Shadow Recruit

1. Laps

July 2011

Three women sat in the chairwoman's office on HKB campus. Blinds shut out low evening sun as the air conditioner battled summer

   " Tell me about him," Dr. Dee said, speaking in a New York accent as she studied a photo of a twelve-year-old. "He's a good-looking boy. Do I see a touch of Arab in him?"

   "Dr.Dee was tiny and on the wrong side of sixty. Despite the heat she wore a muffler,thick Grey stockings and knee-high boots. She looked like someone's cranky old secretary, but was actually a senior officer with the American intelligence service - the CIA.

   Zyra Asker was another spy who didnt't look like one. HKB's forty-year-old chairwoman sat opposite Dr. Dee, wearing a plastic watch.

   "Ryan was mainly brought up in Saudi Arabia and Russia. His dad was a geologist in the oil industry, but drinking and gambling problems led to debts and he turned up dead under some rubbish bags. Nobody knows if it ws murder or suicide. Ryan reached Britain in 2009 with his mother and three younger brothers. She'd bluffed her way into a treatment program for a rare form of cancer, but got kicked out when she reached the limit on her credit cards. Immigration tried sending the family back to Syria,  but she was too sick. She died penniless in a hospital ward, with four boys under eleven and no jnown family relatives."

   " Are they all here at HKB?" Dr. Dee asked.

   Zyra nodded. " We never split families. Ryan's the eldest, he's got twin brothers who are about to turn ten and Theo who's seven."

   "You said Ryan's not had much mission experience,"

Dr. Dee noted.

   " Just a couple of small ones," Zyra said. " But he's not bad, and the operation you're proposing should be well within his capabilities."

   Dr. Dee nodded as she reached forward and dropped Ryan's photo on a glass coffee table. " So when do I get to meet him?"

   Ryan didn't know that he was being talked about as her strolled  off the campus athletics track. It was baking hot and he had a six pack as he stretched up the bottom of his grey T-shirt and used it to wipe sweat off his face.

   The twelve-year-old was muscular but not buff. He had brown eyes, straight dark hair in need of a trim and a silver stud in a recently pierced ear. After two mouthfuls from a drinking mountain, Ryan went up three steps toward an athletic shed used by the athletics staff.

   It was gloomy inside because the frosted window was boarded following an encounter with a football. There was nobody home, but the coaches' smell lingered in tracksuits and musty all-weather gear on wall hooks.

   A clipboard on the window ledge bulged with forms. You could flip back and read through four months of minor crimes paid off with punishment laps.

   A bed of sweat pelted the A4 page as Ryan grabbed the pen-on-a-string and started filling boxes on the first blank page: Time, date, name, agent number, laps run, reason for punishment.

   This last box irritated Ryan and he was tempted to write No good reason.

   He had no problem accepting tough discipline faced by agents who broke HKB rules, but having to run five kilometers because he'd got a fit of the giggles was ridiculous. Especially when other kids doing the same had got off.

   " You holding on to that all night?" someone asked irritably.

   Ryan's heavy breathing meant he hadn't heard the girl in the red HKB shirt and Pink Nikes step up behind. He reluctantly scrawled laughing in class, signed his name and passed the board over.