Underlings (Not being updated at this time)

Underlings - 1. The Bottleneck

Landry had been living in Shanghai for two years. She hated it. People called it a modern city, but to Landry it was an unwelcoming concrete sprawl ever shrouded in smog; a neon facade trying to be something it wasn't. Shanghai celebrated its innovations, shopping malls and skyscrapers, but its children couldn't play outside if the mercury levels were too high. Maybe that's what people meant by a modern city?

Singapore had been sterile and boring, Hong Kong had been exciting, but two years in Shanghai made her want to rethink her whole career path, get out of the heat and return to London. In London she had a choice. If she wanted to sweat, she could go to Bikram yoga, followed by a cold shower and a glass of Pinot afterwards.

Her white blouse stuck to her pink skin. Even her hair sweated. The pores on her nose had formed a slippery slope for the beads to snake down. She couldn't wait for the air conditioning to greet her inside and turn the sweat into salt.

The Chinese Authorities had been interrogating a British subject for thirty one hours and had only just felt obliged to notify the Embassy. This was, as always in China, delicate shit.

Someone at the Embassy had decided that Landry should get involved, which was unusual, but reasons had not filtered down. There was always a bottleneck somewhere.

Ushered through the airport halls and corridors under fluorescent tube lighting, led by the man who had greeted her, a Robot Yao according to his badge - Landry was unsure if Robot had meant to choose the name Robert, but this was China and you could never tell. They were flanked by two armed men in uniform, barely out of their teens, blank expressions, hard to read, but easy to disarm.

Robot used a passkey to get through a private door, was met by two more youths carrying automatic rifles, who waved them through and then they came to the cell.

Robot bowed to a superior, who ignored the gesture and took Landry's hand, casting his eyes fleetingly across her pencil skirt, legs and blouse.

"Miss Landry, I am Erik Wang. We have British Citizen under arrest. This prisoner don't tell us the truth. It's a problem. We give him plenty opportunity. You talk to prisoner."

"Mr Wang. I've not been given any details as to why you have arrested this man. The Chinese Authorities have failed to notify the British Embassy of his arrest, which is a great concern to us. Usually this kind of thing would be handled by a different department entirely, but it has been deemed an unusual case. What has this man done and what evidence do you have against this man?"

"Come this way."

Mr Wang pushed open the door of an adjacent room to the cell, where typically, there was a two-way mirror, giving a side view of the prisoner in the other room.

The man was hand-cuffed to the table, slumped on a metal chair, unconscious and sporting a recent swelling to the side of his face presented to the secret glass. A polygraph machine had been wheeled next to him to read his reactions to questions asked and a second table displayed various syringes.

"What in the hell have you been doing to that man?"

Mr Wang motioned for Landry to join him at the console which overlooked the cell and had an array of monitors and computerised equipment upon it. He tapped a button and one of the monitors came to life, showing a black and white airport scene.

Mr Wang became both maestro and conductor of the keys before him.

"We had very good reason to believe he was a terrorist..."

"Because he's a British Muslim? This isn't legal Mr Wang." Landry's tone was impatient. This felt like one big joke on her part. Had someone from the department sent her to do a clerk's job? She had a couple of guys in mind straight away. It had them written all over it. Mr Wang ignored her and continued.

"You see him here in this image checking his luggage in for flight to London... here he is through passport control a half hour later...in this image you can see him going into the rest room of the terminal and he does not come out. He did not board his flight, his luggage was taken off. He did not collect his luggage. He did not leave the rest rooms."

Landry studied her counterpart.

"Mr Wang, are you wasting my time? You are holding a British citizen because he failed to board a plane at your airport and collect his luggage? Have you studied those images closely? That is not the same man you have chained to the table in that room. The man that you have just shown me on your CCTV is no more than twenty eight years old."

Mr Wang looked into the cell at the unconscious prisoner. Landry followed his gaze, studied the captive anew; grey hair, lines on his forehead and around the eyes, a blotch of skin the size of a penny on his hand from ageing over time in the sun. The prisoner that had been interrogated in the next room was not a day younger than sixty years of age.

"There is nowhere to go in rest room area. No vent. No cupboard. No door. The cleaners check in there every one hour. You would be surprised how many people die at airports. It has happened. The cleaners check the stalls if they are busy for long time. This next clip is taken from the same camera yesterday..."

The familiar image of the door to the toilets, which the young man had disappeared through, came into view once more. The time on the recording showed that this was days after the previous clips. A business man walked into the toilets... another came out in a baseball cap holding his son's hand... a cleaner entered with his trolley, then in front of the doors, in full view of the cameras, the man that was handcuffed to the table in the next room suddenly appeared out of thin air. He fell to his knees, laughing, touching the marble floor with his hands. A crowd formed around him, wary, standing back from him. The old man on the screen was naked in the middle of the airport terminal.

Landry stared at the screen, paused on the old man. Though she was in an air-conditioned room, she felt the pores open once more on her skin and her body temperature rise.

"There has been no unauthorised handling of the tapes or the equipment. The man in the cell appeared outside the rest rooms like a phantom. We have eye witnesses. When we finally saw the video we feared that he was not terrorist, but a spy. We took the liberty of checking his dental records from our people in Britain, also DNA. The old man in the cell next door is the same man that checked his luggage in six days ago. The question is not why has he aged so much in six days, but where did he go?"

The man in the cell stirred as he began to regain consciousness.

Landry reached for her phone.