EXCERPT FROM ARTEMIS FOWL’S DIARY DISK 2 ENCRYPTED
Today Father was fitted for his prosthetic limb. He joked throughout the entire process, as though he were being measured for a new suit on Grafton Street. I must admit, his good humour was infectious, and I found myself making excuses just to sit in the corner of the hospital room and enjoy his presence.
It wasn’t always this way. In the past, one needed valid grounds to visit my father. Of course, he wasn’t generally available, and even when he was, his time was limited. One did not burst into the Fowl study without good reason. But now I feel welcome at his side. It is a nicefeeling.
My father always liked to impart wisdom, but now it is more philosophical than financial. In the old days, he would direct my attention to the latest share prices in the Financial Times.
‘Look, Artemis’, he would say. ‘Everything else Jails, but gold stays steady. That is because there is not enough of it. And there never will be. Buy gold, boy, and keep it safe.’
I liked to listen to his pearls of wisdom, but now they are harder to understand.
On the third day of his consciousness, I fell asleep on the hospital bed while my father did his walking exercises. I woke to find him looking at me thoughtfully.
‘Shall I tell you something, Arty?’ he said. I nodded, unsure what to expect.
‘While I was a prisoner I thought about my life, how I had wasted it gathering riches whatever the cost to my family and others around me. In a man’s life, he gets few chances to make a difference. To do the right thing. To be a hero, if you will. I intend to become involved in that struggle.’
This was not the kind of wisdom I was accustomed to hearing from my father. Was this his natural personality or the fairy magic? Or a combination of both?
‘I never got involved before. I always thought the world could not be changed.’
Father’s gaze was intense, burning with new passion. ‘But things are different now. My priorities are different. I intend to seize the day, be the hero that every father should be.’ He sat on the bed beside me.
‘And what about you, Arty? Will you make the journey with me?
When the moment comes will you take your chance to be a hero?’
I couldn’t respond. I didn’t know the answer. I still don’t.
FOWL MANOR
For two hours Artemis locked himself in his study, sitting cross-legged in the meditative position taught to him by Butler. Occasionally he would voice an idea aloud, to be picked up by a voice-activated digital recorder placed on the mat before him. Butler and Juliet knew better than to interrupt the planning process. This period was crucial to the success of their mission. Artemis had the ability to visualize a hypothetical situation and calculate the likely outcomes. It was almost a dream state, and any disturbance could send the thread of his ideas flying like vapours.
Eventually Artemis emerged, tired but satisfied. He held three CD-writable disks.
‘I want you to study these files,’ he said. ‘They contain details of your assignment. When you have memorized the contents destroy the disks.’
Holly took the disks.
‘A CD. How quaint. We have these in museums.’
‘There are several computers in the study,’ continued Artemis. ‘Use any terminal you wish.’
Butler was empty-handed.
‘Nothing for me, Artemis?’ he asked.
Artemis waited until the others had gone.
‘I needed to give you your instructions verbally,’ he began. ‘I don’t want to risk Foaly picking them up from the computer.’
Butler sighed deeply, sinking into a leather armchair by the fireplace.
‘I’m not going with you. Am I?’
Artemis sat on the chair’s arm. ‘No, old friend. But I have an important task for you.’
‘Really, Artemis,’ said Butler. ‘I’ve skipped right over my midlife crisis. You don’t have to invent a job just to make me feel useful.’
‘No, Butler. This is of vital importance. It concerns the mind wipes.
If my plan succeeds, we will have to submit to them. I see no way to sabotage the process itself, so I must ensure that something survives
Foaly’s search. Something that will trigger our memories of the People.
Foaly once told me that a strong enough stimulus can result in total recall.’
Butler shifted his position in the chair, wincing. His chest was still giving him trouble. Not surprising really. He had been alive less than two days. ‘Any ideas?’
‘We need to lay a couple of false trails. Foaly will be expecting that.’
‘Of course. A hidden file on the server. I could send an e-mail to ourselves, but not pick it up. Then the first time we check our mail, all this information will come through.’
Artemis handed the bodyguard a folded sheet of A4.
‘No doubt we will be mesmerized and questioned. In the past we have hidden from the mesmer behind mirrored sunglasses. We won’t get away with that on this occasion. So, we need to come up with something else. Here are the instructions.’
Butler studied the plans.
‘It’s possible. I know someone in Limerick. The best man in the country for this kind of specialized work.’
‘Excellent,’ said Artemis. ‘After that, you need to put everything we have on the People on a disk. All documents, videos, schematics.
Everything. And don’t forget my diary. The whole story is there.’
‘And where do we hide this disk?’ asked Butler.
Artemis untied the fairy pendant from around his neck.
‘I’d say this was about the same size as the disk. Wouldn’t you?’
Butler tucked the gold medallion into his jacket pocket.
‘It soon will be,’ he said.
Butler prepared them a meal. Nothing fancy. Vegetarian spring rolls, followed by mushroom risotto with creme caramel to finish. Mulch opted for a bucket of diced worms and beetles, sauteed in a rainwater and moss vinaigrette.
‘Has everybody studied their files?’ Artemis asked, when the group had adjourned to the library.
‘Yes,’ said Holly. ‘But I seem to be missing a few key pieces.’
‘Nobody has the entire plan. Just the parts concerning them. I think it’s safer that way. Do we have the equipment I specified?’
Holly dumped the contents of her pack on the rug.
‘A complete LEP surveillance kit, including camouflage foil, mikes,
video clips and a first aid box.’
‘Plus we still have two intact LEP helmets and three laser handguns left over from the siege,’ added Butler. ‘And, of course, one of the prototype Cubes from the lab.’
Artemis passed the cordless phone to Mulch. ‘Very well then. We may as well get started.’
THE SPIRO NEEDLE
Jon Spiro sat in his opulent office, staring glumly at the C Cube on his desk. People thought it was easy being him. How little they knew. The more money you had, the more pressure you were under. He had eight hundred employees in this building alone, all relying on him for a pay cheque. They wanted yearly salary reviews, medical plans, baby-care centres, regular coffee breaks, double pay for overtime and even stock options, for heaven’s sake. Sometimes Spiro missed the times when a troublesome worker was thrown out of a high window and that was the end of him. These days, if you threw someone out of a window, they’d phone their lawyer on the way down.
But this Cube could be the answer to his prayers. A once-in-a-lifetime deal, the brass ring. If he could get this weird little gizmo working, the sky was the limit. Literally. The world’s satellites would be his to command. He would have complete control over spy satellites, military lasers, communications networks and, most important of all, television stations. He could feasibly rule the world.
His secretary buzzed from reception.
‘Mister Blunt to see you, sir.’
Spiro jabbed the intercom button.
‘OK, Marlene, send him in. And tell him he better look sorry.’
Blunt did indeed look sorry when he pushed through the double doors. The doors themselves were imposing enough. Spiro had them stolen from the ballroom of the sunken Titanic. They were a perfect example of power gone mad.
Arno Blunt was not quite so cocky as he had been in London. Then again, it is difficult to look arrogant when your forehead is a mass of bruises and your mouth is full of gums and nothing else.
Spiro winced at the sight of his sunken cheeks.
‘How many teeth did you lose?’
Blunt touched his jaw gingerly.
‘All ob ‘em. Dendish shaid de roods are shaddered.’
‘It serves you right,’ said Spiro matter-of-factly. ‘What do I gotta do, Arno? I hand you Artemis Fowl on a platter and you mess it up. Tell me what happened. And I don’t want to hear about any earthquakes. I want the truth.’
Blunt wiped a blob of drool from the corner of his mouth.
‘I doh undershtan ih. Shomeshin explohduh. I dunno wha’. Shome kinna shoun grenay. Buh I dell you shomeshin. Budlah ish dead. I shod him in de head. No way he’sh geddin uh affer da.’
‘Oh, shut up!’ snapped Spiro. ‘You’re giving me a headache. The sooner you get those new teeth, the better.’
‘My gumsh wi be healed suffishendly by hish afernoo.’
‘I thought I told you to shut up!’
‘Shorry, bosh.’
‘You’ve put me in a very difficult situation, Arno. Because of your incompetence I had to hire a team from the Antonellis. Carla is a smart girl; she could decide that they deserve a percentage. It would cost me billions.’
Arno tried his best to look remorseful.
‘And don’t bother with the puppy dog look, Blunt. It doesn’t cut any ice with me. If this deal goes south, you’ll be losing a lot more than a couple of teeth.’
Arno decided to change the subject.
‘Sho, di’ your shiendishds geh de Cube worging?’
‘No,’ said Spiro, twisting his gold identity bracelet. ‘Fowl has it sealed up tight. An Eternity Code, or some such thing. That idiot, Pearson, couldn’t get a peep out of it.’
