S*W*A*G*G 1, Spook

by Jill Marshall

  Excited, the two of them angled the newspaper up towards the lilac beam. Immediately a section of the secret message blinked into view as the light shaft fell across it, inked cleanly between the lines of the Venice Museum story. Between them, they wrangled the paper into a better position across G-Mamma’s lurex-covered arm, and Janey noted down the details.

  ‘It’s an address,’ she said at length, after she’d copied everything down onto a blank Post-It note, specially made from edible rice paper so that she could eat the evidence if necessary. ‘In Holland Park, London.’

  ‘Just the kind of place to have a bank vault under it,’ said G-Mamma with a nod. ‘What time?’

  Janey paused, puzzled. There was no sign of a time to meet on the message. The date was easy enough to work out as it would be the same date as the newspaper – it would have to be today - but there was no time stated. Unless …

  ‘G-Mamma, was Garbo represented by any kind of symbol that might relate to a time? An Italian sign, perhaps, as his name sounds Italian. Maybe something to do with Venice? Or maybe the Romans. Yes! Did he have roman numerals associated with his name?’

  ‘Not as far as I know … but maybe …’ The SPI:KE strolled around the bench, half-dancing, mesmerising herself into a trance so she could think straight. ‘That’s it! The Twenties.’

  Crossing over to where Janey had noted down the address, G-Mamma penned a simple symbol underneath:

  XX

  ‘All the double agents around at the time were known as the Twenties, because their sign represented a double-cross. Get it? They were double-crossers. And the sign in Roman numerals means twenty, and that’s where the whole club got its name from.’

  Janey traced the numbers. X and X. Not twenty, because that wouldn’t mean anything on its own, but ...

  ‘Ten Ten!’ she cried. ‘It’s at ten past ten tonight, at the address in Holland Park.’

  ‘Bingo!’ G-Mamma’s dancing hips burst back into life. ‘It’s ten past ten, in the London den; in the Holland Park, where it’s very very dark. Oh! Should we take the Octobus?’

  It was tempting, but from what she knew about central London, it might be quite hard to park an enormous van topped by a giant squid, even it was invisible.

  ‘I think we’ll get a lift,’ she said.

  And she texted Jack. ‘Mine at 8. Don’t be l8!’

  He got back to her immediately. ‘R U kidding? Can’t w8!’

  Truth be told, neither could she. The mission was on again.

  And this time, it was bigger than ever.

  Chapter 7 - The Fault of the Vault

  True to his word, Jack Bootle-Cadogan slipped straight through G-Mamma’s front door and up into the Spy-Lab at one minute to eight, carrying a suitcase.

  G-Mamma snorted. ‘Good Gawdy-Lordy, are you planning a holiday? I don’t think you understand how our missions work, young dog… young man.’

  Jack’s canine face crumpled self-consciously. ‘It’s just that I didn’t know where we were going or what I should wear, so I’ve brought a few options with me.’ He opened the case with a flourish. ‘There’s my helmet for if my dog head doesn’t disappear. It normally does when I relax, but I don’t imagine that breaking into a bank vault will be exactly peaceful. I brought normal boy clothes for if we’re meant to be just mingling in like ordinary teenagers, and I’ve got black tie in case we’re mingling like not-so-ordinary teenagers.’

  ‘Just a black tie?’ said Janey. ‘I don’t think that will go with your hoodie.’ He’d brought jeans and tee-shirts for his teenager outfit, to be topped with a soft, burnt orange hoodie that looked about ten sizes too small.

  ‘No, black tie the outfit. Formal dress. For dinner. With a dickie bow?’ he explained as Janey became increasingly confused. ‘You know, like James Bond would wear. I thought … you know … seeing as you’re spies …’

  ‘Oh! Right.’ Janey chewed her lip, wondering what to tell him. ‘The thing is, Jack, I don’t really think it matters what you wear if you’ve still in your dog get-up. It’s going to be quite hard to hide you if you’re clanking around in half a suit-of-armour.’

  ‘It’s only the top bit,’ said Jack in a small voice. Then he sighed, deeply disappointed, and Janey could hear the old sad Jack from Lowmount re-appearing.

  ‘G-Mamma, what if Jack Wowed?’

  ‘What if I what?’

