by Stuart Gibbs
“You have a least favorite font?” I asked Zoe, unable to help myself.
“Doesn’t everyone?” Mike asked.
“No,” Murray replied, peeling himself off the floor again.
“Mine’s Ipswitch,” Mike said.
“Ipswitch!” Zoe groaned. “That one’s awful!”
“I kind of like Ipswitch,” Alexander said.
“Really?” Zoe asked. She and Mike shared a look and laughed, like Alexander had just showed up at a high school football practice and announced that he was captain of the chess team.
Erica said, “I realize you two are having a lovely time bonding here, but we’re getting off track. What does all this font stuff mean?”
Zoe said, “Due to its shortcomings, Tottenham wasn’t used by very many people except for Samuel Hewes. And Hewes wasn’t a typographer by trade. He only dabbled in it. His real job was as a silversmith.”
“So,” Erica said, “the chances are, Samuel Hewes made that key some time during the 1850s in London.”
“Exactly!” Zoe exclaimed.
“Sorry,” Alexander said. “I’m completely lost here.”
“It’s really quite brilliant.” Catherine was pacing the kitchen now, her eyes alive with excitement. “All we have to do is find out what large commissions Samuel Hewes received around that time and that ought to narrow down where the key is from.”
“Why large commissions?” Alexander asked.
“Because the number on the key is 1206,” I guessed, putting things together myself. “Meaning that there were more than twelve hundred locks being created.”
“Correct,” Catherine agreed. “And while banks must routinely commission that many safe-deposit boxes these days, back in the 1850s it was a much less common occurrence. In fact, I’d surmise that it would be extremely rare indeed. Especially someone asking for the type of craftsmanship evident in this key. Samuel Hewes might not have been much of a typographer, but given the quality of this, he was an expert silversmith. In fact… ” Catherine paused by Zoe’s side to take a look at the key again. “This is really quite exquisite. A small bank probably wouldn’t be able to afford quality like this on such a large scale. You’d be talking about only a handful of larger banks, or…Oh my.” Her mouth made a perfect little O of surprise as a thought struck her.
“What is it, Mom?” Erica asked.
“I think I know where that key goes: the vaults in the British Museum.”
“Which one?” Alexander asked blankly. “There must be hundreds of museums in Britain.”
“No. The British Museum,” Catherine corrected. “That’s what it’s called. It’s one of the largest archaeological museums in the world. Home of the Rosetta Stone and the Parthenon Marbles and a dozen mummies and thousands of other objects from antiquity.”
“Mummies?” Murray asked, paling a bit. “Mummies give me the creeps.”
“I’m sure the mummies feel the same way about you,” Erica said, then turned to her mother. “You’re sure about this?”
“No,” Catherine admitted. “But it makes sense. The vaults of the museum were commissioned in the 1850s to store everything the museum was collecting from around the world. I’ve been down there. It’s an enormous space. There must be at least five thousand storage units of various sizes.” Catherine ran her fingers through her hair. “I’m such a fool. I should have thought of it the moment I saw that key. Come, children. Gather your things right away.” She spun and headed back down the hall.
The rest of us followed her. “You really think Joshua Hallal stored this stuff in a museum rather than in a bank?” I asked.
“The British Museum’s vault is as secure as any bank,” Catherine told me. “Perhaps more. After all, it hasn’t been robbed in more than a hundred and fifty years.”
“If it’s so secure, how are we going to get into it?” Mike asked.
“That’s no problem at all,” Catherine replied. “My cover is a museum curator! I already have the credentials. Now, where did I leave my passport?” She ducked around the corner, already working on her packing list.
Mike flashed the rest of us an excited grin. “Looks like we’re going to London!” he exclaimed.
3 TRANSIT
En route to London
March 31
0600 hours
Normally, getting to London on the spur of the moment would have been difficult.