It was at that moment, dramatically, that a voice emanated from the C Cube’s micro-speaker mesh.
‘Mister Spiro?’ said the voice. ‘This is Ireland calling. Do you read,
Mister Spiro?’
Jon Spiro was not a man who spooked easily. He hadn’t seen a horror movie yet that could make him jump in his seat, but the voice coming out of that speaker almost knocked him off his chair. The quality was incredible. Close your eyes and you’d swear that the person speaking was standing right in front of you.
‘You wan’ me do anshwer da?’
‘I told you to shut up! Anyway, I don’t know how to answer this thing.’
‘I can hear you, Mister Spiro,’ said the voice. ‘You don’t need to do anything. Just talk. The box does the rest.’ Spiro noticed that a digital wave meter had appeared on the Cube’s screen. When he spoke it registered.
‘OK then. We got communication. Now, who the hell are you? And how did you get this box working?’
‘The name is Mo Digence, Mister Spiro. I’m the monkey from Carla Frazetti’s team. I don’t know what kind of box you have at your end; I just have a plain old telephone.’
‘Well, who dialled the number then?’
‘A little kid I have here by the scruff of the neck. I impressed upon him how important it was that I talk to you.’
‘And how did you know to talk to me? Who gave you my name?’
‘Again, the kid. He was very eager to tell me everything after he saw what I did to the metal man.’
Spiro sighed. If the metal man was damaged, he would have to pay the Antonellis a fine.
‘What did you do to the metal man?’
‘Nothing permanent. But he won’t be aiming any guns at kids for a while.’
‘Why did you feel it necessary to damage your own partner, Digence?’
There was a pause on the other end while Mulch got the supposed sequence of events sorted out.
‘It was like this, Mister Spiro. Our instructions were to escort the kid across to the US. But Loafers goes crazy and starts waving a gun about. I figured this was the wrong way to go, so I stopped him. Forcibly. Anyway, the kid gets so scared that he tells me everything I want to know. And here I am now having a conversation with you.’
Spiro rubbed his hands together. ‘You did the right thing, Digence. There’ll be a bonus in this for you. I’ll see to it personally.’
‘Thanks, Mister Spiro. Believe me, the pleasure was mine.’
‘Is the Fowl kid there?’
‘Right beside me. A little pale, but not a scratch on him.’
‘Put him on,’ ordered Spiro, all traces of depression vanishing.
‘Spiro, it’s me.’ Artemis’s voice was aloof, but with an unmistakable tremor.
Spiro squeezed the air, as though it were Artemis’s neck.
‘Not so cocky now, kid? It’s like I told you, you don’t have the guts for this job. Me, on the other hand, if I don’t get what I want, then I’ll have Mo put you out of my misery. Do we understand each other?’
‘Yes. Loud and clear.’
‘Good,’ said Spiro, clamping a huge Cuban cigar between his teeth.
It would be chewed to a pulp, but not lit. ‘Now, talk. What do I have to do to get this Cube working?’
Artemis’s voice sounded even shakier than before. ‘It’s not that simple, Mister Spiro. The C Cube is coded. Something called an Eternity Code. I can remotely access certain basic functions: the phone, MP3 player and so on, but to disable the code completely and unlock the Cube’s potential, I need to have it here in front of me. If you could just bring the Cube here. .’
Spiro spat out the cigar.
‘Hold it right there, Fowl. Just how stupid do you think I am? I’m going to bring this priceless technology back to Europe? Forget it! If you’re going to disable this thing, you’re going to do it here. In the Spiro Needle!’
‘But my tools? My lab?’
‘I got tools here. And a lab. The best in the world. You do it here.’
‘Yes. Whatever you say.’
‘That’s right, kid. Whatever I say. I want you to fuel up the Lear jet that I happen to know you have, and do a quick hop across to O’ Hare Airport. I’ll have a chopper waiting for you.’
‘I don’t suppose I have a choice.’
‘That’s right, kid. You don’t. But do this right and I might just let you go. Did you get all that, Digence?’
‘Loud and clear, Mister Spiro.’
‘Good. I’m counting on you to get the kid here safely.’
‘Consider it done.’
The line went dead.
Spiro chuckled.
‘I think I’m going to celebrate,’ he said, punching the intercom button. ‘Marlene, send in a pot of coffee, and no low-caffeine junk either. I want the real thing.’
‘But, Mister Spiro, your doctors said Spiro waited for his secretary to realize who she was arguing with.
‘I’m sorry, sir. Right away, sir.’
Spiro leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head.
‘You see, Blunt. This is going to turn out fine, in spite of your incompetence. I got that kid just where I want him.’
‘Yesh, shir. Mashderfully done, shir.’
Spiro laughed. ‘Shut up, you clown. You sound like some cartoon character.’
‘Yesh. Mosh amushing, shir.’
Spiro licked his lips, anticipating his coffee. ‘For a supposed genius, that kid sure is gullible. Do this right and I might just let you go? He fell for that one hook, line and sinker.’
Blunt tried to grin. It was not a pretty sight. ‘Yesh, Mishduh Shpiro. Hoo, line an’ shinkuh.’
FOWL MANOR
Artemis hung up the phone, his face flushed with the thrill of the sting.
‘What do you think?’ he asked.
‘I think he bought it,’ replied Butler.
‘Hook, line and sinker,’ added Mulch. ‘You have a jet? I presume there’s a kitchen.’
Butler drove them to Dublin Airport in the Bentley. It was to be his final act in this particular operation. Holly and Mulch huddled in the back, glad of the tinted glass.
The Butler siblings sat up front, dressed in corresponding black
Armani suits. Juliet had jazzed hers up with a pink cravat and glitter make-up. The family resemblance was clear: the same narrow nose and full lips. The same eyes, jumping in their sockets like roulette balls in the wheel. Watching, always watching.
‘You don’t need a traditional gun on this trip,’ said Butler. ‘Use an
LEP blaster. They don’t need reloading, they shoot in a straight line forever and they’re non-lethal. I gave Holly a couple from my stash.’
‘Got it, Dom.’
Butler took the airport exit.
‘Dom. I haven’t been called that in so long. Being a bodyguard becomes your world. You forget to have your own life. Are you sure that’s what you want, Juliet?’
Juliet was twining her hair in a tight braid. At the end of the plait she attached an ornamental jade ring. Ornamental and dangerous.
‘Where else would I get to bodyslam people outside of a wrestling ring? Bodyguarding fits the bill, for the moment.’
Butler lowered his voice. ‘Of course, it’s completely against protocol for you to have Artemis as your principal. He already knows your first name and, truth be told, I think he’s a little fond of you.’
Juliet slapped the jade ring against her palm.
‘This is just temporary. I’m not anybody’s bodyguard just yet. Madame Ko doesn’t like my style.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Butler, pointing to the jade ring. ‘Where did you get that?’
Juliet smiled. ‘My own idea. A nice little surprise for anyone who underestimates females.’
Butler pulled into the set-down area.
‘Listen to me, Juliet,’ he said, catching his sister’s hand. ‘Spiro is dangerous. Look what happened to me, and, in all modesty, I was the best. If this mission weren’t so vital to humans and fairies, I wouldn’t let you go at all.’
Juliet touched her brother’s face.
‘I will be careful.’
They climbed on to the walkway. Holly hovered, shielded, just above the throngs of business travellers and holidaymakers. Mulch had applied a fresh layer of sunblock, and the stink repelled every human who was unfortunate enough to pick up his scent.
Butler touched Artemis’s shoulder.
‘Are you going to be all right?’
Artemis shrugged. ‘I honestly don’t know. Without you by my side I feel as though one of my limbs is missing.’
‘Juliet will keep you safe. She has an unusual style, but she is a Butler, after all.’
‘It’s one mission, old friend. Then there will be no more need for bodyguards.’
‘It’s a pity Holly couldn’t have simply mesmerized Spiro through the Cube.’
Artemis shook his head.
‘It wouldn’t have worked. Even if we could have set up a link, a fairy needs eye-to-eye contact to mesmerize a strong mind like Spiro’s. I don’t want to take any chances with this man. He needs to be put away. Even if the fairies relocated him, he could do some damage.’
‘What about your plan?’ Butler asked. ‘From what you told me, it’s quite convoluted. Are you sure it’s going to work?’
Artemis winked — a very unusual display of levity. ‘I’m sure,’ he said. ‘Trust me. I’m a genius.’
Juliet piloted the Lear jet across the Atlantic. Holly sat in the co-pilot’s chair, admiring the hardware.
‘Nice bird,’ she commented.
‘Not bad, fairy girl,’ said Juliet, switching to autopilot. ‘Not a patch on fairy craft, I’d bet?’
‘The LEP doesn’t believe in comfort,’ said Holly.
