The Ghost Roads (Ring of Five) (20 page)

“Our suspect is within the city boundaries,” Longford said. “I suggest you look for his nest, his sleeping place. We are all at our most vulnerable when we are asleep, are we not?”

Longford replaced the receiver and reflected on his own words. The great game was on. Its conclusion neared. Danny was the wild card, but Longford was confident. Still, why had the words “Lost Boys” sprung to mind a week ago as he slept, and why did they keep returning? Things buried should be left buried. He had warned Steff Pilkington about that. But Steff had kept on digging. Steff believed in shedding light on matters. That was his downfall. There were secrets so great, so terrible, that you had to forget you knew them, had to lock them away in the back of your mind. Longford had held such a secret himself for many long years, and he wearied of it, as, he thought, must the other holder. Never mind; time moves on, he thought, and the end nears.

D
anny waited for a dark, rainy night. As he made his way across the city, he knew it would be his last trip if he could not find some identification. Public transport was out of the question. Every last passenger was checked. Nine or ten times he had to double back or around to avoid a checkpoint. By the time he reached the North End, he was exhausted and drenched to the skin. He
had
to get that passport.

He found the mobile phone shop Pad Burden had told him about and let himself in. He was in a long, narrow,
dimly lit shop. Dust lay heavy on every surface, though if you looked closely in the smeared glass cabinets, there was every kind of phone imaginable, from the ones with winders you saw in old films to futuristic instruments that might have come from downed spaceships. Danny threaded his way through cardboard boxes, heaps of old circuit boards, mouthpieces and other phone paraphernalia, until he saw a little kiosk at the very end, surmounted with an ancient sign saying
DO NOT ASK FOR CREDIT FOR REFUSAL OFTEN OFFENDS
. The glass of the kiosk was covered with yellowing laminated cards carrying warning about terms of payment and warranties.

In the middle of the kiosk sat a small bald man wearing a red polo, with several pairs of glasses pushed back on his forehead. He reminded Danny of a small vulture.

“I’m … er … looking for a passport,” Danny said, deciding to plunge right in. His left hand was resting on the hilt of his knife in his pocket.

“Of course you are,” the man said in a surprisingly deep bass voice. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

“Pad sent me …,” Danny began, but the man held up a hand to stop him.

“No! No names, no pack drill. Your passport. You of course want it for tonight, because you can’t move about the city without it. That will cost five thousand pounds cash on delivery, that is now, on the nail, no discount, no haggling, no Christmas clubs …”

“I have it,” Danny said.

“Good, good, now let me see.…” The man lifted the
glass top from the case in front of him. “Here, hold that for a second.” Danny took the glass. “Now,” the man said, fishing out handfuls of passports, “what do we have here? Ghana? No. Hong Kong? No. France … perhaps. Ah, here, Australia. That will do.”

He replaced the other passports and put the top back.

“Go away and come back in an hour. With the cash, mind.”

“What about a photograph?”

“Sorted. You were photographed as you came through the door.” The Phonemaker gestured to a tiny camera mounted above the doorway.

Danny made his way back out onto the street. The Phonemaker set the Australian passport to one side. It would only take minutes to finish. He lifted the glass top from the case in front of him and smiled grimly. They fell for it every time. He took a small box of powder and a brush from his pocket and dusted the glass. When Danny had held the top of the glass case, he had left his fingerprints on it. The Phonemaker placed the piece of glass on a small scanner. He pressed a button and waited for a result as the scanner whirred. When it came, he sat very still for a minute, then let out a low whistle.

“Got you,” he said to himself. “After all this time, I got you.”

I
t was pouring outside. Danny huddled miserably in a shop doorway. A police patrol car drove slowly down the
street, and he had to duck behind some dustbins that stank of old fish. He was itching to get hold of the passport and get back to his mobile home.

After half an hour he trudged back to the shop. The door scraped open and the bell rattled. The shop was darker than it had been, and he had trouble negotiating the piles of junk on the floor. He was halfway to the counter when he heard the click of the door closing behind him, followed by the sound of a bolt being slid across. He spun around, his hand on his knife. A deep voice spoke.

“Take your hand out of your pocket. You’d be shot down like a dog before you got your knife out.”

Danny slowly withdrew his hand.

“Kneel down on the floor and put your hands on your head.” Danny did as he was told. The Phonemaker stepped out of the shadows, an ugly, stubby Uzi in his hand.

“That’s better.” The Phonemaker stepped behind Danny, and he felt handcuffs being expertly clicked onto his wrists. For the first time since Danny had gotten the mobile home, he felt the power of the Fifth rise in him, but he suppressed it.

“Now,” the Phonemaker said, coming around and squatting at eye level. He lifted Danny’s chin and examined his eyes with interest. “That’s better. Before the others get here we’ll have a little chat.”

“I’ve got nothing to chat about.”

“Everybody has something to chat about. Especially those who want to change their identity. Especially when that person is the Fifth.”

N
ala wondered if he’d been forgotten. His meals were slipped through the door, but otherwise he was left alone. Every night a short message was tapped out on the pipes to him in Morse and he tapped back. One night he heard shouting and raucous laughter in the corridor. He listened carefully at the door. He gathered that the guards’ commander had a regimental dinner every Friday, and that when he was gone, the guards smuggled in beer and spirits. He stored away the fact that it was Friday, so he could now keep track of which day it was; then he went to the pipes and started tapping. It was the first time he had started the conversation, and there was a long lull before an answer came.

“Sorry took so long.”

“Okay. Guards drunk,” Nala tapped.

“Can you help me?”

“Help?”

“Escape?”

“Who are you?”

“Flanagan.”

