The Black Paw

by Heather Vogel Frederick

  ‘Looking good,’ said his father, nodding in approval. ‘Maybe I should get one too.’

  Oz glanced at his watch again. ‘I'll be back in a minute, Dad. I gotta make a pit stop.’

  In the hallway behind the cafe, Oz didn't turn left towards the toilets but right towards the metal staircase. He crouched down on his hands and knees and peered into the shadows. No sign of Glory. He peered at the dead drop under the bottom stair. No note either. He glanced at his watch again anxiously. Two minutes to go.

  Oz sat down under the staircase and hugged his knees to his chest. He couldn't tell his dad about the Hallowe'en party. His dad wouldn't understand. He'd get the James Bond part, but he wouldn't understand about the sharks. His mum might understand, but she was in Australia and what could she do about it? DB would definitely understand his fear of the sharks, but Oz wasn't ready to tell her about the whole James Bond thing. She'd probably think it was stupid. That left Glory. She was the only one Oz could think of who might be able to help him.

  He looked at his watch again. Now all he had to do was wait.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  Glory had been waiting all morning.

  Central Command was in an uproar. News about the Kiss of Death's loss had leaked to the press, and reporters from all the major papers - Mouse Daily, Mouse Post, Washington Whiskers, and even Tattletail, the city's most notorious tabloid – were clamouring for an official comment. Julius had been in meetings since dawn, first with members of the Council, then with Sir Edmund Hazelnut-Cadbury (‘Highly displeased,’ was all that the pair of tightlipped computer gymnasts who'd been called in to take notes would say), and now with the top brass from the Mouse Guard.

  Glory, meanwhile, slumped miserably on a spool by her boss's desk, awaiting her fate. A white bandage covered the shoulder that Dupont had clawed. Across the room, Fumble could hardly conceal his delight at her misfortune. Glory was sure that the whispered rumours flying around Central Command (‘International scandal!’ was the latest) were his doing as well.

  ‘Let him gloat all he wants. He's just jealous,’ consoled B-Nut, who'd stopped by to lend moral support. ‘Did you know Fumble wanted to be a field agent?’

  Glory looked at her brother in surprise.

  ‘That's right,’ B-Nut continued. ‘I overheard him talking to Julius right before we started spy school last summer. Julius told him he doesn't have the build for it. A polite way of telling him he's a gutbucket. Then you come waltzing in, plucked from the lowly ranks of the computer gymnasts, no less. Your job is a hundred times more exciting than his, and Fumble resents it.’

  ‘I suppose that would explain why he's always on my tail,’ said Glory, eyeing her portly colleague with distaste. ‘But I still think he's a stupid house mouse backstabber.’

  The doors to Central Command flew open and Chip, B-Nut's twin, entered the room, fresh from a foraging run. He spotted his siblings and made a beeline for Julius's desk.

  B-Nut slapped him a high-paw. ‘Good run this morning, Bro?’

  Chip nodded, dumping his duffel bag – made from a foraged baby sock – on to the sardine-can desk. Out tumbled a penny, a plastic fork, a deflated balloon and two fresh pieces of chewing gum.

  ‘So, Glory,’ he said as B-Nut admired the haul, ‘any word yet?’

  Glory shook her head. ‘I've been cooling my tail all morning,’ she said.

  ‘Don't worry, you'll come through just fine. You always do.’

  ‘I don't think so, Chip,’ Glory replied. ‘Not this time. But thanks anyway.’

  Her brother gave her a quick hug, gathered up his things and headed for the Foragers' Cupboard. Glory watched him go. Like B-Nut, Chip was true blue. He was also well on his way to becoming a Master Forager. ‘Never met a junk pile he didn't love,’ her father had always said. But besides the basic magpie instinct that all born foragers came into the world with, Chip possessed the requisite sense of honour. Any mouse could steal something, but true foragers abided strictly by the Forager's Code: ‘One man's trash is another mouse's treasure' – never taking anything that belonged to another, not even a human, but foraging only those items that had been lost or thrown away instead.

  The Forager's Code made Glory think of the Mouse Code. Had she been dishonourable by breaking it? She squirmed uncomfortably on her perch and glanced at the clock on the wall. She was supposed to meet Oz in ten minutes. Even if Julius was through with her by then, she still wasn't sure if she was going to go.

