City Spies

by James Ponti

  “Okay,” Brooklyn said, trying to wrap her brain around this bit of information. “That’s pretty big.”

  29. The Sinclair Collection

  AT THE SAME TIME KAT was laying out her plan to use François Fournier’s ID to access the server room, Mother was across town in Montmartre visiting the Sinclair Collection.

  The more he thought about it, the more he believed Stavros Sinclair was actually Le Fantôme. Both were shadowy figures who oversaw global organizations. Both had seemingly endless supplies of wealth and influence. And both were obsessed with art, specifically French impressionism.

  Mother was so convinced, he’d sent an encrypted message about it to Tru at MI6 headquarters. Now he was hoping to find clues among the art collection that might prove him right.

  As he approached the unmarked building, Mother saw Sinclair’s personal curator pacing the sidewalk.

  “Bonjour, Gilles,” he said, rushing over to him. “I’m sorry I was delayed.”

  “That is fine, Monsieur Archer,” said Gilles. “But I am on a tight schedule, so we must ‘chop-chop,’ as they say.”

  “Of course,” replied Mother. “I just want to double-check a few things before I go back to Scotland. I think they’ll be amazed when they hear what I have to tell them.”

  What Mother hoped to find was more art of dubious origins. If there were other paintings among the collection that came from the black market, then he might be able to match that criminal activity with Le Fantôme.

  Once again, they went through the various layers of security. But this time when they stepped off the elevator, things were different. The wall that held the works by Van Gogh, Monet, and Renoir was now empty.

  “Where are the paintings?” asked Mother.

  Gilles didn’t answer.

  Workers in blue jumpsuits were carefully taking down some artworks and placing them into narrow crates. Gilles seemed dismayed but did his best not to appear flustered as he approached a woman supervising them. She had long brown hair tied up in a topknot and wore a matching jumpsuit that somehow looked stylish on her.

  “Marie,” said Gilles, still trying to keep a brave face, “what’s going on?”

  “Did you not receive word?” she asked.

  The man chuckled, reluctant to show confusion in front of a guest. “What word?”

  “Stavros decided to move some art,” she replied.

  Mother noticed that she called the boss by his first name, while Gilles always referred to him respectfully as Monsieur Sinclair.

  “Pourquoi?” asked Gilles. “Why?”

  Marie shrugged. “I never ask why. I just do what he tells me.”

  Mother knew his visit was about to be cut short, so he quickly surveyed the scene, trying to figure out what was happening. He looked at which paintings were being crated and realized each had an identification label with a red dot. Sinclair was leaving the art owned by the company but taking the pieces that belonged to him. Two workers passed by carrying a crate, and Mother saw it had a sticker reading LBG, the code for Paris-Le Bourget Airport. These paintings weren’t just going across town.

  He’s packing up his toys to go, Mother thought to himself. I think he’s leaving Paris with no plans to come back.

  30. The Guards of Asgard

  TWO SECURITY GUARDS HAD AN animated discussion as they walked through the Asgard building. One, younger and more gung ho about his job, was determined to check on something he thought was suspicious. The other, older and more interested in watching football on television, thought they were wasting their time.

  The problem lay in the system that tracked employees as they moved through the facility. Like Olympus, Asgard was designed to be an “intelligent building.” Only, now it claimed François Fournier was currently in the server room, which didn’t make sense because he’d clocked out and left the building nearly three hours earlier.

  “He can’t be here if he already went home,” complained the reluctant guard.

  “Exactly,” replied the other. “That’s why we’re checking it out.”

  “But it’s just a mistake,” said the older man. “A glitch.”

  “Impossible,” said his partner. “This system doesn’t have glitches.”

  They reached the server room, and the young man opened the door and called out, “Monsieur Fournier!”

  When there was no response, the other replied, “See? I told you.”

  That’s when the younger guard saw the footprint. It was dirt from a shoe. Brooklyn’s shoe, to be precise. And in a room that was otherwise spotless, it was impossible to ignore. He nodded toward it, and his partner was no longer reluctant. They stopped talking and used hand signals to communicate.

  They also drew their weapons.

  The servers continued to work, their fans humming, drives periodically spinning and then stopping. Despite this, however, there was an eerie calmness to the room.

  Brooklyn and Sydney were both hidden beneath the false floor. The base of the room was raised to prevent possible flood damage and so that cables could run beneath the computers.

  Paris had lifted two of the floor panels so they could nestle down among the wires, a high-tech version of the wormholes they’d used to get into the catacombs.

  But he was too big to fit, so he’d searched the rows desperately looking for someplace to hide. He finally found a spot. There were empty racks built into the cabinets at the end of the eighth row, space for when Sinclair wanted to add more servers.

  Paris managed to squeeze his body into one, but there was no door to the cabinet. If the guards stood at the end of the row and looked down the aisle, he’d be out of sight. But if they walked even halfway down, there’d be no way they’d miss him.

  He tried to listen to their progress, but it was hard to hear anything above the din of the machines. He could see a shadow on the wall that let him know they were getting closer. He could also see the outline of a gun.

  Meanwhile, under the floor, Sydney held her breath as the larger guard stepped onto the panel directly above her face. It dipped slightly, almost pressing against her nose.