  G-Mamma circled Jack with a finger on her lime-green lips. ‘The Wower does bring out the best in everyone. Shows them their finest version. Are you up for it, Jack? You might discover your finest version is – I don’t know … maybe a Yorkshire Terrier?’

  ‘Oh. I’m not sure.’ Jack looked from Janey to G-Mamma and back again. ‘What happens to you if you get Wowed?’

  G-Mamma rolled her eyes. ‘I’m always in my best version, Jack the Lad! I Wowed before you arrived.’ She was wearing builder’s overalls spattered with paint and make-up of every hue to match. ‘If we get caught, I’ll just say I’m the decorator. I’ll blend.’

  It was highly unlikely that G-Mamma would blend anywhere but a paint factory, but by now Jack was looking so miserable that Janey decided it was time to help him out.

  Besides, she was absolutely desperate to get inside that Wower!

  ‘I’ll go first, Jack,’ she told him. ‘You can see what it does to me and decide for yourself if you want to try it. You can always de-Wow if you don’t like the result.’

  ‘Back to this?’ Jack pointed to his furry face. ‘Yay.’

  There was no answer to that, really, so Janey just gave him a small smile, trotted across the lab and opened the doors of what appeared to be the large American-style fridge. As she stepped in she breathed deeply. Heaven! The scent was just as she’d remembered: faintly medical with a hint of vanilla and chocolate, and a beautiful earthy warmth that reminded her of beaches and sandcastles.

  ‘Wow me,’ she told the machine, and it began instantly – the robotic hands massaging her head into a pony-tail that would be part-fashion and part-weapon; the gossamer threads of silver encasing her in a fluid but hard-as-nails lycra body-suit, and gold and multi-coloured laser beams that layered sparkles through her hair, wrapped her hands and feet in state-of-the-art gadgetry and, last of all, placed a new pair of Ultra-Gogs on the bridge of her nose.

  ‘Oh! That’s different!’ she exclaimed, as a dropper appeared from the wall of the Wower and inserted latex into her ear. Suddenly she could hear everything clearly: the conversation G-Mamma and Jack were having outside the door; even the low buzz from the radio next door where her parents were listening to a quiz, believing her to be safely in her bedroom.

  ‘So will I still recognise her?’ Jack was saying as she stepped out of the cabinet. His canine jaw dropped open. ‘Wow.’

  If there wasn’t so much spy-power coursing through her, Janey was quite sure she would have giggled nervously at his reaction. But with the combination of spy-suit, spy-buys and spy senses, Janey felt incredibly grown-up and pretty much invincible. It was an amazing sensation, and suddenly she realised just how much she’d missed it.

  ‘Wow indeed, Blonde girl,’ echoed G-Mamma. ‘The new improved Jane Blonde. Jane Blonder – that’s what we might have to call you.’

  As she turned to the mirrored surface of the fridge door, Janey almost laughed aloud. It was the same as she used to be, but better, as G-Mamma had said. The Lycra outfit was not so much silver as a pearly white, which suited her better now that she was older. Light armoured padding ran down each of her limbs and across her ribs. Her hair, too, was paler than before, and instead of springing out sharply from the crown of her head, her ponytail lay in a silky rivulet across one shoulder and down her front. It might not be a dagger any longer, but it was long enough to be a lasso or something. The Ultra-Gogs, meanwhile, had all but disappeared since they were constructed from some material that weighed nothing, on super-light, almost invisible frames. From behind lenses which were almost impossible to see, her grey eyes flashed with e
xcitement.

  Jack’s doggy eyes were still staring at her, and now it was getting embarrassing, so she spun back around to him quickly.

  ‘Yes, Wow,’ she said. ‘That’s what the machine does. So that’s what it will do to you too, if you want. Not the spysuit and everything – that’s just for me – but whatever’s right for you. Just close the doors and say, “Wow me”, and it does the rest. Don’t worry; it’s straightforward.’

  ‘I’m not worried,’ said Jack. ‘That’s all very low-key compared with some of the transformations I’ve witnessed. Although still …’ He gave her a double thumbs-up as he backed into the cabinet. ‘Wow.’

  The two spies waited until they heard Jack utter the magic words so that the Wower sprang into life. He was sweet, Janey realised, and she hoped above all else that the Wower would capture that and set him free from his Doghead alter-ego, at least for a while.

