Goldwhiskers

by Heather Vogel Frederick

  She had to find a way to notify MICE-6 about the extermination plan! Quickly scaling the table, she raced to the telephone. She pretended to trip, then fell on to the speakerphone button. Glory danced rapidly across the keypad, just as she’d done as a computer gymnast, punching in the numbers for MICE-6’s emergency line.

  ‘Get her! Get that mouse! Defend Master!’ screamed Goldwhiskers, frantically trying to untangle the bracelet, which was caught in his golden whiskers, and wipe the spit out of his beady red eye at the same time.

  His frustrated bellows covered the sound of the phone ringing at MICE-6 headquarters. Why don’t they answer? thought Glory. She only had a couple of seconds before she’d have to make a run for it.

  Finally, she heard Miss Honeyberry’s voice. ‘MICE-6 here,’ she said.

  ‘DEFEND MASTER!’ screamed Goldwhiskers simultaneously.

  All around the cubbyhole, the mouselings drew back in confusion. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. Their ears told them to defend Master, but their noses told them that Glory was one of their own. Instinct battled training. Instinct won out. They didn’t move.

  Dupont did, however. Before Glory could say a word to Miss Honeyberry, her arch enemy lunged for the table. Glory abandoned the phone and dived headfirst towards the carpet below, somersaulted three times, then sprang up and ran for the trapdoor. Dupont lunged again, grabbing her tail in his mangy paw.

  ‘You won’t get away this time,’ he snarled.

  Glory twisted frantically in his iron-tight grip, but Dupont held her fast. He hoisted her up in front of his hideous snout. The stench of his breath was almost unbearable. Glory’s eyes began to water. She glanced over at the table. Was the line to MICE-6 still open?

  She drew a deep breath. The next words she uttered might well be her last. ‘OPERATION SMASH UNDERWAY!’ she screamed with all her might, as Dupont bared his fangs. ‘STOP MICE AND STOP HUMANS! GOLDWHISKERS AND THE OTHER RATS ARE PLANNING TO –’

  Before Glory could finish her warning, Roquefort Dupont jerked her aloft and swung her round his head like a lasso. His tail thrashed behind him as he did so, accidentally tangling in the telephone cord and yanking it out of the wall. With a screech of triumph, he hurled Glory to the floor. She landed with a crash and went limp.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  DAY TWO – TUESDAY 1800 HOURS

  ‘One thousand exterminators!’ cried Bunsen. He stared at AMI’s screen, aghast.

  Three thousand miles away, in London, Sir Edmund Hazelnut-Cadbury watched him on the Video Scrambler. Dozens of mice peered over his shoulder. The staff at MICE-6 had been on full alert since Glory’s call had come through, and Sir Edmund’s office was jammed. ‘What was that, Mr Burner?’ he demanded.

  ‘I said, ONE THOUSAND EXTERMINATORS!’ Bunsen repeated, turning to face him. ‘This was what Glory was trying to tell us!’ He tapped the computer screen behind him in agitation. ‘See? It’s right here. I found a credit card registered to D. G. Whiskers, Esquire – Goldwhiskers, as Glory called him – and he used it less than an hour ago to hire Rodent Rooter.’

  ‘Call Rodent Rooter!’ sang one of the British computer gymnasts automatically, and was quickly shushed.

  ‘One thousand trucks, one thousand exterminators,’ continued the lab-mouse-turned-secret-agent. ‘They’re scheduled to strike every neighbourhood in the city at six a.m. tomorrow.’

  ‘On Christmas morning?’ cried Z. ‘Ghastly!’

  Sir Edmund nodded. ‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘And coordinated attacks, no less. It’s the Blitz all over again!’

  ‘Can you cancel the exterminations?’ asked Julius.

  Bunsen shook his head regretfully. ‘Not without the security code on the back of Goldwhiskers’s credit card,’ he said. ‘And even if we had that, we’d have to cancel by twenty-two hundred hours tonight. Rodent Rooter has an eight-hour cancellation policy. See?’ He tapped AMI’s screen again. ‘It’s in the fine print here.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Burner,’ said Sir Edmund. ‘Your intelligence-gathering skills are remarkable. MICE-6 is in your debt.’

  Bunsen blushed modestly. Sir Edmund Hazelnut-Cadbury and Julius Folger stared soberly at each other via the Video Scrambler. Spymaster to spymaster, ally to ally, friend to friend, both of them contemplating the utter devastation that would follow such a vast number of coordinated attacks.

