Goldwhiskers

by Heather Vogel Frederick

  The wind snatched away his words, and for a moment there was no response. Then he felt something brush against his face. He choked back a scream.

  ‘What issssss it?’ he heard, or thought he heard. The voice was soft and sibilant, nearly as soft as the bats’ own silent wings. ‘Issssss not moussssse.’

  ‘Issssss human,’ came another voice, soft as a sigh. ‘Not to be trusssssted.’

  Oz squeezed his eyes tightly shut. He couldn’t look. He just couldn’t. James Bond would look, he told himself. Agent 007 laughed in the face of danger. Oz cracked one eye open. He found himself face-to-furry-face with an upside-down bat. He quickly shut the eye again. Laugh? He felt more like crying. Every nerve in his body was screaming, run! But Oz thought again of Glory, and the orphans, and all the other mice in London who were depending on him. He stood his ground.

  ‘He knowsssss the sssssignal,’ whispered a third voice.

  ‘No,’ said the second voice. ‘Imposssster. Not to be trussssted.’

  ‘Wait!’ called Oz in desperation, as he heard the bats begin to fly away. Mustering every ounce of courage he possessed, he opened both eyes and took a step forward. The bats hesitated, dipping and fluttering before him like dark moths against the moonlit sky. ‘The name is Levinson,’ Oz announced firmly. ‘Oz Levinson. Friend of mice and fellow soldier against evil. Against rats.’ And sharks, he almost added. He paused, unsure of what else he should say.

  A single bat detached itself from the flock and circled closer. He stared at Oz with fathomless, unblinking eyes. ‘Fellow sssssoldier against ratsssssss?’ he whispered, his voice a low hiss.

  Oz nodded.

  ‘Batsssss hate ratsssss.’

  Oz nodded encouragingly. ‘That’s right. And the mice are in trouble tonight. Just as they were a very long time ago. During the Blitz. The rats are holding some of them prisoner right now. Mouselings. They’re planning to kill them, and to exterminate the rest of London. We need your help.’

  ‘Mousssssselings?’

  Oz nodded.

  ‘Exxxxxxterminate?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Oz soberly.

  ‘We haven’t heard the sssssssummons in a very long time,’ sighed the bat.

  ‘No,’ agreed Oz. ‘Not since Sir Peregrine Inkwell.’

  ‘You knew Ssssssssir Peregrine?’

  Oz shook his head. ‘I’m here under orders from his great-grandson, Sir Edmund Hazelnut-Cadbury. He’s the head of MICE-6 now.’

  The bat flitted away again and rejoined the others. Oz could hear them consulting among themselves as they flickered in the air above him, their words like the whisper of dried leaves.

  The three who had spoken detached themselves from the others and darted towards him again with such speed that he drew back in alarm. They swooped to a stop at eye level and clung by their claws, upside down, to the stone parapet overhead. The bats’ small, eerie faces were hideous and wild, their mouths bristling with sharp, evil-looking fangs. Oz gulped. How do I get myself into these things? he wondered.

  ‘What are our ordersssssss?’ whispered the leader.

  ‘It’s a r-r-r-escue mission,’ stuttered Oz. ‘Glory’s been captured.’

  ‘Who issssss Glory?’ the bat asked.

  ‘Glory Goldenleaf. She’s a spy mouse,’ Oz explained. ‘A very brave spy mouse, and one of my best friends in the whole world. She’s been captured with one of her colleagues, Bubble Westminster, and a whole bunch of orphan mouselings. They need to be airlifted to safety.’

  He reached into his pocket for the slip of paper with the coordinates to the Savoy Hotel and read them off. Then he held up the paper, trying not to flinch as a leathery wing brushed the back of his hand when one of the bats snatched it from him.

  The three bats studied the note, then looked back at him and nodded their fierce little heads. ‘Yesssssss,’ they whispered in unison. And without another word they rose into the air above St Paul’s Cathedral and disappeared into the night.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  DAY TWO – TUESDAY 2145 HOURS

  ‘Be brave, mouselings,’ whispered Glory, as Big Ben chimed the quarter hour. The orphans clustered closely around her. Twist was glued to her side, and Farthing had clambered up on to her back again. He was sucking his tail furiously. At her side, Bubble Westminster stood his ground staunchly.

  ‘It’s been an honour working with you, Glory,’ Bubble said.

  ‘Likewise, Bubble. You’re true blue.’

