Gone Tomorrow

‘Can anyone else see the screen?’

I didn’t answer.

‘Play it,’ she said. ‘I’ll stay on the line. I’ll do a commentary. Like a special edition.’

I didn’t answer.

She said, ‘Like a director’s cut,’ and laughed a little.

I moved the mouse and put the chubby little hand over the play button. It waited there, patiently.

I clicked the mouse.

The tower unit made more whirring sounds and the blank window on the screen lit up and showed two distorted horizontal lines. They flashed twice and then the picture settled to a wide-angle view of an open outdoor space. It was night. The camera was steady. Mounted high on a tripod, I guessed. The scene was brightly lit by harsh halogen lights just out of shot. The colour was raw. The space looked foreign. Beaten earth, a dark khaki tone. Small stones and one large rock. The rock was flat, bigger than a king-size bed. It had been drilled and fitted with four iron rings. One at each corner.

There was a naked man tied to the rings. He was short and thin and wiry. He had olive skin and a black beard. He was maybe thirty years old. He was on his hack, stretched into a wide X shape. The camera was positioned maybe a yard from his feet. At the top of the picture his head was jerking from side to side. His eyes were closed. His mouth was open. Tendons in his neck stood out like ropes.

He was screaming, but I couldn’t hear him.

It was a silent movie.

Lila Hoth spoke in my ear.

She asked, ‘What are you seeing?’

I said, ‘A guy on a slab.’

‘Keep watching.’

‘Who is he?’

‘He was a taxi driver who ran an errand for an American journalist.’

The camera angle was about forty-five degrees, I guessed. It made the taxi driver’s feet look large and his head look small. He thrashed and bucked for a whole minute. He was raising his head and banging it down on the rock. Trying to knock himself out. Or trying to kill himself, maybe. No luck. A slender figure ducked into shot at the top of the frame and slipped a folded square of cloth under the guy’s head. The figure was Lila Hoth. No question about it. The video definition was not great, but there was no mistaking her. The hair, the eyes, the way she moved.

The square of cloth was probably a towel. I said, ‘I just saw you.’

‘With the pad? It’s necessary, to avoid self-inflicted injury. And it puts their heads at an angle. It tempts them to look.’

‘At what?’

‘Keep watching.’

I glanced around the room. My three temporary colleagues were all still working. They were all focused hard on their own business.

On my screen nothing happened for close to twenty seconds. The taxi driver wailed away, silently. Then Svetlana Hoth stepped into the frame from the side. She was unmistakable, too. The fire-plug body, the blunt steel-grey hair.

She had a knife in her hand.

She crawled up on the rock and squatted beside the guy. She stared up at the camera for a long second. Not vanity. She was judging its angle, trying not to block its view. She adjusted her position until she was crouching unobtrusively in the angle made by the guy’s left arm and the side of his chest.

The guy was staring at the knife.

Svetlana leaned forward and to her right and placed the tip of the blade on a spot about halfway between the guy’s groin and his navel. She pressed down. The guy jerked uncontrollably. A fat worm of blood welled out of the cut. The blood looked black under the lights. The guy screamed on and on. I could see that his mouth was forming words. No! and Please! are clear in any language.

‘Where was this?’ I asked.

Lila Roth said, ‘Not far from Kabul.’

Svetlana moved the blade up towards the guy’s navel. Blood chased it all the way. She kept it moving. Like a surgeon or a wholesale butcher, casual and practised and expert. She had made similar cuts many times before. The blade kept on moving. It stopped above the guy’s sternum.

Svetlana put the knife down.

She used her index finger and traced the line of the cut. Blood lubricated its progress. She pressed down and put her finger right in the cut, to the first knuckle. She slid it up and down. She paused occasionally.

Lila Hoth said, ‘She’s checking that she’s all the way through the muscle wall.’

I said, ‘How do you know? You can’t see these pictures.’

‘I can hear your breathing.’

Svetlana picked up the knife again and returned to the places where her finger had paused. She used the tip of the blade quite delicately and nicked through what seemed to be minor obstructions.

Then she sat back.

The taxi driver’s belly was open, like a zipper had been pulled. The long straight cut gaped a little. The wall of muscle was ruptured. It was no longer able to hold back the pressure from inside.

Svetlana rocked forward again. She used both hands. She worked them into the cut and parted the skin quite carefully and rooted around inside. She was in there up to her wrists. She tensed and squared her shoulders.

She lifted out the guy’s intestines.

They made a shining, glistening pink mass about the size of a soft soccer ball. Coiled, sloppy, moving, wet and steaming.