The Shadow Project, page 6
“Who are you?” Opal asked.
“My name is Hazrat Farrakhan, adviser to my master, Venskab Faivre, whom you doubtless recognize. He wishes you to tell him if you are an American.”
“How can you hold me here?” Opal demanded. “How is this possible?”
“I am a student of ilmu al-hikmah,” said Farrakhan.
“Who is Ilmu Al—?” Opal began, but the old man held up a sudden hand for silence.
“No more questions, prisoner. You must now answer my master.”
Prisoner? It struck her with the force of a thunderbolt that this was exactly what she was. She was trapped in a wicker cage and now, incredibly, under interrogation. And there was nothing in her training to help her. Why train operatives for something no one believed could happen?
Should she answer? What was it they said in war movies—name, rank, and serial number? Except she didn’t have a rank or a serial number. She was a Project operative, not a soldier. So what was she supposed to tell the enemy? And what would happen if she refused to answer? If she was James Bond or Mata Hari, caught behind enemy lines, she might be beaten or tortured. But to torture somebody, you had to get your hands on their physical body, and her physical body was back at the Project, slumped in a chair with a helmet on its head. So no beatings, and torture was impossible.
Just as it’s supposed to be impossible to hold me in a cage. The thought brought her up short. Opal felt a chill of fear.
Did it matter if she told them she was not an American? Her nationality was hardly important. What was important was that the Skull should not discover she was a spy. Half the effectiveness of the Shadow Project was that no one knew of its existence. The secrecy of the Project had to be protected at all costs. What she needed was a cover story, something to convince these men she was…a civilian. She almost laughed aloud. An innocent, invisible, ghost of a casual visitor.
“I’m not an American,” she said.
“Ah good,” murmured Farrakhan, as if she’d told him something of importance. “My master does not like Americans.” He spoke a few words in Lusakistani to the Skull, then turned back to her. “Why are you here?”
“Why are you here?” the Skull echoed in English. His brown eyes were locked on the cage and this time he seemed to be looking directly at her.
There were scraps of cloth and paper woven into the wicker of her cage. It was the first time she’d really noticed them, but now she saw they were covered in curious, hand-drawn symbols. Cramped as she was, she reached out to uncover one of them, momentarily forgetting that she could not actually touch anything. The fabric of the cage repelled her hand.
“I don’t know,” Opal said. “I don’t know how I got here.”
“Elle ne sait pas,” Farrakhan repeated to the Skull in French.
“What is your name?” the Skull asked.
Did it matter if he knew her name? Opal Harrington would mean nothing to him. Unless he knew of her father’s position with MI6. Even then, he wouldn’t know her father had a daughter. All the same, best not to let him know her last name. She took a chance that he simply wanted a name to call her by and said, “Opal.”
“Opal,” the adviser Farrakhan repeated.
To her surprise, the Skull smiled. “Like the jewel,” he said. “Are you a jewel, my captive?” He snapped off several staccato phrases of Lusakistani to the old man.
“My master wishes to know how you got here,” Farrakhan said. “He is a patient man, but now he grows impatient.”
One of the books Opal had read during her basic training was entitled The Projection of the Astral Body, written by a psychical researcher called Hereward somebody. It told the story of an American named Sylvan Muldoon, who had spontaneous out-of-body experiences throughout most of his life. He attributed them to the fact that he was a chronic invalid. He believed illness loosened his second body. She’d also read various reports of people projecting while in the hospital and after accidents.
“I was ill,” Opal said. “The doctor told me to stay in bed—I had fever. I think I must have fallen asleep because I dreamed I was here, in the mountains.” The dreaming business was sheer inspiration. Dreaming made her sound confused and innocent. Dreaming made it sound as if it might be safe to let her go.
“Where do you live?” Farrakhan asked.
Her accent would give her away if nothing else, assuming he was familiar with accents. She decided it was probably safe to tell him, in any case. “Great Britain.”
