Spy School British Invasion

by Stuart Gibbs

Erica caught us as we started up the stairs, having gathered the weapons the thugs had taken from her. “You forgot your grenade,” she said, handing the explosive I’d stolen back to me.

  “Thanks,” I said, though I didn’t really mean it. I had left the grenade behind on purpose. It seemed likely that there might be more trouble ahead for us, but even so, I hadn’t enjoyed the feeling of carrying explosives so close to my private parts. Rather than explain this to Erica, though, I dutifully put the grenade back in my pocket.

  We reached the second floor and entered a tidy, well-kept study with gorgeous views of Notre Dame and the Seine. The walls were lined with bookshelves, a half-knitted scarf lay across the arm of a plush armchair, and framed family photos were nicely arrayed on a burnished oak desk. It looked far more like the sort of room where a grandparent might write letters to their grandkids than where an evil person might plot chaos and mayhem.

  A computer sat on the desk. It wasn’t anything fancy. It was even a few years out of date. The screen saver showed the standard photos that came loaded on every computer. Some lavender Post-it notes were stuck to the screen, reminders of things Ms. E had to take care of: “Send card for Tina’s birthday,” “Order bullets,” “Find Ben Ripley & kill him.”

  Ms. E started for the desk, but Catherine held her tight. “No,” Catherine said. “I don’t trust you. Erica, handle the computer, please.”

  “Sure thing, Mom.” Erica quickly checked the desk and chair for booby traps, then sat down and woke the computer.

  The first thing that appeared was a log-in screen asking for a password.

  Erica looked to Ms. E expectantly.

  “That’s not going to be so simple,” Ms. E said. “That’s encrypted with a rotating sixty-four-digit code that changes every five minutes for maximum security. The only way past it is for me to press my thumb to the fingerprint scanner you see there, but that has been designed to assess my stress levels and heart rate. If it senses that I’m attempting to access it under duress, as I am now, the entire system will lock down for twenty-four hours.… ”

  “Try UnicornsRule!!!” I said, recalling it from my brief look at Orion’s computer. “The U and the R are both capitalized, and there are three exclamation points.”

  Ms. E glared at me hatefully, in a way that indicated I was right.

  Erica entered the code. It worked. We immediately had access to all of Ms. E’s files.

  “I assumed you were bluffing,” I explained to Ms. E. “Erica once told me that the weakest point of any security system is the human element. I figured, even the head of SPYDER probably wanted a password she could remember and would never bother to change it.”

  Zoe gave Ms. E a disdainful look. “UnicornsRule? Really? How old are you? Seven?”

  Now that Erica had access to the computer, her fingers raced across the keyboard, bringing up one file after another. “Let’s see what we have here. Looks like that list of double agents. I’ll bet that’ll make for some interesting reading. Oh, and here’s a list of all the leaders of SPYDER, along with their home addresses. I’ll definitely want a copy of that.” She took a flash drive, jammed it into the port, and started dragging files onto it.

  I glanced at Ms. E, expecting that she would be glowering with rage. Instead, she seemed bizarrely happy. Jubilant even. It looked like she was doing everything she could to keep from bursting into laughter.

  And if Ms. E, the head of SPYDER was happy, that could only mean one thing:

  Something very bad was about to happen.

  18 FAIL-SAFE

  Secret lair of Ms. E

  Paris, France

  April 1

  1600 hours

  “What’s so funny?” I asked Ms. E.

  “The great Ben Ripley doesn’t seem to know everything after all,” she replied.

  “He knows enough,” Zoe said. “That information’s going to put you and everyone else in SPYDER in jail for the rest of your lives.”

  “I don’t think so,” Ms. E said cheerfully. “You were bluffing about Operation Wipeout, weren’t you? You morons didn’t know a single thing about it. You started it the moment you downloaded those files.”

  A wave of nausea swept over me. I did know one thing about Operation Wipeout: On Orion’s computer, there had been a warning, right after the code word to access Ms. E’s computer. “Watch out for Operation Wipeout.”

