The Shadow Project (13 page)

O
pal felt wound up to the breaking point. First Michael humiliating her, then the old woman. She'd been absolutely sure Dorothy was having another stroke, absolutely sure she was going to die right there on the edge of the bed. Then the voice, so strange that she was beginning to wonder if she'd heard it at all. Now Dr. Holroyd was on his way to sign her out.

On his way to sign her out and she wasn't even dressed!

Opal swung her feet out of the bed and ran for the wardrobe. Quickly she pulled on T-shirt, sweater, and jeans, looked for her shoes, couldn't find them, found them, pulled them on while hopping on one leg, then sat down on the bed to wait.

She looked out the window, in a quandary over what to do about transportation. Should she ring for a car, or had the clinic organized one for her? She wouldn't know
that until Dr. Holroyd got here with the paperwork. Perhaps her father had arranged something. She wondered if he wanted her to go home or come straight to the Project. But she didn't want to go home. She felt fine now, and she was bored after her stay in the hospital.

Bored and mad. She was angry with Michael now. No longer shocked at the way he'd positively
stomped
out just because she'd asked him to the ball, but actively furious. She suspected girls didn't ask boys out in his country—some cultures were positively medieval the way they treated women—but talk about overreacting!

She was mad at Dorothy as well. She must have done the funny voice as a joke. But it was terrifying when you didn't know the person. Especially when they said, “Beware the Devourer!” That sounded like something out of a horror movie.

Where was Dr. Holroyd? Opal was annoyed with him for keeping her waiting. She flicked on the TV and glared at some stupid soccer match.

She was anxious to go back to the Project. She wanted to find out if they'd caught the Skull and what they planned to do about that terrifying old man who'd trapped her when everybody said that wasn't possible—

Opal stopped. It wasn't a soccer match on the television, just the sports section of a news program, and they'd gone back to the main bulletin. The screen was
showing an airport, Heathrow probably, with passengers disembarking from a plane. What caught her attention was Guy Manton, a friend of her father, who worked at the Ministry of Defence, shaking hands with two men at the bottom of the steps.

“…Spiros Avramides,” the voice-over was saying, “and his associate, Peter Kanska.”

Then the clip finished, and they were back in the studio as the broadcaster smiled directly into the camera and said, “And now let's find out what the weather has in store for us.”

Opal switched off the television, but somehow could not take her eyes off the screen. It was as if the images at the airport had burned themselves onto her brain. The plane, the passengers, the runway. Spiros Avramides and Peter Kanska shaking hands with Uncle Guy. The cameraman had been some distance away, but he'd used a zoom lens, so the faces were visible enough. Even in the second or two before the clip finished, she had no problem recognizing them.

Her paralysis broke and she scrambled for her cell phone. To hell with Dr. Holroyd—she had to get back to the Project
now.
She thumbed her speed dial for the Project, gave her code ID, and asked the switchboard to transfer her to the motor pool. She didn't recognize the voice that answered, but it didn't matter: her ID was
enough to get a car dispatched to the clinic. “Priority,” she said.

As she cut the connection, there was a knock on her door. Bloody Dr. Holroyd at last, exactly when she
really
didn't need him. Well, she had too much on her mind to start filling out a bunch of silly forms. She—

But it wasn't Dr. Holroyd, it was Michael. Opal stared at him. For a moment she waited for him to apologize, to tell her
of course
he would escort her to the ball, but then she saw the strain on his face, the fear in his eyes.

Michael said, “You have to come at once—something's happened. I have your driver and a car outside.”

M
ichael didn't mention what had happened between them earlier. Nor did Opal when she saw his face. There were armed guards in the car. Their driver, Harry Byrne, was also carrying a gun, tucked into a shoulder holster. Harry
never
went armed. Nobody in the Project wore shoulder holsters.

Something horrible had happened.

Michael didn't know the details, but she realized it was serious when Harry took them through the tunnel entrance rather than the gate. And security was tighter than she'd seen it,
ever.
There were uniformed soldiers everywhere, with semiautomatic rifles.

Then they arrived at her father's office, and all she needed was a glance at their faces. Her father, George Hanover, and Gary Carradine—all three of them looked as though someone had been assassinated.

