Operation Sherlock

by Bruce Coville

  The song did indeed have the sound of the sea in it, and Rachel began to feel dreamy and far away. She was actually disappointed when the Jeep lurched forward and Dr. Weiskopf put the whistle away so they could concentrate on their tour.

  As the tour circled the island, the kids felt a growing sense of excitement. Anza-bora was truly beautiful. Its low southern end was blessed with spectacular beaches. Its northern tip—barely five miles away—rose to a peak that stood nearly a thousand feet above the ocean. In between were the airfield, the marina, the base housing (mostly deserted now, of course) and a wonderful forest.

  Later the kids would remember many things about that afternoon: their delight as they began to sense the possibilities inherent in the island’s private coves and rocky shores; the way Trip Davis’s father got so excited about a view he wanted to paint that he forgot to look where he was going and fell over a small cliff; Dr. Hwa smiling with pride as he pointed out a long three-story building with an odd central dome and explained that it housed the great computer which would soon be the center of their parents’ lives.

  But most of all they would remember finding the first of the clues that would eventually convince them one of the adults they had just met was a dangerous traitor.

  Bugged!

  It was Ray who found it. The gang had returned to the canteen after the official tour to compare notes (and to try another round of the new, improved Gamma Ball). Ray was rummaging through his pockets for coins when he pulled out a small metal square with several wires sticking out of it.

  “Hmmm. I forgot about this,” he said, just before he tossed it onto the small mountain of stuff he had already piled on the table.

  “What is it?” asked Wendy, extracting the square from the stack of paper clips, transistors, rubber bands, and marbles.

  Ray looked up from his rummaging. “What’s what? Oh, that. It’s a current detector my father and I were working on.” He made a face. “I’ve got to give up fishing,” he said, dropping a dead worm onto the table.

  “How does it work?” asked Wendy, ignoring Rachel’s squeal of disgust. “The current detector, not the dead worm.”

  “Got it!” cried Ray, pulling a crumpled dollar bill from his pocket. “I knew I had one in there.”

  “Ray!” snapped Wendy. “Forget about the money and answer me!”

  The blond boy who had cooked the Wonderchild’s burger that morning appeared at the table with several bottles of soda and a cup of black coffee. Setting the coffee in front of Rachel, he looked at Wendy and said, “Patience is a virtue.”

  “So is minding your own business! Not to mention answering questions,” she added, returning her attention to Ray.

  “Wendy!” hissed Rachel. “That wasn’t very nice.” She glanced over at the counter. The dark eyed boy had returned to his workstation. But he was staring at them in a way that made her nervous.

  “Okay, okay,” said Ray, taking the current detector from Wendy. “There’s a microbattery here, see? Now, these wires set up a small field that can be interrupted by any electrical activity in the area. That trips the beeper. Here, I’ll turn it on.”

  He fumbled with the device for a moment. “Darn lint,” he muttered to no one in particular. “Always gumming things up. Ah, there we go…” He looked up at the others. “Of course, there’s not much point in turning it on,” he said. “It only has a range of a couple of feet, and—”

  He was interrupted by a high, urgent beeping.

  He furrowed his brow. “That’s odd. Is one of you wearing an electric watch?”

  Of course, none of them was. Their watches were all powered by heat transferred from their skin.

  “I wonder what it is?” said Ray, slowly moving the device around the table.

  “Probably a short circuit,” said Trip.

  Ray snorted.

  The beep was getting louder.

  “Hey, Rachel, it’s you!” said Wendy. “Maybe you’re really a robot!”

  “Yuk, yuk, I’m dying from laughter,” said Rachel. “Get that thing away from me, Ray. I don’t like it.”

  Ray’s eyes lit up. “Would you prefer this?” he asked. Reaching out, he plucked a small chip of metal from the underside of her collar.

  Rachel looked shocked. “What is it?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Ray. “But my guess is that you’ve been bugged.”

