The Unknown Spy (15 page)

“They’re giving me a chance to put myself in even more danger,” Danny snarled. “I don’t have to thank them for that!” He looked as if the harsh Cherb part of his nature had taken over.

They wrenched open the doors of the Land Rover as a line of bullets stitched up the snow beside them.

“Quick!” Dixie scrambled into the driver’s seat and looked blankly at the controls. “It looks different!”

Danny leaned over and turned the key. The engine caught as wood splinters cascaded from the walls of the shed, torn by bullets. The engine roared to life.

“We can’t get out the front …,” Danny said, but that wasn’t to be a problem. Dixie pulled at the gear lever and stomped on the gas pedal and the Land Rover zoomed backward. With a great rending noise the back of the garage collapsed and the vehicle shot out into the snow. Dixie pulled at the gear lever again. With a gout of black smoke from the exhaust, the Land Rover leapt forward. More bullets struck the garage and flames started to lick at it. Dixie gunned the engine and the tires dug into the ice on the road. Lurching at first, then building up speed, the vehicle pulled away from the house.

Looking back, Danny could see orange muzzle flashes until black smoke from the burning garage obscured the battle.

Dixie knew how to point the Land Rover in the right direction and put her feet on the pedals, but she didn’t know anything else. She gripped the wheel determinedly, oblivious to signs, and Danny was glad there was no other traffic on the road. They ate up the miles. Danny forced himself to think about what might be waiting ahead.

“Stupid,” Dixie said.

“What?”

“Not you. Me. We don’t know where we’re going but I have the Globe, the GIPEP, in my bag. Take it out!”

Danny took the glass globe from her bag. Instantly two tiny figures appeared on it, moving side by side as they were.

“I wonder …,” Danny said.

“Wonder? Of course you do. We all wonder what’s going on,” Dixie said.

“That isn’t what I meant,” Danny said. He held the Globe up and spoke into it.

“The kingdom of Morne!” he said. For a moment nothing happened; then the Globe darkened as though a tiny storm was blowing through it. When it cleared Danny could see the two figures again, and in front of them a tiny castle. Morne!

“Up there,” Danny said, pointing into the distance, where the peaks of a mountain range were obscured by sullen snow cloud. “That must be it!”

A few minutes later they met their first car, crawling
through the snow. Dixie waved vigorously at its driver—so vigorously that the Land Rover brushed against a lamppost.

“Keep your eyes on the road, Dixie,” Danny said.

“I am,” she said happily, bumping over a sidewalk and narrowly missing a mailbox. They were in the suburbs of a small town now, and the next hour was a nightmare as Dixie drove through red lights and veered onto sidewalks. When she spotted a playground, she drove straight through it, waving happily at the small band of bemused children who had braved the weather. Danny was convinced that he and Dixie would have been arrested if it wasn’t for the fact that the police had more to do than worry about terrible driving. Blizzards and fallen power lines had resulted in an evacuation of the area at the foot of the mountains, and housing had to be found for all the people. The police were busy dealing with the shelters that had sprung up in the town center. Danny struggled to stop Dixie being distracted by flashing shop signs and phone boxes—all normal things to him, but things Dixie had never seen before. Nor did she see the police barrier at the edge of town warning of the dangers of the snowy roads ahead. The front bumper of the Land Rover caught the barrier and crashed straight over it.

“Now the front is as battered as the back,” Dixie said with a dizzy grin. As they passed a sign saying N
EWCASTLE
10, she gunned the Land Rover toward the evacuated town.

* * *

N
ewcastle lay between the sea and the mountains. It looked like a seaside resort that had fallen onto hard times. There were closed amusement parks on the boardwalk, and a frozen pond with half-sunk boats stuck in the ice. The sea had started to freeze, and chunks of ice washed back and forth in the sullen waves. There were small cafes and pizza restaurants, but they were all closed, some of them derelict. The Land Rover came to a halt, jammed against a telephone box, and they got out.

“This looks like a fun sort of a place,” Dixie said. Danny said nothing. The Globe in his hand was pointing unwaveringly toward the cruel-looking snowy mountains. It was nearly dark, but could they afford to wait another night? The Treaty Stone might already be lying in pieces, the forces of the Ring streaming across the border to the Upper World. Dixie followed Danny’s eyes.