“Great Britain,” Farrakhan repeated with emphasis. He smiled a little.
Opal hesitated, trying to stay in character as a schoolgirl dreamer, then said innocently, “Can you let me out of this cage? It’s very uncomfortable.” She half thought of adding that she wouldn’t try to escape, but decided not to press her luck.
“In Great Britain where? Is it London?”
“Yes, London,” Opal said. It didn’t matter anyway. The Project was located outside London.
The adviser Farrakhan turned to the Skull. “British,” he said in English. “A girl who is ill and dreams she is here visiting Venskab Faivre. A girl from London. Ce qu’elle voudrait nous faire croire. This she would have us believe.” He turned back to Opal, and the smile had left his face. “We have no more patience with such lies,” he said. He made a gesture with his left hand. “Now we must learn from you the truth!”
Opal’s second body convulsed as it flooded with a tidal wave of agony.
18
Danny, the Shadow Project
Sir Roland was serious. They walked out of the library and took a hidden lift down to the underground complex. He went through the full security bit, thumbprint, eye pattern, key pattern, and—something Danny hadn’t discovered earlier—voice analysis. Danny kept staring at Sir Roland, wondering what he’d gotten himself into.
“I want you to understand exactly what our work is here,” Sir Roland said. “Would you like some tea?”
The guided tour had taken them to what looked like a little canteen, deserted at this hour, but Sir Roland got them tea from a machine and carried it to the table in plastic cups. The tea tasted awful, but Danny said nothing because his Nan had brought him up to be polite when somebody was nice enough to do something for you. Besides, it sounded like nice Sir Roland might be offering him a job.
Sir Roland sipped his own tea and made a brief face as he sat down. “I suppose the best way to put it is this,” he said. “The world we live in is a lot more dangerous than it used to be. Time was when you knew where to find your enemy—Napoleonic France, Nazi Germany, Communist Russia. If they decided to attack you, there was always a warning. Troop movements, missile alerts, what have you. Not anymore.”
“You mean like the War on Terror?” Danny asked.
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” Sir Roland told him. “International terrorism. An enemy that could be anywhere and attacks without warning. There has never been a time when intelligence—espionage—spying, if you like—has been more important to the free world. But even spying doesn’t work the way it used to.” He glared at his plastic cup. “This is dreadful tea. Do you want me to see if the machine has some coffee?”
“No thanks,” Danny said. He wanted the man to keep talking.
Sir Roland sighed. “It used to be you infiltrated men into East Berlin, or bugged the Russian Embassy in London. You knew where to plant your bugs, you knew where to send your spies. But how do you plant a bug in a terrorist camp halfway up some mountain in Lusakistan when the people you want to spy on keep moving about like a three-card trick? Oh, we still do it, of course, but it’s particularly difficult for spies to maintain their cover when it sometimes involves killing innocent civilians. Frankly, we’ve lost many good people. Meanwhile, the quality of the intelligence coming back has been dropping steadily. Clearly we need a new approach. Which is where our Project comes in. Are you sure you don’t want a coffee?”
“No thanks.” Danny shook his head.
“Mind if I do?”
“Be my guest.”
Sir Roland carried back another plastic cup. “Remote viewing is definitely part of the answer. You can send an operative out quite safely. You can send him at a moment’s notice. You can dispatch him—instantly—anywhere in the world. There’s very little cost involved, so you can afford to check out every lead or rumor. Your man can slip past every known security system. He’ll never be captured or killed. The enemy doesn’t even know he’s being spied on—can’t know: remote viewing is completely undetectable.” He sipped from his cup. “This is just as bad as the tea.”
“Thought it might be,” Danny said.
Sir Roland set the cup down. “The point is that here at the Project we can now trigger a remote-viewing experience in which the operative can be sent to specific coordinates—anywhere, without fail—in his energy body, and once there—”
Danny said nothing. He was curious about “energy body” but didn’t want to interrupt. Thing was, it sounded like the job might be spying, and if Roland wanted Danny as the next James Bond, there could be room for a nice little arrangement. Danny was thinking Porsche.
