The Shadow Project, page 10
Sir Roland spun around. Opal was moving fitfully in her chair. She convulsed and vomited onto the floor. Then she looked up and caught his eye. “Hello, Daddy,” she said weakly.
28
Opal, the Shadow Project
Opal opened her eyes. She was lying in a bed that wasn’t her own in a room she didn’t recognize. There was a television set mounted on the opposite wall and a remote control on the bedside table.
She remembered now. After the fuss and the vomiting in the operations room as she got her body back, they’d moved her to the Project clinic. She’d told them they didn’t need to, but her father had insisted. And he’d been right. She’d slept around the clock, woken to the most enormous breakfast, then slept again. She remembered the most embarrassingly thorough medical checkup by a young doctor who absolutely refused to take her word for it that everything was all right, that she should be discharged right away.
A gentle knocking at the door had woken her. She pushed herself upright in the bed. “Come in,” Opal called.
To her surprise it was Michael, carrying a bunch of flowers—and she hadn’t brushed her hair, or put on even the slightest smidge of makeup. She pulled herself together and smiled lightly. “Hello, Michael.”
“Hello, Opal,” Michael said awkwardly. He raised the flowers a fraction. “I brought you these.” He looked around, clearly wondering what to do with them.
“Put them on the table,” Opal said. “I’ll ask the nurse to find a vase.” She pressed the bell as Michael disembarrassed himself of the flowers. “I’ll ask her to bring you a chair as well.”
Michael perched cautiously on the edge of the bed. “How are you?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” Opal told him, “I’m absolutely fine. They’ll let me out soon.” Which was true, she thought. Even the young doctor had been encouraging. Then, because she knew that as an operative he had the necessary security clearance, she said excitedly, “Hey, I found the Skull!”
“Yes, I know—your father told me. That’s brilliant, Opal—what a coup!”
It occurred to her that she didn’t know what the outcome had been. She’d only managed a few words with her father before she collapsed, and no one in the clinic had any information at all. “Did they get him? Do you know?”
Michael shook his head. “Not yet.” He hesitated, then added, “It’s early days, of course.” Another hesitation, then, “Are you sure you’re all right?”
It was nice. She’d never had a boy bring her flowers before. “Yes, I am. Really.”
“It’s just…well, I know you got into trouble,” Michael said. “There’s been a lot of talk about it.”
“No, I’m fine. It was…” She stopped, thinking about it. “It was difficult. But I’m all right.” In fact, what she’d been through had been absolutely terrifying. If it hadn’t been for the wildest chance, nothing more dramatic than the appearance of a cleaning woman, she’d still be in the hands of Sword of Wrath. And who knew what that frightening old man was able to do. He’d trapped her and tortured her. She could still remember vividly how her energy body had writhed and jerked and even crackled as the waves of agony coursed through her. At one point she was convinced she was going to die.
She didn’t want to look weak in front of Michael, so she pushed the memory fiercely out of her mind. “Did you come up from Eton today?” Operatives who were still at school were usually sent back as quickly as possible. But what she really wanted to ask was whether he’d come up from Eton today specially to see her. The actual question was a small failure of nerve.
“Last night,” Michael said. “I stayed over with my uncle.”
It came out as oncle. She loved his accent. There was a moment’s silence, then Michael asked awkwardly, “Are you going home after they discharge you? Or will you come back to the Project?”
“Father wants me to stay home for a few days,” Opal said.
“Don’t you want to?”
She shook her head. “Not really. He’ll fuss.”
“Perhaps you need a little fussing,” Michael said lightly. “You’ve had a very difficult experience.”
Opal hid a smile. “I suppose so,” Opal said. But I don’t need fussing from my father.
Out of nowhere it occurred to her she was being totally self-centered. He’d been the anchor while she was trapped. With what she had experienced, the energy could have affected him as well. He might even have been hurt. And here she was, droning on without thinking to ask him how he was. “How…,” she began cautiously. “How did it go as my anchor?”
He gave a shy, embarrassed smile. “I got sick.”
“Honestly?”
He nodded. “Yes, I had to lie down.”
Opal laughed. “That must have been horrid.”
“Well, not in your league.”
They filled a moment looking at each other. Then Opal asked, “When are you going back?”
“Back where?”
“To Eton.”
“Not until Sunday evening. I might even leave it until Monday morning if I can catch an early enough train.”
“Oh, good,” Opal said. “So you’ll still be here on Saturday?”
“Yes.”
Should she suggest they do something together this weekend? Maybe that would sound too pushy. And besides, he probably had other plans. Hopefully with his uncle. “Are there girls at Eton?” she heard herself ask suddenly.
Michael blinked. “It’s a boys’ school.”
“Of course. Yes, of course.” She hesitated, then said sheepishly, “I meant in the town.” She wanted to ask if he ever met girls in the town, but realized she was on the way to making a complete fool of herself. After a long moment, she licked her lips. “There’s a hunt ball at Oakleigh a week from Saturday.”
“Really?” Nothing at all showed on his face. Not a hint of interest.
But too late to back off now. “Probably a bit of a bore,” Opal said casually, “but I thought I might go.”