  Less than a mile from the canteen, the gang’s words were being picked up by a small but sophisticated receiver. The person hunched next to it was frowning. Already unhappy at the turn the conversation had taken, the listener tensed when Ray Gammand said, “My guess is that you’ve been bugged.”

  Instantly a black-gloved fist came crashing down on the receiver. The little device shattered into a thousand pieces—triggering a signal that simultaneously destroyed the transmitter being held by Ray Gammand.

  The code name of this secret listener was Black Glove. It was a name known only to the handful of people in the world who were even aware of the agent’s existence.

  The spy looked down at the remnants of the receiver and made a sound of disgust. With the discovery of the transmitter so carefully placed on Rachel Phillips’s collar, the device had instantly become worthless. That was why it had to be smashed. Black Glove had no tolerance for useless things.

  Moreover, the spy did not underestimate enemies. It seemed unlikely, but not unthinkable, for one of those kids to have some device tucked away in his or her pocket that would have let them trace the bug’s line of transmission.

  A device that would, in effect, have led them straight to this secret room.

  Of course, they could never get into it, but why take unnecessary chances? Planting the bug had been risky enough. Not that they would ever guess whose hand had slipped it onto the girl’s collar. Even so…

  Muttering softly, Black Glove swept the pieces of the receiver off the table and tossed them into a nearby disintegrator, where a bank of laser beams destroyed them.

  Taking a deep breath, the spy eliminated any remaining anger just as efficiently.

  Anger was a waste of time.

  And it was one of the basic rules of espionage that there was always more than one way to skin a cat…

  With a cry of pain “Gamma Ray” Gammand dropped the device he had plucked from Rachel’s collar. It made a brief sizzling noise, then vanished in a puff of smoke, leaving behind nothing but an acrid smell.

  The five young people stared at one another in shock. The moment of silence was followed by a small uproar as each of them began to talk at once.

  “All right!” yelled Roger. “Can it!”

  The group fell silent. Knowing the moment wouldn’t last, Roger began speaking immediately. “To begin with,” he said softly, “let’s get out of here and see if we can find some safe place to talk. If there was a microphone on Rachel, there could be more anywhere: tables, chairs, walls…”

  “Us,” added Wendy.

  “Exactly,” said Roger. “So no more talking until Ray has made a complete sweep with that little circuit detector of his.”

  They left the canteen as a group, ignoring the strange look that the young attendant gave them as they went.

  Because they didn’t know the island well yet, it took them some time to find a place where they felt secure. Finally they settled on a rocky patch of land that thrust a little way into the ocean. Before they continued their discussion, Ray took out his current detector and swept it over each of them. He found no more bugs. Rachel had been the only one “infected.”

  “Things are different on an island,” said Wendy, looking out across the water. Of the group, she had spent the most time at the beach. But in California she had had a continent behind her when she faced the ocean. Here there was only a few miles of sand and rock, and then more ocean. She stood, looked out at the water, and felt very small.

  Though she hadn’t expressed it in words, the others knew what she was thinking. Anza-bora Island was like a beautiful cage
; a cage with lots of room and plenty to do, but with walls as real as if they had been made of brick and mortar. If they got in trouble, there was nowhere to run.

  “Sit down, Wendy,” said Rachel. “You’re making me nervous.”

  “Afraid I’ll fall off the island?” asked Wendy with a bitter laugh.

  “I feel like we’ve fallen off the world,” said Ray. “What’s going on here, anyway?”

  “That’s what we came out here to talk about,” said Trip. “But to tell you the truth, I haven’t the slightest idea.”

  “Well, let’s start at the beginning,” said Roger.

  “The first thing we need to know is who put that bug on Rachel’s collar.”

  His twin shivered. It made her nervous just to think of some unknown hand so close to her neck.

  “Maybe it was put on before you got here,” suggested Ray. “Even though Dr. Hwa is trying to keep the whole thing quiet, I bet there’s a lot of interest in this project. Someone might have found out you guys were coming here and figured it was easier to bug you than your father.”