For starters, it should have been expensive. Until only a few months before, I hadn’t even been on an airplane, due to the costs. My parents both worked at a grocery store; we lived in the farthest fringes of the suburbs of Washington, DC, and the only vacation we had ever taken was to Virginia Beach. The only way I could afford spy school was because it was free; the CIA paid for the program. (Meanwhile, my parents thought I had an all-expenses paid scholarship to St. Smithen’s Science Academy for Boys and Girls, which was a front for spy school. The entire junior spy training program—and my participation in it—was top secret. Erica was the only student whose parents knew what she was really doing.)
Luckily, Catherine Hale had our travel taken care of. She had flown one of MI6’s jets to Tulum, parking it at a private airfield close to Aquarius that catered to wealthy clients and foreign governments. We didn’t have to pay a thing for our flight. The fuel was pricey, but MI6 had an expense account at the airport. (Apparently, it was common for British spies to head to Mexico and the Caribbean on “fact-finding” missions.)
The second potential problem was that none of us had brought passports. When we had set out a few days earlier, we hadn’t even known we would be leaving the country. I didn’t even own a passport—or so I had thought.
It turned out Cyrus had procured one for me. Once he had learned I was in Mexico—along with Mike and Zoe—he had called in a dozen favors at the State Department to have passports made for us right away, then brought them down. He hadn’t known that we’d end up heading to England, but we would have needed the passports anyhow to get back to the United States.
Erica had been carrying her passport all along, tucked into a secret pocket in her utility belt, as Erica was always prepared for emergencies. Or adventure.
Murray Hill had his passport too. He was always prepared for fleeing the country at a moment’s notice.
Given that, we wasted no time getting out of Mexico. Joshua Hallal was on the loose and certainly knew where we were going—it was his secret location, after all—so he would be trying to beat us there. Our only hope was that Joshua, being an easily recognizable fugitive with his broken limbs, wouldn’t be able to arrange transportation to London as quickly as we could.
We still had the rest of SPYDER to worry about too. We didn’t know if they were aware of Joshua’s potential evidence against them, but we figured there was a good chance they’d be heading that way as well.
There was no choice but to leave Cyrus behind. The last time I had been on a small plane for a mission—only three days before—I had nearly been killed in a missile attack. We all hoped we wouldn’t have anything like that happen to us again, but if we did, there was no way Cyrus could have handled it in his addled state. His friends in the Mexican police promised to take care of him—as well as keep an eye on the other SPYDER agents we had apprehended. The rest of us headed to the airstrip.
The jet was nicer than the one I had come to Mexico on, but that wasn’t saying much. Then again, we didn’t plan to do much except sleep. I’d had very little rest over the past few days, and even though it was early afternoon when we took off, I was exhausted. This was the case for my fellow agents-in-training as well. Despite being eager to explore their newfound mutual love of fonts and typesetting, Mike and Zoe quickly passed out in their seats; Murray, who had the metabolism of a house cat, was asleep soon afterward. Even Erica was tired; she had probably slept far less than the rest of us and had certainly fought more bad guys. Normally, she prided herself on her vigilance, but with her mother on board, she allowed herself the luxury of
legitimately relaxing for once.
After Catherine had the jet in the air, she engaged the automatic pilot and dozed herself.
So I let myself nod off as well. The seats on the jet were much bigger than the ones on a regular passenger plane, allowing me to curl up in mine. It wasn’t the best sleep I’d ever had, as my fears about SPYDER kept clawing their way into my dreams, but I still managed to get enough to recharge my batteries.
I woke somewhere over the North Atlantic.
Everyone else was still asleep, save for Alexander Hale. He was seated in the chair across the aisle from me, fidgeting anxiously in the darkness. When I had first met Alexander, he had been the epitome of the suave, debonair gentleman spy, always cool, calm, and collected. The ensuing years had not been kind to him. His fraudulent nature had been exposed, and he had fallen from grace. Now he was sullen and morose. He still looked awfully good in a suit, though.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
Alexander shrieked in fright and tried to leap from his seat, but his seat belt held him down. It took him a few moments to gather his wits. “Sorry about that, Benjamin. You caught me by surprise. I thought you were still asleep.”
