The Unknown Spy (2 page)

Danny pressed his head against the windowsill. He tried to remember something from his spying classes that would help. The two cars would be at the house in minutes. He had to think! What had he learned? Concealment! The approaching car would need to be hidden.

He ran down the stairs two at a time, grabbed a broom from the closet and turned off the hallway light before
opening the front door, so that he wouldn’t be seen. The cold made him gasp. The car engines were clearly audible now, the roar of the Mercedes and the smooth powerful hum of the following car. Danny ran around the side of the house, skidding on the hardened snow. He flung open the garage doors and ran back, broom at the ready. It would be a close thing.

The Mercedes was coming round the last corner flat-out, fishtailing, and it flattened a small sapling. His mother was behind the wheel, her face pale. His father was in the passenger seat, head flung back. Danny didn’t have time to absorb the information. He gestured frantically with the broom. His mother looked at him in shock, then instantly understood. Spinning the wheel, she threw the car into a long, graceful slide, then straightened. The car sped through the backyard and into the garage. Danny slammed the big doors. As fast as he could, he brushed away the tire tracks, running to the front of the house and finishing the last track just as the second car rounded the corner. If it hadn’t been for the fallen sapling he would have been caught in the headlights, but the beams pointed momentarily across the frozen fields. Danny looked around wildly. No cover near, except for the shadow of the stairs to the front door.

The car slowed, then stopped. A door opened. Footsteps crunched in the snow. Danny crouched in the small shadow by the door. He knew from Concealment classes at Wilsons that you could hide almost in plain view if you didn’t move a muscle. Movement drew the hunter’s eye. Danny didn’t dare look up. The whites of his eyes in the
darkness would give him away. The footsteps stopped; then a harsh female voice spoke.

“They are still in front of us! Fly, Sasha, fly like the wind!” The pitch of the engine rose as the car door slammed shut. The tires spun, then gripped, sending an arc of snow high into the air. As the car picked up speed, Danny risked a glance. There were four men and one woman in the car, all tough-looking, and Danny found himself shrinking back into the shadow.

He gave the car a full minute to clear the house, then leapt to his feet and raced to the garage. The door was open, and he saw light from the kitchen. As he ran toward the light, he looked down. The virgin snow at his feet was spotted deep red. When he reached for the door handle, he found it smeared with blood. The door swung slowly open.

His father was slumped at the kitchen table. His mother was bent over him, but as the door creaked, she spun around. To his shock Danny found himself staring down the barrel of a large and deadly-looking revolver. His mother’s hair had fallen over her face and there were streaks of oil and blood on her cheek, but her steady brown eyes did not falter. Slowly the gun was lowered.

“Are they gone?” Her voice was brisk and commanding. Danny stared back before nodding dumbly. Where was the elegant, remote woman who had sat by the fire beside him a few days previously? This new mother wore no makeup. Her black jeans and top were streaked with mud.

“Don’t stand there gaping,” she snapped. “Help me. Quick. Get him under the arms.”

Danny moved to do as his mother said, questions flooding his mind. As he reached her side, he opened his mouth to speak, but a glance silenced him. He looked down at his father for the first time. The man’s face was pale and his breathing was quick and shallow. The shoulder of his shirt was sodden with blood.

“Heave!” his mother said. Together they got him onto the kitchen table.

“The bullet’s gone into his shoulder and taken some fabric from his shirt into the wound,” she said. “We have to get it out. Now.” Danny looked at her blankly.

“We need to get a doctor—hospital …,” he stammered.

“No time,” she said. “Besides, they’ll be watching the hospitals. There’s a box in the top drawer of the writing desk. Get it.”

Danny ran for the box. It was a steel case that he had never seen before. He handed it to his mother. She flipped it open. Inside were surgical instruments and several vials of liquid. She opened one of the vials and poured something onto a cloth. She held it over his father’s mouth. “Breathe deeply, Agent Stone,” she said. “We need to put you out.”