‘There’s barely enough room in an LEP shuttle to swing a stink worm.’
‘If you wanted to swing a stink worm.’
‘True.’ Holly studied the pilot. ‘You’ve grown a lot in two years. The last time I saw you, you were a little girl.’
Juliet smiled. ‘A lot can happen in two years. I spent most of that time wrestling big hairy men.’
‘You should see fairy wrestling. Two pumped-up gnomes having it out in a zero G chamber. Not a pretty sight. I’ll send you a videodisc.’
‘No, you won’t.’
Holly remembered the mind wipes.
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘No, I won’t.’
In the passenger section of the Lear jet, Mulch was reliving his glory days.
‘Hey, Artemis,’ he said, through a mouthful of caviar. ‘Remember the time I nearly blew Butler’s head off with a blast of gas?’
Artemis did not smile. ‘I remember, Mulch. You were the spanner in an otherwise perfect works.’
‘To tell you the truth, it was an accident. I was just nervous. I didn’t even realize the big guy was there.’
‘That makes me feel better. Scuppered by a bowel problem.’
‘And do you remember the time I saved your neck in Koboi
Laboratories? If it hadn’t been for me, you’d be locked up in Howler’s Peak right now. Can’t you do anything without me?’
Artemis sipped mineral water from a crystal flute.
‘Apparently not, though I live for the day.’
Holly made her way back through the aisle.
‘We’d better get you kitted out, Artemis. We land in thirty minutes.’
‘Good idea.’
Holly emptied the bag’s contents on to the central table.
‘OK, what do we need for now? The throat mike and an iris-camera.’
The LEP captain selected what looked like a circular adhesive bandage from the pile. She peeled back the adhesive layer and stuck the material to Artemis’s neck. It immediately turned the colour of his skin.
‘Memory latex,’ explained Holly. ‘It’s almost invisible. Maybe an ant crawling up your neck might notice it, but apart from that. . The material is also X-ray proof, so the mike is undetectable. It will pick up whatever is said within a ten-metre radius, and I record it on my helmet chip. Unfortunately, we can’t risk an earpiece — too visible. So we can hear you, but you won’t be able to hear us.’
Artemis swallowed, feeling the mike ride on his Adam’s apple.
‘And the camera?’
‘Here we go.’
Holly removed a contact lens from a jar of fluid.
‘This thing is a marvel. We’ve got hi-resolution, digital quality, recordable picture with several filter options, including magnification and thermal.’
Mulch sucked a chicken bone dry.
‘You’re starting to sound like Foaly.’
Artemis stared at the lens.
‘A technological marvel it may be, but it’s hazel.’
‘Of course it’s hazel. My eyes are hazel.’
‘I’m glad to hear it, Holly. But my eyes are blue, as you well know. This iris-cam will not do.’
‘Don’t look at me like that, Mud Boy. You’re the genius.’
‘I can’t go in there with one brown eye and one blue eye. Spiro will notice.’
‘Well, you should have thought of that while you were meditating. It’s a little late now.’
Artemis pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘You’re right, of course. I am the mastermind here. Thinking is my responsibility, not yours.’
Holly squinted suspiciously. ‘Was that an insult, Mud Boy?’
Mulch spat the chicken bone into a nearby bin.
‘I have to tell you, Arty, a cock-up this early in the proceedings doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence. I hope you’re as clever as you keep telling everyone you are.’
‘I never tell anybody exactly how clever I am. They would be too scared. Very well, we will have to risk the hazel iris-cam. With any luck, Spiro might not notice. If he does, I can invent some excuse.’
Holly placed the camera on the tip of her finger, sliding the lens under Artemis’s lid.
‘It’s your decision, Artemis,’ she said. ‘I just hope you haven’t met your match in Jon Spiro.’
11 P.M., O’ HARE AIRPORT, CHICAGO
Spiro was waiting for them at O’Hare’s private hangar. He wore a fur-collared greatcoat over his trademark white suit. Halogen lamps blasted the tarmac, and the downdraught from the chopper blades snagged his coat tails. It was all very cinematic.
All we need now is background music, thought Artemis as he descended the motorized steps.
As per instructions, Mulch was putting on the gangster act.
‘Move it, kid,’ he snarled, quite convincingly. ‘We don’t want to keep Mister Spiro waiting.’
Artemis was about to respond when he realized that he was supposed to be the ‘terrified kid’. It wasn’t going to be easy. Being humble was a real problem for Artemis Fowl.
‘I said move it!’ repeated the dwarf, stressing the point with a firm shove.
Artemis stumbled the last few steps, almost colliding with a grinning Arno Blunt. And this was no ordinary grin. Blunt’s teeth had been replaced by a custom-crafted porcelain set. The tips had been filed to sharp points.
The bodyguard looked for all the world like a human shark hybrid.
Blunt caught Artemis’s stare.
‘You like ‘em? I got other sets too. One is all flat. For crushing stuff.’
A cynical sneer was forming on Artemis’s mouth before he remembered his role, replacing the sneer with a set of quivering lips. He was basing his performance on the effect Butler usually had on people.
Spiro was not impressed.
‘Nice acting, sonny. But pardon me if I doubt the great Artemis Fowl has fallen to pieces quite so easily. Arno, check the plane.’
Blunt nodded curtly, ducking inside the private jet. Juliet was dressed in a flight attendant’s uniform and was straightening the headrest covers. For all her athletic ability, she was finding it difficult not to fall out of her high heels.
‘Where’s the pilot?’ growled Blunt, living up to his name.
‘Master Artemis flies the plane,’ replied Juliet. ‘He’s been flying it since he was eleven years old.’
‘Oh, really? Is that legal?’
Juliet put on her best innocent face. ‘I don’t know about legal, Mister. I just serve the drinks.’
Blunt grunted, charming as ever, and had a quick poke about the jet’s interior. Eventually he decided to accept the flight attendant’s word.
Lucky for him, because had he decided to argue, two things would have happened. First, Juliet would have clobbered him with the jade ring. And second, Holly, who was lying shielded in an overhead locker, would have blasted him into unconsciousness with her Neutrino 2000. Of course, Holly could simply have mesmerized the bodyguard, but after what he had done to Butler, a blasting seemed more appropriate.
Blunt stuck his head through the hatch.
‘No one in there except some dumb attendant.’
Spiro was not surprised.
‘I didn’t think so. But they’re here somewhere. Believe it or not,
Digence, Artemis Fowl did not get suckered by a goon like you. He’s here because he wants to be here.’
Artemis was not surprised by this deduction. It was only natural that Spiro should be suspicious.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said. ‘I’m here because this odious little man threatened to crush my skull between his teeth. Why else would I come? The C Cube is useless to you, and I could easily construct another one.’
Spiro was not even listening.
‘Yeah, yeah, whatever you say, kid. But let me tell you something.
You bit off more than you could chew when you agreed to come here. The Spiro Needle has the best security on the planet. We’ve got stuff in there that even the military don’t have. Once those doors close behind you, you’re on your own. Nobody is coming to save you. Nobody. Understand?’
Artemis nodded. He understood what Spiro was saying to him. That wasn’t to say that he agreed with it. Jon Spiro might have stuff that the military didn’t have, but Artemis Fowl had stuff that humans had never seen.
A Sikorsky executive helicopter whisked them downtown to the Spiro Needle. They landed on a helipad on the skyscraper’s roof. Artemis was familiar with helicopter controls, and realized how difficult it must be to land in the bluster of the Windy City.
‘The wind speed must be treacherous at this altitude,’ he said casually. Holly could record the information on her helmet chip.
‘You’re telling me,’ shouted the pilot over the rotors’ din. ‘It gets over sixty miles an hour on top of the Needle. The helipad can sway up to ten metres in rough conditions.’
Spiro groaned, giving Blunt a nod. Arno reached forward and whacked the pilot’s helmet.
‘Shut up, you moron!’ snapped Spiro. ‘Why don’t you give him the blueprints to the building while you’re at it?’ He turned to Artemis. ‘And in case you’re wondering, Arty, there aren’t any blueprints floating around.
Anybody who goes looking in City Hall is going to find that file mysteriously missing. I have the only set, so don’t bother getting one of your associates to do an Internet search.’
No surprises there. Artemis had already run several searches himself, although he hadn’t really expected Spiro to be so careless.
They climbed down from the Sikorsky. Artemis was careful to point the iris-cam at any security feature that could be useful later. Butler had often told him that even a seemingly insignificant detail, like the number of steps in a stairwell, could be vital when planning an operation.
A lift brought them down from the helipad to a key-coded door.
Closed-circuit cameras were strategically placed to cover the entire rooftop. Spiro moved ahead to the keypad. Artemis felt a sharp sting in his eye and suddenly the iris-cam magnified his vision by four. In spite of the distance and shadows he could easily discern the entry code.