  Standing shoulder to shoulder, the two spy mice agents faced the waiting rats. Several more minutes ticked by. Finally, the London Eye reached the height of its arc. As it did, it seemed to pause and hang there in space. The rats closed in. For each step forward that Goldwhiskers, Dupont and Piccadilly took, the two spy mice and the throng of mouselings took one step back, until they teetered at the very brink of the glass observation car’s sloping edge. Glory drew a deep breath, still determined to meet her end with the dignity befitting both a Goldenleaf and a member of the Spy Mice Agency.

  ‘Are you really going to go through with it, Goldwhiskers?’ she said. ‘Send all these innocent mouselings to their deaths?’

  ‘Nobody double-crosses Double G,’ snarled Goldwhiskers, who had completely reverted to his sewer-bred roots. ‘Especially not mouselings!’

  ‘They should call you Coldwhiskers,’ said Glory bitterly. ‘You’ve got nothing but an ice cube for a heart.’

  The big rat sneered and stepped closer. Glory edged back. The tiny flame of hope she had been tending inside sputtered and went out. She was out of time. It was too late. There was nothing more she could do.

  Then Glory caught a flutter of something in the distance, out of the corner of her eye. Probably nothing. But she decided to stall for time, just in case.

  ‘Isn’t it tradition for condemned prisoners to be granted a last request?’ she asked.

  Goldwhiskers’s eyes narrowed. ‘Be quick about it, then,’ he said.

  ‘I’d love to see the Koh-i-Noor one more time,’ Glory replied.

  Goldwhiskers regarded her shrewdly. ‘This had better not be a trick.’

  Glory turned around to show that her paws were still bound. The big rat gave a curt nod and opened his velvet duffel bag. He reached in and drew out the gem. If possible, the diamond was even more beautiful in the moonlight. The moon’s silver rays twinkled and danced across its luminous facets like starry lights on a Christmas tree. Mice and rats alike fell silent for a moment under the Koh-i-Noor’s spell.

  And then –

  ‘INCOMING!’ screamed Roquefort Dupont, as thousands of bats dropped from the night sky. Leading them, astride her pigeon, was Squeak Savoy.

  Instantly, all was chaos. The mouselings shrieked and scattered, even more terrified of the ferocious-looking bats than they were of their rat captors. They tumbled across the top of the glass observation car like furry marbles, and Goldwhiskers scrambled after them, furiously trying to round them up. Dupont and Piccadilly swatted frantically at the dive-bombing bats, who nipped at the rats’ heads and snouts like moths around a trio of flames.

  Glory and Bubble instantly moved into back-to-back position, the emergency manoeuvre they’d learned in spy school, and untied each other’s paws.

  ‘Get the credit card!’ cried Squeak, glancing anxiously at Big Ben. ‘Code Red!’

  Her urgent words fuelled her two colleagues to ever greater efforts and, the moment they were free, Glory and Bubble raced towards Goldwhiskers. He saw them coming and slashed at them with an enormous paw, sending them spinning away, tail over whiskers. Glory rolled to a stop right in front of Roquefort Dupont.

  ‘How convenient,’ he said, and dived for her, dragging Fumble, who was still attached to his hind paw, with him. Glory rolled quickly to one side. Dupont missed her by a whisker. He lunged again. Glory rolled back the other way, but Dupont was too quick for her this time. He pounced, grabbing her with his sharp claws, and bared his fangs in a smile of triumph.

  The
smile quickly turned to a snarl of terror, however, as behind him Fumble stood up. Glory’s former colleague teetered on the edge of the observation car, shot Glory a cryptic glance and slowly toppled over the side.

  Glory gasped.

  ‘NO!’ screeched Dupont, as the lead slithered after Fumble, dragging him with it. He let go of Glory and scrabbled for a pawhold, but Fumble’s weight was enough to tow him slowly, agonizingly, inch by inch, towards the edge. The rat’s sharp claws scraped and clawed across the glass as he slid, emitting a hideous screech, like fingernails dragging across a blackboard.

  Stilton Piccadilly saw him and rushed across the glass, swatting bats fiercely out of his way.

  ‘Grab my paw, Piccadilly!’ screamed Dupont.

  Instead, the head of London’s rat forces reached out and yanked the Sovereign’s Ring from round his rival’s scruffy neck. ‘I think I’ll grab this instead.’

  ‘DOUBLE-CROSSER!’ howled Roquefort Dupont, his final words echoing as he vanished over the side.