Sir Roland looked vaguely uncomfortable. “Unfortunately a full, reliable projection only works for certain individuals. Very few of them are adults.”
Danny had the feeling something had just whizzed past his head. “Pardon?”
“It’s a question of psychological interactions with the energy body. The research shows that general mindset influences brain-wave patterns, as, of course, do endocrine levels. Some fluctuations are fine—indeed, necessary—but fixed patterns can become counterproductive.”
“Pardon?” Danny said again.
Sir Roland smiled a little. “Most adults are too set in their ways. If you want to detach the energy body, you need a mind that’s imaginative and genuinely flexible. Finding that in an adult is virtually impossible, so we had to turn elsewhere. Young children are viable in the technical sense, but obviously you can’t use young children as spies. So we use teenagers.”
It all came together. “You want me to be a remote-viewing spy?” Danny said. “Is that what this is all about?”
“I’ve reason to believe you have a talent for it. Not many do. In fact, at the moment, we only have a handful of active operatives.”
“How do you know I have the talent?” Danny asked.
“Something you said.”
Danny waited for him to explain, then, when he didn’t, tried again. “What would I have to do?”
Sir Roland shrugged. “Take the basic training. We have ways to develop a natural talent, which we can then enhance electronically. Once you’re trained, you would be expected to go on missions.”
“Spy missions?”
“Essentially, yes.”
“Like James Bond?”
“Not quite. There are very few pretty girls, I’m afraid. But to compensate, you will be in no physical danger.”
Danny said, “What’s in it for me?”
A small smile played across Sir Roland’s lips. “I suppose I could say it would keep you out of jail. You did break in, remember—and we caught you red-handed.”
“I’m too young to go to jail. But even if I wasn’t—”
“I know,” Roland cut in. “You wouldn’t be much use to anybody working under duress. So let me put the proposition to you. You’ve been offered a place at Cambridge, which you can’t afford to take up—”
Danny gaped. “How did you know that?”
“We broke into your home,” Roland said.
For a long moment Danny just stared at him.
“Come on, Danny,” Roland said easily. “You burgled this house, gate-crashed a top secret operation, and told us a pack of lies. What did you expect—a medal? We had to find out who you were. Apart from all other considerations, you might have been an enemy agent—they’re using youngsters your age now. Our security chief let you escape from—”
“Let me?”
“Yes, of course. You didn’t imagine it was that easy to walk out of an MI6 secure operation?” Roland sniffed. “Well, obviously you did, but it wasn’t and it isn’t. When you left the building, there was an electronic tracer in your jacket. We simply followed you home, and when you left again for the hospital, two of our operatives kept an eye on you there while a team broke into your house—”
“My Nan’s house!” Danny snapped, outraged.
“—and searched it for incriminating evidence. You came up clean, but one of my men found your letter of acceptance from Cambridge. Congratulations, by the way. I’m an Oxford man myself, but I know how difficult it is to get into any half-decent university these days. Now the thing is, Danny, we both know you can’t afford to take up the offer—” He stopped suddenly. “You haven’t declined it yet, have you?”
“No.” Danny’s gaze had turned into a glare.
“Oh, good. Because we can help you. How would it sound if I told you the Project will fund your education at Cambridge—fees, lodging, living expenses, plus some decent money in your pocket—in return for a simple commitment to give the Project the benefit of your talents a few days every month? Once you graduate, there will be an offer of a full-time, permanent position with MI6 in London, with good benefits and all. What do you say?”
“No.”
“No?” Roland looked taken aback. “Don’t you want to go to Cambridge?”
“Of course I want to go to Cambridge,” Danny said. “Honest answer—I’d kill to go to Cambridge. My ticket out, isn’t it? You wouldn’t know about it, but it’s no fun growing up where I live—hard men, drug dealers, street gangs, and never enough cash. Can’t go out late at night—I’ve been beaten up more times than I can count. But I’m not going to Cambridge and it’s not the money. Well, it is the money, but that’s not the only reason. It’s not even the main reason.”
