Spy Penguins Series, Book 1

by Marek Jagucki

  “Maybe they’re both behind the rocks,” Jackson said. “I could dive in and take a look.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Lily shuffled nervously. “Only staff are allowed in the tanks. I don’t want to get Dad into any more trouble.”

  “But if I can find the lobsters, it might help your dad,” Jackson said.

  Lily thought about it for a moment. Then she shrugged. “I guess it can’t hurt. See that door over there? Behind it is a small staircase; it leads up to the top of the tank, and you can get in from there.”

  “You guys keep watch,” Jackson said, heading for the stairs.

  “Take these.” Quigley tossed a pair of glasses to Jackson. “They’re Blink Cam Goggles. Indestructible! My latest and—”

  “Greatest invention!” Jackson smiled. “Yeah, I know.”

  “These really are awesome,” Quigley said. “Every time you blink, the goggles take a picture, so then we can make sure all the lobsters are there.”

  Jackson put them on as he climbed the steps.

  “Watch out for the stink-ink squid,” Lily called. “It doesn’t like penguins. It might try to grab you. If it stink inks you, you’ll smell like seal pee for weeks.”

  Jackson snorted. Secret agents weren’t scared of squid.

  At the top of the steps he found a small platform leading to the tank. Jackson checked that the goggles were on tight, then he took a deep breath. “Let’s do this!” he said before diving in.

  He zoomed downward, blinking a few times. The goggles clicked in response. Cool gadget, he thought, turning his head to take pictures of some spiky fish. Through the glass he could see Lily and Quigley. He gave them a flippers-up, then headed for the back of the rocks. Gotcha! He snapped a picture of one of the missing lobsters—the small knobby one, which, as he’d expected, was lurking behind the rocks. But there was no sign of the other one. Wait—what’s that? On the floor of the tank Jackson had spotted a small hatch. Is that big enough for a thief to crawl through? Jackson wondered. He ran his flipper over the top. He thought he might just about manage to squeeze through. But an adult like Coldfinger couldn’t. Maybe she has a smaller penguin working for her. Jackson blinked a few times to take pictures of the hatch to show Lily and Quigley. But when he stopped blinking the camera kept snapping. Hey! Cut it out! Jackson shook his head to try to make the goggles stop, but they kept taking pictures. Then a flashing light appeared in front of his eyes. What? NO! It must be some sort of flash mode. He shut his eyes as the flashing light increased in speed. It’s like being in a crazy disco. Jackson tried tapping the goggles to turn them off, but they kept snapping pictures and flashing. Got to get them off. He tried yanking them off, but they were stuck tight. Please tell me Quigley hasn’t sealed the edges of the goggles with poop glue, like he did with that flying spy heli-hopper hat he made me test out last week.

  Jackson pushed up off the rocks to swim back to the surface, but as he tried to move, he felt a sudden pull on his leg. Hey, let go! But whatever had gotten him held on tighter. Then he remembered Lily’s warning about the stink-ink squid. Uh-oh! If it stinks me, Mom will definitely know I’ve been up to something. “Get off!” he yelled. But the creature was pulling him down, down, down, dragging him toward the floor of the tank. Jackson felt a sudden sucking, as if he was being pulled into a small hole. “What? The hatch? Nooo! Stop!”

  9

  There was only one way to get out of this. He’d have to try the Ultimate Instant Flipper Release Move from the FBI’s Secret Agent Handbook of Flipper-to-Flipper Unarmed Combat. (Uncle Bryn always left his copy in his bathroom by the tub, and Jackson had borrowed it last time he’d visited.) Jackson and Quigley had practiced some of the moves, and this one never failed. What was it again? Oh, right—one back shimmy, two flipper flicks, and a smack in the nose with a foot. Here goes nothing, Jackson thought.

  One back shimmy, two flipper flicks, and a smack in the nose with a foot later, Jackson’s leg was free and he was torpedoing to the top of the tank. As he reached the surface he poked his head out and the goggles seemed to loosen. He pried them off with a twang and pulled himself up onto the platform. He sniffed his feathers. Nah, the squid didn’t stink me. Whew!

  “Did you find the lobsters?” Lily shouted up from the bottom of the staircase.

