by Tanya Allan
Connie smiled, agreeing with her friend’s assessment. This was a million miles from where she thought she’d end up.
“I still need my back-up, and that’s you two!” Keira had said just three months ago.
They’d all gone their separate ways after school. Connie and Keira having split up when Keira left their first school close to the Thames. Keira had brought Shannon home in the Christmas holidays after that first term, as she was unwilling to go home to Ireland. Shannon and Connie had got on well, and the girls had promised to keep the friendship going no matter what.
Connie was a little jealous of Shannon at first, but she realised that Shannon was now a kind of irreverent, older-sister figure for Keira. In fact, Shannon made everyone look better than they really were. The girls made a pact to spend the summer holidays together, starting with a trip for them all to France.
Keira’s father finally married Stephanie and they planned to move abroad as soon as Keira had flown the nest. Not that they were in any rush, so when Keira announced that she had been offered a scholarship to any university, her father rubbed his hands together in undisguised glee.
The girls had headed off to France when Graham and Stephanie were on their Honeymoon. The apartment in France was still there when they went the following year, and Graham was a little sad that his daughter no longer wanted to join them. Keira had told them that she had grown out of the place, and wanted to do other stuff with her friends. Graham decided to sell the apartment as he and his new bride were looking at somewhere different to settle down.
After getting straight A’s in her A-levels, Keira had gone to Cambridge to study Russian and IT, while Shannon had got into Reading to study criminal psychology a year earlier. Connie had done a design course at Brunel University in Hillingdon.
The girls had tried to keep in touch with each other, but it had been quite difficult because they were in three different places doing very different courses. However, Shannon became almost a permanent feature at the Frost household during the Christmas breaks in particular; Mr Frost wondered if he might have two chicks to leave the nest rather than just one.
Qualifying a year earlier than Keira, Shannon had been unable to find a job immediately. She acknowledged that her interview techniques might let her down a bit, which her two friends had to admit was probably the case.
“I’ll get you both a decent job when I go and work for the spooks!” Keira had said.
Both girls had thought she’d been joking. Now they knew that she had been perfectly serious.
The lift stopped and the door opened.
“Look what the cat dragged in” said a familiar voice.
The girls smiled at their friend, who looked almost like a different person. Clad in a dark suit, she looked like the epitome of a civil servant of executive. With a new hairstyle, shorter and gleaming, she looked stunning. Judging by the amount of male heads that turned as the trio made their way along the corridor, she wasn’t the only one.
“What is it we’re meant to be doing here?” Shannon asked; for which Connie was grateful.
“I’m putting together my own team; and you’re it.”
“Just us?”
“To start with. I’m not operational yet, so we’re in the early stages of development.”
“I’m not with you,” Shannon admitted.
“The department is very hush-hush. The director answers to the Prime Minister only. It’s a small department and one that gets some of the trickiest jobs. Now the director has done nearly all the work up to now, so she is grateful that there are a few of us to take on the workload. Even I don’t know any of the other specialists. I met a girl called Kezzy [1] the other day, but I have no idea what she does. She’s a little older than me, but seems friendly enough. We’re not allowed to talk about what we can do; that was one of the first rules that the boss told me about.”
“I thought you’d all work together, like the Avengers,” said Shannon.
“It’s all too secret. We aren’t allowed to know how many of us there are, or what we do. That way, if one of us is taken, we can’t reveal anything. Anyway, I’m still in training, but apparently it is essential to have my own team as backup. You will be that team. You’re my interface with everyone else, as you will be the only people who know the truth.”
“Who is this director, your boss?” Connie asked.
Keira paused, unsure what to say.
“Her name is Amber and I think she can do a lot of what I can do, but she doesn’t need a torc. All I know is that she started back in the seventies and took over this department a little while ago.”
“So she’s old?” Connie asked.
“Not that you’d notice,” Keira said.
“So, when do we get guns and stuff?”
“You don’t, Miss O’Hanrahan,” said a new voice. “At least not until you’ve convinced me that you know how to use them without maiming your own side.”