“Yes.”
This was definitely not going well. All the same, she had to finish it. “I was wondering if you might like to accompany me?” When his face remained blank, she added, “As my escort?”
He hesitated. “You mean…like a…date?”
Opal gave a small shrug. Then lost the last of her confidence: “I suppose so. Technically.”
To her relief, Michael began to smile slowly. It lit up his whole face. But suddenly the smile disappeared, replaced by a peculiar look.
“I’m sorry,” he said abruptly. “I have to go.”
Then, to her horror, he stood up and walked out of the room.
29
Sir Roland, London
“This isn’t a secure line,” Sir Roland warned.
“I’ll be discreet,” Hector promised. “Was it Farrakhan?”
“Definitely,” Roland said. “Fits the description, and Opal claims he told her that was his name. Haven’t showed her pictures yet, but who else could have done that to her?”
“Is she bearing up?”
“Opal? Yes. The medics say there’s no physical harm at all. Emotionally she seems fine too, unless she’s hiding it. But she was tortured, obviously a very difficult experience—I should never have sent her out, but I’d no idea he could do something like that. Frankly, I didn’t expect her to come within a thousand miles of him. I’m afraid I assumed the tip-off would lead to another Elvis goose chase. But fortunately she seems fine. More worried about her hunt ball than Épée de la Colère.”
“Do you know what happened yet?”
“Not entirely. We have the broad picture, of course, but I postponed a full debriefing to give her time to recover. Not according to the book and probably a disciplining offense, but she is my daughter.”
“She is your daughter,” Hector agreed. “I’d have done the same. Any news of the spear?”
“That’s why I rang. It’s definitely been moved.”
“Out of the Ringstrasse?”
“Afraid so.” Roland hesitated. “Actually, right out of Austria. The museum authorities decided to feature it in a traveling exhibition of religious art and artifacts. It’s currently on display in Egypt.”
“Egypt!” Hector exploded. “Oh my God.”
“It may not mean anything,” Roland said.
“Of course it means something. It means the original has been moved as well. Which suggests somebody’s been tinkering with it. My money is on Farrakhan. We’ve known for some time that he’s the real moving force behind Sword of Wrath. This is exactly the sort of thing he would do.”
Roland sighed lightly. “Don’t suppose the Priory would help?”
“You know the Priory, Roland—you’ve been involved with us for long enough. Broader picture and all that. We don’t get involved. Not even sure I should be telling you half the things I do.”
“That works both ways,” Roland said a little sourly.
“I know, I know,” Hector said. “Tell you what, I’ll have a word with the powers that be.”
“Are you serious?”
“Think I am, actually,” Hector said. “All very well to stand aside and claim the moral high ground, but you and I are soldiers, Roland. Things look different at the sharp end. That little creep who’s running the Skull is getting help from some very nasty quarters; and with this spear thing, God knows what he might be planning. Could be time for the good guys to wade in and get their hands dirty.”
“Do you think they will?”
“Probably not. Free will, destiny, collective karma of humanity—you know how they go on. But they might nudge things in the right direction. Or let me help a little if it turns out that I can. It depends what happens. And how bad it gets, I suppose.”
“How bad do you think it will get?” Roland asked. His mind was on Opal.
“Bad enough,” Hector said. “You’ve only to look at the connections.”
“The Skull and Farrakhan?”
“Well, that, obviously, but I was thinking more on our own side. There’s obviously a mystic link with Michael, and there may be one with Opal as well, but I’m particularly intrigued by this new boy and his association to our mediator. That’s really peculiar, even in our line of work. Take it all together and you get the feeling of strange forces gathering just beyond the horizon.”
“Yes,” Roland muttered. It was exactly the feeling he’d been getting during the last few days. But who could you talk to? Nobody believed in Cosmic Battles anymore. Even the old concept of evil had been distorted for political ends. But what Farrakhan was up to was objectively evil. Not because he was teamed up with Épée de la Colère, not even because of what he had done to Opal, but because he was an occultist who deliberately tapped into dark currents, calling on evil entities. The only way to deal with that was to align yourself with the powers of good. Except, as Hector said, those powers were very hesitant to interfere. “What do you think will happen next?” he asked Hector.
“Couldn’t say,” said Hector promptly, “but I’d be prepared to bet you half my pension that it will involve your new boy Danny Lipman. He’s in this deeper than he knows.”
30
Danny, the Shadow Project
“What’s this, then?” Danny asked. “The Project Museum?”
It was the weirdest collection he’d ever seen: cabinets and displays of African masks and jujus, ceremonial swords, Egyptian ankhs, chalices, brass discs, wands, thuribles, and a load of other religious junk, alongside—and this was the really weird bit—a bank of scary machines like the things they hook you up to in the hospital, a control console that must have come from outer space, and one of the coolest sound systems he’d ever seen, with speakers that were actually bigger than he was. It made the operations room with its two electric chairs look like a train set.
Fran smiled. She could smile now that she wasn’t playing Bad Cop, but she was still one tough lady. Danny wouldn’t want to cross her. “Looks a bit like a museum, doesn’t it?” she said. “It’s actually the heart of our Project.”