  “I saw the knobby one,” Jackson called back, shaking his feathers dry as he hopped down the stairs. “But that stink-ink squid grabbed my leg before I could spot the other one.”

  “No, it didn’t,” Lily said. “The squid has vanished.” She pointed around the tanks. “I’ve been looking everywhere for it, but it’s gone.”

  Jackson scratched his crest. “But that’s impossible. It definitely tried to pull me down a hatch. Wait—the goggles. They went bonkers and took loads of pictures. Look at them. You’ll see.” He handed the Blink Cam to Quigley.

  “What do you mean, bonkers?” Quigley said, pulling out a small screwdriver, which he poked into a tiny control panel on the side of the goggles.

  “Well, they wouldn’t stop taking pictures and flashing,” Jackson explained. “I couldn’t see a thing. But before that happened I saw a hatch on the floor of the tank behind the rocks. The squid tried to drag me down it.”

  Lily shook her head. “That’s probably just one of the drainage tunnels. The squid can’t get in there. Twice a year the keepers move the fish into the backup tanks and drain these so they can clean them. I helped Dad do it last time. It was so neat—”

  “Wait!” Jackson’s brain was going into overdrive. “Are you telling me there are drainage tunnels in every tank in the aquarium? Including the koi carp pond up on the roof?”

  “Sure.” Lily nodded. Then she stopped. Her face turned pale. “You don’t think— Is that how the thieves are stealing the fish? Through the tunnels?” She shook her head. “Impossible! They’re too small for penguins to fit through.”

  “But not too small for a long, thin fish-grabber claw,” Jackson said, making a pincer movement with his flipper. “Like the one the new restaurant next door has had made.”

  Lily gasped. “Surely you don’t mean they’ve stolen our fish to eat them?”

  “Did you mess around with these goggles?” Quigley interrupted, giving Jackson a stern look. “Because you seem to have erased most of the pictures.”

  Jackson blushed. “I may have slapped them around a bit when I was trying to take them off.”

  “But they don’t come off underwater,” Quigley said. “They have a special water-locking system.”

  “So there are no pictures of the squid?” Jackson groaned.

  “Take a look.” Quigley hit a button on the side of the goggles and the lenses turned into viewing screens that displayed a few blurry pictures of the inside of the tank.

  “Wait! There!” Jackson pointed to the screen. “See that long, gray squid tentacle next to my foot? That’s what got me.” But the screens on the goggles suddenly went blank. “That’s it? No more pictures?”

  Quigley sighed. “You wiped the rest.”

  “Well, it wasn’t the squid that grabbed you,” Lily said. “Its tentacles aren’t gray. They’re bright yellow.”

  “Then what was it?” Jackson froze. A sudden icy thought had crashed into his brain. “Maybe…,” he said, slowly. “Maybe it was the fish-grabber claw that got me. And if it was”—he glanced around the tunnel, his eyes widening, his feathers standing on end—“then Coldfinger could be inside this building right now.”

  “But the aquarium has security cameras everywhere,” Lily said, pointing to a camera above their heads. “If someone was sneaking around the back corridors, opening the drainage tunnels, and stealing the fish, we’d have seen them.”

  “Unless there’s another way in,” Quigley said, “that doesn't have a camera covering it.”

  Lily thought for a moment. “There’s a big map of the building on my dad’s office wall,” she said. “If there are any other entrances, they would be marked on there. Come on, I’ll
show you.”

  Lily led them down the corridor, past several large tanks full of jellyfish and seahorses and strange electric eels that stared at them as they walked by. Then she opened a door with a sign saying STAFF ONLY.

  “It’s through here,” she said, leading them into a large office with pictures of colorful sea creatures on the walls.

  Jackson and Quigley shuffled over to take a closer look at the map. “So that’s the lobster tank,” Jackson said, pointing with his flipper. “And I guess that must be the drainage tunnel I spotted. Look, you can follow it around the whole building.”

  “Sure,” Lily said. “Like I told you, there are drainage tunnels connecting all the tanks.”

  “But what’s that over there?” Quigley pointed to the left-hand side of the map, which showed an area with large fish tanks and more drainage tunnels. “Why has that part of the building got a line through it, like it’s been crossed out?”