  Paris was paralyzed as he saw the shadow grow and realized one of them had almost reached his aisle. Even though the room was kept cold for the servers, he could feel droplets of sweat forming on his forehead. Then he had an idea. He wasn’t sure if it was good or if he was just desperate, but it was his last hope.

  He waited for one of the larger drives to engage and spin, letting the noise cover the sound as he tossed François Fournier’s ID down the aisle.

  When the older guard reached the row, Paris kept perfectly still. His mouth was beyond dry, and his heart was racing a thousand beats per second.

  “Regardez là-bas!” the man called to his partner. “Look there!”

  He took two steps down the aisle, but before he was close enough to spot Paris, he leaned over and picked up the ID.

  The man let out a roaring laugh and put his pistol back in its holster. “Here is your François Fournier!” He held up the ID for the other man to see. “It must have fallen off while he was working.”

  The younger man wasn’t completely convinced, but that was probably because he’d actually been excited about the chance to come face-to-face with criminals.

  “Come on, let’s get back,” said the older man. “Maybe we can see the end of the PSG match.”

  Reluctantly, the younger man holstered his weapon and followed his partner out of the room. He did stop momentarily at the door to look at the footprint again, but then left.

  “I told you it was not a glitch,” he called out to the other guard. “It was a mistake by the employee. The computer never makes mistakes.”

  31. The Eiffel Tower

  IT WAS ELEVEN O’CLOCK AT night, and the lights on the Eiffel Tower twinkled as they did at the beginning of every hour. The area was still packed with tourists and would stay that way well past its midnight closing. That’s why Mother had picked this as their rendezvous poin
t. No matter what time they met or how long they talked, they wouldn’t look out of place. Especially with the Youth Summit in town. Young people were everywhere.

  While they waited for Monty and Kat, Brooklyn walked over to a gift kiosk that sold official Eiffel Tower souvenirs. Everything from T-shirts and posters to models and bookends.

  “How much is this?” she asked, holding up a plastic snow globe.

  “Six euros,” said the woman behind the register.

  Brooklyn dug into her pocket to get the money, but Mother swooped in and beat her to it. “My treat,” he said, handing the woman the cash.

  “Thanks,” said Brooklyn. She shook the globe and watched the snow fall on the miniature tower. “I thought I’d add it to my collection.”

  “You have a snow globe collection?” said Mother.

  She smiled weakly. “Well, now I’ve got two, so that’s kind of a collection.”

  “What other snow globe?” he asked, and then it dawned on him. “Ahhh, the shoebox …”

  “You’re pretty smart,” she said. “You should be a spy.”

  Just then Monty and Kat arrived, each carrying a white paper bag.

  “We come bearing macarons!” Monty said cheerfully. “They are magnifique.”

  Brooklyn had never heard of macarons before, but was a fan from her very first bite. They were colorful little cookies shaped like miniature hamburgers. They passed around the bags and retold the story of the hack at Asgard. Although Paris downplayed how close they came to being caught by the security guards.

  “Know this,” Monty said proudly. “If we’re right and Sinclair Scientifica is linked to Umbra, then what you accomplished today is one of the biggest achievements for British Intelligence in years.”

  Next, Mother told them about Stavros Sinclair packing up his paintings. He was more convinced than ever that Sinclair and Le Fantôme were one and the same. However, it seemed as though every bit of information they uncovered raised more questions than answers.

  “Let’s break everything down into three groups,” said Mother. “The things we know; the things we think we know but don’t know for sure; and the things that totally baffle us and are driving us bonkers.”

  “I know that tomorrow Sydney is going to get up there and deliver a speech,” Paris said, pointing to the stage that had been constructed at the base of the tower. “What I don’t know is whether she’s going to get scared and forget all her lines.”

  “You’ll know it’s an emergency if you hear me say, ‘I’m here for queen and country, and I’d like to … um … um … what’s my line?’ ”

  Everybody laughed.

  “What else do we know about tomorrow?” asked Rio.

  “We know that if the pattern continues, the Purple Thumb will do … something,” said Kat.

  “And we think we know that they’ll attack Sinclair Scientifica,” added Sydney. “At least they have every time before.”

  “We know Stavros Sinclair is packing up his paintings,” offered Rio. “Although we have no idea why.”

  “You know what’s baffling me?” said Mother. “We have no idea if or how the stolen virus fits in with all of this.”

  “I find that particularly worrisome,” said Monty.

  They sat there for a moment considering all of these, and then Kat broke the silence when she said, “I’ll tell you what troubles me most,” she said.

  “You mean other than people touching your stuff?” said Rio.

  She ignored him and continued, “We know virtually nothing about Leyland Carmichael’s thumb.”

  This brought more laughter.

  “That wasn’t a joke,” she said. “In this pattern he’s the constant. How does a dead man’s thumbprint keep winding up at crime scenes?”

  “The police have been asking themselves that for years,” said Mother.

  “What do we know about him?” asked Brooklyn.