Amber was standing outside her office watching the three young women approach. It was at that point they appreciated what Keira had said, for Amber might be older than their parents, but she looked very much younger than her years.
“My God,” Amber said, smiling and shaking her head. “What the hell are you going to call yourselves; Charlie’s Angels?”
“Huh?” said Shannon.
“Look at yourselves, and then look at all those men in their offices dribbling down their nice new suits. Get in my office before you cause one of them to cease functioning altogether.”
They sat in the spacious and remarkably modern office, despite it being in a rather elderly building.
“Welcome to my domain,” said Amber. “Now, despite your enthusiastic start, I will remind you that we have the formality of a job interview to undergo before anyone is employed. Just because Keira wants you does not necessarily mean you get the job. Have you both brought the relevant documentation?”
After handing over their various diplomas and degree certificates, so began a gruelling morning. Neither girl actually had any idea what they were to face. Whatever they had thought was nothing like the reality. They did not realise it, but Amber had ‘interviewed’ them both without their knowledge within the first fifteen minutes.
Despite Shannon’s rough edges and somewhat questionable language, Amber discerned that the girl was loyal and dependable. Deep down, she craved to be needed and important to others, as both these elements were conspicuously absent in her family life. She had discovered a friend in Keira, and to a lesser degree in Connie, that had given her friendship for the first time in her life.
Connie, on the other hand, was sadly lacking in self-esteem, regardless of the fact that she now looked slim and very attractive. Her formative years had been tough, and once again, Keira had given her a boost when she so desperately needed one.
Both were intelligent and intuitive young women, but they were also lacking the level of discipline that Amber believed necessary for working in the intelligence game.
While Keira was otherwise occupied researching various organisations that potentially could be enemies of the United Kingdom and her allies, Amber had the pair working on a scenario assessment, while she contemplated whether or not to take them on. Keira needed a support team, and from her own experience she knew that the fewer that knew her secret the better. She could recruit experts who could assist and Connie and Shannon could act as mediators so as to keep the true powers hidden even from those they worked with, as well as those who had a nefarious agenda.
The girls finished and sat back, regarding each other warily.
“Jeez, that was fuckin’ nasty,” said Shannon.
“Did you get the one where you had to decide who should live and who should die?”
“Yup.”
“What did you do?”
“I cheated; I wrote that I called Keira on my mobile and got her to come and help.”
“I never thought of that. I saved all those under forty.”
“I don’t see how we could answer that one right. It was bloody tricky.”
Amber came into the small office in which the girls had been sat for the last couple of hours. She took their sheets of paper and sat in one of the vacant chairs as she read through the list of actions with reasons.
Finally, with a smile, she put down Shannon’s paper and started on Connie’s answer sheet. The girls felt inordinately nervous, but sat in silence. Finally, Amber put down the papers.
“Why don’t you want to be a psychologist?” she asked Shannon.
“It’s boring, and I hate boring.”
“So is intelligence work. Most of the work is routine and positively brain-numbing.”
“Yeah, but it’s the moments of sheer bloody panic that I’d be looking forward to. I mean, that time when Keira took out them terrorists, I just wanted to be part of it all and not sitting on me arse hearing it all second hand.”
Amber failed to control her smile, so she turned to Connie.
“How about you, Connie; is being a designer not as glamorous as you thought?”
“My friend wants me to help, and that’s far more important.”
Amber smiled and nodded.
“Right, then you’d better come with me,” she said, standing and leaving the room. The girls grabbed their bags and followed.
They returned to Amber’s office, to find Keira waiting for them.
Once all were seated, with Amber behind her desk, they all looked at her expectantly.
Amber regarded Keira for a moment.
“Are you sure that you want to screw up these two friends’ lives?”
“If they’re willing, yes.”
She turned to the girls.
“Are you sure you want to forget what a normal life is?”
“What’s so good about a normal life anyway?” Shannon asked with a grin. Connie just smiled and nodded.