Her father walked directly toward them as they
entered the room. His face was the color of cigar ash as he said, “I'm terribly sorry, Opal. Fran is dead.”

Opal stared at him as if he'd struck her. Then she decided she must have misheard. But the tightness in her stomach didn't ease. Nor did the sense of shock. She felt someone take her hand and realized it was Michael. “What?”

Her father said, “Something dreadful has happened. I'm afraid Fran is dead.”

Opal said breathlessly, “What are you talking about?”

Michael said, “It's true, Opal. Fran Hitchin is dead.”

“That's not possible.” She didn't believe it. She couldn't believe it. But if anything, it was the sheer brutality of her father's announcement that convinced her. He'd always been that way. Bad news was something to get out in the open and deal with. He would no more have considered breaking it gently than lying. All the same, she caught her breath and said, “She can't be.” Then, when her father said nothing, she said, “What happened? Was she ill?”

She heard Mr. Carradine release something close to a sigh before he said, “She was murdered.”

She turned to look at him blankly. “Who killed her?”

“Danny,” Carradine said.

“We think Danny,” her father amended.

“It's just happened,” George Hanover told her. “They were working together.”

“Danny?” Opal echoed. She glanced at Michael, who was still holding her hand. Danny had assaulted Michael. But assault was a long way from murder. She looked back at her father. “Are you sure?”

Carradine shrugged. “He was the only one with her.”

“But somebody from outside—”

“No signs of forced entry. Just the two of them together in the room. They were working on projection training. Fran locked the outer door—standard procedure.”

George Hanover said, “We'll know exactly what's happened when we review the tapes.”

Carradine said, “Meanwhile Danny Lipman is in custody.”

Her father said, “But this isn't why we called you in, you and Michael.”

Opal was so upset, she scarcely took in what he'd said. It was Michael who asked, “Why
did
you call us in, Sir Roland?”

Roland reached out to lay a protective hand on his daughter's arm. “We've received intelligence of a possible attempt on Opal's life.”

“W
ho'd want to kill me?” Opal asked, bewildered. She still couldn't understand what was happening, but part of her wondered if this could have anything to do with Fran's murder.

“Épée de la Colère
—Sword of Wrath—apparently,” George Hanover said. “According to MI5.”

“Sword of Wrath doesn't even know I exist!” Opal exclaimed, looking from face to face. But even as she spoke, she realized it was nonsense. Sword of Wrath was run by the Skull. And the Skull—or rather, the Skull's adviser—had caught her spying. The old man, Farrakhan, hadn't believed her story for a moment, and she'd stupidly given him both her name and her location. Admittedly it was only her first name, but that would make little difference. It might not be possible to track down a particular girl named Opal in a city the size of London if you were starting from scratch, but all you
had to do was start with the premise that Opal worked for MI6—which would make sense if she was a British spy—and your job got a whole lot easier. Any good espionage service would quickly find out that the senior MI6 executive, Sir Roland Harrington, had a daughter named Opal who matched the age and description of the girl they were looking for. After that, it was only a matter of time before their agents caught up with her. “Oh my God,” she breathed.

“You're in no danger here, of course,” her father said, “but they
are
looking for you. The question is why?” He knuckled one eye tiredly. “I think it may have been a mistake not to debrief you straightaway.”

She caught the awkward looks on the faces of the others. It was a strict rule that agents must be fully debriefed at the earliest possible moment after their return, and her father had broken it. She'd told him what happened, of course, told him about the Skull and the two men who'd visited him, told him about the old man who somehow managed to imprison her second body, but that didn't amount to a full debriefing. That would have involved days, perhaps weeks, of questioning by Carradine and his staff, the sifting through every nuance of her conversations, relentless examination of whole computer libraries of photographs in an attempt to identify the people she'd seen. There might even have been hypnosis to help her
fill any blanks in her memory. But she'd been so shaky when she returned that her father had cut through all of that, sent her directly to the clinic for her tests.

Carradine cut through the silence. “Maybe we shouldn't waste any more time…?”

Sir Roland stared at him for a moment, then said abruptly, “You're right. We must start this at once. It will take precedence over Fran's murder.” The living came before the dead. It was an MI6 maxim.

Carradine said, “I have my people on Fran's case. They're studying the surveillance tapes and will get back to us.”