Danny watched as the cloth covered his father’s nose and mouth. Agent Stone? But there was no time to quiz his mother. The man was out cold now, his breathing shallow.

Danny’s mother took a scalpel and what looked like a
pair of pliers from the case. With one swift stroke she cut through the flesh around the bullet wound.

“I’ll hold the wound open,” she said, “you reach in for the bullet and the piece of fabric.”

Danny gulped as she pressed the pliers into his hand. He wasn’t squeamish, but he’d never carried out kitchen-table surgery before, particularly when the patient was the man who was supposed to be his father. As he hesitated, the man groaned again.

“We have to do this, Danny,” his mother—or whoever she was—said. “Please.” She met his eyes, and this time there was something of the person Danny remembered in them. He gulped and nodded.

Danny closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he was looking down into an open wound, blood everywhere, muscle and sinew exposed.

“Quickly!” Danny could feel a trickle of sweat run down his back. He lowered the tips of the pliers toward the wound. The matted piece of shirt fabric was clearly visible.

“Now!” He plunged the pliers down and grasped the fabric. In one quick movement he removed it and dropped it on the table. Now for the bullet, the small gray slug deep in the wound …

“You’ll have to dig for it.” As if in a nightmare Danny reached into the wound. He had to grope and twist to extract the bullet. It seemed to take hours. When he was done, he slumped back into a chair and stared numbly as his mother efficiently bandaged the wound.

“Go into the drawing room,” she said, her voice gentler now. “I’ll finish here.”

I
t was almost an hour before she joined him. She handed him a mug of hot chocolate. She had showered and was wearing a dressing gown. She sat down beside him and looked into the fire.

“He’s sleeping now,” she said. “He should be okay.”

“You called him Agent Stone,” Danny said. “Dad.”

“Did I?” She looked thoughtful and a little sad. “Funny the things that give you away.”

“You’re not my real …” The word stuck in Danny’s throat.

“Mother? No, though sometimes I feel like I am. A lot of the time, in fact.”

“Well, if I’m not your son, then who am I?” His voice rang harshly in his own ears.

“That,” she said, “is complicated.”

“Is it?” Danny said sarcastically. He was trying to be tough, but his heart was hammering in his chest.

“I’m afraid so.” She sighed and hugged her knees. “He said it was time to tell you. Past time.”

“Tell me,” Danny said, his voice cracking.

“You were given to us as a mission, your … Agent Stone and I.”

“A mission?”

“To protect you and … well, watch you.”

“In case of what?”

“This is very difficult,” she said. “We don’t really know why. We were just given a mission. Your father—”

“Agent Stone,” Danny interrupted.

“Don’t be too hard on us, Danny. We’ve worked night and day for many years. To guard you, but also now to find out why! We were given much support over the years by unknown hands, but we do not know who has been helping us. There is danger—you saw what happened tonight.”

“Who are they? The attackers?”

“I don’t know. We were recruited anonymously, and now we can’t get in touch with those who hired us. All we have now is you.…”

Danny held up his hand. No more. There was too much to take in. This woman looking at him was a stranger. What right did she have to ask for understanding? He got to his feet.

“I’m going to bed,” he said.

“All right,” she said. “We can talk again in the morning.”

“Perhaps,” Danny said. “Good night.”

She watched him walk away. It was too much for a boy of his age to bear, she thought, and he shouldn’t have found out like this. Still, she could talk to him in the morning, explain in more detail so that he might begin to understand.

“Good night,” she called after him; then, under her breath, her lips barely moving, she formed the word “son.”

* * *

D
anny tossed and turned, words racing through his head. “Agent Stone.” “A mission!” Deep down he had long suspected that the people he lived with were not his real parents, but now, faced with the knowledge that he was right, he was in turmoil. After several hours he fell into an uneasy sleep in which he dreamed he was back at Wilsons Academy, sitting in Ravensdale—the strange village canteen—with his friends, and then lying in bed in the Roosts—the dormitory—trying to ignore the voice of Blackpitt, the school announcer, who organized the students’ day.
Cadet Caulfield, Cadet Caulfield!
the voice in his head said.
Go away
, Danny moaned in his sleep, but the voice did not go away.

