Chapter 12: Being Monitored
William dismissed the strange encounter with the man who looked like Pierce Brosnan as a joke. He stayed at the bar by himself, leisurely finishing his drink while watching the Chelsea vs. Newcastle United match.
After the game was over, he downed the last of his whiskey, paid his bill, and returned to his hotel room.
After taking a shower, William reflected on meeting the Pierce look-alike. It was strange, but harmless. The man probably just liked the movie character and was playing a joke. It didn't affect him. Still, it was a shame he hadn't gotten a photo to prove it.
He opened the hotel computer and searched for "Pierce Brosnan", wanting to see if there was any news of the actor being in London.
The search results showed many men named Pierce Brosnan, but none of them were the man he had just met in the bar. *What's going on? How can that be? He's a huge star, so why can't I find anything?*
Just as he was about to type "007" into the search bar, his mind jolted. He froze, his hand hovering over the keyboard. His mental power was warning him of danger.
He stood up from the chair and looked around the room in confusion. He moved to a spot where he couldn't be seen from the window and used his senses to scan the room and the six-story building twenty meters across the street.
Since becoming a primary mage, his mental perception had a range of nearly thirty meters. He was in a business suite on the twelfth floor of the Hilton. The building opposite wasn't even half as tall. He scanned it for a while but didn't sense anyone watching him from there; it would be impossible to watch a twelfth-floor room from the sixth floor anyway.
He scanned the corridor outside his room and sensed no one. For a moment, William didn't know what was going on. Why had his senses warned him of danger? He silently replayed the last few moments in his mind.
He suddenly remembered that the alert had triggered just as he was about to search for "007". He then thought of the man in the bar who called himself James Bond and denied being Pierce Brosnan. Suddenly, it all clicked into place. This wasn't his previous world. If that man in the bar was really James Bond, then everything made sense. And if that was the case... wasn't his room being monitored?
That had to be it. The computer was being monitored. Otherwise, his mental power wouldn't have warned him. In this world, there were no 007 movies, but there was a real 007, and Mr. Bond himself had appeared right in front of him.
He scanned his room several more times with his mental power. Fortunately, there were no cameras. Cameras in the year 2000 weren't as small as they would be in the future. However, he did find a listening device planted on the hotel phone.
Knowing he was truly being monitored, William's mind raced, trying to recall where he might have slipped up. After thinking for a long time, he couldn't pinpoint it. The only possibility was his magic practice in the dormitory. But he had been cautious, and thanks to his "dumb" system, the chance of exposure was minimal. Still, it was a chilling thought. He had let his guard down.
After another scan of the room turned up no other devices, he pulled the curtains shut, walked to the door, and scanned the corridor and a dozen nearby rooms. Nothing.
He put on a coat, left the room, and headed for the stairs. He knew better than to take the elevator. In this era, hotels weren't generous enough to install cameras everywhere. As he walked, he scanned each floor. The hotel was in its off-season, so there weren't many guests. He passed three floors that were completely empty and found no one suspicious on the other four. If agents were staying in the Hilton to monitor him, they would surely have surveillance equipment with them.
From the fourth-floor stairwell, his mental power scanned the street below and locked onto a courier van parked nearby. An alarm bell went off in William's head. He had seen enough spy movies to know that agents often monitored their targets from unmarked vans.
He went down to the second floor. From a window that overlooked the van's position, he used Mage Hand to silently unlock a nearby utility closet. Inside, he carefully cracked open the window and tried to listen, but he could only faintly hear muffled sounds from the van. He searched for a spell in his system and found one. Following the system's description, he simulated a magical stethoscope with his mental power. The power was invisible to ordinary people. He formed one end of the mental stethoscope into a listening device on the van's window and connected the other end to his ear. The sound came through immediately.
He listened for over ten minutes to what was mostly idle chatter. After waiting for nearly half an hour, he finally heard something of interest.
"Pitt, you think this guy is asleep? Why hasn't there been any movement for over an hour?"