“Can Michael sit in?” Opal asked suddenly. Despite his earlier behavior, she found his presence comforting.

Her father looked surprised. “Yes, if you want.”

Michael said quietly, “I appreciate that, sir.”

They had moved across to Carradine's office, and Opal, whose life was apparently under threat from the world's most dreaded terrorist organization, found herself thinking that the chairs here were more uncomfortable than those in any other office in the building. She sat down in one of them and looked up anxiously at Carradine.

Without so much as a glance toward Sir Roland, Carradine said crisply, “Your father has given me a broad outline of what happened to you and what you saw, but I
would like to hear it for myself—everything.”

He might have been about to say something more, but Opal interrupted. “Did Father tell you I saw two men with the Skull—two Western businessmen, I think—doing some sort of deal with him or something?”

Carradine nodded. “Yes.”

Opal took a deep breath. “Well, I've just seen them again.”

“What?” her father exclaimed.

“Where?” Carradine asked simultaneously.

“They were on
television
!” Opal said. “Just before I left the clinic. They were coming off a plane—I think at Heathrow. One's called Avramides. The other's called Kanska.” She glanced at her father. “Uncle Guy was meeting them.”

“Who's Uncle Guy?”

“Guy Manton,” Roland said. “He's a permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence.” He looked at Carradine, then added, “Friend of the family. The
uncle
part is honorary.”

There was absolute silence in the room. Then Carradine said, “Did you say Avramides and Kanska?” He reached for the laptop on his desk, typed something. After a moment, he turned the computer around to let her view the screen. “Is that one of them?”

The photograph on screen was black and white and
not particularly sharp. It looked as if it might have been taken through a telephoto lens; and possibly some years ago, because the face looked younger than the one she remembered. But for all that she had not the slightest doubt. “That's Avramides,” she said.

“Christ!” Carradine breathed.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw George Hanover look across at her father. Both had expressions of shock on their faces. Opal glanced at Michael and asked, “Who is he?” It was very clear that they knew.

Carradine took a deep breath. “Greek arms dealer. Kanska is Hungarian, his partner.”

For some reason, Opal felt that he was holding something back. She caught his eye and held it. “And…?”

Carradine said tiredly, “Avramides and Kanska are suspected of trafficking in nuclear weapons.”

“Oh,” Opal could only say, stunned.

“It's just a suspicion,” George Hanover said. “We've never been able to prove anything. But Kanska has contacts in the former Soviet Union—there's a lot of nuclear material there: outdated Russian warheads and materials. The trouble is that since the Soviets collapsed, security is rubbish—and frankly, some of the governments in the smaller, poorer states aren't above making dirty little deals. It's been a massive headache for years now. But we
hadn't seen it as a likely Sword of Wrath connection.”

It was Michael who asked, “Why not, Mr. Hanover?”

Hanover shrugged slightly. “A question of scale. The old Soviets stockpiled what you might call conventional nuclear weapons—the sort of thing you might use if you went to war with another country. You could sell some of that stockpile to another nation state—North Korea, Iran, or where have you—but it's frankly useless to an organization like Sword of Wrath. They don't have an air force, they don't have missile silos or permanent launch bases—they're just not fighting that sort of war. The only thing that would be of any use to them is a miniaturized tactical atomic, something they could smuggle into a country and hide away in a suitcase, then detonate from a distance to take out a city. But that's a much more recent technical development, certainly not something the Soviets stockpiled. Contrary to the scare stories you read in the press, tactical atomics are very difficult to get hold of.”

“But not impossible?” Michael put in. “Perhaps what Opal saw—”

Carradine cut through the conversation with just the barest hint of impatience by saying to Opal, “When you saw these men—Avramides and Kanska—with the Skull, was the conversation in English?”

Opal nodded. “Yes.”

“I want you to tell me everything they said. Everything.”

“Actually there wasn't much,” Opal told him. “The Skull said, ‘It is satisfactory,' and the older man—”

“What was satisfactory?” Carradine interrupted.

“I don't know,” Opal said. “Obviously something they'd been talking about before I arrived.”

“Okay,” Carradine said. “So the Skull said something was satisfactory. What did Avramides or Kanska say?”

“Avramides asked about payment, and the Skull said his men were loading bullion onto their helicopter.”

