The Shadow Project (4 page)

P
iece of cake,
Danny thought. But he resisted the urge to fling his cell door open and make a run for it. The people who nicked him hadn't impressed him very much, but it never did to underestimate anybody. Especially when you didn't know exactly who they were.

He pulled the door open a crack and peered through. The place they'd stashed him had
prison
written all over it, right down to the bunk bed and the standard lock on the door. Which made him grin because a standard lock didn't last more than five minutes when you had the tools.

Crap!
Should have guessed it—there was a guard! He was sitting on a seat outside, one of the security goons who'd been stationed by the door when Danny was questioned. Danny could see his profile through the crack. Ugly, short haircut, thick neck, wouldn't want to meet him on a dark night. But was he built for speed?
Danny knew how to leg it when the occasion warranted, first thing you learned as a street kid. If you were big and tough, you fought. If you were a skinny little runt, the way Danny used to be, it was speed that got you away from the other gang. Danny was bigger now, and he'd left the street gangs behind, but he still had his turn of speed. And the element of surprise.

But the trouble with legging it was, he didn't know where to leg it
to.
And there might be a second guard, out of sight. There'd been two when they were questioning him.

The guard spotted him! Danny jerked his head back, waited for a moment, then put his eye to the crack again. No, he'd been wrong—not spotted. The guard was just closing his book and standing up. Standing up and plodding off. Call of nature, probably.

Danny held back until the footsteps faded and he heard the closing of a door. Then, all thoughts of a second guard forgotten, he opened his own door, looked around, slipped out, and took off.

He was on the bus home before he switched on his cell phone.

There was a message waiting for him, a woman's voice, familiar though he couldn't place it and she didn't leave a name. Sounded a bit anxious, like she wasn't used to voice mail. The woman said, “Danny? That you,
Danny? Hate these bleeding things. Danny, if you get this, come straight home. Your Nan's been taken bad.”

And that was it. No details, nothing. Danny clicked the button and stared at his reflection in the window of the bus. He'd gone cold inside.

O
pal dropped lightly behind the ridge like an eagle landing on a crag. Everybody kept telling her there was no way she could be seen, but she simply couldn't shake the habit of caution. The problem was that she felt solid, as if she still had a physical body, and her head kept telling her it made no sense to take chances. In some ways it was like being in a dream. Nothing could really hurt you in a dream, but you still screamed and ran when the monster chased you.

She started to walk. Everywhere was rocky and steep. In normal circumstances she would have found the terrain difficult, stumbled, maybe even fallen. But in her second body she could move without problems. She could have walked right through those rocks, right through the ridge itself, if she put her mind to it, but she found walking through things creepy and avoided doing it where possible.

She reached the top of the ridge and peered over.

She knew at once she'd gotten lucky. Stretched out across the valley below was a massive military camp, so massive it was almost a town. Opal crouched, thunderstruck. Temporary structures and tents mixed with permanent brick buildings, while on the far side of the valley several tracks and two well-made roads wound their way up to what had to be a warren of caves pushed deep into the mountain. The whole place looked like a garrison, swarming with armed men. Even as she watched, a convoy of trucks, armored cars, and a scattering of light tanks meandered along the valley floor. At one end, behind a heavily guarded stockade, soldiers were loading a helicopter with crates from a low building with a camouflage roof.

She'd found the Skull!

The moment the thought occurred, she dismissed it. Until she investigated further, she couldn't even be sure this was a terrorist encampment. Lusakistan was still run by warlords. For all she knew, she could be looking at the headquarters of one of them. She needed to get closer.

Opal glanced at her watch and found herself staring at an empty wrist. It was so irritating. Nothing could be brought on a mission except the clothes on your back, but looking at your watch was like hiding behind rocks—a habit that died hard. She focused on the main
road through the camp. There was just the briefest pause—and then, with no sensation of movement, she was standing in the middle of the road itself. New smells assailed her nostrils.

There was an armored car bearing down on her, but she ignored it. From a distance the roadway looked in better repair than it was close up. It was potholed and crumbling as if made in a hurry or subjected to a lot of wear and tear. Opal looked around. This
might
be a legitimate township despite the heavy military presence, but she doubted it. The whole location looked as if it had been chosen for secrecy. There was a single, narrow entrance to the valley. The place was invisible from the lowlands, invisible even immediately below until you stumbled onto it, and as Opal had discovered, it was almost impossible to see from the air until you were directly over it.

The armored car drove through her, creating a moment of darkness and confusion. For an instant she felt disoriented, queasy; then she was back in the daylight. She began to walk toward what might have been a market square.

