Excerpt
The Unknown Spy
1
AGENTS
Danny lay in a warm little room, a Nintendo DS closed on the bedspread beside him. That was the problem, he thought. Once you had been a spy, your life in jeopardy every minute, when one false slip meant betrayal and perhaps death, then a computer game seemed very tame. But that wasn’t his main worry.
He had come home for the Christmas holidays from Wilsons Academy to find that his parents were their kind but absent selves. As usual, they were hardly ever home. Danny had thought they might appreciate him more since they hadn’t seen him for three months, but if anything, they were gone more often. Even on Christmas Day (after a morning of present opening under the tree and a delicious turkey dinner) his father had received a phone call and ten minutes later his car swept out of the driveway. As he’d dashed away, his wave to his wife and son was cheery, but Danny had seen the fatigue around his eyes.
That night he and his mother had sat by the fire, his mother reading and eating chocolates, Danny watching a Christmas film. It was almost too good, Danny realized, to have her to himself for a whole evening.
“Goodness,” his mother had said, “I can’t remember the last time I had a chance to just sit and read.”
“I haven’t watched a film in ages,” Danny said.
“It’s a Wonderful Life.” She smiled. “I was half watching it over your shoulder. It was my favorite when I was your age.”
She stood up.
“Would you like some hot chocolate?” He nodded and watched as she stood to go to the kitchen. Even in a dressing gown, her hair tied up, she was elegant. She paused beside him, her hands resting gently on his hair. There and then Danny almost blurted out the truth about where he had spent the last three months. His parents thought they had sent him to a boarding school called Heston Oaks. Instead he had been virtually kidnapped and spirited off to Wilsons.
When he’d arrived home for the holidays, he found that someone--probably Brunholm, the devious vice principal of Wilsons--had constructed an elaborate cover story for him, complete with fake letters sent home saying what a wonderful time he was having at Heston Oaks. Part of Danny ached to tell the truth, but he thought that he wouldn’t be allowed back to Wilsons, and he could not bear the thought of not seeing his new friends again. That was what he told himself, anyway, although he wondered if the part of him that loved secrets and shadows was the real reason for his silence.
“Have your hot chocolate, then clean your teeth and get to bed,” his mother had said, moving off. Danny had grinned inwardly. Imagine telling a member of the Ring of Five, the most terrifying group of spies ever known, to brush his teeth.
While his mother made the chocolate in the kitchen, he had looked at the family photographs on the mantel. His mother and father were tall and blond; he was short and dark. He’d never questioned this when he was younger, but the physical differences between him and his parents was starting to trouble him. What if . . . what if they weren’t really his parents?
“Here you go.” His mother had handed him a steaming mug. Her smile made him feel what he’d missed in the past, and what he was going to miss in the future when she started to go out every evening again.
But that worry was for the future. For the moment Danny had enjoyed his mother’s company, enjoyed pretending to be asleep when she came in to check on him before she went to bed, enjoyed all the normal things other children took for granted. If only this could last forever, he’d thought.
But of course it hadn’t. Three days after Christmas he’d woken to find a scribbled note from his mother on the kitchen table, saying that “I’ve gone out for a few hours.”
That had been forty-eight hours ago, and still she had not returned. She had stayed away overnight once or twice before, but she had always phoned to let him know. Danny had tried both of his parents’ cell phones, but they had been turned off. There was plenty of food in the house, and he was used to being on his own, but still he was lonely and worried. They might not be my real parents, he thought, but they’re all I’ve got.
For the tenth time that evening he went to the window and stared out at the snow, untouched for miles around. This time he knelt down and squinted into the distance. He could see a far-off light on the road--a car! Small at first, but growing rapidly. He blinked and looked again. There was another set of lights behind the first, moving just as quickly. How could both drivers keep up the pace on the icy road? And why were they going so fast? There could be only one reason for the speed. He opened the window a little and his heart dropped. From the lead car he could make out the throaty growl of his father’s Mercedes. It dropped a gear, and Danny heard the second car do the same. His father was being chased!
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.”
It 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.”