  There was a worried buzz from the gathered mice, and Sir Edmund turned to face his staff. ‘This is a Code Red situation,’ he announced crisply. ‘We need that credit card. It’s our only hope. I want 80 Strand surrounded ten minutes ago! Every mouse will do his duty. And hers. I want those rats stopped – and those orphans rescued – on the double.’

  ‘And Glory! Don’t forget Glory!’ added Bunsen anxiously.

  ‘That goes without saying,’ snapped Sir Edmund. ‘Agent Westminster too.’

  As his staff started to disperse, the head of MICE-6 held up his paw. ‘If the exterminations can’t be cancelled, we’ll have to evacuate London.’

  There were more worried murmurs from the mice at this news. Never in mouse history – not even during the Blitz and the Great Turf War – had London’s mice been evacuated. It was a daunting prospect.

  ‘Do you have the mousepower to handle it?’ Julius asked, his face on the Video Scrambler puckered with concern. ‘Not that there’s anything I can do to help you at this point, Edmund, I’m afraid. Even if we sent agents and troops over on the next flight, they wouldn’t arrive in time.’

  ‘Of course we can handle it,’ Sir Edmund replied stoutly. ‘We Londoners are made of stern stuff. We’ve faced down tyrants before, and we’ll face them down again. Remember?’ He pointed to the MICE-6 crest on the wall behind his desk and the words LUX TENEBRAS EXSTINGUIT.

  The gathered mice eyed their agency motto. Sir Edmund was offering them hope and courage and a reminder that other mice before them had faced dark times and come through. They sat up a little straighter.

  ‘Miss Honeyberry, get on the phone to Buckingham Palace!’ ordered Sir Edmund. ‘We need authorization from the Prince of Tails to call in the Royal Guard. Call in the Welsh Rarebit Regiment while you’re at it. We’re going to need all the paws we can get.’

  A loud whirr, and a thwump on the carpet announced the arrival of the Tube. Its hatch opened and Squeak popped out.

  ‘Reporting for duty, sir,’ she said.

  ‘Did you see the children?’ asked Sir Edmund.

  Squeak nodded. ‘I brought them up to speed, just as you asked,’ she reported. ‘I was listening to the news just now, and the concert has been given the green light. They’re probably at the opera house already. But it doesn’t look good, I’m afraid. Not with Lavinia Levinson’s paw prints – I mean fingerprints – all over that ransom note. I expect they’ll be arrested and officially charged the minute the concert is over. And they’re very worried about Prudence Winterbottom’s daughter. Apparently they think she’s up to something.’

  ‘Nothing we can do about that now,’ said Sir Edmund regretfully. ‘There have been some new developments while you were gone. Alarming developments. I’m going to need you to lead a squadron of pigeons back to 80 Strand. With any luck, we should be able to save at least some of the orphans.’

  ‘Some?’ cried Bunsen over the Video Scrambler, his nose and tail flaming bright pink with concern. ‘What about Glory?’

  Sir Edmund sighed. ‘I promise you I haven’t forgotten about Glory, Mr Burner.’

  ‘A squadron won’t be enough,’ said Julius. ‘If it were any other rats, perhaps. But not with Dupont and Piccadilly in the mix. And there must be dozens of orphans.’

  Sir Edmund tugged thoughtfully at his whiskers. He stared at the portraits on the wall. ‘What would Churchill and my great-grandfather have done, I wonder?’ he mused. Suddenly, he spun about. ‘Julius,’ he said, addressing the Video Scrambler screen again, ‘I believe it’s time to break out the Summoner.’

  Julius Folger was quiet for a long moment.
‘Are you sure?’ he said finally. ‘It’s an awfully big gamble. It was decommissioned more than half a century ago, after all. What makes you think they’ll even respond?’

  ‘Who will respond, sir? If you don’t mind my asking,’ said Squeak.

  ‘It’s a chance I’m willing to take,’ Sir Edmund replied to Julius, ignoring her. He turned to his staff. ‘Friends and colleagues,’ he announced. ‘I’m going to call in the SAS.’

  The room went dead silent. Not a tail twitched. Finally, one of the pilots cleared his throat. ‘The Secret Air Service?’ he croaked.

  Sir Edmund nodded. ‘Yes.’

  The mice exchanged nervous glances. The SAS had long been rumoured to exist, its exploits whispered of by the elders who’d been mouselings at the time of the Blitz and the Great Turf War. Ghosts, they were, said some. Swallows, said others. Swift as night, they’d swooped down from the skies of London, helping to turn the tide in the battle against the rats. And just as swiftly they’d disappeared, never to be seen or heard from since.