The place had an unpleasant smell—the sweat of unwashed men, mixed with cordite and diesel fumes, with an occasional revolting burst of cheap cologne. Almost everyone was in some sort of military uniform,
mostly dusty and tattered. Everyone was heavily armed.

She hated moving through crowds, hated the way people passed through her like the armored car. There was no sensation, of course, but she found herself tensing each time it happened. It was like one of those 3-D movies where you had to wear the special glasses. When they threw the bucket of water over you, you knew it wasn't real, but you ducked anyway.

Opal had two goals. The first, and by far the most important, was to try to identify this place as a terrorist camp. She couldn't afford to make a mistake. If she did, the Allies would bomb innocent civilians. It had happened before, more than once. But never, thank God, because of one of her reports. She didn't want this to be the first.

The second goal, far less easy, was to find out whether the Skull was here. Confirmation of that would make her a legend.

There was a standard procedure for a mission like this, but she wasn't keen to apply it. It involved crisscrossing the area under investigation in a tight grid pattern, moving fast without reference to structures, people or obstacles, and all the while observing, taking note of clues. All very logical, except that Opal loathed the bewildering experience of passing through walls almost as much as she loathed the experience of passing through
people. Gridding meant passing through both. All the same, it looked as if she might—

Opal stopped dead. Someone had emerged from the heavily guarded compound where the helicopter was being loaded. For a moment she simply stared at him, openmouthed, not able to believe her eyes. But there was no doubt at all. She was standing less than a hundred yards away from the tall, hairless figure of the Skull.

“Y
ou did
what
?” Sir Roland exploded.

Carradine gave one of his small, crooked smiles. “Take it easy, Roland—it was the best thing, in my judgment.”

Roland.
Not
sir,
or even
Sir Roland.
You could always tell Carradine served a different master. It wasn't that Roland really cared about titles. But, dammit, Carradine was younger than he was, so a little respect would not have gone amiss. “Your judgment was that
letting him escape
was the best thing to do?”

Carradine nodded. “That was my call.”

“You didn't think to consult me?”

“Didn't want to trouble you.”

“I'm head of the Project,” Roland snapped.

“And I'm head of security,” Carradine shot back, as if that clinched the argument.

Because he was still irritated (read
furious
), Roland
said, “In that case, Gary, I think you'd better explain, as
head of security
, how anyone could imagine that letting the boy go was the best thing to do.”

They were in Carradine's office with its uncomfortable chairs and high-tech equipment. Carradine placed considerable reliance on computers and associated gadgets. Roland hated the bloody things.

Carradine, who had parked one buttock on the corner of his desk, glanced briefly at an open laptop before he said, “Well, for one thing, our questioning got nowhere.” By which he meant George Hanover's questioning: there was a bit of an edge between Carradine and Hanover, although neither let it interfere with work.

“It got us his name and address,” Roland said coldly. “Enough to run a check, I would have thought.”

“Both phony, I'm afraid.”

Roland stared. “What?”

“Lester Thomas isn't his name, and he doesn't live at Rigby Villas.”

Roland drew up one of the hideous modern chairs and sat down. He looked at Carradine. “How do you know?”

“As you say, what he gave us was enough to run a check. So I had the Department send some men around.”

Roland found himself feeling even more aggrieved.
“MI6? You ordered MI6 to send some men around?” Carradine was CIA. They thought they ruled the world.

“Requested,” Carradine corrected him.

Roland made a conscious effort to reel in his temper. CIA or not, Carradine had considerable experience, so presumably he did know what he was doing. “What did you find out?”

“Rigby Villas exists, and Lester Thomas lives at number sixty-eight. But Lester isn't our boy. He's a Jamaican thug in his fifties, known to the police. I think our young burglar probably knows him too—he was awfully quick with the name, and it matches the address. My guess is he hoped we'd go calling and Lester would beat us up. But he's not Lester.”

“Who is the boy, then?” Roland asked.

“We don't know.”

Genuinely puzzled, Roland asked, “So you let him escape?”

“Seemed the easiest way,” Carradine said. “The kid had a set of professional lockpicks—”

“Are you serious?” Roland interrupted. “Where would a teenager get hold of professional lockpicks?”

Carradine smiled slightly. “The Internet, I'd think. You can buy the basics for a few dollars.”

“Can you really? Good God.”

“Anyway,” Carradine said, “I found them when I searched him, but pretended I hadn't—he'd sewn them into the lining of his jacket, so the only way you could get to them was through a hole in an inside pocket. When I felt the set, I had the idea that it might save some time and effort if I let him use them. I put Burke on duty outside the door with instructions to take a leak if the kid managed to get the door open. Sure enough, the kid did—amazingly quickly, as well. Burke heard the door click, took himself off and warned everybody else to keep clear. When he got back, the kid was gone.” He grinned. “There was only one way he could go—we locked the other doors and left an elevator operational, so he had to end up in the parking lot.”