"Who cares if he's asleep? I don't know why they have us watching this guy, anyway. Isn't he just a normal college student? What's there to watch?"
"Hey, you don't know?"
"Know what? What's the deal with this guy?"
"I don't know the whole story. He's apparently been on our list for years, but no one's paid him much mind recently. Now he's made some noise, so they want us to take another look."
"I heard it from the guys in the daytime surveillance team. Apparently, this kid designed a game and held a meeting in the hotel this morning where he asked for a starting bid of 100 million pounds."
"That fatso Richard, the guy whose shift we took, looked like his world had ended. You should know, Richard was the one assigned to watch William Devonshire full-time. If he'd been paying attention, he might have had the chance to buy the game himself before it blew up. He would have made a fortune. But he completely ignored William for the past two years. Seeing the look on his face when he was relieved of duty really made me laugh."
"A hundred million? Are you kidding me? What kind of game sells for a hundred million pounds?"
"I don't know. Something called *Plants vs. Zombies*, I think."
"What? *Plants vs. Zombies*? I know that game! I've played it! So this is the guy who designed it. But how could it possibly sell for a hundred million pounds?"
"Beats me."
The van was silent for a few minutes, then one of the men sighed. "I was just looking at this guy's file. There's nothing in it. Single-parent family, grew up in London, always had good grades. Won a lot of awards. No girlfriend. Spends all his time in the library or his dorm. What could be wrong with a guy like that? But still, he's so handsome and has no girlfriend, maybe he has some psychological issues. What's that got to do with military intelligence, though?"
"You idiot, did you even read the last paragraph of the file?"
"I read it. So what?"
"You're only fit for outsourcing. You didn't see the part about how the game was made? Design, programming, even the art for the characters and zombies—he did it all by himself in less than a month. Even if you put his entire department on it, it would take them months, and that's if they already had the design concept."
"He's that good? No wonder he was on the list. And no wonder they're paying attention to him again."
"Of course. Why else would we be monitoring him? Looks to me like they want to recruit him. Plus, he's getting attention from the top. Didn't you see Bond came here with us? We'll see what conclusion that guy comes to."
"But he's mixed-race. He's part Chinese."
"For God's sake, Pitt, what century are you living in? That's racist."
"No, no, I'm not racist. My girlfriend is a black beauty. You think I'm racist?"
"Hey, who knows with you. As long as she's a beauty, you don't care about skin tone. You change girlfriends every few months anyway."
"Screw you. I'd love to have a stable girlfriend, but who knows when we'll get a mission? I'm often gone for months at a time. You think I like it?"
"I think you like having a new girl every month."
"You're just jealous, you bastard."
At that moment, a cell phone vibrated in the van. One of the men answered. "Someone's coming to relieve us in a bit," he said to his partner. "Bond is settled in. They want us back at HQ to report."
"That's great. I can finally get a good night's sleep after we report. I went to bed at one yesterday and was woken up before six this morning."
"Hey, you were at your girlfriend's place yesterday. Don't tell me she wore you out."
"Piss off, or I'll beat your ass."
The sounds of a scuffle broke out in the van. William had heard enough. He quietly returned to his room.
Back in his hotel room, William felt a wave of relief. Fortunately, they didn't know he had magic. Otherwise, he was sure there would be more than just a two-man team watching him. What William couldn't understand was why Bond had approached him personally. Was it some kind of test? Over the years, especially after his grandparents died, he had felt as if he and his mother were being watched.
Now, hearing them mention what was clearly the Military Intelligence Directorate, William suddenly understood. It had to be something his grandfather left behind, something MI6 had always wanted. But William shook his head. If an intelligence agency wanted something that badly, they wouldn't be so polite about it. They wouldn't just monitor him for nearly ten years without ever trying to interrogate or torture him. Unless the item, while important, wasn't something they needed immediately.
Could it be that while one group was monitoring him, another was protecting him? Thinking of this, William couldn't help but shiver. The sale of the game was at a critical stage; the last thing he needed was trouble. He had no idea what he should do now.