by Eoin Colfer
Good old Myishi, thought Lord Teddy now, and his marvelous gadgets.
The duke and Ishi Myishi had been associates as man and boy. Or, more accurately, since Myishi was a boy who had lied about his age to join the Japanese army and Teddy Bleedham-Drye was a British army officer. The duke had discovered young Myishi breaking out of a prison shed in Burma, defending himself with a shotgun the lad had cobbled together from the frame and springs of his cot. Teddy recognized genius when he saw it and instead of turning the boy in, he’d arranged for him to study engineering in Cambridge. The rest, as they say, was history, albeit a secret one. By Teddy’s reckoning, Myishi had repaid his debt a hundred times over.
Make that a hundred and one, Teddy thought, for one of the duke’s sponsorship perks was a hunter-tracker system that could be bounced off several private satellites. And so, wherever in a several-hundred-mile radius that troll went, Teddy could easily follow.
The Fowls will never hear me coming, he thought. And they will never hear the bullets that kill them.
The Army Helicopter
Lazuli Heitz could not figure out the black-haired Fowl boy.
He just sat there smiling at her as though she were absolutely visible to him. But that could not be, for the other occupants of the chopper were completely ignoring her. The second boy was making bird noises at passing seagulls, while the woman in black plied the bespectacled kid with questions that he blithely ignored, maintaining both his eye contact with Lazuli and a broad grin.
That child radiates smugness, Lazuli thought. I don’t like him already. At the first opportunity, I shall retrieve the troll and get far away from these people.
In truth, she was beginning to regret her decision to board the helicopter in the first place. Perhaps she should have simply waited for LEPrecon to show up. But the decision was made now, and there was no point regretting it. Plus, her pedaling mechanism had been injured by the fall and she had barely managed to make it to the helicopter. Her wings had folded themselves into their rig as a sign that there would be no more flying until her suit regenerated. So now she needed to concentrate on her next step.
As her angel had told her: There is no future in the past.
Which meant that obsessively second-guessing your own decisions was a waste of time. At least, that’s what she took it to mean.
And so Lazuli had, minutes before, dragged herself from the seaweed, feeling like she had endured a severe beating due to the effects of the Filabuster, and pedaled her way to the chopper’s altitude. The ad hoc plan had been to clamp herself on to the skids, but there were already armed soldiers occupying those spots, so Lazuli had no choice but to slip between the troops, careful not to nudge against the automatic weapons, for it was a universal truth that warriors of any species do not like their guns being touched. She crawled under the jump seat, hoping the filaments did not drop off and expose her. Although it felt like the chromophoric camouflage strands were embedded in the fabric of her jumpsuit, not to mention patches of her blue skin, and would never wash off. Which was currently a good thing.
Lazuli hunkered under there in the shadows trying to take stock.
Learn as much as you can, Specialist.
More advice from her angel.
A friend once told me that gold is power. But he was wrong for once. Information is power.
Information. Lazuli had precious little of that currency.
And after more than a minute she hadn’t picked up much more, aside from the fact that the bespectacled boy was still looking right at her.
If he’s looking, why isn’t he telling?
Lazuli sincerely wished she could have done a little homework on this family before embarking on her exercise, but the Fowl file was locked up tighter than a dwarf’s wallet.
The strange boy’s smile is not a friendly one, she realized. It is the smile of a boy who has a secret.
As for the second child, he was apparently a simpleton who cawed and screeched down at seagulls as the chopper whupped overhead.
Perhaps three minutes later, Lazuli had picked up two potentially useful nuggets.
One: They were headed southeast toward mainland Europe.
And two: As a magic-free zone herself, Lazuli had been forced to study hard just to barely pass the gift of tongues exam, and so she realized that the human child squealing at seagulls was not as simple as she had assumed he was.
Her train of thought was derailed by the bespectacled boy, who cleared his throat noisily.
