No Hero Read Online Free PDF Page A

moment. As if I’ve caught her with a real stumper, as if she hadn’t thought of that one. And maybe it is all just a big fat happy lie. And then she says, “We have a book.”
    “A book?”
    “Yes, Detective, a book. A book the British government believes... that it believed...” She hesitates. I want to ask the questions about those holes in the conversation, but it seems that other information is more pressing. “It is a book of significant importance.” Shaw has gathered herself, speaks confidently. “A book that contains information which, if disseminated, could unsettle the power balance of the entire world, which, in the hands of just one of the petty despots or egomaniacs in the world, could crack the very surface of our reality like the shell of an egg.”
    She pauses, lets the seriousness of her tone, her look sink in. “I’m sure you’ll find it an interesting read.”
    It is by far the most threatening offer to read a book I’ve ever received. It’s like an Ayatollah holding out a copy of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses with a wink and a dangerous smile. And right then I bottle it. It’s not worth it. I think I’d prefer to live with the idea I had a moment of madness, and that Felicity Shaw is just a good guesser.
    “You know what,” I say. “I’m not sure I really do remember anything from that night. It’s all a blur. I was very stressed. Think I got some things muddled.”
    “It’s not much further,” says Shaw, pushing my wheelchair resolutely on. I don’t think I can get out of here on foot.
    We round a corner. The corridor is short and ends in another dull, gray door. Interest has been added by way of a muscular-looking man in fatigues holding the sort of oversized machine gun no one can ever hit Arnold Schwarzenegger with. I have no illusions that I could prove to be similarly elusive.
    Coming along with Shaw is starting to seem like a very bad idea.
    This time it’s a nine-digit code, plus the thumb scan, and the retina scan, and some voice recognition just for kicks.
    I swallow a lot, and rub sweat off my palms onto my pants.
    The room Shaw wheels me into is bare except for a single low table. Four steel legs, a chipped particleboard surface. There’s a book lying on the table. A four-inch-deep doorstop of a book. Heavy leather covers patinated with age. Moth-eaten pages hanging out at odd angles. The sort of book John Carpenter would throw in to let you know Kurt Russell’s day was about to go south.
    But that’s it. There’s no chair. No windows. The door swings shut behind us. I swallow again. Hard.
    “We’re off the grid in here,” Shaw says. “No wires in and out. Not even radio waves. We’re in a completely sealed environment.”
    “And this is where I read the book?”
    “Not exactly, no.”
    Oh shit. Oh balls.
    Shaw walks away, leaves me sitting there. She reaches out to a small switchbox on the table, next to the book. For the first time I notice that the book is clamped to the table by a metal casing. Wires connect to it, trail down the back of the legs. Shaw flicks a switch. There is a hum like a generator.
    “No one reads the book,” Shaw says. “That’s not quite how it works.” Which seems an odd thing to say, because how else could a book work? “It was discovered by a British government expedition to the summit of Everest in 1933, twenty years prior to Edmund Hilary’s ascent. You will find no record of that expedition anywhere. But that expedition—and this book that they found—led directly to the founding of MI37 in 1935, and to the magic arms race of the seventies and eighties. Not many people have experienced what you are about to, Detective Wallace.”
    What am I about to experience? What is wrong with the book? Why me? But I don’t have time for any questions because then, without any more ado, she turns back the cover.
    For a moment all I see is looping handwriting on a browning page. It’s not a Roman script. Cyrillic?