The Shadow Project, page 2
“We don’t know yet, but he’s under lock and key now, so we won’t be disturbed again. I’ve asked George Hanover to question him. I’ll have a word myself after I send you off. Meanwhile, we need to get going. Feel okay to start—the two of you?”
“What’s the target?” Michael asked.
Carradine glanced at him in surprise. “Haven’t you been briefed?”
Michael shook his head. “No. Should I have?”
“Neither have I,” Opal put in.
“Sorry,” Carradine said. “Thought George talked to you.” He went over to the control panel and flicked a switch. “We’ve had a tip-off from Israeli Intelligence—another Elvis sighting. We need you to check it out.”
Another Elvis sighting. Opal groaned inwardly. The target was the Skull, head of Épée de la Colère, the Sword of Wrath terrorist network. Real name Venskab Faivre, but no one ever used it since the media had come up with the nickname. At the Project they’d taken to calling him Elvis because so many people reported seeing him in peculiar places, the way nutcases insisted they kept seeing Elvis Presley. He was widely believed to be the most dangerous man in the world ever since his chemical weapon attack on New Jersey had left seven thousand people dead and an almost unbelievable eighteen thousand seriously injured. Although America had always been his prime target, he had struck successfully in Britain, India, Australia, Israel, and Bermuda. Security services throughout the world were now listing him as their number-one priority. The problem was that the U.S. government had put a $50 million bounty on his head. No wonder people kept thinking they saw him. “Where’s he been sighted?” Opal asked.
“Lusakistan,” Carradine said. “Near the border with China.”
“Lusakistan.” Opal sighed. “Like the last time. And the time before.”
“Actually,” Carradine said, unfazed, “Mossad thinks it’s the real deal this time, hence the urgency. So if you two are okay with it, maybe we should get started.”
Opal slumped down in her chair. She didn’t want to complain too much or Michael might think she was a bit of a brat, and she didn’t want that, certainly not on their first mission together. She grinned at him. “I’ll try not to put too much strain on you,” she said, then groaned inwardly at her lame attempt at a joke.
Michael looked as if he might say something, but when he did, it was only a sober “Thank you,” which was not a satisfactory response at all. Annoyingly, he looked at Mr. Carradine, who nodded. Michael sat down in the other chair, then redeemed himself at once by turning to stare directly into her eyes. He gave her the smile again, then turned away. But they were still sitting close, almost shoulder to shoulder. She could smell his cologne. Normally she hated boys who used cologne, but this one was rather nice, spicy and subtle.
Carradine adjusted the helmets for both of them. The metal skullcaps were always icy cold, and their trailing filaments were irritating until they connected with the microchip implants in her scalp. She waited patiently while he made the electrical connections, then watched out of the corner of her eye while he did the same for Michael. “Comfortable?” he asked them both when he had finished.
She disliked the gel—she had to shower after every mission to get it out of her hair—but since the equipment wouldn’t work without it, she just said, “Yes.”
“Yes,” Michael echoed confidently.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Fran come in. Fran usually took care of operations once Mr. Carradine finished the initial setup. After a moment she heard the whine of the generator, closely followed by the distinctive tone of the Hemi-Sync. “Good luck,” Michael murmured, then closed his eyes as per standard procedure. Opal did the same. There was a brief moment of disorientation, but almost at once she felt the warm, pleasant flood of relaxation as their brain waves synchronized. Opal let out a long, sighing breath. The sensation was almost as if Michael had crept into her head and was now hugging her. Not telepathy, exactly—but she could sense the close connection of his presence and his warmth. She felt as if she’d known him for years.
“Here we go,” said Carradine, and he threw more switches.
He must have gotten the Hemi-Sync under control, because suddenly she could see the hazy flutter of the threshold guardians. Not for the first time, she thought they looked like little bats.