  Glory lay there for a moment in shock. What had just happened? Had Fumble slipped, or had he sacrificed himself in a bid to save her and the orphans?

  ‘Glory, I need that credit card NOW!’ Squeak cried desperately. ‘No time to explain!’

  All of her Silver Skateboard training kicked in as Glory responded to her colleague’s urgent plea. No time to think about Fumble – she had to act. She scrambled up and raced towards Goldwhiskers.

  Across from her, Bubble was bravely battling Stilton Piccadilly. Overhead, Glory saw members of the SAS plucking terrified orphans off the observation car one by one, while Goldwhiskers, who appeared to have come completely unhinged, swung at them with his gem-filled velvet pouch.

  ‘Those are MY mice!’ he thundered. ‘MASTER’s mouselings!’ There was a loud THWACK as the pouch connected with a bat. Stunned, the creature dropped like a stone. Goldwhiskers whirled the pouch round his head and prepared to deliver the final blow.

  Glory dived for him. ‘No, you don’t, Goldwhiskers,’ she cried, crunching down on his tail with her sharp little teeth.

  The big rat yelped and swung round with a murderous glance. Before he could attack, however, a whole squadron of bats surrounded him. Grabbing him by his ears, whiskers, paws and tail, they lifted him bodily into the air. He dangled there, howling in frustration.

  ‘I’ll take that,’ said Glory, plucking the velvet pouch from his grasp. ‘Diamonds are a mouse’s best friend, remember?’ She rummaged through the pouch’s contents. ‘And credit cards aren’t bad, either. Here, Squeak!’ she called, holding up the card.

  Squeak swooped from the sky and grabbed it. She pressed the button on her transmitter and crisply called out the numbers to MICE-6.

  ‘Well done!’ Glory heard Sir Edmund say. ‘Well done, indeed!’

  Bubble joined them, panting. ‘What was that all about?’ he asked.

  Squeak flipped the credit card over and tapped the security code with her paw. ‘Couldn’t cancel the exterminations without this,’ she explained. ‘Bunsen figured it out. Problem was, we only had until ten o’clock to do it.’

  Glory turned and stared at Big Ben. The fur on the back of her neck prickled as she saw that the clock’s hands pointed to two minutes to ten. ‘We almost didn’t make it,’ she whispered.

  ‘A very close call,’ agreed Bubble soberly.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Squeak. ‘But we did make it, thanks to you two.’ She slipped the credit card into her backpack. ‘I’d better take this to HQ. The Royal Guard are waiting for you below.’

  And with that she flew off.

  Suddenly, Roquefort Dupont reappeared over the side of the sloping glass observation-car roof. Glory and Bubble clutched each other in fright, then relaxed when they saw that he too was dangling safely from SAS claws.

  There was no sign of Fumble, however.

  ‘Let me go! You don’t know who you’re dealing with!’ screamed Dupont, struggling with all his considerable might. ‘I am Roquefort Dupont! The great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-greatgreat-great-grandson of Camembert Dupont!’

  One of the bats hovered in front of Dupont’s ugly snout. ‘You are the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandsssssson of Camembert Dupont?’ he repeated.

  ‘Heard of me, have you?’ sneered Dupont. ‘That’s right, buddy, and you and your bat-brained friends here better not forget it! Release me now, and I’ll go easy on you.’

  ‘Releassssse you?’ whispered the bat. ‘I think not. We have an old, old ssssscore to sssssettle. Cccccenturies old.’ He flew over to Glory and Bubble. ‘Permisssssion to dissssspose of the prisssssoner?’

  ‘Granted,’ Glory replied promptly.

  ‘Take them both,’ offered Bubble, gesturing towards Stilton Piccadilly. ‘Two for one, just for tonight. Christmas Eve special.’

  ‘We’ll keep this, though,’ added Glory, plucking the Sovereign’s Ring out of Piccadilly’s paws. She tucked it inside the velvet pouch, then nodded at Goldwhiskers. ‘And that one as well, for now.’

  The bat inclined his ugly head and flapped away. He signalled to the rest of the SAS, and in a trice Roquefort Dupont and Stilton Piccadilly were ferried off, still thrashing and snarling in protest. The last that Glory saw of them was their silhouetted forms soaring across the illuminated face of Big Ben as the great bell rang out its famous chime. BONG! BONG! BONG! tolled the bell, a total of ten times to mark the hour. The sound came as music to Glory’s ears. What had almost been a death toll for her – and for the mice of London – was now the sweet sound of victory.

