by Stuart Gibbs
I was actually a good runner, and I’d increased my stamina during my time at spy school, but Hank was setting a hard pace, and we were going over rugged ground. The land around our camp turned out to be much hillier than I’d realized; it was full of sharp wooded rises and cut with steep ravines. All of it probably would have been beautiful if I hadn’t been on a forced run through it. After the first mile, I was starting to flag a bit and wondering how on earth I was going to cover another five—let alone scale a mountain. The Muskrats had already spread out along the trail in order of athletic ability, with Hank in the lead and Jawa on his heels, while Nate and Warren stumbled along at the rear. The line of us was stretching longer and longer as we went, so that every now and then, I found myself alone on a stretch of trail without anyone visible ahead or behind through the thick trees.
I was just beginning to think this wasn’t the safest place for me to be when the attack came.
A loop of cord that had been hidden in the dirt suddenly snapped tight around my right leg and yanked it out from under me. I hit the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of me and was dragged into the underbrush. Before I could scream for help, someone pounced on top of me and slapped a hand over my mouth.
My attacker was dressed in head-to-toe camouflage, looking like a stretch of lawn that had come to life. I wouldn’t have recognized her if it weren’t for her ice blue eyes. Her usual lilac-and-gunpowder smell was overwhelmed by the scent of grass and soil.
Erica Hale.
She waited until Warren and Nate had staggered past and were well out of earshot, then took her hand away from my mouth.
“Y’know, when most people want to talk to someone else, they call them on the phone,” I said. “Maybe drop by their room. They don’t ambush them in the middle of the woods.”
“It’s in both of our best interests if no one knows we’re aligned on this matter.” Erica got off me, then helped me to my feet.
“I think you just enjoy ambushing me,” I told her.
It was hard to tell, given the green paint on her face, but I think Erica might have smiled. It only lasted a fraction of a second. Then she was back to business as usual. “If you were more attuned to your environment, I wouldn’t be able to ambush you. You need to be much more alert with SPYDER on the prowl. I can’t always be there to protect you.”
“Like the other day at FunLand?” I asked pointedly.
“There were two dozen CIA agents watching you. I felt they had things under control.”
“Well, they didn’t. Murray Hill dropped by—and he got away.”
“So I heard.” Erica started into the forest, heading away from the running trail I’d been on.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“We’re taking a shortcut back to camp. Unless you were enjoying the scenic route.”
“Uh, no. This way is fine. As long as Hank doesn’t notice I’m gone.”
“He won’t.”
I plunged into the woods behind Erica. There wasn’t any evident trail, but Erica seemed to know exactly where she was going. “Do you believe that I saw Murray?” I asked.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because no one else does. They all claim he’s locked up at some juvenile rehabilitation facility.”
“Yes, that struck me as a bit odd as well.”
“Murray doesn’t have a twin, by any chance, does he?”
“No.”
“So is it possible that he escaped and no one has noticed?”
“I’d doubt it.”
“Then how can Murray be in two places at once?”
“I’m still working on that.” Erica led the way down a steep, rocky slope into a narrow ravine.
I carefully picked my way down after her. The rocks were slick with morning mist. “Any ideas so far?” I asked.
“I’m still gathering data. Speaking of which, I found out why everyone was so freaked out about that license plate you got.”
“Why?”
“Because it belongs to the director of the CIA.”
I froze on the rocky incline, stunned. “The director of the CIA is working with SPYDER?!”
Erica shot me an annoyed glance, disappointed by my limited powers of deduction.
“Oh,” I said, understanding. “SPYDER stole it from him.”
“Yes.” There was a small stream at the bottom of the ravine, and Erica led us along it. “The thing is, the director’s identity is classified. . . .”
“No, it’s not. He’s on TV all the time. . . .”
Erica shot me another annoyed look. “The real director of the CIA,” she told me. “The guy who actually runs it.”
“The other guy’s just a decoy? No one told me about that.”
“Most of the agents in the CIA don’t know about that. They have no idea who the real director is—or where he lives. Thus, it’s quite disturbing when SPYDER swipes the license plate off his car.”
“Why would they do that?”
“To send a message to the CIA: They know everything. And they can get to anyone, anywhere.”
I felt a chill pass through me. “So . . . if I don’t agree to work for them, they’ll really be able to take me out?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“Do you have any idea what SPYDER needs me for?”
“No,” Erica admitted. “But it must be something big. SPYDER’s kept in the shadows for years—and now they suddenly start making public appearances just to get your attention? Every time they do that, it’s a risk. And yet, SPYDER must think you’re worth it.”
“But why me?” I asked. “If they wanted the best agent at spy school, why aren’t they going after you?”
“There’s two possibilities,” Erica replied. “One: They think they can turn you. They know they can’t get me. I’d rather die than work for them.”
“So would I.”
“Really? When they come for you today and point a dozen guns to your head and say, ‘Work for us or we’ll shoot you,’ you’ll really have the guts to turn them down?”
“Of course,” I said, although while I really wanted to believe this was true, I was quite sure it wasn’t. Death is a really good negotiating tactic.