“Cadet Caulfield!”
Danny sat bolt upright. It really was the voice of Blackpitt, coming from behind the bed! Of course—the Radio of Last Resort! The radio had been given to him on leaving Wilsons so that the school could contact him as needed.

“Awake at last,” Blackpitt said through the little transistor radio, sounding faintly amused. Somehow Blackpitt always knew what you were doing. “Please hold for Master Devoy.”

Sleep fell away. Devoy was the head of Wilsons and a master spy. Why was he calling? Danny threw back the bedclothes and sat up.

“Cadet Caulfield.” Devoy’s tone was smooth and untroubled, but Danny knew that he had trained himself to show no emotion. “I am sorry to disturb you at this hour of the night, but it is urgent that you return to Wilsons immediately. Fairman the cabdriver will pick you up in
twenty minutes. I am sorry to interrupt your holiday, but this will not wait.” The Radio of Last Resort crackled and went silent.

Twenty minutes! Danny grabbed a bag and started to stuff clothes into it. He half smiled before taking a battered-looking overcoat from the back of the door. It smelled musty and looked old-fashioned, but it had many hidden secrets.

Ten minutes later Danny was in the foyer. He peered into the living room. The woman who had been masquerading as his mother had fallen asleep on the chair beside the fire. He tiptoed down the hall to the downstairs bedroom. The man who had said he was Danny’s father was also asleep, his face gray. He looked terribly unwell, and Danny had to resist the temptation to go over to him, perhaps whisper something in his ear. But it was better this way. Better that Danny leave without saying goodbye.

He opened the front door and closed it gently behind him. He walked down the long avenue bordered by bare lime trees. The night was still starlit, but there was a faint gleam of dawn to the east. His feet crunched in the snow and the cold nipped at his ears and nose, but the battered old coat kept him warm.

He heard a rattling engine in the distance. It grew closer and closer. Danny put down his bag and leaned against one of the lime trees. A cab drew up and the driver leaned out. He had deep-set eyes and big yellow teeth. “Get in,” he growled. Danny climbed into the back. As the cab jolted forward, he leaned his head against the
headrest. He was on his way back to Wilsons, the only place he now belonged.

M
aster Devoy stood at the window of his office in Wilsons Academy of the Devious Arts, looking out at the wind-tossed trees of the forest that fringed the huge rambling building. He was a tall thin man with a smooth unlined faced. Seated in the room behind him was Marcus Brunholm, a swarthy figure with a large mustache and darting brown eyes.

“You agreed, my dear Devoy,” Brunholm said, “that the best course of action would be to bring Danny back to Wilsons immediately. His location in the Upper World is no longer safe.”

“Yes, of course I agree,” Devoy said. “So why send him back into danger?”

“Because we have no choice! Who else can we send?”

“If he is caught it will be seen as breaking the treaty. It will bring war. Our job is to guard the Upper World, not unleash mayhem on it.”

“And what if the Ring of Five find the Treaty Stone first, Devoy? If they find it and break it, then there is no treaty. As you know, the treaty between the Upper and Lower Worlds is inscribed on the Stone and is dependent on it. There are other risks. I only hope the boy can be relied upon. He is a true spy. He has the smell of treachery on him.”

“I won’t allow it,” Devoy said.

“You will allow it,” Brunholm said, getting up and
approaching Devoy, looking into his face, so close that his luxuriant mustache almost brushed Devoy’s skin. “You will allow it, because you have no choice.”

“What about his parents?”

“Parents?” Brunholm shrugged. “You mean the paid agents hired to guard him? They know nothing of his relationship with Wilsons. I made sure of that. They are expendable. Let Conal and the Ring have them. The Ring can torture them until their eyeballs pop out of their skulls, they’ll learn nothing.”

THE UNKNOWN SPY’S WIFE