  The door to the conference room opened and a dignified grey nose appeared. ‘Glory, you may come in,’ Julius announced solemnly.

  Glory hopped off the spool, and B-Nut patted her shoulder in encouragement. ‘Good luck, Sis,’ he whispered. ‘I'm rooting for you.’

  ‘Thanks, B-Nut,’ said Glory, and with a withering glance at Fumble, she marched into the conference room with her whiskers held high.

  ‘Take a seat, Glory.’ Julius waved a paw at one of the empty corks that surrounded the circular wooden cheese-box conference table.

  Obediently, Glory sat. A trio of high-ranking officers from the Mouse Guard – her father's former colleagues – regarded her solemnly. Glory swallowed. Her throat was tight with anxiety, and she desperately wished she had a thimble of water.

  ‘Glory, there's no easy way to say this,’ Julius began, shaking his grizzled head sadly. ‘I'm afraid I warned you, my dear.’

  Julius, it wasn't my fault,’ Glory protested. ‘Dupont goes missing for days and finally surfaces – what else could I do? I had to take a closer look! I figured you'd want to know what he was up to.’

  ‘You were sent on a simple mission,’ countered Julius. ‘A routine courier job. And instead you took a risk that ended in disaster. Disaster, Glory! Do you realize what this means? Dupont finally has his paws on a weapon. He may be illiterate, but he's not stupid. It won't be long before he figures out how to replicate it. Imagine, Glory, armed rats swarming the streets of Washington! It could alter the balance of power in this city – no, the world – forever.’

  The Mouse Guard officers all nodded in sober agreement.

  ‘We're going to do our best to retrieve the Kiss of Death,’ Julius continued. ‘Sir Edmund Hazelnut-Cadbury wants to call in MICE-6, says they've had centuries' more experience dealing with the likes of Dupont than we have, but the Council and I have full faith in our own resources. I'm sending in a Silver Skateboard team. They'll join forces with a commando unit from the Mouse Guard. The mission is in the planning stages now and they'll be ready to go in twenty-four hours. But meanwhile, Glory, I'm afraid there's no room here in the Spy Mice Agency for a cowboy.’

  Glory sagged on her cork. A cowboy, as she well knew, was the name for a spy who took unauthorized risks, often endangering his or her fellow agents. She stared hard at the table, willing herself not to cry in front of her father's fellow soldiers.

  ‘Three strikes, Glory,’ said Julius softly. ‘Remember?’

  Glory nodded miserably. Losing her job hurt worse than she ever could have imagined.

  ‘I'm afraid it's out of my paws, my dear,’ said Julius. ‘You're fired.’

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  Oz glanced at his watch. Glory was late. He looked over at the mouse hole in the shadows. Not so much as a whisker in sight.

  She's not coming, he thought in despair. Glory's not coming.

  He'd give it five more minutes. Any longer than that, and his dad and DB would come looking for him. Oz pushed at his glasses and frowned intently at the mouse hole, willing Glory to appear.

  Two more minutes ticked by. Oz sat up a little straighter. Was that a movement in the shadows?

  He craned his head forward, holding his breath. And then an elegant little nose poked out of the mouse hole.

  ‘Glory!’ Oz whispered joyfully. She had come after all!

  Morning Glory Goldenleaf hauled herself listlessly through the mouse hole in the wall. Her whiskers and ears drooped with dejection.
r />   Oz spotted the bandage on her shoulder. ‘Glory, you're hurt!’ he exclaimed. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I just got fired,’ said Glory, and started to cry.

  Very gently, Oz reached out his hand and placed it on the floor, palm up, next to her. ‘I'm so sorry,’ he said.

  Glory hesitated only a second, then flung herself on to Oz's palm. All the pent-up emotions of the past week came pouring out.

  ‘It's all my fault!’ she sobbed. ‘I should have gone straight to Embassy Row, just like Julius told me. He warned me to be on my guard, but I saw Dupont and I thought I should take a closer look and –’

  ‘Dupont? Julius? Embassy Row?’ said Oz, mystified.

  Glory swiped at her tear-stained fur. ‘It started three months ago,’ she gulped. ‘Last July, Dupont – that's Roquefort Dupont, leader of the rats here in Washington – kidnapped my father and assassinated him.’

  Oz's brown eyes widened in consternation. ‘That's awful!’ he said.

