Free The Ghost Roads (Ring of Five) by Eoin McNamee Page A

structure.
    “Shelter,” he said.
    “What’s that?” Dixie asked. Something fluttered across the clearing behind them.
    “I don’t know …,” Les answered. With a suddenness that made them both jump, a raven alighted in front of them. It did a strange little dance up and down, then flew off a few yards, looking back expectantly.
    “It wants you to follow,” Dixie said. The raven did an impatient jig.
    “Yes, but where?” Les said.
    “Wilsons?”
    “We can’t be sure.” The raven looked at them in exasperation as Dixie thought. It came back toward them, picked up a mouthful of twigs and with incredible speed laid out a “W” on the ground, with an arrow pointing north.
    Behind them, Nala had started laying boughs of pine across the logs.
    “We’ll wait here for you,” Dixie said. Pearl moaned as if at the memory of some recent pain. “I wish Vandra was here. Hurry, Les!”
    Les hesitated, but the raven rose off the ground, fluttering its wings in his face.
    “All right, all right, I’m coming,” he said. “I’ll bring back enough Messengers to get you and Pearl and … the Cherb, I suppose.”
    “What about Danny?”
    “If Danny is still alive, he’ll go his own way now,” Les said. “He’s a danger to himself and everyone around him.” He turned to Nala.
    “Here, you—make sure nothing happens to them. If it does I’ll hold you personally responsible.”
    With that Les took off. The raven flew in front of him, then sped up, flying fast and true between the tree trunks, heading for the open sky. With a wave to Dixie, Les followed.
    A hundred miles away a group of grim-faced policemen gathered in a back street. At a signal from their leaderthey moved out into the open. Half of them went to the back entrance of an exclusive apartment block, half to the front.
    The intelligence chief had just settled himself on his satin sheets and turned out the light when a mighty crash shocked him awake. He grabbed the handle of the bedside cabinet, where he kept a Magnum revolver, but before he could open it, men’s hands had tumbled him onto the floor, a gun barrel pressing between his eyes.
    The men knew exactly what they were looking for. One of them went straight to the freezer in the kitchen, reached into the back of it and pulled out a sheaf of documents in a plastic bag. In the living room white-overalled technicians unpacked their instruments of detection. They glanced up as Nurse Flanagan, looking radiant, stepped over the threshold. The freezer package was handed to her. She went to the hall table, picked up the telephone and dialed carefully, still slightly wary of the instrument.
    “Hello? Ambrose?”
    I n the backseat of a black limousine, Longford received her news with pleasure. He replaced the receiver. The great web he had spun was gathering in its prey. The phone rang again. A clipped military voice informed him that an unidentified flying object had been detected in the area of the destroyed Kilrootford military installation.
    “Scramble air cover,” Longford said. “Shoot it down.”
    Now it was his turn to make a call. He dialed anumber. In the intelligence chief’s apartment one of the crime-scene technicians answered his mobile. He nodded, then went to one of the other technicians, who were lifting fingerprints from every available surface. The man stopped what he was doing, walked to the hall telephone and began to brush fingerprint powder on it.

SEEK AND DESTROY
    T oxique had gotten over his strange mood, and when Vandra asked him what had happened, he muttered that it was all over now anyway and it didn’t matter. By the time they were summoned into the library of the third landing, she had pushed it to the back of her mind. Devoy and Brunholm were waiting for them.
    Devoy motioned for them to sit.
    “In the great days of Wilsons we would have the cream of adult spies to call upon,” he began, “but alas, those days are long over. Yet the danger is graver than ever.