Chapter One
Danny, outside London
Danny would never have noticed the door that night if it hadn't opened a crack. It was hidden on the outside by the same wood paneling that ran along the whole length of the corridor. Cleverly hidden too, lovely workmanship. How it opened, Danny didn't know—you probably twisted a candlestick or felt behind a family portrait for a hidden button. Only he didn't have to look for anything like that, because the secret door was already open. Not much more than half an inch, but half an inch was enough.
He was expecting the door to be stiff—it looked like it hadn't been used in years—but it swung back sweet as you like, not so much as a creak. There was another door behind it, a modern door this time, brand-new and high-tech looking. There was a combination lock pad built in with some sort of sensor plate above it and a little lens above that.
Danny stared, impressed but puzzled. He knew what he was looking at, all right—high security. Very high security. You didn't just need the numbers to punch in: that pad was for a thumbprint, and the little lens above it was an iris recognition system. But what was such a high-security system doing in an old, run-down country house?
He took a step back before another thought struck him. Maybe the secret door led to a vault where the owner kept his priceless art collection. Maybe the old boy who owned the house was filthy rich. Not that it mattered, because Danny didn't have the combination or the thumbprint or the iris pattern to get through a door like this anyway. But it didn't stop him from pushing it. Just a little push, not really expecting anything to happen—just the sort of thing you did if you were somebody like Danny with nothing to lose.
The door opened.
Not inward, but sideways. A sliding door, so silent you couldn't hear a whisper. And an automatic light came on.
Danny was looking into a lift.
Danny kept looking into the lift, thinking it was all too much. The thing was all sparkling chrome with mirrors built into the walls, not so much as a finger smudge on any of them. No buttons, though: no top floor, ground floor, lobby, or that sort of thing. But there was a discreet brass plaque announcing otis, which that this was an American installation, what they called an elevator. What was an American high-tech, state-of-the-art, high-security elevator doing hiding behind a secret panel in an old English country house?
There was no question of getting into it, of course. That would be stupid. No buttons. This was an automatic elevator, the sort took you somewhere of its own accord with no way of stopping it or making it go somewhere else. All the same, he was curious. He wondered if there really was an art collection.
Danny stepped into the elevator. The door slid closed behind him. “Going down,” the lift murmured in a soft American accent. It went down for a lot longer than he thought it would, a lot longer than it would take to get to a converted cellar, for example, before the doors slid open again.
Danny felt a sudden pang of fear. He was in a corridor that didn't seem to suit the rest of the house. It was modern, stark, dead straight, and painted blue. No furniture, no ornaments, no pictures on the walls. And not just a corridor. This looked like a whole maze of corridors, which definitely didn't belong here. It was as if somebody had built an entire office deep underneath the old house. But why?
Danny wished the lift would go back up again, but it stubbornly refused to move, refused even to close its doors. There had to be sensors, maybe even a hidden camera, that told it somebody was still inside. So it left him standing exposed to anybody who was down there. He had to move to somewhere less conspicuous, and he had to move fast. He was no longer in an empty country house. There might be people down here—people who set up high-security systems.
As Danny stepped smartly off the elevator, its door slid shut again, and this time it didn't open when he pushed it. Whatever he'd got himself into, he was stuck here. But where was he? What was this place? It even had light tracks along the floor, like the markers in airports that showed where you were supposed to go. Different colors seemed to lead to different places.
He turned to push the elevator door again, but nothing happened. Coming down here had been really stupid. It was one thing trying to nick a few quid from an empty house, but this place was something else. One step in and he was creeped out already. His heart was pounding uncomfortably. His hands were sweating. It wasn't just waiting for somebody to step into the corridor and spot him. It was the feeling that getting caught down here could be a lot more serious than getting caught up above. He needed to find a way back out and find it fast.
Danny started to move along the corridor. There were doors opening off it, which might mean places to hide but might also mean roomfuls of people. All the same, he had no choice. He stopped and listened at one of the doors before pushing it open.
The room was the weirdest thing he'd ever seen. All he could think was execution chamber. Two electric chairs—at least they looked like two electric chairs with their shining metal headsets and cables snaking everywhere—were set side by side in the middle of the floor. There was a pretty girl inside, about Danny's own age, dressed in a T-shirt with a fairy on it and expensive-looking designer jeans. She might have been headed for a high-class disco, only she wasn't. She was sitting in one of the electric chairs, strapped in with the steel cap on her head, not quite covering the blond hair. There were things flying around her: for some reason his eyes couldn't focus on them properly, but they flapped like little bats. Behind her, standing by a bank of switches, was a man who looked like Nicholas Cage, except for the color of his hair. The girl had her eyes closed, but the man was staring straight at Danny. His mouth dropped open.