by Stuart Gibbs
I sat up, grimacing, glanced toward the window . . . and found, to my shock, that it was dark outside. “What time is it?”
“Dinner-ish. You’ve been out all day.”
“All day?! Shouldn’t I be in a hospital?”
Alexander chuckled. “For a little bump? This was nothing. Once, in Afghanistan, I was unconscious for eight days. Besides, you seemed like you needed the rest. How about some Gatorade?”
“Uh, sure.”
“Coming right up.” Alexander ducked into a small kitchen and opened the refrigerator. It was full of mineral water and various hues of Gatorade. “Proper hydration is extremely important in our business. Although you don’t want to overdo it either. I once had to urinate so badly during a gunfight in Venice that I lost focus and almost took a bullet to the brain. What flavor? Glacier Freeze? Riptide Rush?”
“Orange.”
“Ah. A traditionalist. Very good.” Alexander poured a tall, chilled glass and brought it to me.
He was right. It did make me feel better. The ache in my head subsided and my mind was clearing, although I still felt a bit fuzzy around the edges. For instance, I knew there was something wrong about the room we were in, but I couldn’t put my finger on what.
“Where am I?” I asked.
“You’re still on campus. There was some discussion of taking you to the infirmary, but given your precarious situation vis-à-vis enemy agents, I felt it’d be safer to keep you here, in my personal quarters.”
“You mean . . . you live on campus?”
Alexander laughed heartily. “Heavens no. I have a real home in the city. This is more of a pied-à-terre—for those times when work dictates that I need to be here. And right now I need to be here.”
“To help hunt for the mole.”
Alexander’s eyebrows arched. It was the first time I’d ever seen him off guard. Which meant he had no idea Erica had come to see me the night before; for some reason, she hadn’t told him. I wondered why this might be—and if I’d made a mistake mentioning the mole hunt at all.
Thankfully, Alexander didn’t get suspicious. Instead, he seemed pleased. “Figured it out on your own, did you? I told them you were smart. How’d you put it all together?”
If Erica wanted her investigation to remain a secret, I decided to keep it a secret. “Well, when I considered my fake cryptography skills, the assassination attempt, and the principal’s reaction to it, it all seemed kind of obvious.”
Alexander laughed again, then slapped my knee and plopped himself into an overstuffed chair nearby. “To you, perhaps. But it wouldn’t have to everyone. Good work, Ben. You remind me of myself when I was younger. A real self-starter. When I was only twenty-two, I tracked down an arms dealer in Djakarta who had eluded the DEA for a decade. Well, now that the wool’s off your eyes, I think you might be of service.”
“I thought the principal wanted to keep me in the dark about all this.”
“And as far as he knows, you’ll be there. In fact, no one has to know you’re helping me but me.”
“Not even Erica?”
Once again, Alexander seemed slightly thrown, as though he wasn’t quite sure what to say about his daughter for a few moments. “Erica’s an excellent student. I admit, I’ve given her quite a bit of tutoring on the side over the years. She’s going to be an incredible agent someday. . . . But I’m not sure she’s ready for this.”
“And I am?”
“Well, you don’t really have a choice in the matter, do you? You’re a part of it whether you want to be or not. I think it’d be best if we keep this between us for now. It’ll be our little clandestine operation. You must be starving.”
He said this last bit quickly, as though he was trying to change the subject. But he was right. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. “I am.”
“I have some frozen dinners. Not exactly filet mignon, but it’s still better than anything you’ll get down in the mess.” Alexander sprang back into the kitchenette and rooted through the freezer. “Pizza okay?”
“That’d be great, thanks.”
Alexander dug out a pepperoni one and tossed it in the oven. “All right, let’s get down to brass tacks. Any idea as to who the mole might be?”
“Um . . . ,” I said. “I was hoping you’d know that.”
“Oh, I have my suspicions,” Alexander said. “But I only decided to enter the fray today. You’ve been in the thick of this. Ergo, your thoughts matter. So . . . what do you think?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t really had much time to investigate . . . and I’ve been unconscious most of the day. . . .”