  ‘I don’t like the sound of this,’ said Bunsen anxiously.

  ‘There’s only one problem,’ continued Sir Edmund.

  ‘What is that?’ asked Julius.

  ‘The Summoner,’ said Sir Edmund. ‘My great-grandfather entrusted it to his friend Winston Churchill after the wars were over. To keep it out of enemy paws. Churchill sewed it into the lining of his favourite waistcoat for safekeeping, so my mother told me. That’s what her father told her, and her father’s father before him.’ Sir Edmund looked up at Julius again. ‘That waistcoat was donated to a museum after Churchill’s death.’

  ‘Which museum?’ asked Julius.

  Sir Edmund turned to Squeak. ‘Cancel my original orders,’ he said. ‘I want you to go to the Royal Opera House instead. We’re going to need the children’s help.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  DAY TWO – TUESDAY 1800 HOURS

  ‘Wait!’ ordered Stilton Piccadilly. Behind him, Goldwhiskers was scowling at his orphans.

  Dupont’s razor-sharp teeth stopped a whisker’s width away from Glory’s neck. He turned to the British bull rat. ‘Finders keepers,’ he snarled angrily. ‘She’s mine.’

  ‘No, you fool, didn’t you hear? She shouted something just before you knocked her out.’

  ‘So?’ said Dupont, turning back to Glory, who had come to, but who had closed her eyes again in anticipation of her fate.

  ‘Don’t you understand?’ shouted Piccadilly. ‘She was talking to someone! She was passing information about the exterminations!’

  Dupont’s beady red eyes narrowed. He pawed Glory’s fur. ‘No transmitter,’ he reported, then gave her a brutal shake. ‘Are you working alone?’

  Never give in, thought Glory bravely, remembering Winston Churchill’s rousing words. Never give in. Never, never, never, never. She gritted her teeth and kept silent, determined to protect Bubble no matter the consequences.

  Dupont shook her again, more savagely this time. ‘Won’t talk, eh? We’ll see about that. I crack mice like nuts.’ He held up one knife-like claw and curled it round the base of her tail. Glory shivered. Dupont’s thin rat lips peeled back in a hideous smile. ‘Still have a place for it on my wall, right beside your father’s.’

  ‘For the love of rubbish, Dupont,’ muttered Piccadilly, shouldering past him towards the tea hamper. ‘You always have to make such a production out of everything.’ He rummaged swiftly through the basket’s contents, and gave a cry of triumph as he lifted the white napkin at the bottom. ‘Aha! Just as I thought.’ Reaching in, he plucked Bubble out by the scruff of his neck. ‘What did I tell you? They always work in teams. Double G! There’s something you need to see.’

  Goldwhiskers was still glaring at his cowering mouselings. ‘Mouselings disobeyed Master,’ the big rat said in a low growl. ‘Mouselings didn’t defend Master. What is wrong with mouselings?’

  The orphans looked at one another in confusion. There was something new in Master’s voice. Something they’d never heard before. And it was exceedingly unpleasant.

  ‘Mouselings know what happens when mouselings defy Master!’ Goldwhiskers continued, his voice rising to a deafening pitch. ‘Mouselings must be PUNISHED!’ The orphan mice quailed. They clapped their paws over their ears. Goldwhiskers’s voice dropped to a low hiss. ‘But this is different! This is betrayal! And betrayal calls for something much, much worse than the OUBLIETTE!’

  Farthing squeaked in terror and climbed Twist like a tree. Twist wrapped his paws round the toddler and held him fast as the little one tried to burrow under his chin.

  ‘Double G!’ Piccadilly said again.

  The big rat turned to Piccadilly. ‘What?’ he snapped, breathing hard.

  Piccadilly hoisted Bubble up in the air. ‘The American mouse wasn’t working alone.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘She called out a message, just before Dupont decked her. About the exterminations.’

  ‘He’s probably got a transmitter,’ said Goldwhiskers.

  Piccadilly turned Bubble upside down and shook him until his teeth rattled. No transmitter appeared. Piccadilly’s eyes narrowed. ‘I’m sure she was passing information, Double G. She ran up the table leg, remember, and then –’

  Goldwhiskers whipped round and stared at the table by his red leather chair. His gaze travelled up the table leg to the telephone that sat on its surface next to his gold-lacquered box. ‘You used my PHONE!’ he screamed at Glory in outrage. ‘To transmit information about MY PLANS!’