“Are you ill, chico?” the nun asked, to which he replied:
“I am perfectly fine, Sister Jeronima,” he said. “There is no need to shout into my right ear. It’s here beside you. Perfectly visible.”
It took Lazuli a moment to realize that his comments were aimed at her and not at the nun. When the lightbulb went on, she hurriedly clamped a hand over her right ear.
D’Arvit, she swore internally, which defeated the venting purpose of swearing. Does this mean I owe the human boy a favor?
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Commander Diavolo Conroy of the Irish Ranger team assigned to assist Sister Jeronima in whatever manner she wished to be assisted, considered this particular assignment, i.e., to escort twin boys to a black-site facility in the Netherlands, the second-lowest point of his career.
The absolute lowest point being the time a brigadier general ordered the entire squad to dress as manga clowns and fly a pony to his daughter’s birthday party. The pony’s name was Buckles, and it was, to put it delicately, a nervous flyer. Commander Conroy still shuddered when he thought back on that day.
But at least he had understood the objective of Operation Buckles: Deliver a pony to a child. This assignment—Operation Fowl Swoop, as it had been dubbed—was an altogether more mysterious and unsavory affair. Two months ago, the Spanish nun had simply driven into the Curragh army camp, swiping her way through several locked gates with that infernal black plastic card of hers, and basically made herself at home in her semitruckload of high-tech tricks.
That ink-black card was the first thing about Sister Jeronima to give Conroy the creeps. When Conroy had flashed his ID at the nun and asked her to explain herself, she had simply tapped his badge with her card and the black color had somehow flowed across from her ID to his. While he was still gazing at his altered card in slack-jawed amazement, he received a terse call from the minister of defense himself, who summarily informed Conroy that his squad had been deputized by a top secret intergovernmental organization and he was to follow Sister Jeronima’s orders to the letter until his ID returned to its original color.
“And if I don’t, Minister?” Conroy had brazenly asked.
“If you don’t,” the minister had spluttered, “you will find yourself changing the blue latrine blocks in an Antarctic research facility.”
This was a most specific threat, and it helped Diavolo Conroy decide to follow orders.
And so now he and his highly trained men were delivering a pair of Irish twins to an industrial park near Schiphol airport so they could be transported to a black site.
Children in a black site?
Sometimes Commander Conroy couldn’t help wondering if he was still one of the good guys, if indeed there even were good guys anymore these days.
“That will be all, Commander Conroy,” Jeronima told him as soon as the chopper skids touched down. “My people will take it from here.”
Sister Jeronima’s people emerged from two SUVs, not of any make Conroy could identify. Two four-man teams just to transport a couple of sleeping eleven-year-old children.
Overkill, surely, thought Conroy, and for a moment he entertained the crazy notion of defying the minister and pulling the chopper out of there before the payload could be transferred to the vehicles.
But he didn’t, because he was a soldier, after all, and soldiers obeyed orders from the chief. Still, it didn’t sit well with Conroy as, after the passengers disembarked, he gave the command to lift off, and h
e decided to ask some hard questions when he landed back in the Curragh.
The only positive in this entire operation was that Conroy noticed that his ID had shed its skin of black and was back to its original color. As if the black sheen—or the nun herself—had never been there.
On a side note, Conroy was true to his word and asked several hard questions of the minister upon his return to Ireland, but the answers were wishy-washy at best, so Diavolo handed in his resignation and carried around the guilt for what he considered an abduction until, almost two years later, he got the unexpected opportunity to both set things right with the twins and explain the origins of his unusual first name.
But that is another story, which is, incidentally, even more surprising than this one.
The first rule of interrogation is to question captives separately with the hope that their stories might contradict each other. Sister Jeronima had handled scores of prisoners, suspects, and detainees in the span of her long career and had literally written a handbook on the subject, which was entitled Todo el mundo habla finalmente, or Everyone in the World Talks Eventually, in which Jeronima laid out her interrogation philosophy.
The thing to remember, she wrote in the foreword, is that everyone is guilty of something.