  She was about to say this to G-Mamma when she noticed that her SPI:KE was close to tears. ‘G-Mamma, what?’

  ‘Oh, it’s youuuuuuu!’ bleated the woman, fishing for a paint-spattered cloth in the enormous bib pocket of her dungarees. ‘My blonde girl! Spylets really are forever. But you look so … so different, Janey Zaney Blonde and Brainy. My little spylet’s all grown up!’

  And then she crushed Janey to that same bib pocket across her voluble bosom so that her Ultra-Gogs ground into her nose and her waterfall of a pony tail got caught in G-Mamma’s braces. ‘Owww,’ she said plaintively.

  ‘Sorry.’ G-Mamma pushed Janey away and blew her nose on the painting cloth. ‘Got carried away.’

  ‘You smudged your make-up,’ Janey pointed out.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ sniffed G-Mamma. ‘It goes with the overall look. Oh! Ha. The Overall Look! See what I did there?’

  Some GM self-congratulation and possibly a rap about overalls were about to start up, so Janey held up a hand and pretended to be listening to the Wower. Actually, she didn’t need to pretend. She could hear quite clearly that, deep within the cabinet, Jack was actually singing.

  ‘Are you getting that?’ she asked. ‘I’ve got new plugs in my ears or something. I can hear loads more than usual!’

  G-Mamma tried to shake her head and nod at the same time; it came out in a weird spasm, so the effect was like an earthquake in denim. ‘I can’t hear it, but I thought you could hear something, and no, I don’t know what you’re hearing, but oh! You must have been given BATS – Bionic Audio Transmission Selectors. You can tune in to the good stuff and tune out the bad. Oh, Blonde! You’ll be able to tune in to my rapping from your bedroom! Or even further away!’

  Luckily, Janey was saved from having to respond by the appearance of Jack Bootle-Cadogan. Without the dog head.

  ‘Wow to you too,’ she said with a grin, as she took in his normal boy appearance.

  She turned him around by the shoulders – which she could now reach – and showed Jack his reflection in the mirror. He was tall but not gigantic, with a kind, thoughtful face and a thatch of fair hair that she somehow hadn’t expected, since it was in stark contrast with the ebony fur of his canine head. He was dressed in pretty much an identical outfit to the ‘ordinary teenager’ one that he’d brought with him, apart from this one looked like it had been ironed. He touched his ears self-consciously and Janey noticed that his lobes were a tiny bit bigger than usual, but his limbs, while long enough to make him tall, were all in proportion so that he seemed very … connected, somehow, and not at all gangly and awkward like Alfie. More like Gideon Flynn, she thought suddenly, startled to find her cheeks growing hot.

  ‘Yes, that’s me,’ said Jack after a moment of looking himself up and down. Janey was only glad that he hadn’t been watching her at all in the last few minutes.

  ‘Aren’t you different to normal?’ she said, clearing her throat. ‘That’s what the Wower usually does.’

  Jack stared a little more, then shook his head. ‘No, exactly like I am normally, apart from when I’m chewing on bones and chasing sticks.’

  ‘Well, you must just be perfect all the time then,’ she said with a smile. Which had to be true, basically. ‘You must always be the best version of yourself.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Jack shrugged and held up his nicely normal-sized hands. ‘Or maybe I don’t have a best version. Maybe there’s only this and the dog. How about that?’

  ‘I don’t think so …’ started Janey.

  But the truth was, she didn’t know. The Wower seemed to work it out, somehow, but it was a machine, after all, and it must have been programmed somehow – by Gideon Flynn and his team, to some specifications that hadn’t been shared with the spies.

  It was almost a relief to remember they had a mission to complete.

  Janey led Jack across the newspaper on the bench and explained what they’d discovered. ‘I didn’t put it into the text in case someone’s tailing you.’

  ‘Tailing me! That’s funny.’

  ‘No, not because you’re a dog, but because you’re in this team – this SWAG set-up.’

  Jack screwed up his nose. ‘Yes, I wonder what that’s all about? And where is our esteemed leader, the mysterious Gideon Flynn? I’d like to give him my bank account details, for a start.’