“Have you slept at all?”
“Me? Er, no. When you’re up against a foe as crafty as SPYDER, there’s no time for sleep. You have to train yourself to go without it. Why, once, when I was on a mission in the Punjab, I went twelve entire days without so much as a nap.”
“I don’t think that’s true, Agent Hale.”
Alexander frowned, disappointed I had caught him in a lie. Back when we’d first met, he had regaled me with dozens of similar stories, and I’d believed every last one of them…for a while. “Of course. I was merely testing your mental acuity. Keeping you on your toes. The truth is, I…well… ” Alexander seemed to be trying to come up with a plausible lie, but couldn’t do it and gave up. “The truth is…I’m too nervous to sleep.”
“Really?” I couldn’t hide my surprise. I had known Alexander to be many things—foolish, egotistical, incompetent—but never nervous. If anything, his overblown image of himself often gave him delusions that he could handle things he had no business handling.
“Yes,” Alexander replied. Then he leaned across the aisle and whispered to me, even though everyone else on the plane was asleep. “This may come as a shock to you, but…I’m not quite as good a spy as I appear to be.”
“That’s not a shock,” I told him. “I’m well aware that you’re a bad spy.”
“Oh,” Alexander said. “I don’t know if ‘bad’ is the right word.… ”
“You’re right,” I agreed. “I should have said ‘terrible.’ ”
Alexander lowered his eyes. “Is it that obvious?”
The correct answer to that was “yes.” But instead, I said, “Erica told me a lot about you.”
“Yes. She’s the good spy in the family. I should have known I couldn’t put anything past her.” Alexander sighed heavily. “I never had a choice about being a spy, the way you did, Benjamin. This is the family business. I was expected to do it, no questions asked. No matter how many times I told my father I didn’t want to.”
“I always thought you liked being a spy.”
“I liked the image of it. And I’m pretty good at that part: looking suave, being charming. But as for the actual spying part—the dangerous missions and defusing bombs and nearly getting killed on a regular basis—I’m not a fan. I was never good at any of that stuff, to be honest, no matter how much my father tried to teach me. I only got into the academy because I was a legacy, and I nearly flunked out my first year, which would have upset my father even more. No Hale had ever flunked out of spy school. But then I discovered what I was good at: cheating.”
I sat up slightly, not surprised by the revelation, but by the fact that Alexander had admitted it. Now that the truth was coming out, however, it seemed as though he’d been desperate to tell someone for a long time. “Really?”
“That’s right. I cheated my way through spy school. I stole test answers. I came up with ingenious ways to copy the work of my fellow students. I took credit for things other people had done. I admit, it was loathsome and despicable—but it was also exceptionally good training for being a spy. In this business, it often doesn’t matter how you get the job done, so long as it gets done. In fact, in my senior year, I was busted for cheating on my final exam in Advanced Deception. My professor was so impressed by my methods, though, that she gave me an A-plus. It was the best grade I ever got. In fact, I would have done worse if I’d actually studied for the exam and taken it the right way.
“The problem was, once I got started along that path, I didn’t know how to stop. I kept using the same techniques that had gotten me through spy school, and they kept serving me well. I moved up in the ranks. People respected me. Everyone wanted to have me to parties. Eventually, I suppose, I started to believe my own lies. I started to think I was truly a good spy, even though I wasn’t good in the slightest.” Alexander shook his head in shame. “I mean, I was married to a secret agent for years and I never had an inkling. She must have thought I was the world’s biggest idiot.”
“Maybe,” I said. When Alexander cringed in response, I quickly added, “But I know she was really in love with you. That wasn’t a lie.”
Alexander managed a weak smile. “The point is, I might have pulled the wool over my own eyes for years, but now I’ve pulled it back off. I know I’m the weak link on this mission. Even worse than those of you who have only been in school for a few months. But this isn’t a normal mission. In the past, if I screwed up, it didn’t really matter to me who got hurt. This time it does. Catherine and Erica are on this mission, and if I mess up, something bad could happen to them.”