  At that moment, a box opened on the computer screen. SECURITY BREACHED. OPERATION WIPEOUT INITIATED. A timer began to count backward from fifteen minutes.

  Erica immediately started typing, trying to stop it, but had no immediate success.

  “What is Operation Wipeout?” Catherine demanded.

  “Like I’d tell you… ,” Ms. E said, but then yelped in pain as Catherine twisted her arm again. “Okay! Fine! I’ll tell you! It’s not like you can do anything to stop it anyhow. It’s a fail-safe I put in place in case anything like this ever happened. Once that timer is done, a massive electromagnetic pulse will be triggered, big enough to take out every major city in Europe, as well as those on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States.”

  My nausea got much worse. We had discussed electromagnetic pulses—or EMPs—in class as one of the biggest threats to national security. EMPs were short but incredibly disruptive bursts of energy. A large one could wipe out all electronics in a city, leading to instant chaos: Cellular networks, streetlights, and air traffic control systems would fail. “Why?” I asked. “You’re already captured. What’s the point of this? Just to be a huge jerk one last time?”

  “No,” Zoe said, grasping Ms. E’s plan. “Being a huge jerk is just a side benefit to her. A big enough EMP will take out the computer networks in all those cities. Law enforcement. Banking. The stock market. Everything. All that information is going to be wiped out. We’ll lose all our evidence.”

  “But you’ll lose all your money, too,” I said to Ms. E. “Everything you have in the banks.”

  “Who says my money is in banks?” Ms. E asked gleefully. “People rob banks. I have millions in cash, gold, and jewels stored in a very safe place. Once the banks crash, the world’s economy will be in shambles—and all the records of SPYDER’s debt will be wiped out. I’ll be able to buy anything I want. Including my freedom.”

  The timer was now down to just over thirteen minutes. Erica hadn’t been able to stop it.

  She yanked the flash drive from the computer and wheeled on Ms. E. “Where’s the generator?” she yelled.

  “Too far away for you to reach it in time,” Ms. E replied. And then she actually giggled.

  Catherine wrenched her arm behind her again.

  “Ouch!” Ms. E yelled. “All right! It’s at the top of the Eiffel Tower!”

  Understanding came to all of us at once.

  “The biggest antenna in all of France,” I said. “Right. Where is it exactly?”

  “To be honest, I have no idea,” Ms. E said. “I’m not the one who installed it there. And in the name of security, the man who did install it provided another one of those skulls down in the catacombs. So I’m afraid there’s no way to stop it.”

  “We still have to try,” Erica said, more to us than to Ms. E.

  Catherine looked to us in response. Her standard unruffled persona was gone. There was panic in her eyes. “It’s impossible. The tower’s all the way across town. You couldn’t drive there in thirteen minutes in traffic, let alone climb to the top, locate the EMP, and defuse it.”

  “Who says we have to drive?” Erica asked. “Where’s Dad?”

  “Oh,” Catherine said. And the panic in her eyes faded a tiny bit. She shoved Ms. E over to Erica, then snapped out her phone and called Alexander while Erica took over keeping Ms. E’s arms wrenched behind her back.

  The phone rang. And rang. And rang again.

  Mike bounded into the room, blissfully unaware that anything had gone horribly wrong in the five minutes since he’d last seen us. “I got those bad guys tied up nice and ti
ght,” he announced. “They won’t be going anywhere for a… ” His mood immediately sank as he read the tension in the room. “Oh no. What’s happened now?”

  Zoe said, “SPYDER has an EMP atop the Eiffel Tower set to wipe out civilization as we know it.”

  “Oh come on!” Mike shouted at Ms. E. “What is wrong with you? You can’t go five minutes without doing something horribly evil?”

  Alexander finally picked up on the tenth ring. He must have still been in the helicopter, because he was shouting loud enough for me to hear him across the room. “Catherine!” he said. “Sorry. I was on the other line with my mother.… ”

  “That’s all right,” Catherine said. “Listen—”

  “And you know how she can natter on and on and on sometimes,” Alexander continued.