“What about gate security?”

“Templeton had orders to look the other way.”

Frowning, Roland said, “You've let him walk out, and now he could be anywhere?”

Carradine's smile broadened. “Not anywhere. I bugged his jacket when I searched him. If you come around the desk, I can show you on the laptop
exactly
where he is right now.”

D
anny ran the last few hundred yards. Old man Kozak—kids all called him Kojak—came out of his front door and waved, but Danny ignored him. By the time the bewildered look settled back on Kojak's face, Danny had his key in the lock, the door open, and was shouting, “Nan? You in there, Nan?”

Danny and his grandmother lived in a terrace house, two up, two down, that belonged to the local council and was set aside for pensioners. There were a few younger souls living there, family members like Danny, but there was always a wrinkly in the house somewhere.

“Nan? It's Danny.” His panic grew. Nan wasn't answering, but she was a bit hard of hearing, specially with the TV on, and she might be in the kitchen, or even out the back.
And she might be lying dead,
his panic whispered, but he pushed the thought aside.

There was nobody in the kitchen, nobody in the
living room. He took the stairs two at a time and ran into his Nan's room, which was full of junk, mainly plastic flowerpots, but empty of his Nan. He looked into the bathroom, which needed a bit of cleaning, but no Nan lying on the floor.

Danny ran down the stairs, ran through the kitchen, ran out the back door. “Nan!” he called, just stopping short of screaming it. He looked around the little yard. His grandmother wasn't here, wasn't anywhere. Somebody on his voice mail said she'd been taken bad, and now she was gone. He thought of the hospital. (Which one?) For just a moment he thought of Fanning's Funeral Parlor and hated himself for it.

“Danny? That you, Danny?”

Aggie from next door was rattling the latch, shuffling into the yard in her slippers and cardigan. She looked pale and worried, but relieved to see him. “Oh, Danny, thank God you've come. Didn't know if you would get my message.”

“What's happened, Aggie?”

“It's your Nan, Danny. She's had a stroke. Came in for a little chat and found her lying at the bottom of the stairs. Put the fear of God into me, I can tell you—I thought she was dead, see? I mean she looked dead, even though she had her eyes open, couldn't see her breathing.
Sweet Jesus,
I said when I saw her.”

“Where is she now? At your place?”

“Saint Luke the Physician's, Danny. They took her away in an ambulance, put an oxygen mask on her and everything. I thought I should go with her, but I wasn't family and my Tommy's on the night shift and the buses don't run this route. 'Sides, nothing I could do, was there? Don't think she even knew me, Danny. But you should go. Need to be somebody there when she wakes up.”

“I'm on my way,” said Danny.

Saint Luke the Physician Hospital was a sprawl of grimy buildings at the far end of Victoria Street. There was a large woman on reception who gave him a tired fake smile and asked, “Can I help you?”

Danny discovered he was sick with fear. He licked his lips. “Come to see about Dorothy Bayley.” He knew he was muttering, but he couldn't seem to get his voice any louder.

It made no difference to the receptionist, who was probably well used to nervous visitors. “Dorothy Bayley,” she repeated clearly, and turned sideways to flick through card index drawers. After a bit she frowned. “I don't suppose you know what day she was admitted?”

“Last night, I think,” Danny said. “They brought her in an ambulance.”

“Ah,” said the woman. “Excuse me a minute.” She reached for a phone.

Danny waited. When he couldn't hear what she was saying, he looked around the reception area. There was a young woman with a small child sitting in an armchair near the second set of glass doors. A cheery-looking old guy in a porter's uniform nodded to her as he walked past.

The receptionist was saying something. Danny turned back. “Pardon?”

“Are you a relative?” the receptionist asked him again. Her voice had taken on a kindly, sympathetic tone, which was worrying.

“Grandson,” Danny told her woodenly. “Come to visit.”

“The doctor will be with you in a minute,” said the receptionist. “You can take a seat over there.”

Danny took a seat beside a little table that was littered with old
Hello!
magazines. He didn't like this at all, didn't want the doctor to be with him in a minute. When your Nan was fine, just had a bit of a turn, they said, “She's in ward eighty-eight—go on up.” When there were problems—bad, serious problems—they said, “The doctor will be with you in a minute.” Doctors were too busy otherwise. Only got to see them when the receptionist didn't want to give you the bad news.