“Maybe not. They’re two of the most competent spies I’ve ever met.”
“It’s also possible that something bad could happen to you. And though you’re not my son, Benjamin, I feel somewhat paternal where you’re concerned.” Alexander’s smile broadened.
I smiled as well. My own feelings about Alexander had changed over the past year: I had at first been in awe of him, then disdainful, then downright disgusted, but I realized that I’d now developed a sort of begrudging friendship with him. “Catherine and Erica will look out for me.”
“I’m sure they will. But that doesn’t mean they’ll be able to protect you.” Alexander’s face grew grave. “I know you’ve gone up against SPYDER before, and I know that it has been dangerous. But this time you’re going to face down the leaders of the organization, who are as devious and malicious a group of scoundrels as there has ever been.”
I swallowed hard. Nothing Alexander had said was a surprise to me, and yet I had been so eager to bring down SPYDER, I had buried my concerns. Now, hearing that Alexander had those same concerns—and that he was actually worried himself—brought everything to the surface again. SPYDER was an incredibly cunning and deceitful organization, which had corrupted the CIA—the very agency tasked with bringing it down. The idea that my friends and I could defeat such a formidable enemy seemed almost impossible.
And yet we had thwarted SPYDER before. Several times.
“This time is different,” I said, doing my best to convince myself that it was true. “We’re not going up against SPYDER directly this time. We’re merely chasing down a way to destroy them.”
“When is a tiger most likely to attack you?” Alexander asked me. “When you’re trying to take away something it wants—or when you’re trying to hurt it?”
“Um… ,” I said. “It seems like both of those situations would be dangerous.”
“Really?” Alexander asked. “Hmm. Maybe that wasn’t the best analogy. Would it work better if I used a polar bear?”
“Not really.”
“How about a rattlesnake? Ooh! Or a tarantula? That would be better because a tarantula’s a spider. So spider/SPYDER. It works on multiple levels.”
“That’s all righ
t. I understand what you’re trying to say. SPYDER will be even more dangerous than usual this time around.”
“Exactly! The leaders know we’re coming for them, and they will do anything to protect themselves. Are you prepared for that?”
“Not really,” I said. “But I’m willing to do what’s expected of me anyhow.”
Alexander smiled. For a moment I saw a hint of the old, rakish superspy who had come to recruit me. “I appreciate your honesty, Benjamin. As well as your determination. I could stand to be more like you. I, too, am willing to do what’s expected of me, to the best of my abilities.”
“It’s about time,” said someone else.
Alexander and I turned to see that Erica was sitting awake in her seat behind us.
“How much of that did you hear?” Alexander asked, reddening around the ears.
“Enough. Do me a favor, though?”
“What is it, Pumpkin?”
“Okay, do me two favors. One: Don’t ever call me ‘Pumpkin’ again. Two: Try not to do what’s expected of you to the best of your abilities. Try to do even better than that. Because the best of your abilities, so far, hasn’t been that good.”
Even though what Erica was saying wasn’t particularly nice, her tone wasn’t as icy as usual. There was actually a tiny bit of warmth to it, indicating that she was trying to give her father advice rather than simply dismissing him.
Alexander picked up on this too. His smile spread wider across his face. “It’s a deal, Buttercup.”
“Ugh. Don’t call me that, either.” Erica unbuckled her seat belt and started for the cockpit.
After she had passed, Alexander leaned across the aisle and whispered to me conspiratorially. “She used to love being called that when she was a child.”
“Buttercup?” I asked, surprised.
“Princess Buttercup. She used to wear a pink dress and a tiara and everything.”
“That was a disguise,” Erica said. “I was only pretending to be a secret agent going undercover as British royalty.” She shook Zoe awake gently, then roused Murray with a smack to the face.