A guard walked down the corridor, singing a drunken song. Nala waited for him to go before replying.

“How?”

“I can get key of cell. No way out after that.”

“I can pick other locks.”

“Next Friday.”

“Okay.”

Nala sat back in the darkness. Escape was possible.
Then he had to find Danny. He had no home. Danny was all he had.

T
he Phonemaker led Danny to the rear of the shop and opened the back door, which led into a dusty storeroom.

“What are you going to do with me?” Danny asked. He could feel the power surge in him again, and again he repressed it.

“Do with you?” The Phonemaker turned to look at him. “I don’t want to do anything with you.” He put his shoulder against a rickety cupboard at the back of the storeroom. It swung open smoothly, and a light came on, revealing a battered metal staircase leading down.

“Go on,” the Phonemaker said, pushing Danny in front of him. It was a spiral staircase, so Danny couldn’t see what was at the bottom. Some of the bulbs along the way were broken, and a feeling of foreboding grew in him.

Finally he stumbled out into a dark tunnel with rounded walls.

“Where am I?” he asked. The Phonemaker tapped an enameled sign directly in front of him. It said
SKREEN JUNCTION
. The man touched a switch and a light came on. Danny gasped. They were in an underground train station, but one that had not been used for a long time. The rails were covered with dirt and debris and the walls were dusty. The platforms, however, were lined with computers and other technical equipment. In one corner guns were piled against the wall, gleaming with oil.

“What’s going on?” Danny said, then stopped as his
eye fell on a plaque mounted on the far wall. It showed an intertwined
S & G
exactly the same as the one on his ring!

“Wh-what …,” he stammered, turning to the Phonemaker, “what is this place? Who are you?”

“They call me the Phonemaker, and this place is the center of resistance set up by Steff Pilkington many years ago to protect the world against the catastrophe that is now almost on us.”

“Steff Pilkington, my da …,” Danny blurted out.

“Yes,” the Phonemaker said with a smile, reaching out to undo Danny’s handcuffs, “and his raincoat looks very well on his son, I have to say!”

“I don’t understand,” Danny said, sitting down on a bench.

“Your dad knew the treaty would be broken eventually. He knew the Upper World needed an underground. Wilsons was very much against it, and he defied them.”

“How did you meet him?”

“I was a student of history and I came across some very odd documents that spoke about the existence of another world, and how what we thought of as angels were in fact the emissaries of that world. I published several papers on it. Many people laughed at me, but others approached me who had made the same discovery. Your father read one of my papers and then contacted me. We set up a network. There aren’t many of us, but we will be here to support you.”

As Danny watched, people started to emerge from side tunnels. Ordinary people, but harried-looking, as
if they were under surveillance by a ruthless enemy. Danny’s only thought till now had been to get close to Longford and to punish him, but when he saw these people, he realized that he couldn’t just think about himself. Shuffling forward on the dark, dusty platform, they looked at him as if hope had suddenly entered their hearts.

A small man in a dark coat approached the Phonemaker with a slip of paper.

“This is just in,” the man read. “Professor Longford has brought the armed forces under his direct control.”

“He’ll watch us fight until we’re on our knees, and then he’ll take over,” the Phonemaker murmured.

“Over here,” a gray-haired woman called. She was sitting in front of a monitor, wearing headphones.

“Special forces activity in the north of the city,” she said. The Phonemaker went to a young woman in a knitted cap.

“Can you get the traffic camera up?”

“Working on it.” The girl’s computer screen flickered and came to life. A gray streetscape came into view. Danny stared. He recognized the street, and the mobile home parked on it.

“That’s mine,” he said, watching as half a dozen black cars pulled up quickly at either end of the street. Armed men poured out. Suddenly the street was full of them, taking up positions. Danny’s throat tightened. If he hadn’t come to the Phonemaker he would have been asleep in the caravan. One of the men stood up and signaled.

“They’re going to storm it now,” the Phonemaker
said. But that wasn’t what the signal meant. As one, the men trained their weapons on the caravan and opened fire. The heavy bullets ripped through the flimsy shell of the mobile home, which rocked and shuddered, metal and glass debris flying through the air. The withering fire did not slacken. The caravan seemed to collapse on itself, and bright orange flame flickered in what was left of the interior.

“Good,” the Phonemaker said with satisfaction.

“Good?” Danny looked at him suspiciously. “What do you mean by ‘good’?”

“Look.” The flames were spreading quickly. “If they had taken the caravan intact, they might have found clues to lead to you, or at least to your intentions. Now they have nothing. Longford will be furious. You can stay here now, if you want. You’ll be safe.”

Danny nodded, but he scanned the faces in front of him. He knew that Longford’s first act when he got into power would be to recruit as many spies as he could, and that he would take delight in infiltrating an opposition movement. But it was hard to believe that among the faces there could be a traitor. An image flashed into his head of these people being led out of the underground station, handcuffed, betrayed and defeated. Spy Danny felt a warm glow of malicious pleasure. But then his eye landed on the intertwined
S & G
, and he felt Spy Danny rebuked, a flood of shame washing over him.

“We’re here to help you,” the Phonemaker said. “We have experts in many fields. Just tell us what to do.”

Danny looked at him. He was used to working on his
own. He had planned his approach to Longford, and his plans hadn’t included anyone else. The Phonemaker’s shrewd eyes watched, as if he sensed Danny’s difficulty.

“We can create diversions. We can shut down street cameras, computer systems, even security systems. Just tell us what to do and when to do it. You don’t have to give us a reason for it. That’s your business.”

The Phonemaker led him to a small office to the side of the platform—a stationmaster’s office, perhaps. There was a small bunk in the corner.