“Payment in gold,” Hanover murmured. “The bastards were supplying him with
something
.”

“Anything else?” Carradine asked.

Opal shook her head. “They had coffee after that, and Avramides said it was a pleasure doing business with him. And then he asked what the Skull was going to do with it.”

“Do with what?” her father asked.

Opal looked at him. “Whatever they'd sold him.”

“But there was no mention of what it was?” Carradine asked.

Opal shook her head. “No.” She glanced down at the floor. “Sorry.”

“It could be anything,” George Hanover muttered
half to himself. “Even nuclear.”

“But you said the sort of bomb they'd need would be, you know…” The talk of nuclear weapons was making Opal nervous. She kept thinking what would happen if a nuclear device was detonated in London.

“It may not be a tactical miniature,” Hanover said soberly. “They may be opting for a dirty bomb—conventional explosive surrounded by radioactive material. Not much in the way of property damage, but widespread fallout, so the death toll would be high. Avramides could certainly supply Sword of Wrath with radioactive material.”

“It's not that,” Michael said bluntly.

Hanover blinked at him. “How do you know?”

“Because the men were loading gold bullion onto a helicopter,” Michael said. “And it didn't sound like it was a quick job, if they were having coffee while they waited. That sort of payment is far more than you'd need for a few containers of enriched uranium.”

Carradine turned to look at him with an expression of admiration. “Got it in one, Mike,” he said. He glanced at Hanover, who had asked the question, and raised an eyebrow.

“Maybe it was more than a few,” George Hanover said, sounding defensive.

“If it was a massive amount—enough to justify a
helicopter load of bullion—then you have to ask yourself how it was delivered. Avramides certainly didn't bring it with him, and the Skull is hiding in the middle of a war zone. You'd need a convoy of trucks, and what are the chances of their getting through without us spotting them?” Carradine tapped the casing of his laptop. “Besides, there's the threat to Opal.”

There was silence in the room as everyone looked at him.

Carradine glanced from one face to the other, then said, “Put it together. The Skull discovers he's been spied on. Forget about how—that's another problem. He captures the spy temporarily, then she escapes.” He hesitated, frowning suddenly. “How
did
you escape, Opal? Your father hasn't told me.”

“It was ridiculous,” Opal said. “They left me, and while they were away, a woman came to clean the room. She unplugged the electricity to the cage.”

Carradine stared at her in astonishment, then gave the barest ghost of a smile. “Are you serious?”

Opal nodded. “She couldn't see me, of course. She unplugged the cage to plug in a funny little vacuum cleaner. I came back at once.”

“Well, well,” Carradine said. Then his smile faded. “In any case, you escaped. Now MI5 tells us they have information that
Épée de la Colère
plans an assassination
attempt. You have to ask yourself why. Nobody goes to the trouble of sending a team to Britain just to get revenge—that's playground behavior. They have to be worried that you know something they badly want to keep secret. It's not their location, since that changes all the time; besides, they'd already moved on by the time we sent in the bombers. It's nothing obvious in their camp: everything you saw was routine military hardware. Which leaves the fact that the Skull was involved with two Western businessmen. Granted they were arms dealers, but it's hardly news to anybody that he buys arms. So it wouldn't trouble him that we'd discovered details of a conventional arms deal. Which only leaves the nuclear option. If he
is
planning a tactical nuclear strike against the States or over here, he's going to go a long way to keep it secret until it happens.”

“Impressive reasoning, Gary,” Hanover said. “But there's a flaw in your logic.”

“Which is what, George?”

“Once they discovered Opal had escaped, they'd know their secret was out. By the time they got someone in place to kill her, it would be too late.”

But Carradine shook his head. “That assumes Opal knew the men the Skull was dealing with. She didn't. It's only by the sheerest chance we know who they are. In a full-scale debriefing she might have found them in
a photo lineup, but that could take several days, maybe weeks. The Skull could reasonably assume that he had time to mount an assassination attempt. In any case it would obviously be better to try than not to try. Besides, he may have had someone already in place.” He looked from one face to another.

“Do you have someone in mind?” Sir Roland asked quietly.

“Young Lipman,” Carradine said.

“Danny?” Opal whispered. “Why Danny?” She felt Michael's hand tighten on hers.

Carradine shrugged. “He just killed Fran, didn't he?”