  Glory didn’t say a word. Never give in, she told herself again. Never, never, never, never.

  ‘Well, transmit THIS!’ Goldwhiskers cried. He whisked the phone cord up in his huge paw, jammed it back into the plug in the wall, then he smacked the speakerphone button and pressed redial. Glory could hear the phone ringing at MICE-6 headquarters, and then Miss Honeyberry’s soft voice. ‘Yes?’ she said anxiously. ‘Miss Goldenleaf, is that you?’

  ‘How about Goldwhiskers instead?’ screamed Goldwhiskers. ‘You tamper with my world and my plans, you PAY! You want to play rat-and-mouse? You send your spy mice here to my home – to play I spy here in MY HOME? I’ll send them back to you, and the orphans too – if you can find all the PIECES, that is! And speaking of pieces, here’s a little PUZZLE for you! I’m going to take all these DOUBLE-CROSSING, DISOBEDIENT, DISLOYAL mice on an outing tonight. A little Christmas Eve treat in London. Won’t that be FUN?’

  Glory, still held tightly in Dupont’s grip, watched and listened as Goldwhiskers came unglued. She could hear it in his voice, just as she’d heard it in Dupont’s before. It happened frequently when rats whipped themselves into a frenzy of retaliation. A very, very dangerous frenzy.

  Goldwhiskers took a deep breath and chanted:

  ‘Up on the rooftop the rodents pause,

  Lots of mouselings in their claws.

  Off for an evening of games and fun –

  We’ll come full circle when the night is done.

  Round and round we’ll go, then WHEE!

  I’ll be the last thing they ever SEE!’

  The big rat’s voice rose to a piercing crescendo. Behind him, the mouselings clutched each other in terror. Farthing let out a squeak of fear, and Goldwhiskers whirled round, pinning him with a ferocious glare. ‘Don’t even THINK about it!’ he roared, and slammed his paw down on the speakerphone button again, cutting off the call.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  DAY TWO – TUESDAY 1830 HOURS

  ‘Are you talking to a mouse?’

  Oz and DB started guiltily. Nigel Henshaw was standing at the door of Oz’s mother’s dressing room with an astonished look on his pale, pinched face.

  ‘Uh,’ stammered Oz.

  Nigel stared open-mouthed at Squeak Savoy. She ducked under a large make-up brush on the dressing table, but it was too late. The damage was done.

  Oz prodded nervously at his glasses. DB crossed her skinny arms across her chest. ‘What exactly do
you think you saw?’ she demanded.

  Nigel pointed at Oz. ‘Him talking to that mouse,’ he replied. ‘The one hiding behind that brush there. And she was talking back to him. Said something about a secret mission, and him having to get out of here on the double.’

  What would James Bond do if he were here? Oz wondered desperately. Agent 007 was always wiggling out of tight situations. He was smart; he was wily; he was unflappable. At the moment, Oz did not feel the least bit smart or wily. And he felt extremely flappable. The name is Levinson. Oz Levinson, he reminded himself sternly. Get a grip. ‘Shut the door, Nigel,’ he said, as calmly as he could.

  The younger boy shut the door.

  ‘Um, Nigel,’ Oz continued. ‘DB and I couldn’t help but notice the way Priscilla Winterbottom treats you.’

  Nigel’s pale face flushed.

  ‘How old are you, anyway?’

  ‘Eight,’ Nigel mumbled.

  ‘I’ll bet you don’t have many friends, do you?’ said Oz gently.

  Nigel shook his head miserably. His pale blue eyes filled with tears. Oz tried not to cringe. Looking at Nigel was like looking at himself a couple of years ago.

  ‘Neither did I,’ said Oz. ‘But now I have lots of them. Do you know how?’

  Nigel shook his head again. Oz leaned in close. ‘I became a secret agent,’ he whispered.

  The boy’s mouth dropped open in disbelief. Oz nodded. ‘That’s right. I help my spy friends, and they help me. And they can help you too. How would you like it if my friends and I fixed it so that Priscilla Winterbottom never bothered you again?’

  Nigel brightened. ‘You could do that?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said Oz. ‘You have to do something for us too, though. You have to swear you’ll do it, on your honour.’

  ‘On my honour,’ Nigel promised solemnly.

  ‘You can never, ever tell anyone what you see here in this room tonight,’ said Oz.