“What is the main reason?”
Danny looked at him long and hard. He never liked opening up to people, or talking about the things that were really important to him—too much chance they’d use it all against you. But there was something different about Sir Roland, something that made you feel he could be trusted. And besides, what did it matter if Danny told the truth for once? He took a deep breath. “Know what, Sir Roland? I’ve been telling myself I’m fed up with school, fed up with the snobby treatment. But it’s not really that—after what I’ve gone through at home, I can handle the toffee-noses. What it really is, is my Nan. Bad enough when I went to private school—least I could get home in the evenings—but if I swan off all the way to Cambridge, there’s nobody to look after her.”
“I gather your grandmother has had some sort of stroke?”
“Yes, she has. But even before the stroke I couldn’t have left her. She’s getting on now, must be over eighty—won’t tell me—my grandfather’s dead, my mum’s gone off somewhere, so she has no other relatives, no money except her pension. She thinks she can take care of herself, but she can’t, besides which she gets lonely on her own. Stroke’s made things worse, but I’d already decided I wasn’t going to Cambridge—just hadn’t gotten around to telling them yet.”
Roland stared at him thoughtfully for a moment. “All right,” he said at last. “Supposing we agreed to look after your grandmother as well?”
Danny blinked. He hadn’t seen that one coming. “I don’t want her in a home,” he said quickly.
“I wasn’t thinking of a home,” Roland said. “I was thinking of a live-in nurse, something of that sort. To keep an eye on her and keep her company. You could send her extra money from your earnings, make her a little more comfortable. And you could be with her outside term time or on the weekends you’re not working for us. It’s not that far from London to Cambridge.”
“But—” Danny said, then shut up and looked at Roland. Eventually he said, “I don’t think I can do this. She mightn’t even survive the stroke. I can’t start making decisions about the rest of my life until I know for sure what’s happening.”
Sir Roland said soberly, “Why not compromise—make this a two-stage affair? We could start with an interim arrangement. Your grandmother’s in the hospital now and may be for some time, so you can’t look after her at the moment anyway. You have a couple of months before you have to respond to Cambridge. Join us temporarily, take some of the basic training, get the feel of things, and we can work out something more permanent when your situation clarifies. Meanwhile, we can be a lot of help to your grandmother.”
Sir Roland was smooth, Danny had to give him that. But was he slippery? This was the Secret Service. Once you were in, you were in. All the same…
“Okay, what’s the deal with my Nan? The exact deal?”
Roland hardly hesitated. “At the moment your grandmother is in a public ward of a second-rate National Health Service hospital. If you’re prepared to join us, she will be moved at once to a private clinic—one of our own, in fact—where she will receive round-the-clock nursing and the most up-to-date medical treatment. She’s had a serious stroke, so there can be no guarantees, I’m afraid, but she will have a much better chance of recovery, and she will be infinitely more comfortable.” He looked at Danny soberly. “I’ve spent far too long here—I’m supposed to see the prime minister this afternoon. Do you want to sleep on my question, or can you give me an answer now? If you do, I’ll make a phone call and have your grandmother transferred right away.”
“I can give you an answer now,” Danny said. “I’ll do it.”
Sir Roland smiled and flicked open a mobile phone. He dialed, spoke softly for a moment, then flicked it shut again. “Done!” he said to Danny, and stood up.
As he did so, an alarm began to sound.
19
Dorothy, Saint Luke’s Hospital
The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, Dorothy thought. Well, we all know what the Lord took away, don’t we? And now he’d given her a headache. Funny how much you took for granted. You got a headache, you swallowed an aspirin. If you couldn’t get it for yourself, you asked somebody. Only now you couldn’t. So when the Lord gave you a headache, you kept it.