“Yes, but you must have some idea. A gut instinct?”
“Chip Schacter.”
“Aha!” Alexander perched on the edge of his chair, eyes wide with excitement. “And why do you suspect him?”
“He knew what was in my file very early on. I’d barely been in my room a minute before he showed up, wanting me to hack into the school mainframe for him.”
“To steal secrets?”
“No. To alter his grades.”
“Or so he claimed,” Alexander said suspiciously. “Decent cover story. I assume he threatened you with force?”
“Yes.”
“So you hack in, he steals the files, and if anything goes wrong, you get burned. Clever.”
Erica’s assessment of Chip from the night before came back to me. “But Chip isn’t really known for being clever, is he?”
“No, but that could all be a ruse. He could be so clever, he’s extremely good at appearing not clever at all. After all, he was smart enough to get into the academy, wasn’t he?”
That was true. Whereas I’d only been accepted for my potential as bait. Which meant that, on some level, Chip was better spy material than me, no matter what Erica thought of him. “I guess.”
“So he has classified knowledge about you, and he quickly tries to use your skills for nefarious purposes. Anything else suspicious about him?”
“Well . . . I didn’t do what he wanted . . . and he wasn’t happy about that. So he threatened me.” I suddenly realized something. “And then, that very night, the assassin came to my room.”
“Interesting.” Alexander remained calm and collected, but his eyes were alive with excitement. “Might be Chip turning the screws on you.”
“Yes! And then, by this morning, he was spreading rumors that the assassination attempt was a fake.”
“A campaign of disinformation. Very clever indeed. I think Mr. Schacter has definite mole potential. Good work, my boy.” Alexander patted my knee, then headed back into the kitchen to check on the pizza.
I couldn’t help but smile. Alexander Hale, one of the greatest spies in America, wasn’t only proposing that we run a clandestine operation together; he was also pleased with my investigative skills. His odd relationship with Erica—the fact that neither wanted the other to know what they were up to—nagged at me a bit, but I could certainly understand both their motives. Alexander was trying to protect his daughter from danger, while Erica was trying to prove she could be an agent without help from her father. I didn’t like keeping secrets from either of them, but it did give me an opportunity to work with both the master spy and his beautiful daughter. It was almost enough to make up for the downside: that someone might try to kill me soon.
Alexander slid the warm pizza onto a chopping block. There was an umbrella stand full of bladed weapons nearby. He selected a cavalry sword and hacked the pizza into eighths. “Any other possible suspects rattling around that brain of yours?”
I thought a bit. Another name popped into my head. “I don’t know about this one, but you said to trust my feelings. . . .”
“Never question your instincts. Once, I was headed to a safe house in Qatar when I had a sense something was wrong. No evidence at all, just my gut. So I didn’t go in. Thirty seconds later the place exploded. Nawaz-al-Jazzirrah had infiltrated the place and rigged it with enough C4 explosive to sink a battleship
. If I hadn’t trusted myself, I’d be a fine mist right now. So, what’s your gut telling you?”
“Well, if it’s conceivable that Chip could be playing dumb, then why not one of his goons, who are supposedly even dumber than he is?”
“Now you’re talking. Whom do you suspect?” Alexander slid the pizza onto the mahogany coffee table in front of me. He’d left it in the oven too long and burned the crust, but I didn’t care. I was famished.
“Greg Hauser,” I said between bites. “He was the one who got me in trouble in Professor Crandall’s class today. He claimed Chip said the assassin was a fake, but what if Chip never said that? Maybe it was Hauser’s idea all along, and he’s shifting the blame to Chip. In fact, maybe Hauser put Chip up to trying to bully me into hacking the mainframe in the first place.”
Alexander chewed his pizza thoughtfully. “Hmmm. The old Petersburg Puppeteer . . .”
“What?”
“Oh, sorry. Just a little bit of espionage lingo. It refers to someone who looks like he’s merely the henchman, but really, he’s the criminal mastermind, pulling all the strings. Often, the puppet doesn’t even know he’s being used. We call it the Petersburg Puppeteer after an infamous Cold War Russian operative who looked like a lowly pencil pusher at the St. Petersburg KGB, but who turned out to be running the show. I like this Hauser lead. I like it a lot.”
