by Eoin Colfer
There were no blind spots in the building, no place to hide. The system was foolproof.
But the goblins didn’t have to worry about that. The Laboratories’ defences were actually designed to keep out any LEP officers who might come snooping around at the wrong moment. It was Opal Koboi herself who was funding the goblin triad. The attacks on Koboi were actually a smokescreen to divert suspicions away from her own personal dealings: the tiny pixie was the mastermind behind the battery operation and the increased
B’wa Kell activity. Well, one of the masterminds. But why would an individual of almost limitless wealth possibly wish to associate with a goblin tunnel gang?
Since the day of her birth, nothing much had ever been expected of Opal Koboi. Born to a family of old-money pixies on Principality Hill, her parents would have been quite content had young Opal done nothing more than attend private school, complete some wishy-washy Arts degree and marry a suitable vice-president.
In fact, as far as her father, Ferall Koboi, was concerned, a dream daughter would have been moderately intelligent, quite pretty and, of course, complacent. But Opal did not display the personality traits Ferall would have wished for. By the age of ten months she was already walking unaided, by a year and a half she had a vocabulary of over five hundred words. Before her second birthday she had dismantled her first hard drive.
Opal grew to be precocious, headstrong and beautiful. A dangerous combination. Ferall lost count of the times he sat his daughter down, advising her to leave business to the male pixies. Eventually Opal refused to see him at all. Her blatant hostility was worrying.
Ferall was right to be worried. Opal’s first action in college was to ditch her History of Art degree in favour of the male-dominated Brotherhood of Engineers Masters. No sooner was the scroll in her hand than Opal set up shop in direct opposition to her father. Patents quickly followed. An engine muffler that doubled as an energy streamliner, a 3D entertainment system and, of course, her speciality, the DoubleDex wing series.
Once Opal had destroyed her father’s business, she proceeded to buy shares in it at rock-bottom prices, and then incorporated her businesses under the banner of Koboi Laboratories. Within five years, Koboi Laboratories held more defence contracts than any other company. Within ten years, Opal Koboi had personally registered more patents than any fairy alive. Except the centaur Foaly.
But it wasn’t enough. Opal Koboi yearned for the kind of power that hadn’t been held by any single fairy since the days of the monarchy. Luckily, she knew someone who might be able to assist her with that particular ambition. A disillusioned officer in the LEP, and a classmate from her college days. A certain Briar Cudgeon. .
Briar had good reason to despise the LEP; after all, they had allowed his public humiliation at the hands of Julius Root to go unpunished. Not only that, but he had been stripped of his commander’s acorns after his disastrous involvement in the Artemis Fowl Affair. .
It had been a simple matter for Opal to slip a truth pill into Cudgeon’s drink in one of Haven’s swankier eateries. To her glee, she found that the delightfully twisted Cudgeon was already formulating a plan to topple the LEP.
Quite an ingenious plan as it happened. All he needed was a partner. One with large reserves of gold and a secure facility at her disposal. Opal was happy to supply both.
Opal was curled, catlike, in her hoverchair, eavesdropping on the goings-on in Police Plaza when Cudgeon entered the facility. She had installed mole cameras in the LEP network when her engineers were upgrading their system. The units operated on precisely the same frequency as Police Plaza’s own surveillance cameras, plus they drew power from the heat leaking from the LEP’s fibre optics. Completely undetectable.
‘Well?’ demanded Cudgeon, with customary bluntness.
Koboi didn’t bother to turn around. It had to be Briar. Only he had the necessary access chip to the inner sanctum, implanted in his knuckle.
‘We lost the last shipment of power cells. A routine LEP stakeout. Bad luck.’
‘D’Arvit!’ swore Cudgeon. ‘Still, no matter. We have enough stored. And to the LEP, they are simply batteries after all.’
Opal took a breath. ‘The goblins were armed. .’
‘Don’t tell me.’
‘With Softnoses.’
Cudgeon pounded a worktop. ‘Those idiots! I warned them not to use those weapons. Now Julius will know something is afoot.’
‘He may know,’ said Opal placatingly. ‘But he is powerless to stop us. By the time they figure it out, it will already be too late.’