If pressed on the matter, Jeronima would say that the strangest subject she had ever questioned was Gary Grayfeather, an African parrot that knew the combination to a Cockney gang lord’s safe. It had taken her a few hours and a bucket of nuts, but eventually Gary had spilled the numbers.
The parrot was about to be demoted to second place on the strange-subject list after the Fowl Twins.
Jeronima’s plan was as follows: She would place the twins in adjacent rooms and pose questions to both until some disparity appeared, and then she would use the difference in their stories to drive a wedge between them. Jeronima was aware that Myles was a smart one, but she felt confident that he would crumble quickly in an interview situation.
* * *
Myles awoke, and quickly realized that all was not right in the Fowl world. For one thing, he was in a chair, which was most unusual for him. Not being in a chair, per se, but waking from slumber in a chair, for Myles was not the type of boy to simply nod off; he had not once, since the age of two, fallen asleep in a chair, sofa, or recliner.
To explain: Myles’s brain was so active that he was obliged to perform a nightly relaxation routine in order to disengage his synapses. This routine involved first inserting his nighttime mouth guard and then completing self-hypnosis exercises while focusing on Beckett’s unusually musical snores. Beckett’s snores, technically speaking, were not snores at all but a trio of whistles that he exhaled through both of his nostrils and his mouth. This triple exhale was unusual enough in itself, but the really extraordinary thing was that each orifice played a different note. Notes that combined to form a perfect C-major chord, which never failed to remind Myles of Beethoven’s Mass.
Myles could not hear the chord now and knew that he been separated from his twin. He looked around to find himself in an underground room with stone columns and vaulted arches. There were no visual cues to suggest that he was underground, but Myles could tell instinctively—something perhaps about the heaviness of the air or a pressure he felt in his skull—that he was below sea level. Myles’s skull was very sensitive, and the least change in atmospherics could precipitate a migraine.
Sister Jeronima was seated across a table from him. Bizarrely enough, the nun was absently polishing a throwing knife with a chamois cloth.
Sad, thought Myles. Such a pathetic attempt to intimidate me.
Jeronima expects me to reference the knife, he realized, thus giving her the upper hand.
“Buenas tardes, Myles Fowl,” said the nun without looking up from her knife. “You must have so many questions.”
It was true that there were things Myles needed to know, but he had answers, too, should anyone care to pose the corresponding questions.
He could have asked: Where am I precisely?
Or indeed: Who exactly do you represent?
Or certainly: What do you want with us?
Myles knew that should he pretend to pass himself off as a frightened, witless youth to learn these things, Jeronima would see right through him; after all, his intellect was well-documented.
So, instead of firing off a barrage of questions, Myles said, “You sedated us with the helicopter’s oxygen masks. That was a despicable trick, Sister.”
Jeronima was not in the least abashed. “The levels are delicate. Sometimes people fall asleep.”
“And then you are free to smuggle them into your subterranean base without fuss. I would guess we are in Amsterdam. Or perhaps Rotterdam, but I imagine Amsterdam. I do love Amsterdam. The NEMO science museum is a marvel, though I do worry about the EYE theater, architecturally. I have written letters to the board.”
Jeronima gave Myles her full attention. “Very good. How did you know we were in Amsterdam?”
This would usually have been a simple question for the NANNI chip embedded in Myles’s spectacles to answer. The map of their trip was displayed for his eyes only on the inside of his lenses. Unfortunately, NANNI had lost network outside Schiphol airport, so Myles had been forced to make an educated guess.
“Never mind that,” said Myles. “I’m sure you must have questions.”
“Oh, sí,” said Jeronima. “I have questions, but perhaps some answers, too. I can tell you where your brother is.”
Myles rubbed the scar on his wrist. “No need. Beckett is in the next room.”
“You can sense your twin?”
“Our scars twinge like a form of spiritual radar,” said Myles. “Usually I can see him, too.”