Erica didn’t look like she believed me either, but she let it slide. “Possibility two: You have some latent talent that is extremely important to them.”
“Some talent that even I don’t know about?”
“I guess. Some extension of your math skills, probably. After all, SPYDER has made you an offer before.”
“And I shot them down.”
“So now they’ve upped the stakes in the biggest way possible. Think, Ben. What can you do that’s so special?” Erica started up a steep rock face. It was almost perfectly smooth, but she bounded up it like a mountain goat.
It took me a bit longer to work my way up. By the time I got to the top, fifty feet above the creek, I’d had a good amount of time to think about why SPYDER believed I was so important—and I hadn’t come up with anything. “I have no idea what SPYDER thinks I can do for them,” I admitted.
“Okay,” Erica said, seeming disappointed. “Then let’s focus on protecting you from them. What’s the best way to do that?”
“Get to them before they get to me?”
“Exactly. And how do we do that?
I thought for a moment. “Well, the easiest way for them to be delivering things like the note and the contract to me would be to have another mole on the inside, right?”
“Yes. If not more than one mole.”
“So if we can figure out who it is, we’re on the right path.”
Erica nodded. At the top of the slope was a windswept rocky stretch, mostly bald except for the occasional stunted tree. Erica and I were finally able to walk side by side for a while. “Any idea who it might be?”
“I was going to ask you that.”
“You’re closer to all this than I am.”
I considered that as we walked. “Whoeve
r put the contract in the footlocker did it after all fifteen other bunks were claimed—but before I showed up with Chip, Zoe, and Warren. Because whoever put the contract there thought they were putting it in my footlocker.”
Erica gave me one of her rare smiles. “Exactly. That wasn’t a lot of time.”
“I saw Claire Hutchins and the rest of her MI-6 gang coming from the direction of my cabin right before I got there,” I said.
“Interesting,” Erica said. “The CIA probably doesn’t vet the MI-6 students as tightly as its own because they expect MI-6 to do it for them. Did you see anyone else near your cabin?”
“No,” I said.
“No one?” Erica asked pointedly.
“Well, no one but Zoe, Warren, and Chip.”
“Also interesting,” Erica said.
“No,” I told her. “There’s no way Zoe’s the mole. She’s my friend. . . .”
“So was Murray. And look how that turned out.”
“I didn’t really know Murray all that long. I’ve known Zoe for five months.”
“You can’t trust anybody,” Erica said.
“I can,” I shot back. “I trust Zoe.”
“How about Warren?”
I thought about Chip’s joking accusation that we hadn’t seen Warren actually find the contract inside the footlocker. Then I shook my head. “I don’t think Warren’s exactly SPYDER material.”
“No one would have thought that about Murray, either,” Erica cautioned. “It takes an awfully good double agent to convince you that they’re a really bad real agent.”
“I suppose Warren could have delivered the contract,” I said.
“Chip could have too,” Erica put in. “Of course, there are nearly three hundred other students who got here before your bus did. Plus thirty faculty and assorted groundskeepers. Plenty of them probably had an opportunity as well.”
“Are there any security cameras posted around the cabins?” I asked.
“Of course,” Erica replied.
“Have you checked to see if they recorded anyone entering my cabin?”
“What do you think?”
I frowned, knowing what the answer would be. “You did . . . and they didn’t show anything.”
“Exactly.”
“Someone jacked the cameras?” I asked. “The same way the assassin did when he came to get me?”
“No. These recorded just fine. They simply didn’t record anyone going in or out of your cabin during that time.”
I stared at Erica, incredulous. “How is that even possible?”
Erica shrugged. “I don’t know. But when we figure it out, we’ll probably have a darn good idea who our mole is.”
The bald area ended abruptly at a tall cliff. It plummeted straight down into the woods twenty stories below. I could see the camp not far away: Most of the buildings were hidden by the trees, but the oval of the central lawn was the only big gap in the forest.
“How are we supposed to get down?” I asked.
“With this.” Erica pulled a camouflaged tarp off a boulder nearby. One end of an ancient zip line rig was bolted to the rock. The wire angled down into the forest, so thin it was almost impossible to see.
“You have to be kidding,” I said.
“Have you ever known me to kid?” Erica withdrew a small zip line pulley from somewhere in the recesses of her camouflage gear. She whipped it over the wire and locked it in place. “I only have one of these. We’ll have to share.”
“I don’t think that wire will hold both of us,” I said.
“It will,” Erica told me. “It’s either this or go back the way we came. Which means Hank will beat you back to camp by half an hour and discover you’ve gone AWOL. You want to earn his wrath?”
“I already get that for free,” I said.
“Stop being such a weenie and get on the wire.”
There may be no bigger motivator to a twelve-year-old boy than not wanting to look like a weenie in front of an attractive girl.
A harness was attached to the zip line pulley. Erica quickly cinched it around us, so we were strapped face-to-face. If I hadn’t been terrified of the drop, it might have been the most thrilling moment of my short life.