Cudgeon did not smile. He hadn’t in over a year. Instead his scowl grew more pronounced.
‘Good. My time is at hand. . Perhaps we should have simply manufactured the batteries ourselves,’ he mused.
‘No. Just to build a factory would have set us back two years, and there’s no guarantee that Foaly wouldn’t have discovered it. We had no choice.’
Koboi swivelled to face her partner. ‘You look terrible. Have you been using that ointment I gave you?’
Cudgeon rubbed his head tenderly. It was bubbled with horrific lumps.
‘It doesn’t work. There’s cortisone in it. I’m allergic.’
Cudgeon’s condition was unusual, perhaps unique. The previous year he had been sedated by Commander Root during the Fowl Manor siege.
Unfortunately, the tranquillizer had reacted badly with some banned mind-accelerating substances the former acting-commander had been experimenting with. Cudgeon was left with a forehead like melted tar, plus a droopy eye. Ugly and demoted, not a great combination.
‘You should get those boils lanced. I can barely stand the sight of you.’
Sometimes Opal Koboi forgot who she was talking to. Briar Cudgeon was not the usual corporate lackey. He calmly drew a customized Redboy blaster, firing two bursts into the hoverchair’s arm.The contraption whirled across the stippled rubber tiles, coming to rest leaving Opal sprawled across a bank of hard drives.
The disgraced LEP elf caught Opal by the pointed chin. ‘You better get used to looking at me, my dear Opal. Because soon this face will be on every view screen under this planet, and on top of it.’
The tiny pixie curled her fingers into a fist. She was unaccustomed to insubordination, not to mention actual violence. But at moments like this she could see the madness in Cudgeon’s eyes. The drugs had cost him more than his magic and looks, they had cost him his mind.
And suddenly he was himself again, graciously helping her up as though nothing had happened.
‘Now, my dear, progress report. The B’wa Kell is eager for blood.’
Opal smoothed the front of her catsuit. ‘Captain Short is escorting the human, Artemis Fowl, to E37.’
‘Fowl is here?’ exclaimed Cudgeon. ‘Of course! I should have guessed that he would be suspected. This is perfect! Our human slave will take care of him — Carrere has been mesmerized. I still have that power.’
Koboi applied a layer of blood-red lipstick. ‘There could be trouble if Carrere is captured.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Cudgeon assured her. ‘Monsieur Carrere has been mesmerized so many times that his mind is blanker than a wiped disk. He couldn’t tell any tales, even if he wanted to. Then, once he has done our dirty work for us, the French police will lock him up in a nice padded cell.’
Opal giggled. For someone who never smiled, Cudgeon had a delicious sense of humour.
CHAPTER 6: PHOTO OPPORTUNITY
CHUTE E37, HAVEN CITY, THE LOWER ELEMENTS
The unlikely allies took the goblin shuttle up E37. Holly was none too pleased. First of all, she was being ordered to work with public-enemy number one, Artemis Fowl. And secondly, the goblin shuttle was held together by spit and prayers.
Holly hooked a corn rig over one pointy ear. ‘Hey, Foaly? You there?’
‘Right here, Captain.’
‘Remind me again why I’m flying this old slammer.’ LEPrecon pilots referred to suspect shuttles as slammers because o
f their alarming tendency to slam into the chute walls.
‘The reason you’re flying that old slammer, Captain, is that the goblins built this shuttle inside the port, and all three of the original access ramps were removed years ago. It would take days to get a new rig in there. So, I’m afraid we’re stuck with the goblin ship.’
Holly strapped herself into the pilot’s wraparound seat. The thruster toggles almost seemed to jump into her hands. For a split second, Captain Short’s natural good humour returned. She was an ace pilot, top of her class in the Academy. On her final assessment, Wing Commander Vinyaya had written that Cadet Short could fly a shuttle pod through the gap in your teeth. It was a compliment with a sting in the tail. On her first try-out in a pod, Holly had lost control, crash-landing the craft two metres from Vinyaya’s nose.
So, for five seconds, Holly was happy. Then she remembered who her passengers were.
‘I wonder, could you tell me,’ said Artemis, settling into the co-pilot’s chair, ‘how close the Russian terminal is to Murmansk?’