  ‘That’s that, then,’ said Bubble, watching as one of the bats finally managed to corner the nimble Farthing. The mouseling squealed, puddled, then went limp as the SAS member gripped him firmly and flew off towards Nibbleswick.

  ‘Not quite,’ said Glory, pointing to the still-struggling Goldwhiskers. ‘One last Christmas Eve crisis to deal with.’

  She and Bubble drew closer to the big rat.

  ‘Looks like they were right about the curse of the Koh-i-Noor,’ she told him, patting the velvet pouch. ‘It certainly proved unlucky for you.’

  ‘That’s MY diamond!’ Goldwhiskers howled, bucking and snarling in fury. His efforts to free himself were in vain, however. The bats had him in a ferociously tight grip.

  ‘Not any more,’ said Glory, handing the pouch to Bubble. ‘Would you mind carrying these? We’ll get the Royal Guard to take us to 80 Strand. I have plans for our boogeyrat here.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  DAY TWO – TUESDAY 2225 HOURS

  Oz glanced nervously at his watch, then across the row of red velvet seats. He, DB, Nigel and his father were seated together in the front row, flanked by police. Standing in the stage wings and at every entrance were more policemen, as well as detectives from Scotland Yard. No one was taking any more chances tonight. Not after Oz had been caught re-entering the opera house. Dressed in a disguise, no less.

  ‘Where’s Priscilla?’ whispered his father.

  ‘Napping,’ Oz whispered back, which was true.

  There had been no word yet from Glory or any of the other spy mice. Oz had no clue what was going on in the skies over London. He didn’t know if Operation SMASH had been foiled, or whether the SAS had rescued his friends and retrieved the Crown Jewels. He glanced at his watch again. It was nearly ten thirty. The finale was about to start. Surely he should have heard something by now.

  ‘Stop fidgeting!’ scolded DB. ‘You too, Nigel!’

  Nigel stared at the stage. ‘Do you think it’s really going to work?’

  ‘Of course,’ said DB confidently. ‘Our plans always work.’

  ‘Well, mostly,’ added Oz.

  Mr Henshaw raised his baton, and the orchestra struck the opening chords of ‘White Christmas’. Oz, DB and Nigel sat up expectantly. Right on cue, fog began drifting across the stage.

  ‘Dry ice,’ whispered DB. ‘Jus
t like you said, Oz.’

  Glittering paper snowflakes began drifting down from above the stage, and then, as if by magic, two enormous presents, one wrapped in red foil, one in silver, rose up through the floor. The audience gasped in wonder and began to applaud vigorously.

  Beside him, the policeman shifted in his seat, and Oz looked over to see a detective from Scotland Yard coming down the aisle. He was frowning. He handed a note to the policeman next to Oz’s father. A curtain fluttered up above in the Royal Box, and Oz saw a detective hand the Queen a note as well. She frowned, and Oz’s heart sank. This was it, then. The end of the line. He was going to be arrested.

  The policeman read the note, then passed it to Luigi Levinson. Oz’s father read it and let out a loud whoosh of relief. He leaned over and gave his son a bear hug. ‘Looks like we’re off the hook!’ he whispered. ‘They just found the jewels.’

  Oz glanced up at the Royal Box. The Queen smiled and gave him a discreet nod. Oz, who hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath, exhaled. He smiled back. Everything was going to be OK! The SAS had come through. Glory could fill him in on the details later.

  Onstage, the two sopranos took their seats on the fake presents and began to sing. ‘I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, with every Christmas card I – whoops!’ Prudence Winterbottom bounced slightly, and her voice shot up an octave. She quickly regained her composure and continued. ‘With every Christmas card I write!’

  Suddenly, Prudence Winterbottom catapulted off the giant silver foil-wrapped present. With a loud thud, she landed flat on her backside on the stage floor. The orchestra wheezed to a halt. The top of the fake present flew off, and Priscilla Winterbottom, dressed as one of the Nutcracker ballet’s giant rats, poked her furry, grey, costumed nose out. She sneezed.

  Nigel Henshaw put his hand over his mouth and stifled a giggle.

  ‘Slushbutt goes down!’ whispered DB in triumph.

  There was a moment of stunned silence from the audience. Priscilla climbed out of the box and stood there, blinking sleepily. She yawned, and peals of laughter rippled out across the Royal Opera House.