The Unknown Spy

A
LSO BY
E
OIN
M
C
N
AMEE

The Ring of Five

The Navigator Trilogy

The Navigator

City of Time

The Frost Child

T
he countryside around the old house was dark and silent. The night was cloudless, and stars glittered in the icy sky. The previous few days had seen the first snowfalls of the year, and the snow lay heavily on the fields and woods. A fox’s tracks led toward the frozen lake on the grounds of the house, but not a living thing was to be seen, all the wild creatures huddled in burrow or nest against the cold
.

The house was very old and might have appeared uninhabited were it not for a single light burning in a window just under the eaves. It was the kind of light you saw when you were out late and had a long way to go and were cold and hungry so that you imagined a cozy bedroom with a fire burning in the grate
.

Only the sharpest-eared of creatures would have heard the sound, as if a faint breeze rustled across the land, and only the sharpest-eyed would have seen the bright stars dimmed for a moment. Yet in their beds the wild animals stirred and whimpered in their sleep. Something evil
was abroad in the cold night. On the topmost branches of a tall pine tree overlooking the house there was a sudden flurry, the strong branches bowing down and dumping their load of snow on the ground
.

The branches sprang back. Now, instead of being weighed with snow, they carried a different burden. A tall stooped figure stood in the tree—a man, perhaps, with long gray hair and eyes that burned yellow. A man and yet not a man, for from the middle of his back sprouted a pair of long feathered wings. The fierce eyes were fixed on the single light burning under the eaves of the house. The creature had risked much to be here. There was a solemn treaty forbidding him and his kind from crossing the border between the Lower World and the Upper, where he now stood, and he could not be sure of the consequences if his presence was revealed
.

But the prize was great. The boy was the only one who could unite the Two Worlds. The winged creature and his companions had tried once to turn the boy to evil but had failed. Stubborn values of friendship and loyalty could not be overcome. But this time they would succeed
.

The creature’s name was Conal. Once he had been a winged Messenger, an envoy who came and went between the Two Worlds in time of peace. But he had been corrupted and had become a member of the Ring of Five, the greatest spy ring that had ever existed. Together with his three companions, he had sought the fifth member of their fellowship, without whom their powers were incomplete. They believed they had found him in Danny Caulfield, a boy with a pixielike face and different-colored eyes—the marks of the Fifth
.

The Ring had watched from afar as the boy had begun
to train at Wilsons Academy of the Devious Arts, the school for spies. He had been a natural, discovering in himself almost at once a gift for treachery, a part of him that longed for the thrill of secrets and betrayal. He had resisted it, but that only made the moment so much sweeter when Danny finally turned his back on friendship and love and embraced the dark world of mistrust. He had regretted that choice and escaped the Ring, but now they sought him anew
.

Conal shifted his weight on the branch and spread his wings. He had found the boy. It was time to consult his colleagues. The forces of darkness were gathering, but Danny’s protectors had chosen well. Conal could see the untidy nests in the bare trees around the house. The ravens would be sleeping, but he couldn’t risk being seen by them. The great wings flapped once; Conal launched himself gently into the frigid air and was gone
.

AGENTS

D
anny 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!