The Shadow Project (7 page)

S
ir 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.

T
he 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.

Look on the bright side,
Dorothy thought. Apart from the headache, she was getting a bit better. Could open her eyes now. Just a slit, but couldn't do that before. Not that she could see a lot because she couldn't move her head yet, but it was still an improvement. So she lay there with her headache, looking at the brown stain on the ceiling.

There were voices in the corridor. Men's voices and another voice she recognized as the ward sister—right old battle-ax she was too. Sounded as if they were having
a bit of an argument. Men must be doctors, because they weren't taking any nonsense from Sister: you could hear from the tone.

They were coming into the ward. “Well, it's most irregular,” said Sister's voice severely. And a man's voice said, “If you have any further concerns, you can take them up with the ministry.” Which put manners on her because she said, “No, of course not, sir.” That
sir
meant she'd given in. Sister called nobody
sir
unless they were a consultant or some other big cheese. Dorothy wondered gleefully what was going on.

They were moving her out of bed!
The fuss had been about her all along! She caught glimpses of white coats and uniforms as they lifted her onto a gurney. Next thing she was being wheeled along the corridor. Change of ward, obviously. At least she'd get away from that stain on the ceiling. And the smell of wee.

Except it wasn't a change of ward. They were all in a lift, going down, and now they were in the lobby going out and there was an ambulance waiting: Danny called them “white sick cars” when he was little. They loaded her into the white sick car, gurney and all, like somebody being driven away in a disaster movie. Except in the movies they drove you
to
the hospital, and she was being driven
from.
There was a young doctor sitting beside her, face blank. She wished she could ask him where they
were going. Another hospital, she supposed. Probably needed her bed.

All the excitement made her tired, so she closed her eyes and dozed a little. The noise of the ambulance doors opening woke her up. The new hospital was smaller than the old one and a lot better looking. Seemed to be in the country, for one thing. Nice grounds, like a convalescent home. You could see trees and flowers and grass. And when they wheeled her through the doors, the smell was different: less antiseptic scrub and more furniture polish. And the gurney wheels didn't rattle the way they did in the last place, as if she was being wheeled over carpet, not linoleum. Maybe things were looking up.

Somebody adjusted the head of the gurney so she was propped up a bit, which was a real improvement because she could see where she was going. Which was a ward all to herself, could you believe it? Just one bed and a big color TV and a nice view of the gardens through the window.

There was a bouquet of flowers beside the bed.

There was a plump nurse with a nice smile who said, “Hello, Mrs. Bayley. I'm Cathleen and I'll be looking after you most mornings and afternoons.”

There was…she hadn't noticed it before. There was posh music playing gently in the background.

They lifted her—
one, two, three!
—off the gurney
and into the bed, and it must have been an orthopedic mattress because the comfort was amazing, and the sheets were just washed and starched and smelled fresh, so she took in a deep breath through her nose; and as she settled into this heavenly bed, for some reason she found herself thinking of that peculiar dream she'd had where Stanley said to her, “I think our boy Danny's getting into trouble.”

She hoped this wasn't another of her premonitions.