4
Danny, the Shadow Project
It was like being back in court, except it wasn’t. More like the Spanish Inquisition. Or the interrogation room at his local cop-shop. He knew these characters well. Not by name, of course, but you could spot the types a mile away.
Take the goons by the door. Beefy. Big chests. Sharp suits just a shade too tight so you could admire their muscles. You saw the type employed as bouncers outside clubs, throwing their weight around and showing off for the girls. You saw it in the drug gangs too, minders for the pushers. And you got it with certain cops at the precinct as well, not the brightest bulbs in the sockets, but great when you wanted to break a door down or scare somebody rigid, the way Danny was now. These two stood like sentries in the doorway, faces blank, arms crossed, all ready to make sure young Danny Lipman didn’t make a break for it. Flattering to think it took two of them, but that didn’t make him feel any less nervous.
The ones behind the desk were familiar types as well: Good Cop, Bad Cop, only Bad Cop was a woman. Nice looking too, if she’d only crack a smile, but you could tell from the shoes you wouldn’t want to mess with her. Good Cop was older, liked his food, nice open face, lazy eye, friendly grin, shapeless suit. They could both actually be cops, Danny thought. Especially the woman. He could imagine her in uniform, pounding the beat, poking her nose in where it wasn’t wanted. And the man might be plainclothes gone to seed, close to retirement.
Danny tried to get his fear under control. He knew from past experience he mustn’t show he was scared—that only encouraged them. But the bad news was, he really was scared. This wasn’t like any of his previous brushes with the law. He was in some sort of huge underground complex, like nothing he’d ever seen before. This wasn’t law enforcement: the cops didn’t have enough money to build something this size. It was far too big to be anything but government.
Danny worried about that, worried about that a lot. He didn’t know for sure what he’d gotten himself into, but his money was on some sort of secret agency. It was the only thing that made sense. And he was old enough to know that British secret agents weren’t nice gentlemen like James Bond, whatever they said in the movies. These characters really were licensed to kill and weren’t afraid to do it, either. The question was, would they kill somebody just because he’d found their hideaway?
“What’s your name?” Bad Cop demanded.
“Lester Thomas, ma’am,” Danny told her. He opened his eyes wide and tried to look innocent. With luck she might think he was too stupid to lie.
“Where do you live, Lester?” asked Good Cop mildly.
“Sixty-eight Rigby Villas,” Danny told him. It was the home of a dealer he knew. If these freaks ever came calling, they were in for a big surprise. Lester was a hard man and so were his friends.
“What are you doing here?” asked Good Cop, still mildly.
“Sir,” said Danny earnestly, “your front door was open—somebody must have left it off the latch by accident—and I heard a noise inside and I came in to tell you, to warn somebody. I mean, just last Wednesday my old gran got her handbag nicked.” He blinked his eyes, took a deep breath to steady his nerves, and added, “Can’t be too careful.”
“Is that why you assaulted Michael?” Bad Cop cut in, glaring.
That was admittedly a weakness in his story. Michael had to be the boy he’d kneed in the nuts. He stared at her with wide-eyed innocence. “You know him, then? Thought he might be a burglar.”
“He’s an African prince, you young—” Bad Cop started to get out of her seat, and for just a second Danny thought there might be a bit of grievous bodily harm coming.
But then Good Cop waved her back with a quiet “It’s okay, Fran, the boy’s just a bit nervous.” Then to Danny he said, “Actually, we do know him.” He had an interesting accent, a bit upper crust for a copper, but country rather than city. Danny filed that away, along with the information that Bad Cop was called Fran, probably short for Frances.
“Yes, well, he was running straight for me,” Danny said. “Seemed like he was up to no good.”