  “Because that’s the old part of the building,” Lily said. “It doesn’t belong to the aquarium anymore. They sold it off to raise money for the new koi carp pond.”

  Sold it off? Jackson stared at her. “So who owns it now?”

  Lily’s face paled. “The new restaurant next door.”

  “Bingo!” Jackson shouted. “That’s how Coldfinger gets in! Through the drainage tunnels on her side of the building. Look, you can see it there.”

  “I get it!” Quigley said. “Coldfinger drops her extending fish-grabber claw down through her end of the drainage tunnels, like this,” he said, following the tunnel with his flipper, “then she reaches along, farther and farther, until BAM!—she hooks a fish.”

  “I’ve got to tell Dad,” Lily cried.

  But just then an alarm sounded. She glanced at the clock on the desk. “It can’t be closing time already. Something must be wrong. Let’s go see.”

  They raced down the corridor and nearly ran into an older penguin.

  “Dad!” Lily cried. “What’s happening?”

  “Lockdown, Lily,” he said. “I’ve been suspended from my job and the aquarium is closing until they find out what’s happened to the fish.”

  “But we know what’s happened,” Lily cried. “You see—”

  Before she could finish, three larger penguins in dark glasses appeared behind her father. Jackson immediately recognized the one at the front—it was Uncle Bryn’s boss with the long beak.

  “The FBI!” Jackson breathed.

  “Mr. Light-Feather?” the FBI boss penguin said to Lily’s dad. “I’m Senior Agent Frost-Flipper from the FBI. We’d like you to come with us now to answer some more questions.”

  “Wait!” Jackson stepped forward. “There’s something we need to tell you—”

  “You again!” The FBI boss penguin glared at Jackson.

  He gulped. If only Uncle Bryn was with them! He’d listen! Jackson thought. “But you don’t understand,” he began. “We know who is stealing the fish. If you’d just let us explain—”

  “Enough!” The FBI boss penguin held up her flipper. “This isn’t some sort of silly hatchling game. This is FBI business. And you need to keep your beak out of it! If you don’t, then your uncle will be in serious trouble.”

  Jackson shivered. The last thing he wanted was for Uncle Bryn to lose his job.

  Lily’s dad gave her a quick hug. “I need to go with these penguins now. And you all need to go home.” He turned to Jackson and Quigley. “If you’d like to go through that exit over there, you’ll find your way back out onto the sidewalk. And, Lily, I already called your mom. She’s waiting for you in the staff cafeteria.”

  “But, Dad—” Lily tried again.

  “No, Lily.” His voice was sharp now. “Please.” His eyes softened. He looked close to tears. “Please, Lily, do as I say.”

  She gave him a long, sad look, then nodded and shuffled off down the corridor.

  “And you hatchlings should go, too,” the FBI boss penguin said. “Now!”

  As Jackson and Quigley followed the other visitors outside, Jackson felt a bubble of frustration growing in his belly. “We can’t just leave!” he cried. “We’ve got to STOP Coldfinger. No way are we going to let Lily’s dad lose his job and more fish get stolen. Why don’t grown-up penguins ever listen to kids?” He stopped and clenched his flippers. “We’re going over to that restaurant right now. We’re going to find that grabber arm and the stolen fish and we’ll arrest Coldfinger. Are you in?”

  But Quigley didn’t seem to be listening. He was looking over Jackson’s head, his face frozen, his eyes wide. “Um—Agent 00Zero,” he whispered out of the corner of his beak, “I think that’s your mom over there. And she doesn’t look too pleased to see us.”

  10

  Jackson spun around and his eyes met his mom’s. She was sitting in her red snowmobile, waiting in a line of traffic right by the sidewalk where they were standing.

  Jackson swallowed hard. “Don’t panic,” he muttered to Quigley, trying not to move his beak too much so she couldn’t beak-read; she was ace at that. “Mom won’t suspect a thing. We’ll just say we’ve been to see the fish at the aquarium, because that part’s true, right?”

  Quigley nodded. “You know, I really think your mom has X-ray eyes,” he muttered as they moved toward the car. “When she looks at me, I swear she can actually see right into my brain.”