“If you’re thinking of tackling the mountain,” she said, “I’m not doing it on an empty stomach.”

Danny realized that they hadn’t eaten all day. His stomach was beginning to rumble.

“Look,” Dixie said. At the end of the street, a neon sign winked on and off: M
ACARI’S
O
RIGINAL!
R
EALLY
N
OURISHING
A
ND
E
XCELLENT!

“Someone wasn’t evacuated,” Danny said.

The smell of frying fish and chips reached their nostrils as they approached. Dixie was so hungry that she disappeared and reappeared right outside the door of the restaurant.

“Don’t do that, Dixie,” Danny said. When he got to
her she had her nose pressed up against the menu in the window.

“Starving …,” she said, vanishing and reappearing just inside the door. Danny groaned inwardly. If, as Pearl had said, the Ring had agents in the Upper World, then Dixie might as well have been carrying a sign to say who she and Danny were. He pushed the door open.

It was an ordinary chip shop. There was a counter with a fryer behind it, a jukebox in the corner and a few wooden tables and chairs. The aroma of frying fish filled the air. Yet Dixie wasn’t paying any attention to the smell. She was staring, awestruck, in the direction of the counter.

“What’s wrong?” Danny whispered, glancing nervously at the entrance to the kitchen, where he could see a man slicing potatoes.

“That … that!” Dixie breathed, and nodded to a television on the wall behind the counter. “What is it?”

“That? A television. Don’t you remember? I told you about it. It’s showing the news.”

“There are people inside.…No … don’t be silly, Dixie.…Are they real or are they moving paintings? Look. A river!”

“They’re real people, Dixie. You just point a camera at them and put it on film, then the TV people send a signal through the air.…”

Dixie looked as if she only half believed him. Danny smiled inwardly. It
did
sound a bit unlikely when you thought about it. Dixie’s mouth made a perfect O as she gazed at an aerial shot of a snow-clogged motorway.
Danny delved into his pocket and came out with a fistful of notes. Better buy some food quick, he thought, and get out of here before Dixie disappears and reappears in the fish fryer. He could see the snow-covered mountains through a side window. They would have to go on foot, he thought; the snow was too deep for the Land Rover.

There was a cough. Danny looked around to see the proprietor standing at the counter. He was a small swarthy man with a neat mustache. One eyebrow was raised, and he had a half smile on his face, as if there was something amusing in the sight of two hungry strangers.

“Er, could we have two fish suppers, please?” Danny asked.

“Certainly, certainly.” The man had a foreign accent—Italian, perhaps, Danny thought. Two pieces of cod were slipped into the hot oil.

“Look, Danny,” Dixie said breathlessly. “It’s here!”

Danny followed her eyes to the television set. The screen was indeed showing an aerial view of the town and the mountains beyond. The news announcer was relating how, after weeks of cold weather, an evacuation plan had to be carried out for towns at the foot of the mountains as food and fuel ran short.

That’s odd, Danny thought again. Why would a chip shop be open if the population has been evacuated? He turned back to the counter to question the owner and found himself staring at a large and extremely deadly-looking crossbow in the hands of a now-unsmiling shop owner.

“So,” the man said softly, “what are the boy and the disappearing lady doing in the evacuated town?”

“Whoops,” Dixie said.

“We came back,” Danny said, with as much confidence as he could muster. “We left Dixie’s auntie behind in the rush. We were afraid that she would be frozen. She has no food.” He was amazed how the lie slipped off his tongue, even with an arrow pointed at his heart.

“She’s not very well,” Dixie added, with an expression of wide-eyed innocence. “She’s kind of forgetful and she’s very fond of cats—”

“And we have to find her,” Danny cut in, stopping Dixie’s flow of information about her imaginary aunt.

“I see,” the man said. “And where does this aunt live?”

“Up there,” Dixie said, pointing toward the mountains, “right up near the top.”

The man smiled, but the smile did not touch his eyes.

“A lonely place for an old lady, no?”

“She’s very independent,” Dixie said. The man slipped out from behind the counter, keeping the crossbow fixed on Danny. He locked the door and turned the sign so that it read C
LOSED
.