  “Yes, I’m well aware that runs in your family.… ”

  “I was trying to get her off, but she always has to say one last thing.… ”

  “Alexander!” Catherine shouted. “Shut up and listen! We have a crisis!”

  “Oh. What is it?”

  “Are you close by with that helicopter?”

  “Yes! I’m parked on the helipad atop a hospital.… ”

  “I need you right now. On the rooftop at the location we pinpointed for SPYDER’s hideout.”

  “On my way. What’s the crisis?”

  “Just get here!” Catherine exclaimed. She hung up, then tossed the phone to Zoe. “You know computers. Stay here and see if you can stop the EMP from this end.”

  Erica shoved Ms. E into Mike’s hands. “And you see if you can get her to cough up anything helpful. Feel free to punch her teeth out if you have to.”

  “I think they’re already false,” Mike said.

  Catherine, Erica, and I raced out of the room.

  “You’ll never make it!” Ms. E taunted, then burst into laughter again.

  We ignored her and hustled up the circular stairwell. Even though it was only five flights up, I was beginning to feel the effects of our long day. My muscles were tired and achy after all the fighting and running, and the Ding Dongs I’d eaten had barely made a dent in my hunger. I was running low on energy.

  At the top of the stairs, we found a grand bedroom with balconies on both sides. One set faced Notre Dame, while the other looked out onto the interior atrium. Catherine threw open the French doors on the atrium side, then scrambled up a drainpipe to the roof, as nimbly as a squirrel.

  Erica followed her with just as much skill and speed.

  I wasn’t nearly as graceful, but with their help, I was able to clamber up onto the gravel rooftop.

  Although we hadn’t set a timer to match the one on Ms. E’s computer, I had a good enough sense of time to know exactly how long we had to stop the EMP.

  Nine minutes and forty-five seconds.

  It was surprisingly quiet up on the roof, five stories above the traffic and the crowds. Below us, throngs of people swarmed the cafés, the walkways along the banks of the Seine, and the plaza in front of Notre Dame. They all were going about their normal lives, completely unaware that the electricity and the cellular networks and almost everything else they took for granted in their daily lives were about to disappear.

  There are not many tall buildings in Paris. Most were shorter than the one we stood on, so I could easily see the Eiffel Tower sticking out over the other rooftops like a toothpick in a sandwich. By my reckoning, it was about three miles away. It looked completely innocent, and yet…

  “Let me guess,” I said to Catherine and Erica. “The Tower wasn’t built as a tourist attraction. Some kind of French spy agency built it for security reasons, just like every other monument on earth.”

  “Yes,” Catherine said. “Although Gustave Eiffel was quite open about the tower being used as an enormous antenna. The fact that it was used to transmit classified information was never much of a secret.”

  Because of the quiet, we could hear the helicopter coming from far away. It raced along the river, then swooped over the riverbank and set down gracefully on the roof. Orion, still in his bathrobe, slid the door open. We clambered into the chopper, shielding our eyes against the dust and gravel the rotors kicked up. Alexander lifted off before we even had the door shut again.

  “Hey, guys!” Alexander said cheerfully.

  “Get us to the top of the Eiffel Tower!” Catherine ordered. “Now!”

  We raced across the rooftops, quickly narrowing the distance to the landmark.

  “And I’ll need your phone,” Catherine said to Alexander. “So I can stay in touch with the others.”

  Alexander reluctantly handed his phone to her. “I’ve almost used all my minutes,” he warned. “And they charge an arm and a leg if you go over. So try not to use it unless there’s an emergency.”

  “Like the possible destruction of the world’s electrical, communications, and banking systems?” Catherine asked sarcastically. “Perhaps something like that will come up.”

  Erica grabbed a parachute off the wall and unfurled it inside the chopper.

  “We’re not jumping again?” I asked fearfully.

  “No time for that,” she replied. “We’ll have to climb down. And we’ll need to do it quickly.”

  She nodded out the window. Before, when we had approached the city, Alexander had kept the helicopter high enough not to draw attention until after we had jumped out of it. Now he had caught the attention of the police. It was probably against the law to be buzzing the rooftops like we were, as two police helicopters were homing in on us.