  He was mysterious, she had to admit. They knew virtually nothing about Gideon Flynn. He’d paid for their spy-buys make-over, told them who to contact, named the team of which they were now a part without any explanation, sent them off on a dangerous mission, and completely failed to show up for anything other than the first meeting.

  ‘G-Mamma, that’s true. Where is—'

  ‘He’s meeting us there,’ said the SPI:KE, tilting one of the screens in their direction.

  There was an email entitled: Dog-walking.

  Janey winced, wondering what Jack would think of that, but he simply read it through with interest.

  Give me a ring when you’re through, said the email, and I’ll meet you with treats. Can’t wait to pat the doggy. It was signed off by someone called Greta.

  ‘Greta Garbo, like that double agent’s name,’ said Jack with a nod. ‘One of my grandfather’s favourite actresses.’

  ‘Greta Garbo was also a spy herself,’ added G-Mamma.

  Janey could hardly believe they were discussing spy names when Gideon had been so rude. ‘Pat the doggy? Meet you with treats? Who does he think he is?’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s clever?’ said Jack evenly. ‘Give me a ring reads as though it’s just giving him a call, but he actually means, you know, give me the ring! And then we’ll get our rewards. And if he’s going to pat me then it must mean that the ring really does help his condition. Or maybe he thinks his leprosy won’t affect me because I’m … you know.’

  ‘A dog,’ G-Mamma reminded him.

  ‘A god,’ said Janey sternly.

  Jack obviously needed reminding how special he was. As this was something that she

  used to require in order to believe in herself, she was well cut-out for the job.

  Jack, however, didn’t seem to be bothered by it. ‘Well, it’s after nine,’ he said, rubbing his own hands together. ‘Are we going to do this thing? I’d really love some treats – I mean, money.’

  He took careful note of the address, the picture of the house and the image of the Indian ring, and without even thinking about how long it had just taken him to get rid of it, he snuffled for a second and grew instantly into his dog-headed self. Then he grabbed each of their shoulders, bob-sleighed down - or rather through - the SPIral staircase, and blasted off towards London.

  What nobody had considered was that the house would be full of people. And that it would be an enormous great house, one of several on a wide, tree-lined avenue. The houses were like small palaces – white and opulent, with grand staircases leading up to the massive doors in the middle, and symmetrical ranks of gleaming windows reaching up for three, four, even five storeys.

  Janey peeked at the house next-door from their reconnaissance position bene
ath one of the horse chestnut trees. ‘Zoom,’ she said to her Ultra-Gogs, and instantly they focussed in on the doorway.

  There were eight different doorbells lined up on a pewter plate to the left-hand side of the immense doorway. So that house had been divided into flats – eight different flats each with four to eight rooms per flat. The one that they were about to infiltrate was a single house with what appeared to be about fifty rooms – and a large basement harbouring a bank vault.

  She trained her Gogs on the lower floors of the beautiful mansion until images of the basement pinged up onto her lenses. At first she couldn’t see the vault. The lowest level of the house seemed only to house odds and ends: a massive wine cellar, some small utility spaces containing washing machines and ironing boards, and – to her surprise – a darkened room that resembled the inside of the Octobus. On every wall was a bank of screens, all flashing grey and white. Two foreboding guards, each dressed from head to toe in dark khaki uniforms, were both concentrating hard on separate screens. Janey could see they were watching something going on inside the house, although she couldn’t work out the details.

  Then she saw it.

  ‘Okay, I’ve found the vault,’ she said. ‘It’s in the very centre of the basement, right behind the room where the security guys are keeping tabs on what’s going on in the house.’

  ‘Well, that makes sense,’ said Jack, unperturbed.

  ‘Spies alive, what IS going on in that house?’ said G-Mamma. ‘Is it a party?’

  ‘Looks like it,’ said Janey, watching the lines of guests approaching yet another be-suited security guard at the top of the steps before being let through into the rooms beyond. Janey could just see a waiter handing out glasses of champagne as the visitors where ushered inside. She was reminded of another time when she found herself at a ball, having to dress hurriedly in her spy-suit and a shower curtain to gain admittance. That had been a few years ago. Now she doubted whether she’d get away with a home-made dress made of sparkly plastic – and anyway, this time they weren’t going to go into the party itself.