“Do not worry, chico,” said Jeronima. “You will be together soon. It was necessary to separate you for a short time, considering your peculiar situation.”
“And which peculiar situation is that?”
This was a genuine question from Myles. The Fowls had, over the years, been involved in a great many peculiar situations.
“The fairy situation,” said Jeronima, and she placed a black plastic card on the table.
Myles did not touch the card and he made no attempt to scan it with his augmented spectacles. Even basic credit cards had photon technology now. Jeronima had presented her card with such a flourish that Myles felt sure it was packed with advanced sensors and would detect a scan. Then he would lose his precious spectacles and he would have no contact with NANNI, as his watch and smartphone were still beside his bed in Villa Éco.
“Don’t worry, niño,” said Jeronima, sensing Myles’s hesitation. “It is nothing but a card. We are very old-school down here. There is not even the internet.”
Myles engaged his organic scanners, those being his eyes. At first glance the card seemed blank, but then Myles noticed seven embossed letters.
“ACRONYM,” he read. “I presume ACRONYM is an acronym.”
“Sí, correcto, Myles,” said Jeronima. “ACRONYM stands for: Asociación para el Control, la Regulación, y la Observación de los No-humanos y la Magia.”
“You’re telling me that the acronym for ACRONYM is ACRONYM?” asked Myles. “That sounds a little forced, if you don’t mind me saying. And it only works in Spanish, though the agency name itself is English.”
“I suppose you could do the better acronym, chico,” said Jeronima, which was unfortunate, for Myles Fowl had always been a whiz at wordplay.
“Most certainly I could do better,” said the bespectacled twin. “Let me see…. Off the top of my head, what about IMP? Imaginary Monster Patrol. I have added a second layer to the acronym there by linking the word itself to the organization.”
Jeronima smiled thinly. “Most amusing. But also insulting, no?”
“I take your point. Let’s try another one: ELF. Excellent Leprechaun Force. I could do a few in Spanish if you like?”
Jeronima shrugged. “English, Spanish, it does not matter. The name
is no importante—it is our actions that count. We are an international intergovernmental organization charged with monitoring fairy activity.”
“Los no-humanos,” said Myles, not bothering to suppress a smirk. “So tell me, Sister, if I ignore the ridiculous premise for your group’s very existence, what does your ACRONYM want with us?”
“Nada. We do not want anything,” said Jeronima, wide-eyed. “We are merely protecting you.”
Myles laughed. “From a gunshot? Why would fairy-hunters care about a shot from a human gun? We had a close shave, that is all.”
“We do not care about this gunshot, but we are most interested in the disappearing island.”
“There you have me at a disadvantage,” said Myles. “I genuinely have no idea what you are talking about.”
Which was not the whole truth.
The nun’s eyes narrowed and she began twirling the throwing knife on the table. “After the gunshot, Villa Éco simply disappeared, momentarily, then came back into view. We do not have such technology. So it must be magic.”
Myles laughed. “Really, Sister? Magic is your first port of call? Why not aliens? Why not alternative dimensions? Your reasoning is fatally flawed, I’m afraid.”
Jeronima thunked the knife into the tabletop, where it quivered and sang. “Listen to me, niño. There is another race under our feet with superior weapons and advanced technology. Some years ago, there was an event that shut down the entire world. Airports, hospitals, everything. It took months for civilization to recover, and it cost billions. Several governments collapsed.”
Myles sighed, not at all perturbed by the knifeplay. “That is old news, Sister. Five years old, to be precise. Everyone knows about the Big Dark.”
“Sí, the Big Dark. A catchy name, no?”
Myles couldn’t help saying, “Better than ACRONYM.”
Jeronima ignored the jibe. “Earth was thrown back to the Dark Ages. And all over the world there were reports of strange creatures with pointed ears suddenly appearing, and, almost as quickly, disappearing. Fowl Manor was ground zero for this event. And since then we have been watching you and waiting for an excuse to go in. These fairies could appear again at any moment. And next time they might decide not to disappear.”