  Glory nodded. ‘My mother still hasn't left the house. We all miss him terribly.’

  Oz nodded sympathetically. He knew all about missing someone. His mother was in Australia – but at least she was still alive. Very gently, he raised his hand and placed it on his knee so that he was eye to eye with Glory.

  ‘And then, last Tuesday, Dupont sent me the Black Paw.’

  ‘What's that?’

  ‘A death warrant,’ Glory replied. ‘Dupont dips his paw in black ink and makes his mark on a piece of paper. It means you're on his hit list.’

  ‘He plans to assassinate you too?’ said Oz, horrified.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said Glory. ‘It scared me –’

  ‘Something like that would scare anyone!’

  ‘– and I got distracted. During a mission that afternoon, one of Dupont's aides infiltrated the museum and almost got the Kiss of Death away from me.’

  ‘You mean that lipstick pistol on display upstairs in the Top Secret exhibit?’

  Glory nodded.

  ‘What were you doing with that?’

  Glory sat up. She wiped away her tears with a paw. ‘One of our main objectives at the Spy Mice Agency, where I work –’ she stopped abruptly and swallowed hard, ‘where I used to work, I mean, is to keep anything that could be used as a weapon against us out of rat paws. As new gadgets arrive, we field agents go in and retrieve them. Our lab replicates them at night with stuff from the Foragers' Cupboard. The Foragers are mice who collect things that you humans drop or throw away. Next morning – voilà! – an undetectable fake.’

  Oz nodded thoughtfully. ‘So the Kiss of Death in the display case upstairs isn't the real thing?’

  ‘Nope, said Glory. Just an old lipstick somebody tossed in the ladies' toilets rubbish bin. The Foragers found it, and our lab mice doctored it up a bit to make it look like the real one.’

  Oz thought this over. Somehow it all made perfect sense. ‘So how come you got fired? I thought you said the rats almost got the Kiss of Death away from you.’

  Glory sighed. ‘Almost as of last Tuesday, but last night was another story. See, yesterday morning there was a glitch with another retrieval mission. Just a brief sighting by a human. It shouldn't have been a big deal, but Fumble tattled.’

  ‘Who's Fumble?’

  ‘A stupid house mouse I work with. He's always on my tail about something. My brother B-Nut says he's just jealous, but for whatever reason, he has it in for me. Anyway, he told Julius, my boss. What with my father's assassination and now the Black Paw, Julius thinks the rats are up to something. He warned me that I was getting careless. Said three strikes and I was out.’

  ‘And last night was strike three?’ guessed Oz.

  ‘Big time.’ Glory heaved a sigh. ‘All I had to do was deliver the Kiss of Death to the British Embassy and go straight back to Central Command. But when I spotted Dupont, I figured I'd better see what he was up to. And then the Kiss of Death slipped out of my backpack and Dupont got it and almost got me and then I got fired.’

  Glory finished her tale of woe in a rush and slumped back into Oz's hand. She covered her face with her paws and began to cry again. ‘What's worse is I'm really, really scared,’ she said, sobbing. ‘I don't want to die, Oz! The Black Paw was bad enough, but now there'll be rat snipers crawling all over this city. I won't be safe anywhere! And it's all my own fault!’

  Oz reached out a finger and stroked her fur soothingly. ‘It's not your fault, Glory. Everybody makes mistakes.’

  ‘Not like this one.’

  ‘Is there no way to get the Kiss of Death back?’ Oz asked.

  Glory shook her head. ‘Dupont is a tough customer,’ she said, sniffling. ‘I'd never seen him up close before until last night. He – he –’

  ‘Did he do this to you?’ Oz asked, brushing his fingertip against the bandage on Glory's shoulder.

  Glory nodded. ‘He's evil, Oz,’ she whispered. ‘He's big, and he's mean, and he's really, really scary. No mouse has ever infiltrated his lair and lived to tell the tale. My father tried, and look what happened to him. Julius is sending in a team of commandos and elite agents tomorrow to try anyway.’ She sat up and wiped her nose with her tail. ‘No use crying over spilt milk, I guess. I'll just have to find another job and move some place far, far away, where Dupont will never find me. Cincinnati, maybe. Or Tahiti.’ She looked over at Oz. ‘So what did you need to see me for? Your note said it was life or death.’

