventually do to us? And what do we eventually do as a result?

I stare again at my fingers and skin and cut-to-the-quick nails. I am Dr Maria Martinez. Raven said they would make me kill her.

Did I?

They have made me believe I have killed before, they got me convicted of the murder of a priest because they—MI5—wanted me hidden and out of the way when the NSA prism scandal broke out, just so the Project would not be uncovered. They framed me, despite my innocence, to suit their own ends, but even then I doubted myself, because if who I am and what I do in life has been decided and directed by the Project, if they have drugged me all along, how will I know with any certainty what really happened?

And who it has happened to?

I reopen my notebook. Perhaps if I scan the pages again, if I link my thoughts here to the wall and the research and the faces and facts, I can make some connections between what I know and what I have just seen. I can lose myself in my thoughts and record everything that swims to the surface of my memory, linking it, if I can, to the NSA, to MI5 and the Project, find some comfort purely in the challenge and routine and order of it all, safe in the knowledge that I won’t take it any further, that I don’t ever want to leave here and the sanctuary it provides, and if they don’t find me, I can remain hidden in my villa forever.

I look up at my wall. I study the multiple news articles and anonymous faces and facts and arrowed figures, and just as I am about to reach forward and readjust a pinned article so that it sits neat and straight and in order next to the others, the emergency cell phone shrills into the calm morning silence.

And everything stops.

Chapter 4 (#ulink_dcd7220e-b692-56e5-a123-d4563829d98a)

Salamancan Mountains, Spain.

34 hours and 46 minutes to confinement

I pick up the cell, slamming down the button so the shrill will stop hammering into my head. ‘Who is this?’

‘Maria, it’s Balthus.’

‘You are speaking on the emergency cell,’ I say, fast. ‘Is there an urgent situation?’

‘What? No.’

‘Then why are you calling me?’

‘You haven’t contacted me for three days and I was worried.’

The ring of the cell still bangs in my head. I shake it. ‘Four days.’

‘What?’

‘I have not called you for four days.’ My eyes catch the sunshine dancing a waltz along the curves of the glass panes. I focus on it and, gradually, my head calms down. ‘You said three.’

There’s a pause. ‘Maria, we agreed when we spilt up in London—you’d stay in touch, contact me every day. I got worried when you didn’t call.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I care for you. Because I promised your father before he died I’d look out for you.’

‘Oh. Okay.’ The glass panes twinkle in the daylight. ‘I had another memory today.’

‘What? When?’

‘At 0612 hours this morning.’

I pick up my notebook and proceed to tell him what happened. He listens. This is what he does, Balthus Ochoa—I talk and he listens. When he was the governor at Goldmouth prison in London where I was incarcerated; him listening led me to find an encrypted file that uncovered the Project and my subsequent involvement in it. He has always told me how he promised my papa that he would be there for me, tells me he cares for me, and I catch myself feeling what must be gratitude towards him, but I never know how to express it, do not understand how people say what they feel inside.

‘That’s odd,’ Balthus says now, his voice a layer of gravel, a boulder on a mountain.

‘What is odd?’

‘Well … Okay, so it may be nothing, but there’s something bugging me about the standalone computer the woman in your flash mentioned, but I can’t figure out why it bothers me. Maria—the memory with the woman, with Raven—do you remember which Project facility that was at?’

‘No. I only recall the facility with Black Eyes when I was younger. That was in Scotland. That is the facility Kurt brought me to. Do you not remember this?’

‘Jesus, how could I forget? I bloody well suggested you see that therapist after you were acquitted—and he turned out to be working for MI5.’