“Now it is time to learn the truth,” he said grimly, beckoning them into the back room with the crossbow. Unlike the warm front part of the shop, there was nothing cozy about the back. The walls were damp cold stone and the floor was earth; it felt and looked like a dungeon. A dark passage led off from the back.

“Now,” the man went on, glowering, “we have places
for to put snoopers and sneaks like you two. And there are ways to get truth from you as well. Many good ways.” He seized Dixie’s wrists and secured them to a set of manacles on the wall. He did the same with Danny.

“Try to disappear now!” He opened a rough wooden cupboard and removed two long steel implements, each with a small horseshoe at the end.

“We haven’t done anything to you,” Danny said. “Let us go!”

“Like hell I let you go,” the small man said. “I find truth.”

Danny watched as the man took the steel implements into the front of the shop, where the fish was still sizzling in the hot oil of the fryer. He thrust the rods into the fire beneath the oil.

“What’s he doing?” Dixie whispered.

“I think I know,” Danny said, “and I don’t like it.” He twisted in his manacles. There was a gun in one of his inside pockets if he could reach it, but the fetters held firm.

“I should be able to disappear out of these,” Dixie said, “but the metal is stopping me. I don’t understand how. Who is he, anyway, and what does he want? Is he part of the Ring or something?”

The man took the rods out of the fire and examined them. The ends were glowing a dull orange. He thrust them in again.

“Danny, he isn’t going to … brand us with those things, is he?” There was a note of terror in her voice. She was a free spirit, not made to be tied. Danny too could feel
cold fear in his heart. He made himself clear his mind. There had to be a way out. He called to the man.

“You don’t have to torture us—we’ll tell you the truth!”

“Sorry,” the man said, coming back in and looking genuinely remorseful. “You see, torturers never believe the first thing they’re told. Our victims always hold something back, even if they don’t mean to, so I’ll have to give you a little tickle with the hot irons at some point anyway. You might as well save it for then.” He headed out to the front again.

Dixie gulped. Use you brain, Danny told himself; use your cunning.

“Dixie,” he said quickly, “did you notice anything funny about this place, something just not right when we were coming in?”

She shook her head. In the front of the shop, the swarthy man checked the irons. They were almost white-hot. He spat on one, and the spit sizzled and evaporated before the irons were thrust back into the heat.

“Have to think …,” Danny muttered. There had been something that didn’t quite fit. He closed his eyes and tried to recall how the front of the chip shop had looked. The peeling paint, the grease-stained menu in the window. The neon sign …

“What did the sign say?” he demanded. “The chip shop sign?”

“I don’t remember,” Dixie moaned. “Do something, Danny!”

Macari took the irons from the fire and looked them
over. They were now white-hot. He touched one carefully to the hairs on his forearm. The smell of burning hair filled the shop. Dixie had her eyes shut tight and was shaking like a leaf. Danny scanned the shop desperately. No weapon within reach. He looked over the approaching Macari’s shoulder toward the street, hoping against hope that he could call out to a passerby. But all he could see was the neon sign blinking on and off. M
ACARI’S
O
RIGINAL!
R
EALLY
N
OURISHING
A
ND
E
XCELLENT!
It was an odd thing for a sign to say. It didn’t even make a lot of sense. Really Nourishing and Excellent …

“Morne!” Danny shouted. “It’s Morne!”

“What are you talking about?” Dixie cried.

“It’s Morne!” Danny said. “Macari’s Original Really Nourishing and Excellent. ‘M-O-R–N-E.’ Morne!”

“Have you gone completely daft?” Dixie said, but Macari had paused, the two brands still in his hand.

“What do you know about Morne?” he demanded.

“We’re students,” Danny said, “sent from the Lower World. Under the terms of the treaty!”

“Are you sure?” Macari peered at them suspiciously. The smell of hot metal from the branding irons reached Danny’s nostrils.

“Absolutely sure!” Danny said.

“Certain,” Dixie added.

“I’ll have to check the book,” Macari grumbled. He shoved the irons back into the fire and took a well-thumbed book from under the counter.

“Who sent you?” he demanded.

“Er, Master Devoy,” Danny replied, hoping he’d chosen to say the right thing.

“Devoy … Devoy …” Macari flipped through the book. “Ah. Here. ‘Two souls for instruction.’ Your names?”