  I helped Erica straighten out the chute so we could use it as a rope.

  Orion was staring at us in a way that people generally stared at car wreck victims. Part horror and part shock that we were still alive. “What happened to you guys?”

  It occurred to me that we had been through quite a lot in the brief period of time since we’d last seen him, during which I hadn’t looked in a mirror. Now I didn’t want to. I felt my face and realized that I had a large welt above one eye and a swollen lip.

  “Long story,” I said. “How are you at hacking into computers?”

  “I’m far better at coding,” Orion said. “But I’m not bad. Why?”

  “Zoe is trying to get into SPYDER’s computer to stop the EMP from detonating. Maybe you could talk her through it?”

  “Good idea,” Catherine told me, then turned to Orion. “Do you have a phone on you?”

  “Of course.” Orion fished his phone out of his pocket and handed it to Catherine, who entered the number for her own phone.

  “How much time do we have?” Orion asked.

  Catherine and Erica looked to me expectantly.

  “Six minutes and fifteen seconds,” I said.

  “Oh jeez, there’s no way,” Orion said.

  “You just said you weren’t bad at hacking!” I exclaimed.

  “I didn’t say I was the god of hacking either, did I?” Orion asked. “And even the god of hacking probably couldn’t pull that off. He’d need at least fifteen minutes.”

  “But in the movies hackers are always getting into enemy computers within seconds,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah, well, they also have talking animals and time travel in movies, don’t they?” Orion asked. “Same level of reality.”

  “Still,” Catherine urged. “Give it a try.”

  “We’re here,” Erica said.

  We had already reached the Eiffel Tower—which was good from a trying-to-save-the-world perspective and bad from a now-it-was-time-to-do-something-exceptionally-dangerous-yet-again perspective.

  Alexander brought us in right over the top of it—almost. He couldn’t hover directly above it, as he had to avoid the main antenna.

  Erica threw the door open again. Wind tore through the helicopter.

  Although I had probably seen thousands of photos of the Eiffel Tower, I had never realized how large the portion at the very top was. It was significantly larger than the top of the Washington Mon
ument or the Statue of Liberty, practically the size of a small house, suspended high in the air over the city.

  There were five stories at the top of the tower, two for tourists and three above that were devoted to various antennas and transmitters. The upper three stories were really a large metal dome bedecked with an exterior framework of metal struts, upon which all sorts of electronic equipment was mounted. At the very top of all that, the main antenna jabbed into the sky, as thick and as tall as a redwood tree.

  “How are we supposed to find the EMP in all that?” I yelled over the wind.

  “It’ll have to be awfully big if SPYDER can take out the East Coast of the United States with it!” Erica had already knotted the top of the parachute to the seats inside the chopper. Now she threw the rope end out the door. “Let’s go!”

  With that, she belayed herself out of the helicopter. She didn’t even pause for a moment to think about what she was doing. She did it as calmly as most people would hop out of a car.

  I cautiously approached the door. Jumping out of the helicopter with a parachute on had been nerve-racking enough. Lowering myself down a rope hand over hand a thousand feet above the ground looked to be a million times worse.

  And yet there wasn’t any time to dwell on it. The police helicopters were closing in, and the fate of the free world hung in the balance.

  So I gritted my teeth, grabbed on to the rope, stepped out onto the runner of the helicopter, and hoped I wouldn’t die.

  19 VERTIGO

  Above the Eiffel Tower

  Paris, France

  April 1

  1610 hours

  It had been just over four months since I had last dangled from a helicopter.

  Turns out it’s not the sort of thing you get used to the more you do it.

  Dangling from a helicopter sucks on about a hundred levels. It was terrifying and cold and the rope was whipping around in the wind from the rotors, but even though I wanted to simply cling on for dear life, I had to force myself to keep letting go with one hand and then the other as I lowered myself.

  The descent wasn’t really that long. Alexander was skilled enough to keep the helicopter about twenty feet above the roof of the Eiffel Tower. Due to my innate sense of time, I knew it took only thirty seconds to get down.