  Rio did a quick search on his phone. “He was an attorney who turned into an environmental activist who then became a self-proclaimed ‘ecoterrorist.’ He was primarily opposed to logging companies,” he said, reading. “He felt guilty because he grew up rich in a family that made millions cutting down forests in Washington and Oregon.”

  “How rich?” asked Sydney.

  “Exceptionally,” said Kat, reading from another article she’d pulled up on her phone. “He attended St. George’s International School in Switzerland, one of the most expensive boarding schools in the world, and went to Stanford for college and law school.”

  “He was a lawyer turned terrorist,” Paris said, shaking his head.

  “Where have we seen that before?” asked Brooklyn.

  “Lawyers turned terrorists?” Paris asked, confused.

  “No, St. George’s International School,” she answered. “Are they one of the teams in the competition?”

  “Nope,” said Sydney. “There aren’t any teams from Switzerland.”

  Brooklyn thought hard for a moment, trying to place it before she remembered. “Oh, I know where I saw it. … That’s interesting.”

  “What’s interesting?” asked Monty.

  “I read about it last night,” Brooklyn said. “St. George’s is where Stavros Sinclair went to school.”

  “And didn’t he get his PhD at Stanford?” asked Paris.

  “He sure did,” she said.

  Now all of them were on their phones searching for any articles or reports that might shed some light on the relationship between the two.

  “Stavros was seven months older,” Kat said. “Even if they were a grade apart, they’d almost certainly know each other.”

  “So are we saying that Stavros is Le Fantôme and the Purple Thumb?” asked Sydney, confused.

  “Listen to this,” Rio interrupted. “It says that Carmichael was severely injured in an explosion when he tried to use dynamite to blow up a bulldozer at a logging site. The fuse was faulty, and it exploded when he was still too close. He lived another nine months but died because of the injuries from the explosion.”

  “So you think that’s where he lost his thumb?” asked Brooklyn. “If so, it would’ve been too damaged to leave a print. How does it connect to Sinclair?”

  Kat smiled. “Stavros already told us the connection,” she said as she slid her phone into her pocket.

  “He did?” said Paris.

  “Today, during his speech,” she answered. “ ‘We’re developing prosthetic limbs so lifelike, they …’ ”

  “ ‘… re-create a person’s fingerprints,’ ” said Sydney, finishing the line. “You are so right.”

  They considered this for a moment. “So we’re thinking what?” said Mother. “Leyland Carmichael accidentally blows up his hand, and his old school buddy Stavros gives him a state-of-the-art prosthetic.”

  “Yes,” said Brooklyn. “That’s exactly what we’re thinking.”

  “But wouldn’t the FBI have found that when they dug up his body?” asked Sydney.

  “They wouldn’t have buried him with it,” said Kat. “It wouldn’t make sense. It’s new and experimental technology. Once he was done with it, Sinclair would want it back to study its durability.”

  “And if they got it back …,” said Paris.

  “Then they’d be able to use it during the burglaries,” Brooklyn said.

  “But that still doesn’t answer the biggest question,” said Monty. “If Stavros is the one who has it, and Sinclair Scientifica is the target of all the crimes, that would mean he’s breaking into his own company. Why?”

  “For the same reason a magician uses misdirection,” answered Rio. “He wants everyone looking at one hand, so nobody notices what he’s doing with the other.”

  32. The Rally

  AMELIE BOUHADDI WAS ONE OF the chief organizers of the Global Youth Summit on the Environment. Twenty-four years old, she was the daughter of Algerian immigrants, spoke four languages fluently, and sometimes performed as a soloist with the Paris Opera. That is, when
she wasn’t too busy saving the world.

  She’d achieved so much at such a young age because she was obsessive about making precise schedules and following them to the last detail. That’s why she was in charge of the biggest and most important rally of the summit. Over the next three hours and forty-seven minutes, there would be a steady stream of pop singers, movie stars, activists, celebrities, and other notables committed to protecting the environment who would take their turn at the microphone.

  Each was allotted a specific amount of time, and Amelie had been deadly serious when she told them the microphone would be turned off if they went so much as one second over. Likewise, they would be silenced if their speeches veered off topic.

  “I don’t care how famous you are,” she said. “Today you are the orchestra, and I am the conductor.” Then she softened her tone, flashed a winning smile, and added, “And together we will make wonderful music.”

  Sydney, who was standing at the rear of the group of speakers, turned to Mother and whispered, “I’m torn. Part of me is terrified of her, yet part of me wants to be just like her.”

  Mother chuckled and whispered back, “Just for the record, you already are.”

  Sydney was among the fifteen students whose speeches would be sprinkled among more famous names. They were given the least amount of time: one minute and forty-five seconds. The combination of the time constraint along with Sydney’s desire to say something significant and inspirational was what had caused her to rewrite her speech so many times.

  Every word has to count, she’d told herself repeatedly.

  The stage faced the Champ de Mars, a public park that stretched out from the base of the Eiffel Tower. When Sydney peered out from behind the curtain, she saw an endless sea of faces.

  “That is a lot of people,” she said, slightly overwhelmed.

  “You’ve got no worries, Olivia,” Mother said, using an Australian accent.

  She looked up at him, stunned. “You haven’t called me Olivia since … I don’t know when … back at Wallangarra.”