  Oz prodded at his glasses. His own predicament seemed pretty stupid now, in comparison to all that Glory was up against, but he explained about the sharks and the masquerade party anyway.

  ‘I know the type,’ said Glory, when Oz finished describing Jordan and Tank. ‘Fumble, with a little Dupont thrown in.’ She hopped down off Oz's palm and paced back and forth across his knee. ‘Hmmmm,’ she said, her bright little eyes narrowing in concentration. ‘Too bad you couldn't find a way to even the score. If you could, maybe you'd get this Jordan and Tank off your tail – er, so to speak permanently.’

  ‘What if you got the Kiss of Death back?’ said Oz suddenly. ‘You'd be safe then – well, safer. And maybe Julius would give you your job back.’

  Glory stopped in her tracks. She stared at him. ‘Me, infiltrate rat headquarters?’

  Just a thought,’ said Oz.

  ‘I couldn't do it on my own,’ said Glory. ‘I'd need help.’

  Boy and mouse regarded each other thoughtfully.

  ‘Maybe we could help each other,’ suggested Oz.

  ‘I was just thinking the same thing,’ said Glory.

  ‘Hey, Oz! Where are you? Did you fall in? Your grilled cheese is stone cold!’ DB's voice came floating down the hallway.

  Glory froze. Oz pulled off his baseball cap and casually placed it over his knee, shielding her from view.

  ‘It's OK,’ he whispered. ‘It's just DB.’

  ‘What's a DB?’ Glory whispered back.

  ‘Not a what, a who. Delilah Bean. She's my friend. The sharks are after her too.’

  Glory hesitated. She'd taken a tremendous risk breaking the Mouse Code and talking to Oz. She didn't know this DB from a mouse hole in the wall. What if the girl screamed and ran? The Exterminator would be brought in for sure.

  ‘I don't know, Oz,’ she whispered.

  ‘Trust me, it'll be fine.’

  What can they do, fire me again? thought Glory bitterly. She took a deep breath. ‘In for a penny, in for a pound,’ she said.

  ‘Great,’ said Oz. ‘You won't be sorry.’

  ‘Talking to yourself, Oz?’ DB crouched down by the stairs. ‘What are you doing under there anyway?’

  Oz looked over at his classmate. He poked at his glasses, which had slipped down his nose again. ‘DB, can I trust you?’

  She squinted at him. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘No maybes. It's gotta be a hundred per cent.’

  DB shrugged. ‘OK, you can trust me a hundred per cent.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Yeah
, I promise.’

  Oz was suddenly struck by fear. ‘How do I know I can trust you?’ What if DB couldn't keep a secret? What if she told? When it came right down to it, despite his assurances to Glory, he hardly knew DB.

  DB stood up. She placed her hands on her hips and tapped her foot. She looked at him, her lips pursed in a frown. ‘It's that important to you?’

  Oz nodded vigorously.

  DB shrugged. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Here goes. For starters, you can trust me because I know a lot more about you than you think. Stuff that I haven't told anybody.’

  Oz was surprised to hear this. ‘What kind of stuff?’

  ‘Like, for instance, what it's like to have a famous mother and have everybody make fun of you because of it,’ DB replied. ‘Your mum's an opera singer, mine's on TV. Every single night. People have been teasing me because of her job since kindergarten.’

  Oz grunted. ‘OK,’ he admitted grudgingly. ‘What else do you know?’

  DB gave him a slow smile. ‘I know that your real name is Ozymandias.’

  Oz blinked at her in disbelief. ‘Who told you?’

  ‘My mother's a reporter,’ said DB. ‘She knows how to get information. Actually, your dad told her when she was here last month, but don't worry, I haven't said a word to anybody. I can imagine the mileage Jordan and Tank would get out of that, and I wouldn't wish those morons on anybody.’ DB shook her head in disgust. ‘What were your parents thinking? I mean, it's a cool poem and everything, but it's a stupid name for a kid. I'd want to be just Oz too if I were you.’

  Oz couldn't believe DB had been sitting on this prime bit of information for a whole month. She could have blackmailed him. She could have sold him out to the sharks a hundred times over. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I trust you.’

  DB crouched down again. ‘So what's the big secret?’

  ‘Well, there's this mouse, see, who's a spy,’ Oz began. ‘She works here at the museum. Not for the museum, actually. For the Spy Mice Agency.’ He stopped. He was putting this badly.