‘I hope you got that,’ he muttered, feeling the mike vibrating on his throat.
Arno Blunt bent his knees, so his extraordinary teeth were a centimetre from Artemis’s nose.
‘Are you talking to someone?’
‘Me?’ said Artemis. ‘Who would I be talking to? We’re eighty floors up, in case you hadn’t noticed.’
Blunt grabbed the teenager by the lapels, hoisting him off the tarmac.
‘Maybe you’re wearing a wire. Maybe you have someone listening to us right now.’
‘How could I be wearing a wire, you big oaf? Your miniature hit man hasn’t let me out of his sight for the entire journey. He even accompanied me to the bathroom.’
Spiro cleared his throat noisily.
‘Hey there, Mister I-Gotta-Make-My-Point, that kid slips over the side and you might as well throw yourself off, because that boy is worth more to me than an army of bodyguards.’
Blunt set Artemis down.
‘You’re not going to be valuable forever, Fowl,’ he whispered ominously. ‘And when your stock falls, I’ll be waiting.’
They took a mirrored lift to the eighty-fifth floor, where Doctor Pearson waited, along with two more muscle-bound minders. Artemis could tell by the look in their eyes that these two weren’t exactly brain surgeons. In fact, they were as close as you could get to Rottweillers still balanced on two legs. It was probably handy to have them around to break things and not ask questions.
Spiro called one of them over.
‘Pex, do you know what the Antonellis charge if you lose their personnel?’
Pex had to consider it for a moment. His lips moved as he thought.
‘Yeah, wait, I got it. Twenty grand for a metal man and fifteen for a monkey.’
‘That’s dead, right?’
‘Dead or incapaci. . incatacip. . broken.’
‘OK,’ said Spiro. ‘I want you and Chips to go over to Carla Frazetti’s and tell her I owe her thirty-five grand for the team. I’ll wire it to her Cayman account in the morning.’
Mulch was understandably curious, and not a little apprehensive.
‘Excuse me? Thirty-five grand? But I’m still alive. You only owe twenty grand for Loafers, unless the extra fifteen K is my bonus?’
Spiro sighed with almost convincing regret.
‘This is the way it is, Mo,’ he said, punching Mulch playfully on the shoulder. ‘This deal is huge. Mammoth. We’re talking telephone numbers.
I can’t afford any loose ends. Maybe you know something, maybe you don’t. But I’m not about to take the chance that you might tip off Phonetix or one of my other competitors. I’m sure you understand.’
Mulch stretched his lips, revealing a row of tombstone teeth.
‘I understand all right, Spiro. You’re a back-stabbing snake. You know, the kid offered me two million dollars to cut him loose.’
‘You should have taken the cash,’ said Arno Blunt, propelling Mulch into Pex’s gigantic arms.
The dwarf kept talking, even as he was being dragged down the corridor.
‘You better bury me deep, Spiro. You better bury me real deep.’
Spiro’s eyes narrowed to wet slits.
‘You heard the man, boys. Before you go to Frazetti’s, bury him deep.’
Doctor Pearson led the party through to the vault room. They had to pass through a small antechamber before entering the main security area.
‘Please stand on the scanner pad,’ said Pearson. ‘We wouldn’t want any bugs in here. Especially not the electronic kind.’
Artemis stepped on to the mat. It sank like a sponge beneath his feet, spurting jets of foam over his shoes.
‘Anti-infection foam,’ explained Pearson. ‘Kills any virus you might have picked up. We’re keeping some bio-technology experiments in the vault at the moment. Very susceptible to disease. The foam has the added advantage of shorting out any surveillance devices in your shoes.’
Overhead a mobile scanner bathed Artemis’s frame in purple light.
‘One of my own inventions,’ said Pearson. ‘A combination scanner. I have incorporated thermal, X-Ray and metal-detector beams. The beam basically breaks your body down into its elements and displays them on this screen here.’
Artemis saw a 3D replica of himself being traced out on the small plasma screen. He held his breath, praying that Foaly’s equipment was as clever as the centaur thought it was.
On-screen, a red light pulsed on Artemis’s jacket front.
‘Aha,’ said Doctor Pearson, plucking off a button. ‘What have we here?’ He cracked the button open, revealing a tiny chip, mike and power source.
‘Very clever. A micro-bug. Our young friend was attempting to spy on us, Mister Spiro.’
Jon Spiro was not angry. In fact, he was delighted to have the opportunity to gloat.
‘You see, kid. You may be some kind of genius, but surveillance and espionage are my business. You can’t slip anything past me. And the sooner you accept that, the sooner we can get this thing over with.’
Artemis stepped off the pad. The decoy had worked, and the real bugs hadn’t caused a blip in the system. Pearson was smart, but Foaly was smarter.
Artemis made sure he had a good look around the antechamber.
There was more here. Every square centimetre of the metal surface contained a security or surveillance device. From what Artemis could see, an invisible ant would have trouble sneaking in. Not to mention two humans, an elf and a dwarf— assuming the dwarf survived Pex and Chips.
The vault door itself was impressive. Most corporate vaults looked impressive, plenty of chrome and keypads, but that was just to make an impression on stockholders. In Spiro’s vault there wasn’t a tumbler out of place. Artemis spotted the very latest computer lock on the face of titanium double doors. Spiro keyed in another complicated series of numbers, and the metre-thick doors slid back to reveal another barrier.
The secondary door.
‘Imagine you are a thief,’ said Spiro, an actor introducing a play, ‘and you somehow get into the building, past the electronic eyes and the locked doors. Then imagine you somehow cheat the lasers, the sensor pad and the door code, and open the first vault door — an impossible feat by the way. And while we’re imagining all this, let’s pretend you disable the half dozen cameras, and even then, even after all that, would you be able to do this?’
Spiro stood on a small red plate on the floor in front of the door. He placed a thumb on a gel-print scanner, held his left eyelid open and enunciated clearly.
‘Jon Spiro. I am the boss, so open up quick.’ Four things happened.
A retinal scanner filmed his left eye and fed the image into the computer.
A print plate scanned his right thumb, and a vocal analyser scrutinized his voice’s accent, timbre and intonations. Once the computer had verified all this information, the alarms were deactivated and the secondary door slid open to reveal an expansive vault.
In the very middle, in the centre of a custom-made steel column, rested the C Cube. It was enclosed in a perspex case, with at least six cameras focused on its various planes. Two burly guards stood back to back, forming a human barrier in front of the fairy technology.
Spiro could not resist a jibe. ‘Unlike you,’ he said, ‘I look after my technology. This is the only vault of its kind in the world.’
‘Live security in an airtight room. Interesting.’
‘These guys are trained at high altitude. Also, we change the guards on the hour, and they all carry oxygen cylinders to keep them going.
What did you think? I was going to put air vents into a vault?’
Artemis scowled. ‘No need to show off, Spiro. I’m here; you win. So can we get on with it?’
Spiro punched a final number sequence into the column’s keypad and the perspex panes retracted. He took the Cube from its foam nest.
‘Overkill, don’t you think?’ commented Artemis. ‘All of this is hardly necessary.’
‘You never know. Some crooked businessman could attempt to relieve me of my prize.’
Artemis took a chance on some calculated sarcasm.
‘Really, Spiro. Did you think I would attempt a break-in? Perhaps you thought I would fly in here with my fairy friends and magic your box away?’
Spiro laughed. ‘You can bring all the fairy friends you like, Arty boy. Short of a miracle that Cube is staying right where it is.’
Juliet was an American citizen by birth, even though her brother had been born on the other side of the world. She was glad to be back in her home country. The discord of Chicago’s traffic and the constant chorus of multicultural voices made her feel at home. She loved the skyscrapers and the steam vents and the affectionate sarcasm of the street vendors. If she ever got the chance to settle down, it would be in the US. On the west coast though, somewhere with sun.
Juliet and Holly were circling the Spiro Needle in a blacked out mini-van. Holly sat in the back, watching the live video feed from Artemis’s iris-cam on her helmet visor.
At one point she punched the air triumphantly.
Juliet stopped at a red light. ‘How are we doing?’
‘Not bad,’ replied the fairy, raising her visor. ‘They’re taking Mulch to bury him.’
‘Cool. Just like Artemis said they would.’
‘And Spiro has just invited all of Artemis’s fairy friends into the building.’
This was a crucial development. The Book forbade fairies from entering human buildings without an invitation. Now Holly was free to break in and wreak havoc without violating fairy doctrine.
‘Excellent,’ said Juliet. ‘We’re in. I get to bodyslam the guy who shot my brother.’
‘Not so fast. This building has the most sophisticated Mud Man security system I’ve seen. Spiro has a few tricks in there that I’ve never come across before.’