  A ripple of relief seemed to pass over the kids. It was like the moment when some pounding noise in the background finally stops and you suddenly realize how much it had been bothering you. In the same way the moment of relaxation that followed Ray’s suggestion made it clear to each of the kids how worried they really had been.

  Unfortunately, the moment was short-lived.

  “It’s a good idea, Ray,” said Rachel, brushing back a strand of flame-colored hair that the ocean breeze had misplaced. “But it doesn’t hold up. I was wearing this blouse last night. I spilled coffee on it before I went to bed, and this morning when I got up I threw it in the cleaner/dryer. No way that transmitter would have survived a trip through the wash cycle.”

  “Chips!” said Wendy. She turned around and looked out to sea again. “I want to go home.”

  “Don’t we all!” said Trip. “But there’s no point in going on about it. We’re stuck here, so we might as well make the best of it.”

  “What makes you so perky?” asked Wendy. She began pacing back and forth. “Did you take sunshine pills this morning?”

  “All right, all right,” said Roger. “Let’s not debate philosophy. The question is: When did the bug get on Rachel’s collar?”

  “And who put it there?” added Trip.

  “Well, look,” said Rachel. “I put on the blouse just before Roger and I left the house to head for the meeting. Since we didn’t meet anyone along the way…”

  “It had to be someone at the meeting,” finished Trip. “And assuming it wasn’t one of us…”

  “Then it had to be one of the adults,” concluded Ray.

  “Is it possible someone snuck into your house and planted the bug on your blouse while you were out this morning?” asked Wendy.

  “Not likely. I’ve learned to safeguard my room because of certain pranksters in my family”—at this Roger looked at the sky and whistled tunelessly—”so I’m pretty sure I would have known it if anyone had been in my room.”

  “We have to consider even the slightest possibility,” said Trip.

  “Let’s say for now it was someone at the meeting,” put in Ray. “Who was close enough to do it, Rachel?”

  The redhead paused for a moment. “Oh, it could have been anyone,” she said unhappily. “I think each of the adults made it a point to greet me. Of course…” She shook her head. “No, it couldn’t be him.”

  “Who?” cried several voices in unison.

  “Dr. Weiskopf. He sat next to me in the Jeep when we took the tour. He would have had lots of time, and I would never had noticed it when we were jouncing around. But he’s such a sweet little man I can’t believe it was him.”

  “Attila the Hun’s mother probably thought he was a cutie,” said Wendy.

  “I have to agree with the twerp here,” said Trip, glancing down at Wendy. “For the moment, Dr. Weiskopf is our number one suspect.”

  “But the truth is, it could have been any of the adults at that meeting,” said Ray.

  He didn’t go on to say that this meant the list of suspects included their parents.

  He didn’t need to.

  They were all thinking it anyway.

  Brainstorm

  Wendy woke the next morning when Mr. Pumpkiss climbed onto her head and began singing a mournful song about its long-lost love.

  “All right, all right,” grumbled the Wonderchild. “You stop singing and I’ll stop snoring. Okay?”

  “Of course, Captain Wendy,” said the bear. Then, as it had been programmed to do, it resumed the song.

  “Chips!” exclaimed Wendy. Snatching the bear from her head, she pushed in its nose.

  It stopped singing.

  “Why I put up with my own inventions, I’ll never know,” she grumbled, climbing out of bed and stumbling through the laundry scattered across her floor. To her surprise, the message light on her computer terminal was blinking.

  “Awfully early for a message,” she muttered to herself. Tossing a stack of mismatched socks off her chair, she sat down at the keyboard and typed in her personal code. Despite the fact that she had been awake for only a few minutes—she usually required at least an hour to start feeling human—Wendy smiled as she did this. Having her terminal connected to the superpowerful mainframe was one of the best things about this island. Of course there was a lot on the big computer she couldn’t tap into. At least, not yet…

  A beep from the computer interrupted her thoughts as a message flashed on the screen:

  Wendy:

  Meet me at the canteen. Pronto!