“Okay, then on your own head be it. Welcome to the smallest and most secret department in the United Kingdom. In a moment, you will sign the Official Secrets Act. Once signed, then you become faceless. As far as your family and friends are concerned, you are now civil servants within the Home Office. We will work on exactly what you can tell them, because on Monday, you will all be heading to a small farm in Hertfordshire where you will stay for six weeks to be trained in areas that you never knew existed. There will be some other members of the team joining you, but you are the only people who know what Keira is able to do, and no one, and I mean no one is ever to even get a whiff of her potential, is that clear?”
The girls nodded. For once, Shannon didn’t have a funny word to say.
“Keira wanted you to be her mentors, to help her deal with all manner of things, both in the social arena and while at work. You are her running backs – there to watch her back and to come up with imaginative and realistic explanations for surprising things that might just happen. Your job, ladies, is to keep a tight lid on anything she does, and to ensure that the press are never able to get anything printable to use.”
“So, do we get to go where she goes?” Shannon asked, with her eyes gleaming.
“Yes. One of the areas in which we will train you is communications. You will be her eyes and ears, using the technology to maintain communication channels while she undertakes whatever it is she has to do. You are not the field agents; you are her support, which is a vital role. I hope you appreciate how important it is. But, if she tells you to ‘Stay there’, then you do as she says. Is that clear?”
The girls nodded. Shannon felt guilty as she recalled not doing exactly that in the woods that fateful night.
“This training; is it likely to be physical?” Connie asked.
“Why?” Amber asked, bluntly.
“I’m just curious. Keira and I used to go running and stuff, so I’d like to get fit again.”
Amber regarded the slender young woman for a moment.
“Connie, you lost a substantial amount of weight over a year and a half, and despite living a typical student’s life, you have kept it off. Getting fit is the understatement for what we are going to expect of you.”
Shannon looked slightly worried.
Amber sighed.
“Look, girls, this is not just a career; it’s a lifestyle. Believe me, and I learned the hard way, this is your chance to say no, walk away and live an ordinary life. What do you say?”
“A boring ordinary life,” muttered Shannon.
“It depends on what you consider to be boring. As I said, much of our work is exceedingly boring.”
“Yeah, but we get to save the world. How many people can say that?” the Irish girl said with a grin.
Keira grinned at them both.
“Then welcome to my world!” said Amber, producing some documents for them to sign.
As the three friends walked away together for lunch, Amber wondered just what kind of world she had welcomed them to.
Time would tell.
.......................End of Book 1.
Books by Tanya Allan
Her AMAZON.COM PAGE: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004VTB5OQ
A Chance would be a Fine Thing (Knox Journals Book 1)
A Fairy's Tale
A Girl can but Dream
Amber Alert
A Tale of Two T’s*
A Wedding and Two Wars (Knox Journal Book 2)
Beginning's End
Behind The Enemy
Dead End (Candy Cane 2)
Dragons & Stuff!
Emma*
Every Little Girl's Dream #
Extra Special Agent
Flight or Fight
Fortune's Soldier
Gruesome Tuesday*
In Plain Sight*
In The Shadows
It Couldn't Happen, Could it?
Killing Me Slowly*
Marine I: Agent of Time*
Modern Masquerade
Monique*#
Queen of Hearts*
Ring the Change
Shit Happens - so do Miracles*
Skin*
Tango Golf: Cop with A Difference
The Candy Cane Club
The Hard Way*
The Other Side of Dreams
There's No Such Thing as a Super Hero
The Summer Job & Other Stories
The Torc (Book 1 – The Emerging)
To Fight For a Dream*
Twisted Dreams*
TWOC - A Comedy of Errors
Weird Wednesday*
When Fortune Smiles
When I Count to Three #
Whispers in the Mind*
Whispers in the Soul*
*Paperbacks can be found here: http://www.feedaread.com/profiles/368/
[1] See - There’s No Such Thing as a Superhero; by Tanya Allan