“The door wasn’t really open, was it?” said Good Cop suddenly. He smiled a little sadly to show there’d be no hard feelings if Danny decided to tell the truth. Danny opened his mouth to tell another pack of lies, but Good Cop hadn’t finished. “Or, if it was, you thought it might be an opportunity to look around, see if there was anything worth…borrowing?” Fran glared, but Good Cop’s smile never wavered. “I understand,” he said. “I know what it’s like to be short of money.” Danny blinked. It looked like it had been a long time since Good Cop went short of cash. “It makes you do things—on impulse—that you mightn’t otherwise do. Now, you look like a decent enough lad to me.” Fran snorted, but GC went on without a pause: “There’s nothing missing from the house, and I know our staff handled you a little roughly, so why don’t you just tell us what you did and what you saw, and maybe we could see our way to forgetting the whole thing.”
“George!” Fran exclaimed, like she was shocked by the suggestion.
So Good Cop’s name was George, but the most important words in his speech were what you saw, Danny thought. They were up to no good, that much was obvious, and wanted to know how much of it he’d spied. Which meant there was a chance he might get out of this with a whole skin, but he had to be careful. The thing was, he hadn’t seen much. There’d been the girl, and God alone knew what they’d been planning to do to her, but just at the precise minute he’d seen her, they hadn’t actually been doing anything. She was the one who stopped him from punching what’s-his-name-Michael in the mouth, so unless she was Houdini, she couldn’t have been strapped into an electric chair.
Danny considered his options. In a situation like this you couldn’t assume they were stupid, couldn’t pretend you’d seen nothing. This was a critical moment and he had to play it right. “All right, it’s a fair cop. I did come in thinking there might be something…you know, some cash, lying around. But the door really was open, I swear it, and that’s a big temptation when your mother—” He was going to say needs an operation but decided that would be overdoing it. “—has all those bills to pay. But I didn’t take anything, I swear to God I didn’t.”
They didn’t look like they were buying it. Danny said hurriedly, “Anyway, when I came down here, there was a girl getting her hair done in a room with bats flying round her head, and next thing I knew this guy was running at me and I panicked, I admit it, and I hit him. But I didn’t mean any harm and I didn’t take anything, not a thing.” He thought of making an impassioned plea for freedom, but decided to leave well enough alone and stopped, waiting for a reaction.
Good Cop George was frowning. “Did you say ‘bats flying round her head’?”
5
Opal, Lusakistan
There were mountains, of course, but they looked completely different from the last time. Opal stared. This was her third trip to Lusakistan, to the same part of the Pakistan border, but—
She stopped. Mr. Carradine hadn’t said the Pakistan border, now that she came to think of it. He’d said border with China. She didn’t even know Lusakistan had a border with China. So this was a different part of Lusakistan altogether, but just as rocky, miserable, and depressing as the bits she’d already seen. The mountains were all around her, a barren wasteland.
There was no sign of a camp.
Which meant nothing, of course. On this sort of mission, the coordinates were always approximate and sometimes just plain wrong. You could travel for miles before you found the exact place you were looking for. But there was a standard procedure, drummed into her by her father and Mr. Carradine. You examined the area where you landed, moving in gradually widening circles. You took your time and were extremely thorough, because even though coordinates were always approximate and mistakes were often made, the area where you landed was still the most likely place to find your target. So you searched it thoroughly before you even thought of anything else.
Opal moved away carefully. She was looking, basically, for signs of life—any signs of life. Once she spotted something—anything—she could investigate further. She was excited, as she always was on a mission. After nearly a year as an operative—and eight months of preliminary training—that had never faded. It wasn’t the thrill of danger. When she was tracking terrorists, she felt like she was doing something really important. And her work was respected in the Project. Her success rate was the highest of all the operatives’, even though many of her missions drew a blank. She suspected this one would be among them.
Despite Mr. Carradine’s remark about strong intelligence, she knew the chances of finding the Skull were slim; the agencies had been trying for years without result. But she might be able to confirm he’d been here, which would still be useful. Or she might stumble accidentally on some other terrorist, perhaps even a training camp. Anything like that would be a reasonable result.
