Anax tried to use the time to her advantage. Truth was, the break had come at just the right moment. She had lied to them. She didn’t know it until she was forced to say it aloud, and the feeling was so strange she doubted it had gone unnoticed. Yes, Adam’s actions were romantic, irrational, unjustifiable. And yet, when forced to comment, Anax had spoken a lie.
She did not know whether she would have done the same thing had she been up in the watchtower, she just knew Adam wasn’t wrong to have done it. She tried to swallow back this new and dangerous knowledge and focus on what was coming next: surely the details of Adam’s arrest and subsequent trial. She reminded herself she was prepared. She reminded herself how much success meant to her, how much it would mean to see Pericles’ face when she delivered the news.
“Do you know how long they’re going to be?” Anax asked, after half an hour had passed with no word being sent through. The guard turned to her. From his expression, she could see he had not been expecting her to speak.
“How should I know that?” His voice was surprisingly soft and quiet. Not like a guard at all.
“I just thought, if you did this often…”
“I’ve never been here before,” he told her. “It’s my first time.”
“But you are watching me?”
“What?” Confusion tightened his features.
“You’re a guard, right? You’re here to make sure I don’t try to communicate.”
“How could you?” he replied. “The building is under full surveillance. All electronic traffic is tied down.”
“I know. I just thought you might be an extra precaution.”
The guard began to laugh.
“What?” Anax demanded. “What’s so funny?”
“I thought the same thing about you,” he told her.
Now she noticed the second door. “So you’re…”
“Yeah, through there.”
“How’s it going?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting the breaks.”
“No. It’s unnerving isn’t it?”
“A little.”
“I’m Anax by the way”
“Pleased to meet you. Soc.”
“What’s your specialist topic?”
“Do you think we should be discussing this?”
“Would they have put us in the same room, if they didn’t want us to?”
“Perhaps they’re watching,” Soc suggested.
Anax liked him. She was good on first impressions. His manner was gentle. He was kind, she felt sure of it. “Have your questions been difficult?” Anax asked.
“Most have been okay,” he replied. “I was thrown by a question on ethics. It’s not my speciality. Perhaps that’s saying too much.”
“I had the same thing,” she told him.
This news seemed to come as some relief to him. Soc looked at Anax as if trying to read her. He leaned forward quickly and Anax, in her surprise, pulled away. He lowered his voice so that it was little more than a hum.
“Be careful,” he murmured. “They know more than you think.”
He pulled back and looked at her, but she did not answer. He was a stranger to her. Who did he think he was, taking a risk like that? At just that moment, as if to underline the danger, her door slid open.
SECOND HOUR
Anax walked quietly back toward the door, avoiding Soc’s eyes. She looked up at the Examiners, feeling even more nervous than before. For all she could tell, they had not moved at all. She tried to imagine what it was they had been talking about.
The Head Examiner waited for her to move into place and then went straight into the next question, as if the break had happened only in her imagination.
EXAMINER: What were the circumstances that led to Adam’s arrest?
ANAXIMANDER: If anything, the details of Adam’s apprehension are anticlimactic. As I have already said, there was much about his behavior to suggest that his actions in saving the girl, who for obvious reasons has become known as Eve, were spontaneous rather than planned.
As is the case with any enforced execution, the records from the watchtower in the period leading up to Joseph’s death were examined and the switching of duties during the incident immediately raised a warning.
Experts were sent in to examine the sea fence and they noted evidence of tampering. Adam’s supply procurement transactions were monitored and, although he made the effort to secure the extra food and water using a stolen registration card, he was put under full surveillance. His tracking chip was activated and the next night when he crept out of the dormitory, a full quarantine and enforcement team followed his every movement.
EXAMINER: Does it not seem unusual to you that a person of Adam’s technical proficiency should not be aware of the tracking chips?
ANAXIMANDER: There is much speculation regarding Adam’s motivation at this point. Again, the problem with conspiracy theories is their assumption that people are capable of exerting sophisticated control over events. I believe that complexity emerges quickly and unexpectedly. It is better to understand the Adam of this time as a frightened man. He has done what he believes to be right, and now finds his world spinning out of control.
EXAMINER: A romantic interpretation.
ANAXIMANDER: No, a pragmatic one. Adam was stumbling. He knew there was no one he could turn to and yet, having made his choice, he was now responsible for the life of the young girl he had saved. So, thoughtlessly, he led the security forces to the cave where she was hiding, and they swooped.
EXAMINER: What happened in that cave?
ANAXIMANDER: I doubt we can ever know for sure. The security forces were under strict instructions to bring in both
Adam and Eve alive, such was the concern that they were playing a part in a larger plot.
The official defense report suggests that a clever ambush had been laid. I hardly need to point out though that the forces had considerable motivation to promote this interpretation. The alternative would suggest that they had not expected the cave to be branched, and simply launched their attack down the wrong tunnel.
Adam was with Eve at the end of the shorter of the two branches when he heard the security forces rushing in. He was armed with Joseph’s gun, which he had left in the cave the previous day. If he stayed where he was, he would be discovered. Terrified, he faced a simple choice. He could leave Eve, and try to escape before the forces realised their mistake, or he could take Eve with him.
He knew that given Eve’s weak state, taking her with him would slow him down, but still he chose this path. We know from her testimony that she begged him to abandon her, but he refused.
He was never going to make it. Sentries had been posted at the cave mouth, and it didn’t take long for the attack force to realise their mistake and turn back. The cave was dark and its irregular walls scattered any flashlight beams and created a confusion of echoes as the soldiers attempted to communicate with one another. Adam later claimed he thought he was under attack from both sides. Whatever the truth, we know he dropped behind the protection of rocks and opened fire on the returning soldiers.
Mistake quickly piled upon mistake. Little thought had been given to the effectiveness of stun guns in a cave environment. The shock waves rebounded off the walls, and the assault force was in effect firing upon itself. Adam’s weapon by contrast was set to kill. For this reason the killing of eleven soldiers need not suggest, as some insist, that Adam had been trained in advanced warfare techniques by a secret cell of outside insurgents. Rather it