Juliet finally found a space opposite the Needle’s main revolving doors.
‘No problem for the little horsey guy, surely?’
‘No, but Foaly’s not supposed to help us.’
Juliet focused a set of binoculars on the door. ‘I know, but it all depends on how you ask. A smart guy like Foaly — what he needs is a challenge.’
Three figures emerged from the Needle. Two large men in black and a smaller, nervous-looking individual. Mulch’s feet were treading air so fast that he seemed to be performing an Irish jig. Not that he had any hope of escaping. Pex and Chips had him tighter than two badgers fighting over a bone.
‘Here comes Mulch now. We better give him back-up. Just in case.’
Holly strapped on her mechanical harness, extending the wings with the touch of a button.
‘I’ll follow them from the air. You keep an eye on Artemis.’
Juliet ran a video lead from one of the spare helmets’ hand-held computers. Artemis’s point of view sprang to life on the screen.
‘Do you really think Mulch needs help?’ she asked.
Holly buzzed into invisibility. ‘Help? I’m just going along to make sure he doesn’t harm those two Mud Men.’
Inside the vault, Spiro was finished playing the gracious host.
‘Let me tell you a little story, Arty,’ he said, lovingly caressing the C Cube. ‘There was this Irish kid who thought he was ready for the big time. So he messed with a very serious businessman.’
Don’t call me Arty, thought Artemis. My father calls me Arty.
‘This businessman didn’t appreciate being messed with, so he messed back, and this kid is dragged kicking and screaming into the real world. So now this kid has to make a choice: does he tell the businessman what he needs to know, or does he put himself and his family in mortal danger? Well, Arty, which one is it?’
Spiro was making a serious mistake by toying with Artemis Fowl. It was difficult for adults to believe that this pale-faced thirteen-year-old could actually be a threat. Artemis had tried to take advantage of this by wearing casual clothes in place of his usual designer suit. He had also been practising an innocent, wide-eyed look on the jet, but wide-eyed was not how you wanted to look when one iris did not match the other.
Blunt prodded Artemis between the shoulder blades.
‘Mister Spiro asked you a question.’ His new teeth clicked as he talked.
‘I’m here, am I not?’ replied Artemis. ‘I’ll do whatever you wish.’
Spiro placed the Cube on a long steel table that ran down the centre of the vault.
‘What I wish is for you to disable your Eternity Code, and get this Cube working right now.’
Artemis wished that he could make himself perspire so that his anxiety would seem more authentic.
‘Right now? It’s not that simple.’
Spiro grabbed Artemis by the shoulders, staring him in the eye.
‘And why wouldn’t it be that simple? Just punch in the code word and away we go.’
Artemis averted his mismatched eyes, staring at the floor.
‘There is no straightforward code word. An Eternity Code is built to be irreversible. I have to reconstruct an entire language. It could take days.’
‘Don’t you have any notes?’
‘Yes. On disk. In Ireland. Your monkey wouldn’t let me bring anything in case it was booby-trapped.’
‘Can we access your hard drive online?’
‘Yes. But I only keep my notes on disk. We could fly back to Ireland. Eighteen hours, round trip.’
Spiro wouldn’t even consider that option. ‘Forget it. As long as I have you here, I’m in control. Who knows what kind of reception is waiting for me in Ireland? We do it here. As long as it takes.’
Artemis sighed. ‘Very well.’
Spiro replaced the Cube in its perspex case.
‘Get a good night’s sleep, kid, because tomorrow you’re going to peel this gizmo apart like an onion. And if you don’t, what’s about to happen to Mo Digence will happen to you.’
Artemis wasn’t unduly worried by that threat. He didn’t believe Mulch to be in any danger. In fact, if anyone was in trouble, it was those two musclemen Pex and Chips.
VACANT LOT, MALTHOUSE INDUSTRIAL ESTATE, SOUTH CHICAGO
Jon Spiro had not hired Pex and Chips for their debating skills. In the job interview they had only been set one task. A hundred applicants were handed a walnut and asked to smash it however they could. Only two succeeded. Pex had shouted at the walnut for a few minutes, then flattened it between his giant palms. Chips opted for a more controversial method. He placed the walnut on the table, grabbed his interviewer by the ponytail and used the man’s forehead to smash the nut. Both men were hired on the spot. They quickly established themselves as Arno
Blunt’s most reliable lieutenants for in-house work. They were not allowed outside Chicago as this could involve map reading — something Pex and Chips were not very good at.
At the moment, Pex and Chips were bonding under a full moon while Mulch dug a dwarf-sized pit in the dry clay behind an abandoned cement factory.
‘You wanna guess why they call me Pex?’ asked Pex, flexing his chest muscles as a hint.
Chips opened a packet of the potato chips he was forever crunching.
‘I dunno. Is it, like, short for something?’
‘Like what?’
‘I dunno,’ said Chips. He used the phrase a lot. ‘Francis?’
This sounded dumb, even to Pex. ‘Francis? How could Pex be short for Francis?’
Chips shrugged. ‘Hey. I had an Uncle Robert and everyone called him Bobby. That don’t make no sense neither.’
Pex rolled his eyes. ‘It’s pec-tor-als, moron. Pex is short for pectorals, on account of me having big chest muscles.’
In the pit, Mulch groaned. Listening to this mindless banter was almost as bad as having to dig a hole with a shovel. Mulch was tempted to deviate from the plan and launch himself into the flaky soil. But Artemis did not want any display of fairy powers at this stage of the proceedings. If he took off, and these goons escaped without being mesmerized, then Spiro’s paranoia would be driven up another notch.
On the surface, Chips was eager to continue the game.
‘Guess why they call me Chips,’ he said, hiding the bag of chips behind his back.
Pex kneaded his forehead. He knew this one.
‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘I can work it out.’
Mulch poked his head from the hole. ‘It’s because he eats chips, you idiot. Chips eats chips. You two are the thickest Mud Men I have ever met. Why don’t you just kill me? At least I won’t have to listen to your drivel.’
Pex and Chips were stunned. With all the mental exercise, they had almost forgotten about the little man in the hole. Plus, they were unaccustomed to prospective victims saying anything besides, ‘Oh no, please, God, no.’
Pex leaned over the grave’s lip. ‘What do you mean drivel?’
‘I mean that whole Chips Pex thing.’
Pex shook his head. ‘No, I mean what does the word “drivel” mean? I’ve never heard that one.’
Mulch was delighted to explain. ‘It means rubbish, garbage, claptrap, twaddle, baloney. Is that clear enough for you?’
Chips recognized the last one. ‘Baloney? Hey, that’s an insult! Are you insulting us, little man?’
Mulch clasped his hands in mock prayer. ‘Finally, a breakthrough.’
The musclemen were uncertain how to react to actual abuse. There were only two people alive who insulted them regularly: Arno Blunt and Jon Spiro. But that was part of the job — you just ignored that by turning up the music in your head.
‘Do we have to listen to his smart mouth?’ Pex asked his partner.
‘I don’t think so. Maybe I should phone Mister Blunt.’
Mulch groaned. If stupidity were a crime, these two would be public enemies one and two.
‘What you should do is kill me. That was the idea, wasn’t it? Just kill me and get it over with.’
‘What do you think, Chips? Should we just kill him?’
Chips chewed on a handful of barbecue Ruffles. ‘Yeah. Course. Orders is orders.’
‘But I wouldn’t just kill me,’ interjected Mulch.
‘You wouldn’t?’
‘Oh no. After the way I just insulted your intelligence? No, I deserve something special.’
You could almost see the steam coming out of Pex’s ears as his brain overheated.
‘That’s right, little man. We’re gonna do something special to you. We don’t take no insults from anybody!’
Mulch did not bother pointing out the double negative.
‘You’re right. I’ve got a smart mouth, and I deserve everything I’ve got coming to me.’
There followed a short silence as Pex and Chips tried to come up with something worse than the usual straight shooting.
Mulch gave them a minute, then made a polite suggestion.
‘If it were me, I’d bury me alive.’
Chips was horrified.
‘Bury you alive? That’s terrible! You’d be screaming and clawing the dirt. I could get nightmares.’
‘I promise to lie still. Anyway, I deserve it. I did call you a pair of overdeveloped, single-celled Cro-Magnons.’
‘Did you?’
‘Well, I have now.’
Pex was the more impulsive of the duo. ‘OK, Mister Digence. You know what we’re gonna do? We’re going to bury you alive.’
Mulch clapped two hands to his cheeks. ‘Oh, the horror!’
‘You asked for it, buddy.’
‘I did, didn’t I?’
Pex grabbed a spare shovel from the boot. ‘Nobody calls me an overdeveloped, signal bell crow magnet.’
Mulch lay down obligingly in his grave. ‘No. I bet nobody does.’