  —Rachel

  “That’s all?” said the Wonderchild. “Meet me at the canteen? Who does she think she is? The President?” Despite her resentment at the tone of the message, Wendy ran a brush through her hair and bound it into pigtails. Then she began rummaging through her clothes. Finding nothing clean (she hadn’t washed anything before she packed), she dashed into her parents’ room and snatched a sweatshirt from her father’s dresser.

  Three minutes later she was heading for the canteen.

  Clutching his basketball, the Gamma Ray trotted along the base’s main road until he came to the crater left by the previous day’s explosion. The air still held a touch of early-morning briskness, and beads of dew glittered on the grass. Early as it was, he was still worried that he might be late. So he sighed with relief when he saw that Trip had not yet arrived. The older boy’s computer message had sounded so urgent Ray had been afraid he would be waiting impatiently.

  I wonder why Trip wanted to meet here, anyway? he thought. Then, answering his own question: Maybe he has some new idea about what caused the explosion that he wants to check out!

  Ray gazed into the crater and wondered, as he had several times in the last twenty-four hours, just what had caused the blast that destroyed the guard shack. Certainly he hadn’t gotten any useful information from his parents, who had assured him it was simply an accident and if it was anything else Sergeant Brody and his men would see to it. His father in particular seemed very impressed by the security measures Dr. Hwa had arranged for the base.

  Bouncing his ball as he walked, Ray paced back and forth at the edge of the blast site. Brody’s men had constructed a temporary road around the hole and repaired the fence. A uniformed guard sat in a chair, leaning against a post and reading a paperback book. He appeared casual, but the nasty-looking rifle propped at his side made it clear he meant business.

  “Well, young man, you look lost in space. What’s on your mind?”

  Ray glanced up and felt his mind go blank at the sight of the dark-haired woman in front of him. She was, to use his father’s term, “a knockout.” Slightly out of breath, she was jogging in place and looking more beautiful than any scientist had a right to.

  Ray knew she was a scientist because she had been at the meeting yesterday. But he couldn’t remember her name to save his life.

  Pretty women a
lways confused him that way.

  She laughed—a light, silver ripple of sound that made him think of bells. His brain began to make connections. Bells ringing… belling… Bai’ Ling!

  “Just thinking, Dr. Ling,” he said with relief. He wished she would stop bouncing. Her jet-black hair, tied in a ponytail, was swishing across her shoulders in a way that he found very distracting.

  “Dangerous habit,” she said, giving him a wink. “Thinking, I mean. Makes you unpopular in the real world. Of course, it’s considered more acceptable for boys than for girls. Even so, if you want to have a lot of friends—stick to basketball.”

  “I’m a little short for it,” said Ray bitterly.

  “Horsefeathers! If you want to do it, do it! If you can’t do everything, do what you can!” She stopped jogging and looked into the crater. “I wonder what caused that explosion.” She glanced at Ray and winked again. “Dr. Fontana thinks we have a traitor in our midst. Me, I think someone was making bootleg firecrackers.” She started to bounce again. “Well, I have to go. I want to make it all the way around the island this morning.”

  Ray watched wistfully as Dr. Ling jogged into the distance, her ponytail bouncing behind her.

  “That,” said a voice at his shoulder, “is one unforgivably beautiful scientist.”

  Ray turned to his side. “Roger! Did Trip ask you to meet him here, too?”

  “Sure did. Only it seems you and I are more punctual than our friend from Philadelphia.”

  “Not much,” said Trip, who had walked up behind them while they were staring after Dr. Ling. “Sorry if I’m a little late. What was it you wanted to see me about?”

  Ray and Roger exchanged a puzzled glance. “We didn’t want to see you,” said Roger. “You asked to see us!”

  “Let me get this straight,” said Wendy, wiping her ketchupy fingers on her father’s sweatshirt. “You’re here because you got a message from me?”