Alexander’s cell phone rang. He checked the caller ID. “Oh. I have to take this. It’s a contact.”
He quickly slipped into the bedroom, leaving me to polish off my pizza by the fire. He didn’t close the door, though, so I could hear faint snippets of his conversation:
“Where should we meet? . . . Ah, very good. I love the opera. . . . Of course I’ll use an alias. . . . That soon? . . . All right.”
He returned two minutes later, smartly dressed in a tuxedo. “Duty calls, I’m afraid. But we’ve done excellent work here today. Truly excellent. How was the pizza?”
“Great,” I lied.
Alexander fastened his cuff links. “Sorry, but I need to blindfold you before we leave. The location of these quarters is classified.”
“Oh. All right.” It occurred to me that I hadn’t left the couch the whole time I’d been there. I hadn’t even glanced out the window. So I had no idea where Alexander’s quarters were in relation to any other building on campus.
My jacket and snow boots were right by the couch. I tugged them on. “So what do we do now?”
“You simply keep doing what you’ve been doing. Keep a close eye on Schacter and Hauser—and anyone else you find suspicious. I’ll see what I can dig up on them. I’ve got quite a lot of experience with moles. Uncovered one in Karachi just last year.” Alexander cinched a wool scarf over my eyes, plunging me into darkness. “Can you see anything?”
“No.”
“Perfect.”
There was a metallic clank, then the sound of something large sliding open. I finally realized what had been odd about Alexander’s quarters: There wasn’t a front door.
Not an obvious one, anyway. I assumed the entrance was hidden behind one of the many bookshelves. We stepped into what I could tell was an elevator, though I couldn’t guess how many floors it went down. A blast of cold air hit us when the doors opened again.
Alexander led me through a few more twists and turns, possibly doubling back once or twice, before yanking off the blindfold. We were in the grand entry hall of the Hale Building. Outside, fresh snow was collecting on the windshield of Alexander’s Porsche.
“Stay alert!” Alexander told me. “I’ll be in touch!” Then he wrapped the scarf around his neck and headed out into the cold.
It was only as he drove away that I realized one more odd thing about that night:
While I’d given Alexander all the leads I had, he hadn’t shared a single piece of information about his investigation with me. Not one.
WAR
Academy Training Grounds
February 8
1400 hours
“Die, Ripley!” My attacker sprang from behind a rock, blasting her gun indiscriminately.
I fled through the woods, ammo exploding off the trees around me.
I didn’t know my attacker’s name, though I recognized her from Chemistry 102: Poisons and Explosives. She was a year older than me, mousy and reserved in class, though out here, on the field of battle, she’d found a way to release her inner Rambo.
Of course she knew me. Everyone knew me already. I’d been at spy school for only three weeks, but I was famous, either as the kid who’d outfought an assassin with a tennis racket—or the kid who’d gotten creamed by a ninja in record time in his first class.
I came to a snowy slope that plunged steeply toward a creek and dove onto it. A paintball whistled past my ear and splattered a rock. The snow had been at the academy as long as I had; a crust of icy rime had formed atop it, making the slope a luge run. I careened down it headfirst, leaving my attacker behind but quickly picking up speed.
At the bottom, straight ahead of me, sat a pile of jagged rocks.
The idea of a combat simulation had been appealing at first. So far, classes at spy school had proved a disappointment. As Murray had warned, they weren’t much different than classes at regular school: boring. Primary Investigative Techniques was mind-numbingly dull. History of American Spying was really just American history with a few spy stories thrown in; it should have been interesting, but our instructor, Professor Weeks, had taught it so many times that she seemed to be falling asleep during her own lectures. Algebra—and its uses in calibrating one’s aim—might have been challenging if I wasn’t gifted in it; Professor Jacobi said I ought to be bumped up to calculus, but the paperwork hadn’t gone through yet. And after the excitement of my pop quiz, Crandall’s self-preservation lectures had slipped back into a series of doddering reminiscences.