Pex shovelled furiously, gymnasium-sculpted muscles stretching his suit jacket. In minutes, Mulch’s form was completely covered.
Chips was feeling a bit squeamish. ‘That was horrible. Horrible. That poor little guy.’
Pex was unrepentant. ‘Yeah, well, he asked for it. Calling us. . all those things.’
‘But buried alive?! That’s like in that horror movie. Y’know, the one with all the horror.’
‘I think I saw that one. With all the words going up the screen at the end?’
‘Yeah, that was it. Tell you the truth, those words kinda ruined it for me.’
Pex stamped on the loose earth. ‘Don’t worry, buddy. There are no words in this movie.’
They climbed back into their Chevrolet automobile. Chips was still a bit upset.
‘You know, it’s much more real than a movie when it’s real.’
Pex ignored a no-access sign and pulled on to the motorway. ‘It’s the smell. You can’t smell stuff in a movie.’
Chips sniffed emotionally. ‘Digence musta been upset right there at the end.’
‘I’m not surprised.’
“Cause I could see him cryin’. His shoulders were shaking, like he was laughing. But he must have been crying. I mean, what sort of crazy whacko would laugh when he’s getting buried alive?’
‘He musta been crying.’
Chips opened a bag of smoky bacon curls. ‘Yeah. He musta been crying.’
Mulch was laughing so much that he nearly choked on the first mouthful of soil. What a pair of clowns! Then again, it was lucky for them that they had been clowns, otherwise they might have chosen their own method of execution.
Jaw unhinged, Mulch tunnelled straight down for five metres and then veered north to the cover of some abandoned warehouses. His beard hair sent out sonar signals in all directions. You couldn’t be too careful in built-up areas. There was always some wildlife, and Mud People had a habit of burying things in places you wouldn’t expect them. Pipes, septic tanks and barrels of industrial waste were all things he had taking an unwitting bite of in his day. And there is nothing worse than finding something in your mouth that you weren’t expecting to be there, especially if it’s wriggling.
It felt good to be tunnelling again. This was what dwarfs were born to do. The earth felt right between his fingers, and he soon settled into his distance rhythm. Scooping muck between his grinding teeth, breathing through slitted nostrils, and pumping waste material out the other end.
Mulch’s hair antennae informed him that there were no vibrations on the surface, so he kicked upwards using the last vestiges of dwarf gas to propel him from his hole.
Holly caught him a metre from the ground.
‘Charming,’ she said.
‘What can I tell you?’ said Mulch unapologetically. ‘I’m a force of nature. You were up there all that time?’
‘Yes, just in case things got out of hand. You put on quite a show.’
Mulch slapped the clay from his clothes. ‘A couple of Neutrino blasts could have saved me a lot of digging.’
Holly smiled in spooky imitation of Artemis. ‘That’s not in the plan. And we must stick to the plan now, mustn’t we?’
She draped a sheet of cam foil around the dwarf’s shoulders, and hooked him on to her Moonbelt.
‘Take it easy now, won’t you?’ said Mulch anxiously. ‘Dwarfs are creatures of the soil. We don’t like flying; we don’t even like jumping too high.’
Holly opened the throttle on her wings, heading downtown.
‘I’ll be just as considerate of your feelings as you are of the LEP’s.’
Mulch paled. Funny how this diminutive elf was much scarier than two six-foot hit men.
‘Holly, if I ever did anything to offend you, I unreservedly —’
He never finished that particular sentence, because their sudden acceleration forced the words back down his throat.
THE SPIRO NEEDLE
Arno Blunt walked Artemis to his cell. It was comfortable enough, with its own bathroom and entertainment system. There were a couple of things missing: windows and a handle on the door.
Blunt patted Artemis on the head.
‘I don’t know what happened in that London restaurant, but you try anything like that here, and I will turn you inside out and eat your organs.’ He gnashed his pointy teeth to make the point and leaned close, whispering into Artemis’s ear. Artemis could hear the teeth click with every syllable.
‘I don’t care what the boss says, you’re not going to be useful forever, so if I were you, I’d be very nice to me.’
‘If you were me,’ responded Artemis, ‘then I’d be you, and if I were you, then I’d hide somewhere far away.’
‘Oh, really? And why would you do that?’
Artemis paused to give him the full effect of his words.
‘Because Butler is coming for you. And he’s extremely annoyed.’
Blunt backed off a few steps. ‘No way, kid. I saw him go down. I saw the blood.’
Artemis grinned. ‘I didn’t say he was alive. I just said he was coming.’
‘You’re just messing with my mind. Mister Spiro warned me about this.’
Blunt edged out of the door, never taking his eyes off Artemis.
‘Don’t worry, Blunt. I don’t have him here in my pocket. You have hours, maybe days, before the time comes.’
Arno Blunt slammed the door so hard that the frame shook.
Artemis’s grin widened. Every cloud had a silver lining.
Artemis stepped into the shower, allowing the jet of hot water to pound him on the forehead. In truth, he felt a little anxious. It was one thing to formulate a plan in the safety of one’s own home. It was quite another to execute that plan while trapped in the lion’s den. And even though he would never admit it, his confidence had taken quite a pounding in the last few days. Spiro had outwitted him back in London, and without apparent effort. He had strolled into the entrepreneur’s trap as naively as a tourist down a back alley.
Artemis was well aware of his talents. He was a plotter, a schemer, a planner of dastardly deeds. There was no thrill greater than the execution of a perfect plan. But lately his victories had been tainted by guilt, especially over what had happened to Butler. Artemis had been so close to losing his old friend that it made him queasy just thinking about it.
Things had to change. His father would be watching soon, hoping that Artemis would make the right choices. And if he didn’t, Artemis Senior would quite possibly take those choices away from him. He remembered his father’s words. ‘And what about you, Arty? Will you make the journey with me? When the moment comes will you take your chance to he a hero?’
Artemis still did not have the answer to that question.
Artemis wrapped himself in a robe monogrammed with his captor’s initials. Not only was Spiro reminding him of his presence with the gold letters, but a motion-sensitive closed-circuit camera was following Artemis around the room.
Artemis focused on the challenging task of breaking into Spiro’s vault and stealing back the C Cube. He had anticipated many of Spiro’s security measures and packed accordingly. Although some were unforeseen and quite ingenious, Artemis had fairy technology on his side, and hopefully Foaly too. The centaur had been ordered not to help, but if Holly presented the break-in as a test, Artemis felt sure that the centaur would be unable to resist.
He sat on the bed, casually scratching his neck. The mike’s latex covering had survived the shower, as Holly had assured him it would. It was comforting to know that he was not alone in his prison.
Because the microphone operated on vibrations, Artemis did not have to speak aloud for his instructions to be transmitted.
‘Good evening, friends,’ he whispered, his back to the camera.
‘Everything proceeds according to plan, taking it as read that Mulch made it back alive. I must warn you to expect a visit from Spiro’s goons. I am certain his personnel have been monitoring the streets, and it should lull him into a false sense of security if he believes my people to be wiped out. Mister Spiro has kindly given me a tour of the facility, and hopefully you have recorded everything we need to complete our mission. I believe the local term for this kind of operation is heist. This is what I want you to do.’
Artemis whispered slowly, enunciating each point clearly. It was vital that his team members followed his instructions to the letter. If they did not, the entire plot could explode like an active volcano. And at the moment, he was sitting in the volcano’s crater.
Pex and Chips were in a good mood. On their return to the Needle, not only had Mister Blunt handed over their five-grand bonus for the Mo Digence job, but he had also given them another assignment. The Needle’s external surveillance cameras had picked up a black van parked opposite the main door. It had been there for over three hours and a review of the tapes showed the vehicle circling the building for over an hour looking for a space.
Mister Spiro had warned them to look out for suspicious vehicles, and this was certainly suspicious.
‘Go down there,’ Blunt had ordered from his chair in the security office. ‘And if there’s anything breathing inside, ask them why they’re breathing outside my building.’
This was the kind of instruction that Pex and Chips understood. No asking questions, no operating complex machinery. Just open the door, scare everything, close the door. Easy. They kidded around in the lift, punching each other in the shoulder until their upper arms went numb.
‘We could make big bucks tonight, partner,’ said Pex, massaging his biceps to get the circulation going.
‘We sure could,’ enthused Chips, thinking about all the Barney DVDs he could buy. ‘This must be worth another bonus. Five grand at least. Altogether that’s. .’
There followed several moments’ silence while both men counted on their fingers.
‘That’s a lot of cash,’ said Pex finally.
‘A lot of cash,’ agreed Chips.
Juliet had her binoculars trained on the Needle’s revolving door. It would have been easier to use the Optix on a fairy helmet, but unfortunately her head had grown too large in the past couple of years.