‘Civilians behind the yellow line,’ growled Holly, ignoring the enquiry. Artemis pressed on. ‘This is important to me. I am trying to plan a rescue.’
Holly grinned tightly. ‘There’s so much irony here, I could write a poem. The kidnapper looking for help with a kidnapping.’
Artemis rubbed his temples. ‘Holly, I am a criminal. It’s what I do best. When I abducted you, I was thinking only of the ransom. You were never supposed to be in any danger.’
‘Oh really?’ said Holly. ‘Apart from bio-bombs and trolls.’
‘True,’ admitted Artemis. ‘Sometimes plans don’t translate smoothly from paper to real life.’ He paused, cleaning some non-existent dirt from his manicured nails. ‘I have matured, Captain. This is my father. I need all the information I can gather before facing the Mafiya.’
Holly relented. It wasn’t easy growing up without a father. She knew.
Her own father had passed away when she was barely sixty. More than twenty years ago now.
‘OK, Mud Boy, listen up. I’m only saying this once.’
Artemis sat up. Butler stooped as he entered the cockpit. He could smell a war story.
‘Over the past two centuries, with the advances in human technology, the LEP have been forced to shut down over sixty terminals. We pulled out of northern Russia in the sixties. The entire Kola peninsula is a nuclear disaster.
The People have no tolerance to radiation, we never built up a resistance. In truth, there wasn’t much to close down. Just a Grade Three terminal and a couple of cloaking projectors. The People aren’t very fond of the Arctic. A bit frosty. Everybody was glad to be leaving. So, to answer your question: there’s one unmanned terminal, with little or no above-ground facilities, located about twenty klicks north of Murmansk —’
Foaly’s voice blurted from the intercom, interrupting what was dangerously close to a civil conversation. ‘OK, Captain. You’ve got a clear run to the subway. There’s still a bit of waffle from the last flare, so go easy.’
Holly pulled down her mouth mike. ‘Roger that, Foaly. Have the rad suits ready when I get back. We’re on a tight schedule.’
Foaly chuckled. ‘Take it easy on the thrusters, Holly. Technically, this is Artemis’s first time in the chutes, seeing as he and Butler were mesmerized on the way down. We wouldn’t want him getting a fright.’
Holly gunned the throttle quite a bit more than was absolutely necessary. ‘No,’ she growled. ‘We wouldn’t want him getting a fright.’
Artemis decided to strap on his restraining harness. A good idea, as it turned out.
Captain Short gunned the makeshift shuttle down the magnetized approach rail. The fins shook, sending twin waves of sparks cascading past the portholes. Holly adjusted the internal gyroscopes, otherwise there’d be Mud People vomiting all over the cockpit.
Holly’s thumbs hovered over the turbo buttons. ‘OK. Well, let’s see what this bucket can do.’
‘Don’t go trying for any records, Holly,’ said Foaly over the speakers.
‘That ship is not built for speed. I’ve seen more aerodynamic dwarfs.’
Holly grunted. After all, what was the point in flying slowly? None whatsoever. And if you happened to terrify a few Mud Men along the way, well, that was just an added bonus.
The service tunnel opened on to the main chute. Artemis gasped. It was an awe-inspiring sight. You could drop Mount Everest down this chute and it wouldn’t even hit the sides. A deep red glow pulsed from the Earth’s core like the fires of hell, and the constant crack of contracting rock smacked the hull like physical blows.
Holly fired up all four flight engines, tumbling the shuttle into the abyss. Her worries evaporated like the eddies of mist swirling around the cockpit. It was a fly-boy thing. The lower you went without pulling out of the dive, the tougher you were. Even the fiery demise of Retrieval Officer Bom Arbles couldn’t stop the LEP pilots core diving. Holly held the current record. Five hundred metres from the Earth’s core before dipping the flaps. That had cost her two weeks’ suspension, plus a hefty fine.
Not today though. No records in a slammer. With the g-force rippling the skin on her cheeks, Holly dragged the joysticks back, pulling the nose out of vertical. It gave her no small satisfaction to hear both humans sigh with relief.
‘OK, Foaly, we’re on the up ‘n’ up. What’s the situation above ground?’