A war game promised a chance to get outside and have some fun. We were basically going to be playing capture the flag with paintball guns. I hadn’t expected to stay alive very long; I figured I’d just run around in the trees a bit, get ambushed, and then retire to the “morgue” for a hot chocolate with the other corpses. But then the weather turned out to be frigid and sleeting. And Coach Macauley, our PE teacher, announced that our grade would be dictated by how long we stayed alive. The first quarter of the class to die would get D’s.
Nobody wanted a D except Murray, who “accidentally” shot himself in the stomach thirty seconds into the game and went off to take a nap.
The rocks at the bottom of the gully were coming up fast. I jammed the butt of my gun into the ice and hung on hard. The gun jolted to a stop and I whipped around it. I kept sliding, moving fast enough to yank the gun back out of the snow, but now I was at least sliding feetfirst. I slammed into the rocks with the soles of my snow boots rather than my face.
My attacker appeared at the top of the hill, gun at the ready. She leveled it toward me.
I tried to swing mine into position, but the strap had got tangled around my arm during the slide. I struggled to get my gloved fingers around the trigger.
The girl had me right in her sights. “Nice knowing ya,” she smirked.
And then a red paintball nailed her in the helmet, splattering all over her face guard.
For a brief moment I was impressed with myself, amazed I’d somehow managed to fire off a kill shot.
Then I realized I hadn’t.
Zoe popped out from the jagged rocks behind me, cradling her paintball gun. “Little lesson for you!” she shouted at the girl she’d just downed. “Save the snarky comments for after you’ve killed your opponent!”
The dead girl stuck her tongue out at us, then trudged off to the morgue.
I got to my feet, shaking snow out of my jacket. I was about to say thanks, but Zoe beat me to it.
“Nice work there, Smokescreen. Led her right to me. How’d you even know I was hiding down here?”
I considered telling the truth: I’d had no idea Zo
e was hiding behind the rocks. She’d saved my bacon. But I didn’t. Without Zoe, I might have been the lamest kid on campus. Instead, thanks to her, I was Smokescreen.
Zoe was big into nicknames. And despite all the evidence to the contrary, she thought I was cool. After witnessing my quick defeat by the ninjas, she’d proclaimed to anyone who’d listen that I’d merely faked the loss. It was a smoke screen: a ruse to convince my enemies that I had no skills, when, in reality, I was a lean, mean killing machine. According to Zoe, I’d done the same thing on my SACSAs, which had led the assassin who came to my room later that night to think I’d be easy prey. In fact, Zoe publicly presumed that I’d actually killed the assassin and that the school had covered it up. She was so supportive that even my embarrassing loss to the ninjas bolstered her belief in me: No one could have really lost a fight that quickly, she insisted. It was such an awful display of self-defense, it had to be fake.
Although Zoe was only a first year like me, she was very persuasive. The story rapidly gained a life of its own. Chip and his goons, Hauser and Stubbs, did their best to push their own version of the story: I had no idea what I was doing and had simply got lucky against the assassin, which was pretty much the truth. But since not many people liked or trusted Chip, this only served to give Zoe’s version of the story more credence. The school was now divided into two camps. The majority thought I was Smokescreen, some kind of covert superspy who occasionally pretended to be inept. The rest suspected I actually was inept. I wasn’t exactly comfortable with so many people believing a lie about me, but it was still far better than everyone knowing the truth. The past three weeks had been far easier than my first day; I’d even managed to make a few friends and have some fun. The downside was, I knew it would last only so long. It was only a matter of time before everyone found out the truth; this was a school full of potential spies, after all. So I figured I might as well keep the ride going as long as possible.
“I’ve been keeping tabs on everyone’s position,” I told Zoe, who looked at me with wide-eyed wonder.
The main thing I’d learned in my time at spy school was this: Everyone there was impressive. I’d been spoiled at my old school. There hadn’t been much competition for top student; I think my math teacher had stopped bothering to even grade my tests and begun rubber-stamping them with A’s.