  “Just don’t look at her,” Jackson whispered. “That’s what I do. Come on, she’s waving to us to get in. Hi, Mom,” Jackson said, opening the door and sliding into the backseat. He pulled Quigley in beside him. “Good day at work?”

  “Great, thanks,” his mom said, glancing at them in her rearview mirror. “So what are you boys doing downtown? I thought you were hanging out at Quigley’s house today.”

  Jackson tried not to meet her eyes in the mirror. “Umm—change of plan,” he said. “We decided to go to the aquarium instead. They’ve got such neat fish in there. There’s this six-foot-wide stingray and awesome lobsters. And we bumped into Lily—remember Lily from school? Well, her dad works there and—”

  “Is something going on?” Jackson’s mom—still stopped at a traffic light—had turned around in her seat to look at him properly. “You look a little”—she paused to peer at him—“anxious? And what have you done to your crest?”

  Sheesh, thought Jackson. The FBI should hire Mom, not us. She sees EVERYTHING!

  “I think the light just changed,” Jackson said, pointing ahead of them. “The traffic’s moving again.”

  “What?” His mom swung back around to look at the road. “Oh, shoot. I should have been paying attention.” She waved an apology to the other drivers behind her and started driving again.

  Jackson breathed a sigh of relief. His mom hated inattentive drivers. His interrogation would have to wait until they got home.

  “I’ll drop you off at your house,” she told Quigley.

  “Thanks,” he squeaked, a wave of relief passing over his face.

  Jackson’s mom glanced at them both in her rearview mirror. Her eyes narrowed. Jackson puffed out his cheeks. He had to think of some amazing—but plausible—story that would throw her off the scent. Otherwise, NO WAY would they be able to get back down to the restaurant to find the missing fish. And if they didn’t do that … Jackson shuddered.

  A few minutes later they pulled up outside Quigley’s house.

  “Bye,” Jackson said as Quigley got out, and then he silently mouthed, See you soon! and gave his buddy a flippers-up.

  “So what happened to your crest?” his mom asked as she pulled away from Quigley’s house.

  Jackson took a deep breath. “Oh, yeah, my crest…” Slow down. Play for time, 00Zero, he told himself. It takes exactly fifty-three seconds to drive home from Quigley’s house. If you can just avoid answering her question for a little longer … “I’m glad you asked about that.” Jackson coughed and cleared his throat. “You see, the funniest thing happened today…” He paused, willing his mom to drive fast
er. They were so close to home now. But she never drove fast. Jackson’s mom had her Advanced Snowmobile Safe Penguin Driver’s License. Jackson’s mom wouldn’t drive fast even if a truckload of leopard seals was right behind them, toothy jaws open and ready to swallow them up whole, snowmobile and all!

  “Oh, by the way,” Jackson said, trying the classic Mom Distraction Plan of going off on a tangent with the hope that she’d forget her original question. “Did I tell you that our new topic this term at school is all about alternative power sources, and Quigley says his mom might be able to arrange for us to go to the seagull-poop power plant where she works for a tour and—”

  “That’s great, Jackson,” his mom interrupted. “But what happened to your crest?”

  “Oh, yeah, I was getting to that. You see…”

  “What on earth—” Jackson’s mom gasped. She was staring through the front windshield of the snowmobile as their house at the end of Surf-Spray Avenue came into view. “Oh no!” She groaned. “Your dad’s been building again.”

  Jackson leaned forward to see and immediately stifled a laugh. His dad LOVED building stuff. Every few days he’d make over a part of their home. Jackson’s room had recently acquired a super-cool loft bed with a full ice slide that went inside and outside as it spiraled down to the floor of his bedroom. But Jackson’s dad didn’t just make over rooms—he also liked to add new ones. Like the iceberg bowling alley that had suddenly appeared below their basement. The frost sauna above the bathroom. Not to mention Finola’s awesome new music studio in the garage, which was accessed by a zip line from her bedroom window. (Finola played drums in a band called the Ice Maidens.) As a result of Jackson’s dad’s building hobby, Jackson’s house was the oddest one on the street, with lumpy, bubble-shaped bits sticking out all over it.

  “Is that a telescope?” Jackson peered up at the new glass-domed room that had appeared on the roof of the house.