That wasn’t the only thing to have changed. Juliet had transformed from gangly kid to toned athlete. She wasn’t perfect bodyguard material though; there were still a few wrinkles to be ironed out. Personality wrinkles.
Juliet Butler was a fun-loving creature; she couldn’t help it. She found the idea of standing po-faced at the shoulder of some opinionated politician appalling. She’d go crazy from boredom — unless Artemis asked her to stay on professionally. A person could never be bored at Artemis Fowl’s side. But that was not likely to happen. Artemis had assured everyone that this was his last job. After Chicago he was going straight. If there was an after Chicago.
This stakeout business was boring too. Sitting quietly was not in Juliet’s nature. Her hyperactive disposition had caused her to fail more than one class at Madame Ko’s Academy.
‘Be at peace with yourself, girl,’ the Japanese instructor had said.
‘Find that quiet place at your core and inhabit it.’
Juliet generally had to stifle a yawn when Madame Ko started on the kung fu wisdom stuff. Butler, on the other hand, ate it up. He was forever finding his quiet place and inhabiting it. In fact, he only came out of his quiet place to pulverize whoever was threatening Artemis at the time.
Maybe that was why he had his blue diamond tattoo and Juliet didn’t.
Two burly figures emerged from the Needle. They were grinning and punching each other on the shoulder.
‘Captain Short, we’re on,’ said Juliet into a walkie-talkie tuned to Holly’s frequency.
‘Understood,’ responded Holly from her position above the Spiro Needle. ‘How many hostiles?’
‘Two. Big and dumb.’
‘You need back-up?’
‘Negative. I’ll wrap these two. You can have a word on your return.’
‘OK. I’ll be down in five, as soon as I’ve had a talk with Foaly. And, Juliet, don’t mark them.’
‘Understood.’
Juliet switched off the radio, climbing into the rear of the van. She swept a pile of surveillance equipment under a fold-up seat, just in case the two heavies actually managed to incapacitate her. It wasn’t likely, but her brother would hide the incriminating equipment just in case. Juliet pulled off her suit jacket and placed a baseball cap backwards on her head. She then popped the rear door and clambered out on to the road.
Pex and Chips crossed State Street to the suspect van. It certainly looked suspicious, with its blacked-out windows, but the pair were not unduly concerned. Every testosterone-fuelled college freshman had blacked-out windows these days.
‘Whatcha think?’ Pex asked his partner.
Chips curled his fingers into fists. ‘I think we don’t bother knocking.’
Pex nodded. This was the plan that they generally went with. Chips would have proceeded to wrench the door from its hinges had a young lady not appeared from around the bonnet.
‘You guys looking for my dad?’ said the girl in perfect MTV tones.
‘People are always, like, looking for him, and he’s never around. Daddy is so not here. And I mean that spiritually.’
Pex and Chips blinked in unison. The blink being universal body language for ‘Huh?’ This girl was a stunning blend of Asian and Caucasian, but she might as well have been talking Greek for all the comprehension that registered on the security men’s faces. ‘Spiritually’ had five syllables, for heaven’s sake.
‘You own this van?’ asked Chips, taking the offensive.
The girl twisted her ponytail. ‘As much as any of us can, like, own anything. One world, one people, right, man? Ownership is, like, you 183 know, an illusion. Maybe we don’t even own our own bodies. We could be, like, the daydreams of some greater spirit.’
Pex cracked.
‘Do you own the van?’ he shouted, wrapping thumb and forefinger round the girl’s neck.
The girl nodded. There wasn’t enough air in her windpipe for speech.
‘That’s better. Anyone inside?’
A shake of the head this time.
Pex relaxed his grip slightly.
‘How many more in the family?’
The girl answered in a whisper, using as little air as possible.
‘Seven. Dad, Mom, two grandparents and the triplets: Beau, Mo and Joe. They’re gone for sushi.’
Pex cheered up considerably. Triplets and grandparents, that didn’t sound like any problem.
‘OK. We wait. Open her up, kid.’
‘Sushi?’ said Chips. ‘That’s raw fish. You ever have that, buddy?’
Pex held the girl by the neck while she fiddled with the key.
‘Yeah. I bought some in the supermarket once.’
‘Was it good?’
‘Yeah. I threw it in the deep-fat fryer for ten minutes. Not bad.’
The girl slid back the van door and climbed into the interior. Pex and Chips followed, ducking under the rim. Pex released the girl’s neck momentarily to take the step. That was his mistake. A properly trained private soldier would never allow an untethered prisoner to lead the way into an unsecured vehicle.
The girl stumbled accidentally, dropping to both knees on the interior’s carpet.
‘Sushi,’ said Pex. ‘It’s good with French fries.’
Then the girl’s foot snapped back, catching him in the chest. The hired muscle collapsed, gasping, on to the floor.
‘Oops,’ said the girl, straightening. ‘Accident.’
Chips thought he must be having some kind of waking dream, because there was no way a little pop princess clone could have decked ninety kilograms of muscle and attitude.
‘You. . you just. .,’ he stuttered. ‘That’s impossible. No way.’
‘Way,’ said Juliet, pirouetting like a ballerina. The jade ring in her ponytail swung round, loaded with centrifugal force. It struck Chips between the eyeballs, like a stone from a sling. He staggered backwards, landing in a heap on a leatherette sofa.
Behind her, Pex’s breath was returning. His eyeballs stopped rolling wildly and focused on his assailant.
‘Hi,’ said Juliet, bending over him. ‘Guess what.’
‘What?’ said Pex.
‘You’re not supposed to deep-fry sushi,’ said the girl, clapping the assassin on both temples with the palms of her hands. Unconsciousness was immediate.
Mulch emerged from the bathroom, buttoning the bum-flap on his tunnelling trousers.
‘What did I miss?’ he asked.
Holly hovered one hundred and fifty feet above Chicago’s downtown district — known locally as the Loop after the curve of elevated track that enclosed the area. She was up there for two reasons. Firstly, they needed an X-ray scan of the Spiro Needle in order to construct 3D blueprints. And secondly, she wanted to talk to Foaly alone.
She spotted a stone eagle perched on the roof of an early twentieth-century apartment block, and alighted on its head. She would have to move perch after a few minutes, or her shield vibration would begin to pulverize the rock.
Juliet’s voice sounded in her earpiece.
‘Captain Short, we’re on.’
‘Understood,’ responded Holly. ‘How many hostiles?’
‘Two. Big and dumb.’
‘You need back-up?’
‘Negative. I’ll wrap these two. You can have a word on your return.’
‘OK. I’ll be down in five, as soon as I’ve had a talk with Foaly. And,
Juliet, don’t mark them.’
‘Understood.’
Holly smiled. Juliet was a piece of work. A chip off the Butler block.
But she was a wild card. Even on stakeout she couldn’t stop chattering for more than ten seconds. None of her brother’s discipline. She was a happy teenager. A kid. She should not be in this line of business. Artemis had no business dragging her into his crazy Schemes. But there was something about the Irish boy that made you forget your reservations. In the past sixteen months she had fought a troll for him, healed his entire family, dived into the Arctic Ocean and now she was preparing to disobey a direct order from Commander Root.
She opened a channel to LEP Operations.
‘Foaly. Are you listening?
Nothing for several seconds, then the centaur’s voice burst through the helmet’s micro-speaker.
‘Holly. Hold on. You’re a bit fuzzy; I’m just going to fine-tune the wavelength. Talk to me. Say something.’
‘Testing. One two. One two. Trolls cause terrible trouble in a tantrum.’
‘OK. Gotcha. Crystal clear. How goes it in the Land of Mud?’
Holly gazed down at the city below her.
‘No mud here. Just glass, steel and computers. You’d like it.’
‘Oh no. Not me. Mud People are Mud People, no matter if they’re wearing suits or loincloths. The only good thing about humans is the television. All we get on PPTV is reruns. I’m almost sorry the goblin generals’ trial is over. Guilty on all counts, thanks to you. Sentencing is next month.’
Anxiety loosened its grip on Holly’s stomach. ‘Guilty. Thank heavens. Things can finally go back to normal.’
Foaly snickered. ‘Normal? You’re in the wrong job for normal. You can kiss normal goodbye if we don’t get Artemis’s gizmo back from Spiro.’
The centaur was right. Her life had not been normal since she’d been promoted to Recon from the vice squad. But did she really want a normal life? Wasn’t that the reason she transferred from vice in the first place?
‘So why the call?’ asked Foaly. ‘Feeling a bit homesick, are you?’
‘No,’ replied Holly. And it was true. She wasn’t. The elf captain had barely thought of Haven since Artemis embroiled her in his latest intrigue.
‘I need your advice.’
‘Advice? Oh, really? That wouldn’t be another way of asking for help now, would it? I Jaelieve Commander Root’s words were “You got what you got.” Rules are rules, Holly.’