After more than an hour of diligent searching, there was still no sign of life, current or recent. She was experienced enough to spot the signs now—the unnatural clearings in the prevailing wilderness, the remains of temporary fortifications, even carelessly strewn rubbish. Sword of Wrath groups kept on the move, so few of their encampments lasted long—except for training camps, which could sometimes stand for months. They often lived in tents, like desert nomads, staying in any one spot for a day or two at most before moving on. If they had reason to think they were being tracked, they worked hard to eliminate signs of their presence. But when they considered themselves safe, they got careless. If you looked closely, you might find a spent cartridge, sometimes signs of a fire, the occasional empty Coke can (Coke got everywhere). Once she’d even spotted a half-written letter ornamented with a doodled drawing of a dog.
Of course her previous experience had been with low-level Sword of Wrath cells. If the new intelligence was correct and the Skull really was somewhere in the area, nobody was going to get careless, whether they thought they were being tracked or not.
Whatever the reason, Opal could find nothing. She was on the point of beginning the wider search when a thought struck her. Everything she’d done so far had been based on the assumption that they’d camped out among the rocks. What if this assumption was wrong? She looked along the face of the mountain and saw the cave at once, high up in the escarpment. There could be a dozen men in there, their ArmaLites at the ready, looking down across the terrain below. Even a single sentry would stop their being taken by surprise. You could send an army after them, and they would have melted away before it moved higher than the foothills.
Opal began to climb.
As she’d been trained, she took her time, moving slowly, alert for any movement. The light was at an angle to the cave mouth, so it was impossible to see more than a foot or so inside. Anything could be in there: terrorists, wild animals, anything. So long as they stood back, no one could see them.
It was silly, but she found she was breathing heavily by the time she reached the level of the cave. Strange how old habits got you, even in situations like this. From her present vantage point she could see a great deal farther into the cavern, and there was still no sign of life. But when she entered it herself, it was clear that someone had been here. The signs were in plain sight—the dead ashes of a fire, a scrap of newspaper with Arabic printing, an abandoned plastic container. But all indications were this was the litter of a single man, two at most. The cave was too small to shelter more. So not the Skull. It was unthinkable that the Sword of Wrath leader would travel alone, or with just one other companion. His survival depended on protection. The last time he’d been positively sighted, he was accompanied by a small army equipped with heavy ordnance and armored cars. What she’d found here might be an overnight for a lesser terrorist, but it could just as easily have been shelter for a goatherd.
She took a last look around, then moved outside again. If the Skull really was somewhere in this vicinity, she needed a better vantage point to find him. She looked up at the sky. There was cloud cover, but it was high, so at five hundred feet she would have a clear view for miles.
Opal launched herself from the mouth of the cave and flew.
6
Sir Roland, London
Opal’s father was carrying a coffeemaker through the kitchen when his cell phone rang. He flicked it open and glanced at the caller name. Hector—inconvenient as always. He thumbed the green handset icon and said, “Roland.”
“Priory meeting on the fifth,” Hector said without preamble. “Can you make it?”
“Doubtful,” Roland said. “I may be in Malta.”
“Do your best,” Hector said. “There are some peculiar undercurrents running at the moment. They’ve moved the spear.”
“What? From the Kunsthistorisches?”
“No longer on display,” Hector said almost cheerfully, one of his more annoying traits at times of crisis.
“Where’s it gone?”
“Hoping you could find out for us,” Hector said. “Since you have the might of MI6 behind you.”
Roland frowned. “I’ll do my best.” If Hector was right, this was not good news. “You don’t think it’s been stolen, do you?”
“Doubt it—there’d have been something in the papers.”
“Have you checked the Austrian papers?”
“Don’t speak German,” Hector said without apology.
“I’ll have someone take a look,” Roland said. “It might not make the British papers—not sensational enough, even with the Hitler connection.” He sighed. “I’ll also make contact with the museum—they may just have taken it off display for a while.”