“Thought that was the operations room,” Danny said.
“That’s just a feed. This is the generator. Whenever we want to send out an agent, we have one of our scientists in here crank up the psychotronic energies and pump out the infrasound. The control panel in the operations room directs what we produce in here.”
“Wow,” Danny said, looking at the electronic gear. Then his eyes slid across the other stuff. For some reason it made him feel uneasy. “What’s all the stuff from Africa?”
“Yes, well, it is a strange mixture.” For a moment he thought she was going to leave it there—he’d discovered they weren’t big on explanations here, Fran least of all—but then she said, “We gathered it together when we were investigating magic. I expect Sir Roland told you about that?”
Danny nodded. Somehow he’d thought Sir Roland just meant books.
“We have some really interesting items.” She moved to a cabinet and took out a peculiar dagger with a triangular blade and gargoyle-headed handle. “This, for example.” She waved it in the manner of somebody used to handling weapons.
“What is it?” Danny asked cautiously. “Wouldn’t want anybody to stick that up your nose.”
“It’s a Tibetan phurba,” Fran said. “A ritual dart used to drive off evil spirits.” She closed the cabinet firmly. “That’s enough of the history lesson.” She pulled up a chair and sat down, nodding for Danny to do the same. “Now, I want you to tell me exactly what happened when you projected.”
Danny shrugged. “I came out of my body when you switched on the power, but I didn’t go anywhere.”
“How did you know you were out of the body?”
“Could see it sitting there.”
“Have you any recall of how you came out?”
“How?”
“Through the top of your head, down your nose, out your ear—what?” Fran asked.
“Tried to swat an insect, and my arm came out of the restraints,” Danny said. “After that I was just out. Standing there beside the chair.”
“So you were aware of the insect creatures? Most of our other operatives have reported them. In the Project we call them threshold guardians: they often turn up when somebody’s projecting—we don’t fully understand their origins. What happened then?”
Danny shrugged. “You adjusted for weight and off I went.”
“But not to Lusakistan?”
“No way,” Danny said.
“What exactly happened?”
Danny shrugged again. “Went dark, felt like I was falling, got light, looked like mountains, then I was in the hospital with my gran.” Nobody had asked him for details of his experiences with his Nan, and he hadn’t volunteered.
“Looked like mountains? You didn’t mention that before.”
“Think I did,” Danny said.
“No, you didn’t.” She frowned. “What were you thinking about before you went?”
Thinking about? His Nan, probably. He couldn’t really remember, but he worried about her most of the time. “My Nan, I suppose.”
For some reason she looked pleased. “I think I know what happened. The equipment didn’t fail at all. I think the problem was that we didn’t use another agent as your anchor—we took out the second chair to avoid any feedback to Opal. I think we sent you to Lusakistan all right—that was your brief flash of mountains—but without the anchor, there was no stabilizing lock. You were thinking of your grandmother. Gross movement follows thought—we teach that to all trainees. If you want to go somewhere, you simply focus on moving to your target—think about it, in other words. In your case that meant you went directly to your grandmother.”
“But I didn’t know where she was,” Danny said. “I knew you’d moved her from Saint Luke the Physician’s, but I didn’t have the new address.”
“Didn’t matter,” Fran said. “You locked in on the image of your grandmother. And managed to resist when we tried to pull you back. You’re obviously a natural for this sort of work.” She rubbed her hands together. “Well, now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s see how much better you can get with a bit of practice.”
31
Opal, the Shadow Project
“Whoops,” the old woman said. “Wrong door—I must be getting senile.” She started to back out again. “Sorry, love.” She was wearing a flannel nightie and dressing gown, both of which looked as if they’d seen better days. Obviously another of the clinic’s patients. A strange one.
Opal smiled. “That’s all right.” On impulse she added, “I was feeling a bit lonely anyway.” Lonely and cross since Michael ran off like that. She was still burning with embarrassment.
The old woman reversed her direction at once. “Can’t have that,” she said as she shuffled across the room to sit on the edge of the bed. “Notice they don’t give you chairs round here—that’s to discourage visitors.”
“Do you think so?” Opal asked, wondering if it might be true. It was a secret intelligence service clinic, after all, but the chair business hadn’t occurred to her.
“Might be,” the old woman said. She stuck out her hand. “My name’s Dorothy.”
“Opal,” Opal told her. The old woman had an East London accent. What on earth was she doing in a clinic run by MI6?
“What you in for, Opal?” the old woman asked curiously. She managed to make it sound like a prison sentence.
Opal smiled at her again. “Just a few tests,” she said. “They’re letting me out this evening.” She made a face and added, “With luck. How about you?”
“Me? Had a stroke, didn’t I? Coming down some stairs. Lucky I didn’t break my stupid neck. Right out of the blue, no warning. One minute I was right as rain, the next I was in a heap on the floor, not able to speak, not able to move. Would have been there yet hadn’t been for my next-door neighbor.”
It occurred to Opal suddenly that Dorothy might be an undercover agent. She certainly didn’t look like one or sound like one, but that was the whole point, wasn’t it? She said, “You look much fitter now.”
