Tales of the Hidden World Read Free

and forth across the Iron Curtain. Stamping out supernatural brushfires, before they could get out of hand. Blowing up super-science villains in their hidden bunkers, before they could let loose something unspeakable, if they couldn’t get their own way . . . Killing people who needed killing. But had any of it really made any actual difference? Had he even killed the right people?
    They’d made such a great team, Jack and his brother, James, fighting the good fight, in all the right places. But the family broke up the team. Separated them, sent them off on different missions, in different places, because there was just so much going on in the hidden world, in those days. And not nearly enough field agents to go around. The world made a legend out of James, and his amazing exploits. They called him the Gray Fox. The greatest secret agent of his time. Guns, girls, and gratuitous violence, and he always got the job done. It seemed like wherever Jack went, everyone had heard of the Gray Fox. In all the secret retreats and the back alley bars, the corridors of power and the loneliest places in the world. And the family . . . went along. Because the Gray Fox’s success reflected well on the family, and it was always useful to have a legend on their side.
    Jack Drood did just as much good work, but he always believed a secret agent’s job was not to be noticed. Get in, do what needed doing, and get out; and if you’d done your job properly, no one should ever know you were even there. So Jack . . . got overlooked. No legend for him. Hardly anyone knew about him, outside the family. And he was fine with that, mostly. He never saw himself, or James, as any kind of legend or hero. Just secret agents, doing a hard, necessary, and sometimes distasteful job. So everyone else could sleep safely in their beds.
    The Drood family has only one code, and one motto: Anything, for the family . Droods serve the family, because the family serves a greater purpose. Droods get the best of everything, because they have to give up everything else that matters. No one gets to walk away, or have their own life. No one gets to know peace, not while the world still needs saving. But there are many ways to serve in the Droods.
    The Armourer didn’t mind giving up being a field agent. Not really. There was excitement and glamour, out in the field. A sense of being right at the heart of things, doing something that mattered . . . but there was also blood and horror and death. Far too much death. Jack never enjoyed the work, the way James did. The Gray Fox was born to do fieldwork. Born to break into hidden bases, steal the secret plans, seduce the villain’s mistress, and walk away with a smile on his face. Jack did that, too, sometimes, but he couldn’t seem to separate the heady moments of triumph from all the dark and nasty stuff that went with it. The innocents betrayed and the people left behind, the bodies left slumped in alleyways and the lives of families ruined. James never looked back, but Jack couldn’t seem to look away from all the collateral damage that went with his successes.
    He didn’t like most of the people he had to deal with, out in the field, and he really didn’t like some of the things he had to do to keep the world safe. The villains who cried before he shot them in the face; the women who cried when they discovered they’d been used by both sides, just for what they knew; the allies you betrayed to get the information you needed and the politicians the family wouldn’t let him touch, even though it was clearly the only sane and reasonable thing to do. Our atrocities were acceptable, because theirs were so much worse. Was it Churchill who said that? The Armourer had believed that for a long time. He had no problem with killing people who needed killing. But the old certainties of World War II were quickly eroded by the increasing ambiguities of Cold War politics. When today’s enemy could be tomorrow’s friend, or at