She could hear Foaly tapping a keyboard. ‘Sorry, Holly. I can’t get a lock on any of our surface equipment. Too much radiation from the last flare.
You’re on your own. Holly eyed the two pale humans in the cockpit. On my own, she thought. I wish.
PARIS, FRANCE
So, if Artemis wasn’t the human helping Cudgeon in his quest to arm the B’wa Kell, who was? Some tyrannical dictator? Perhaps a disgruntled general with access to an unlimited supply of power cells? Well, no. Not exactly.
Luc Carrere was responsible for selling batteries to the B’wa Kell. Not that you’d know it to look at him. In fact, he didn’t even know it himself. Luc was a small-time French private eye, who was well known for his inefficiency.
In PI circles, it was said that Luc couldn’t trace a golf ball in a barrel of mozzarella.
Cudgeon decided to use Luc for three reasons. One, Foaly’s files showed that Carrere had a reputation as a wheeler-dealer. In spite of his ineptness as an investigator, Luc had a knack for laying his hand on whatever it was the client wanted to buy. Two, the man was greedy and had never been able to resist the lure of easy money. And three, Luc was stupid. And as every little fairy knows, weak minds are easier to mesmerize.
The fact that he had located Carrere in Foaly’s database was nearly enough to make Cudgeon smile. Of course, Briar would have preferred not to have any human link in the chain. But a chain comprised completely of goblin links is one dumb chain.
Establishing contact with any Mud Man was not something Cudgeon took lightly. Deranged as he was, Briar was well aware of what would happen if the humans got wind of a new market below ground. They would swarm to the Earth’s core like an army of red-backed flesh-eating ants. Cudgeon was not ready to meet the humans head on. Not yet. Not until he had the might of the LEP behind him.
So instead, Cudgeon sent Luc Carrere a little package. First class, shielded goblin mail. .
Luc Carrere had shuffled into his office apartment’ one July evening to find a small parcel lying on his desk. The package was nothing more than a FedEx delivery. Or something that looked very much like a FedEx delivery.
Luc slit the tape. Inside the box, cushioned on a nest of hundred-euro bills, was a small flat device of some kind. Like a portable CD player, but made from a strange black metal that seemed to absorb light. Luc would have shouted to reception and instructed his secretary to hold all calls. If he had had a reception. If he had had a secretary. Instead the PI began stuffing cash down his grease-stained shirt as though the notes would disappear.
Sud
denly, the device popped open, clam-like, revealing a micro-screen and speakers. A shadowy face appeared on the display. Though Luc could see nothing but a pair of red-rimmed eyes, that was enough to set goose bumps popping across his back.
Funny though, because when the face began to speak, Luc’s worries slid away like an old snakeskin. How could he have been worried?This person was obviously a friend. What a lovely voice. Like a choir of angels, all on its own.
‘Luc Carrere?’
Luc nearly cried. Poetry.
‘Oui. It’s me.’
‘Bonsoir. Do you see the money, Luc? It’s all yours.’ Sixty miles below ground, Cudgeon almost smiled. This was easier than expected. He had been worried that the dribble of power left in his brain wouldn’t be sufficient to mesmerize the human. But this particular Mud Man seemed to have the will-power of a hungry hog faced with a trough of turnips.
Luc held two wads of cash in his fists. ‘This money. It’s mine? What do I have to do?’
‘Nothing. The money is yours. Do whatever you want.’
Now Luc Carrere knew that there was no such thing as free cash, but that voice. . That voice was truth in a micro-speaker.
‘But there’s more. A lot more.’
Luc stopped what he was doing, which was kissing a hundred-euro bill.
‘More? How much more?’
The eyes seemed to glow crimson. ‘As much as you want, Lac. But to get it, I need you to do me a favour.’
Luc was hooked. ‘Sure. What kind of favour?’
The voice emanating from the speaker was as clear as spring water.
‘It’s simple, not even illegal. I need batteries, Luc. Thousands of batteries.
Maybe millions. Do you thinkyou can get them jor me?’
Luc thought about it for about two seconds. The banknotes were tickling his chin. As a matter of fact, he had a contact on the river who regularly shipped boatloads of hardware to the Middle East, including batteries. Luc was confident that some of those shipments could be diverted.