Erica checked the pulley to make sure it was properly situated on the wire—and then, without any warning at all, leapt off the cliff.
Her gravity took me with her. A second later, we were whizzing down the line.
To my surprise, it wasn’t scary. It didn’t even feel like falling. It was more like taking an elevator, albeit a very cramped one where your nose was practically touching that of the only other rider. The ride went on long enough that it seemed I ought to say something.
“How did you even know about this?” I asked.
“I’ve taken some time to familiarize myself with the terrain,” Erica replied. “Just as I did at school.”
I shook my head, not buying it. The school was only a few buildings and a couple miles of subterranean tunnels. The camp property, on the other hand, was massive. It would have taken years to explore it all. Plus, Erica was a legacy. All her ancestors had been spies. “Someone must have showed you around,” I said. “Your father maybe?”
Erica’s eyes hardened. “No. Not my father.”
There was something in her voice that surprised me. Something like pain.
“Joshua Hallal?” I asked.
Erica turned away from me, which wasn’t easy to do while we were strapped together.
I instantly felt like a heel for even bringing it up. Joshua Hallal had been a top student at spy school, the rare person Erica had respected—and SPYDER had killed him. His death the previous January had been the tip-off that SPYDER had a mole in the school in the first place. Which had then triggered my recruitment.
This was the first time I’d ever mentioned Joshua to Erica since she’d first told me about him, and she instantly iced up. Even though we were inches apart physically, she seemed a mile away emotionally. I’d heard rumors that Erica had been the one who found Joshua’s remains—which would have been unsettling even if they hadn’t been friends, as he’d been blown up by a bomb in his dorm room. I’d never been able to confirm this, though, because even at a gossip-happy place like spy school, no one seemed comfortable talking about Joshua’s death. I considered asking Erica about it now, but given her frigid state, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. There was only one thing I could think of to say.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Why?” Erica asked coldly. “You didn’t kill him. Tuck in your legs. We’re coming in for a landing.”
I’d been so distracted, I hadn’t even noticed the ground coming up. Our feet skimmed over the tops of the trees and then we were dropping through the branches. I brought my knees up to my chest, as directed, and noticed that, not far ahead, the wire ended very suddenly at a large rock. We seemed to be heading for it very quickly. Below the point where the wire anchored in, there was a faint but large red splotch that looked like the bad result of a high-speed impact.
Before we slammed into the rock, however, Erica tugged on a latch and the harness came loose from the pulley. She and I dropped ten feet, and landed on what had looked like ground, but was actually a canvas stretched taut over a pit to cushion our fall. It was like a trampoline built at ground level. We bounded off it once, then tumbled over each other until we came to a gentle stop with Erica resting atop me.
She was on her feet in a second, before the moment could get awkward, undoing the harness that had held us together and hurrying off to retrieve the pulley. “We’re a little behind time. We’ll have to move quickly so Hank doesn’t notice you’re gone.” She snapped the pulley off, tucked it away, and took off into the woods.
I ran after her. “So, where are we left with this SPYDER business?” I asked. “We only have a little more than six hours until SPYDER’s deadline is up. What am I supposed to do?”
“Keep your eyes and ears open,” Erica told me. “Try to figu
re out who might have planted that contract and how they got past the cameras. I’ll try to figure things out on my end.”
Her statement jogged my memory. “Did you ever find out what that speck on the first note from SPYDER was?”
“Yes. It was a fragment of bituminous coal.”
“That’s it?” I asked, not bothering to hide my disappointment.
“What were you hoping for? A canister of microfilm that detailed all SPYDER’s plans?”
“I was hoping for something that would tell us something. Coal isn’t exactly rare. It won’t help us narrow anything down.”
“It still could,” Erica said. “Every seam of coal is different. They all have different impurities in them, no matter how minuscule. If we can determine what all those are, we could pinpoint where the coal is from—and thus figure out where SPYDER wrote that note.”
“How long will that take?”
“A little while longer. It involves a lot of very expensive equipment that I’m not supposed to have access to.”
“So how are you going to access it?”
“I’m not. Luckily, I have a friend who can do the work for me. But he can’t just drop everything and slot this in first.”
Before I could ask Erica who her friend was, she pressed a finger to my lips, then yanked me down into the bushes.
A few seconds later, Hank Schacter ran past. The rough pace he’d set had winded him. He was huffing and puffing and coated with a sheen of sweat. Jawa wasn’t far behind him. He looked almost serene, as though he’d found the six-mile slog through the forest refreshing. The remaining Muskrats were spread out even farther behind him than before. It was a good thirty seconds until the next one came along, and the next was a minute after that.
“This looks like your spot,” Erica told me, and before I could protest, she shoved me through the bushes onto the trail.
When I turned back, she’d already melted into the forest. I knew it was pointless to go after her, so I followed the path instead.
Five minutes later, I emerged from the trees onto the main lawn.
Jawa was in a lotus pose, meditating, while Hank and the two Muskrats who’d arrived before me were doing their best to keep from collapsing.
Hank fixed me with a hard stare. “What are you trying to pull here?” he demanded.