right there, bitch!’ Walker was shouting. ‘You stop right there.’ He was coming after her, the thud of each footstep getting louder. The door beeped. She tugged at it, but the handle wouldn’t open. She held the damn card against the panel once more and this time, at last, the little light turned green, accompanied by another short, sharp and friendlier beep. She opened the door and stepped through.
But Walker had been fast, so that now his hand reached through and grabbed at her shoulder. He was strong, but she had one advantage. She swivelled to face him, grabbed the door and used all of her strength to slam it shut. His arm was caught between the door and the frame. He let out a loud yowl of pain and the arm retracted. She slammed the door again, hearing the reassuring click that meant it was electronically sealed.
Leaping up the stairs two at a time, she clutched at the rail as she reached the first landing and pulled herself onto the next flight, seeing daylight ahead. She would only have a few seconds. Walker was bound to have alerted security in reception by now.
Maddy was in the short corridor that led to the entrance of the building. From the outside it resembled nothing more than a low-rent import–export office. That was in her article, too. If you walked past it, you’d never know what horrors lay beneath.
She breathed deep, realizing she had no idea what to do next. She couldn’t breeze out, not from here. Workers were allowed to exit only at prescribed times. They would stop her; they’d call down to Walker; they’d start checking the computer. She needed to think of something. Her head was pounding now. And she could hear sounds coming from below. Had Walker got the downstairs door open?
She had the merest inkling of a plan, no more than an instinct. Flinging the door open, her voice rising with panic, she bellowed at the man and woman manning the front desk. ‘It’s Walker! I think he’s having a heart attack. Come quick!’
The pair sat frozen in that second of paralysis that strikes in every crisis. Maddy had seen it before. ‘Come on!’ she shouted. ‘I think he might be dying.’
Now they jumped up, barrelling past her to get down the stairs. ‘I’ll call for an ambulance!’ she shouted after them.
She had only a second to look behind the desk, at the grid of cubby-holes where they kept the women’s confiscated phones. Shit. She couldn’t see hers. She thought of simply rushing out there and then, but she’d be lost without it. Besides, if they found it once she’d gone, they’d instantly know who she was and what she’d been working on.
Commotion downstairs. They’d be back up here any second. She moved her eye along the slots one last time, trying to be methodical while her head was about to explode. Calm, calm, calm, she told herself. But it was a lie.
Then at last, the recognizable shape, the distinct colour of the case, lurking in the corner of the second last row. She grabbed it and rushed out of the door, into the open air.
The sound of the freeway was loud but unimaginably welcome. She had no idea how she would get away from here. She could hardly wait for a bus. Besides, she had left her wallet downstairs, tucked inside her now-abandoned bag.
As she began running towards the noise of the traffic, working out who she would call first – her editor to say they should run the story tonight or Katharine to apologize for the broken camera – she realized that she had only one thing on her besides her phone. She unclenched her fist to see Walker’s pass now clammy in her hand. Good, she thought. His photo ID would complement her article nicely: ‘The brute behind the brutality.’
Seven hours later the story was ready to go, including a paragraph or two on her ejection from the sweatshop and accompanied online by several segments of video, with greatest prominence given to the miscarriage episode. ‘How LA sweatshop conditions can mean the difference between life and death.’ Use of the Walker photo had taken up nearly an hour’s back-and-forth with the news editor. Howard Burke had worried about naming an individual.
‘Fine to go after the company, Madison, but you’re calling this guy a sadist.’
‘That’s because he is a sadist, Howard.’
‘Yes, but even sadists can sue.’
‘So let him sue! He’ll lose. We have video of him causing a woman to lose her baby. Jeez, Howard, you’re such—’
‘What, Maddy? What am I “such a”? And tread carefully here, because this story is not going anywhere till I say so.’
There was a silence between them, a stand-off of several seconds broken by her.
‘Asshole.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘You’re such an asshole. That’s what I was going to say. Before you interrupted me.’
The exchange that followed could be heard at the other end of the open-plan office.
Burke’s frustration overflowing, he drove his fist through an office partition, which newsroom historians recorded was the second time he had performed that feat – the first some four years earlier, also prompted by a clash with Madison Webb.
It took the intervention of the executive editor herself to broker a compromise. Jane Goldstein summoned Maddy into her office, making her wait while she took evidence from Howard over by the newsdesk. Clearly she had decided it was too risky to have them both in the same room at once.
It gave Maddy time to look at the boss’s power wall, which was a departure from the usual ego mural. Instead of photos with assorted political bigwigs and worthies, Goldstein had displayed a series of framed front pages of the biggest story she – or any other American reporter since Ed Murrow – had ever covered. She’d won a stack of Pulitzers, back when that had been the name of the biggest prize in US journalism.
Maddy’s phone vibrated. A message from a burnt-out former colleague who had left the Times to join a company in Encino making educational films.
Hey Maddy. Greetings from the slow lane. Am attaching my latest, for what it’s worth. Not exactly Stanley Kubrick, but I’d love any feedback. We’ve been told to aim at Junior High level. The brief is to explain the origins of the ‘situation’, in as neutral a way as possible. Nothing loaded. Tell me anything you think needs changing, especially script. You’re the writer!
With no sign of Goldstein, Maddy dutifully clicked the play button. From her phone’s small speaker, the voiceover – deep, mid-Western, reliable – began.
The story starts on Capitol Hill. Congress had gathered to raise the ‘debt ceiling’, the amount of money the American government is allowed to borrow each year. But Congress couldn’t agree. There was footage of the then-Speaker, banging his gavel, failing to bring order to the chamber.
After that, lenders around the world began to worry that a loan to America was a bad bet. The country’s ‘credit rating’ began to slip, downgraded from double A-plus to double A and then to letters of the alphabet no one ever expected to see alongside a dollar sign. That came with a neat little graphic animation, the A turning to B turning to C. But then the crisis deepened.
On screen was a single word in bold, black capital letters: DEFAULT. The voiceover continued. The United States had to admit it couldn’t pay the interest on the money it owed to, among others, China. In official language, the US Treasury announced a default on