He was leafing through
Hello!,
calculating how much he could get for the ornaments on the singer's mantelpiece
in the main photo feature, when he noticed a man in a white coat talking to the receptionist. His stomach sank another notch as they looked in his direction. Then the doctor was walking toward him. “For Mrs. Bayley, is it? You're…?”

“Lipman,” Danny said. “Danny. She's my grandmother.” There was bad news. He could tell from the man's face.

The doctor sat down beside him, which meant it was even worse news. “Is your mother here?” he asked. “Or your father?”

Danny's father wouldn't be here for another five years, given time off for good behavior. God alone knew where his mother was, still with the Romanian maybe. Danny shook his head. “No.” Usually it was best not to explain, not to say anything more, but he could appreciate where the doc was heading, so he added, “I'm her only living.” When the doc looked blank, he finished: “Relative. In the country, so to speak.”

“Ah.” A pause, a deep breath, then, “I'm Dr. Miller, Danny. Your grandmother's had a stroke. You know what a stroke is?”

“Yes,” Danny said irritably.

“There was substantial bleeding into the cranial aper—inside her skull, and some swelling of the brain. We've operated to relieve the pressure and also to repair
the blood vessel—”

“You've operated already?”

“Yes. We had no choice. Your grandmother was in a very bad way when she arrived here.” He sounded a tad defensive. It occurred to Danny that nobody had been around to sign a consent form.

Danny said, “She's going to be all right, isn't she?”

That deep breath again. Dr. Miller said, “She's still in recovery, Danny, but I think she'll be okay. Her age is against her, of course, but she looks like a fighter. I think she'll pull through.”

Which told Danny they hadn't expected Nan to survive the operation. But now she was lying in a recovery room, tubes stuck up her nose. Danny knew the doc wasn't telling him everything: he could smell it. As an encouragement he said, “You think she's going to live?”

“I think so. I hope so.”

Danny looked him in the eye. “But…?”

The doctor shifted uneasily, and Danny could read his mind. There was good news and bad news, and the operation hadn't been the bad news. The bad news was still to come. “Look, Danny,” the doctor said, “it isn't just a question of whether she lives or dies. She's not quite out of danger, but her vital signs are good, and there were no problems during the operation, no technical problems. But it was some time before she got here, some time after
the actual stroke. There was a lot of bleeding. Frankly, we're worried about the possibility of brain damage.”

Danny stared at him. The words
brain damage
had turned him cold. After a long moment he asked, “How bad?”

“We don't know.”

Brain damage
could mean you lost a bit of feeling in your hands, or a small part of your face got frozen. But it could mean something else, something he didn't want to think about. He thought about it, swallowed, then asked hoarsely, “Could my Nan turn into a vegetable? Could it leave her so she can't speak, can't move at all?”

The doctor looked away. “We don't know.”

“How was she before the operation?” Danny asked.

Dr. Miller looked at him. After a long moment he said, “She couldn't move and she couldn't speak. But that doesn't mean she will stay that way. Not necessarily. We've done everything we can to minimize the damage, and we'll continue to monitor her very carefully while she's here, but she's going to need constant nursing for a time after she's discharged. Quite how long that will be I can't tell you yet.”

“Can I see her?” Danny said.

For a second it looked as if the doc was going to refuse, but then he said, “She'll be moved into ward seventeen when she comes out of recovery. That's on the second
floor. Why don't you go up and wait by the nurses' station? I'll look in and see how she is, and if everything's okay, you can see her for a short time: it might do her good to have someone from her family around when she wakes up.” He fixed Danny with a serious look. “But you mustn't expect too much at this stage, Danny. She'll be groggy from the anesthetic on top of all her other problems. So just a few minutes, eh?”

“Okay,” Danny said.

The nurses on the second floor were nice. They told him his Nan was going to be all right, found him a quiet room to wait in—somebody's office, by the look of it—and offered him a nice cup of tea. He was drinking it when the door opened and a fresh-faced young doctor in a white coat stuck his head in. “You Danny Lipman?”

“That's me,” Danny said. He set his cup down and started to stand up. “See my Nan now, can I? She all right?”

The young doctor came in and closed the door behind him. “Your Nan's fine,” he said. He reached out and took hold of Danny's arm, and Danny noticed for the first time that he was carrying a hypodermic needle—but by then he felt the prick near his wrist, and his legs started to feel wobbly.

“Hey!” Danny started, “What the hell…” Then things began to slow down. And it was almost an effort
to breathe. “…is happening?”
I want to see my Nan,
he thought as the lights went out.

The young doctor caught him as he slid toward the floor.