Holly sighed. ‘Yes, Foaly. Rules are rules. Julius knows best.’
‘That’s right. Julius knows best,’ said Foaly, but he didn’t sound convinced.
‘You probably couldn’t help anyway. Spiro’s security is pretty advanced.’ Foaly snorted, and a centaur snorting is something to hear.
‘Yeah, sure. What has he got? A couple of tin cans and a dog? Ooh scary.’
‘I wish. There’s stuff in this building that I’ve never seen before. Smart stuff.’
A small liquid-crystal screen flickered into life in the corner of Holly’s visor. Foaly was broadcasting a visual from Police Plaza. Technically, not something he should be doing for an unofficial operation. The centaur was curious.
‘I know what you’re doing by the way,’ said Foaly, wagging a finger.
‘I have no idea what you mean,’ said Holly innocently.
‘You probably couldn’t help anyway. Spiro’s security is pretty advanced,’ mimicked the centaur. ‘You’re trying to light a fire under my ego. I’m not stupid, Holly.’
‘OK. Maybe I am. Do you want the straight truth?’
‘Oh, you’re going to tell me the truth now? Interesting tactic for the LEP.’
‘The Spiro Needle is a fortress. There’s no way in without you, even Artemis admits it. We’re not looking for equipment, or extra fairy-power. Just advice over the airwaves, maybe a bit of camera work. Keep the lines open, that’s all I’m asking.’
Foaly scratched his chin. ‘No way in, eh? Even Artemis admits it.’
‘ “We can’t do it without Foaly.” His exact words.’
The centaur struggled to keep the smugness from his features.
‘Have you got any video?’
Holly took a hand-held computer from her belt.
‘Artemis shot some film inside the Needle. I’m mailing it to you now.’
‘I need a blueprint of the building.’
Holly panned her visor left and right, so Foaly could see where she was.
‘That’s why I’m up here. To do an X-ray scan. It’ll be in your mainframe in ten minutes.
Holly heard a bell chime in her speakers. It was a computer alert.
Her mail had arrived in Police Plaza. Foaly opened the file.
‘Key codes. OK. Cameras. No problem. Wait until I show you what I’ve developed for CCTV cameras. I’m fast-forwarding through the corridors. Dum de dum de dum. Ah, the vault. On the eighty-fifth.
Pressure pads, antibiotic mats. Motion sensors. Temperature sensitive lasers. Thermal cameras. Voice-recognition, retina and gel-thumbprint scanners.’ He paused. ‘Impressive, for a Mud Man.’
‘You’re telling me,’ agreed Holly. ‘A bit more than two tin cans and a dog.’
‘Fowl is right. Without me you’re sunk.’
‘So, will you help?’
Foaly had to milk the moment. ‘I’m not promising anything, mind. .’
‘Yes?’
‘I’ll keep a screen open for you. But if something comes up. .’
‘I understand.’
‘No guarantees.’
‘No guarantees. I owe you a carton of carrots.’
‘Two cartons. And a case of beetle juice.’
‘Done.’
The centaur’s face was flushed with the promise of a challenge.
‘Will you miss him, Holly?’ he asked suddenly.
Holly was caught off-guard by the question.
‘Miss who?’ she said, though she already knew.
‘The Fowl boy, of course. If everything goes according to plan, we’ll be wiped from his memory. No more wild plots or seat-of-the-pants adventures. It will be a quiet life.’
Holly made to avoid Foaly’s gaze, although the helmet cam was point-of-view and the centaur could not see her.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I will not miss him.’
But her eyes told the real story.
Holly circled the Needle several times at various altitudes, until the X-ray scanner had accumulated enough data for a 3D model. She mailed a copy of the file to Foaly in Police Plaza and returned to the van.
‘I thought I told you not to mark them,’ she said, bending over the fallen hit men.
Juliet shrugged. ‘Hey. No big deal, fairy girl. I got carried away in the heat of battle. Just give him a shot of blue sparks and send him on his way.’
Holly traced a finger round the perfectly circular bruise on Chips’s forehead.
‘You should have seen me,’ said Juliet. ‘Bang, bang, and they were down. Never had a chance.’
Holly sent a solitary spark down her finger; it wiped away the bruise like a damp cloth cleaning a coffee ring.
‘You could have used the Neutrino to stun them, you know.’
‘The Neutrino? Where’s the fun in that?’
Captain Short removed her helmet, glaring up at the teenage human.
‘This is not supposed to be fun, Juliet. It’s not a game. I thought you realized that, considering what happened to Butler.’
Juliet’s grin disappeared. ‘I know it’s not a game, Captain. Maybe this is the way I deal with things.’
Holly held her gaze. ‘Well then, maybe you’re in the wrong line of work.’
‘Or maybe you’ve been in this line of work too long,’ argued Juliet.
‘According to Butler, you used to be a bit of a wild card yourself.’
Mulch emerged from the bathroom. This time he had been applying a layer of sunblock. It was now the middle of the night, but the dwarf wasn’t taking any chances. If this insertion went pear-shaped, as it probably would, then he could very well be on the run by morning.
‘What’s the problem, ladies? If you’re fighting over me, don’t bother. I make it a point never to date outside my species.’
The tension deflated like a punctured balloon.
‘Dream on, hairball,’ said Holly.
‘Nightmare, more like,’ added Juliet. ‘I make it a point never to date anyone who lives in a dung heap.’
Mulch was unperturbed. ‘You’re both in denial. I have that effect on females.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Holly, grinning.
The LEP captain folded out a stowaway table and placed her helmet on top. She switched her helmet cam to Project, and opened the 3D plan of the Spiro Needle. It revolved in the air, a lattice of neon-green lines.
‘OK, everyone. Here’s the plan. Team One burns their way in through the wall of the eighty-fifth floor. Team Two goes in through the helipad door. Here.’
Holly marked the entrances by tapping the corresponding spot on the screen of her hand-held computer. An orange pulse appeared on the floating plan.
‘Foaly has agreed to help, so he’ll be with us over the airwaves.
Juliet, you take this hand-held computer. You can use it to conference with us on the move. Just ignore the Gnommish symbols; we’ll send you any files you need to view. Wear an earpiece though, to cut out the speakers. The last thing we need is computers beeping at the wrong moment. That little indent below the screen is a mike. Whisper-sensitive, so no need to shout.’
Juliet strapped the credit-card-sized computer on to her wrist.
‘What are the teams, and what are their objectives?’
Holly stepped into the 3D image. Her body was surrounded by strobes of light.
‘Team One goes after the security and switches the vault guards’ oxygen canisters. Team Two goes after the box. Simple. We go in pairs. You and Mulch. Artemis and me.’
‘Oh no,’ said Juliet, shaking her head. ‘I have to go with Artemis.
He’s my principal. My brother would stick to Artemis like glue, and so will I.’
Holly stepped out of the hologram. ‘Won’t work. You can’t fly and you can’t climb walls. There has to be one fairy per team. If you don’t like it, take it up with Artemis next time you see him.’
Juliet scowled. It made sense. Of course it did. Artemis’s plans always made sense. It was only too clear now why Artemis had not revealed the entire thing in Ireland. He knew she would object. It was bad enough being separated for the past six hours. But the most difficult phase of the mission lay ahead, and Artemis would not have a Butler at his shoulder.
Holly stepped back into the hologram. ‘Team One, you and Mulch, climb the Needle and burn through on the eighty-fifth floor. From there, you place this video clip on a CCTV cable.’
Holly held up what looked like a twist of wire. ‘Loaded fibre optic,’ she explained. ‘Allows for remote hijacking of any video system. With this in place, Foaly can send the signal from every camera in the building to our helmets. He can also send the humans any signal he wants them to see. You will also replace two oxygen cylinders with our own special mix.’
Juliet placed the video clip in her jacket pocket.
‘I will enter from the roof,’ continued Holly. ‘From there, I proceed to Artemis’s room. As soon as Team One gives us the all clear, we’ll go after the C Cube.’
‘You make it sound so easy,’ said Juliet.
Mulch laughed. ‘She always does that,’ he said. ‘And it never is.’
TEAM ONE, THE SPIRO NEEDLE’S BASE
Juliet Butler had been trained in seven martial arts disciplines. She had learned to ignore pain and sleep deprivation. She could resist torture both physical and psychological. But nothing had prepared her for what she would have to endure to get into this building.
The Needle had no blind sides, with twenty-four-hour activity on each face, so they were forced to begin their ascent from the pavement.
Juliet pulled the van round, double-parking it as close to the wall as she could.
They went out through the sunroof, draped in Holly’s single sheet of camouflage foil. Juliet was clipped on to the Moonbelt on Mulch’s waist.
She rapped on Mulch’s helmet. ‘You stink.’
Mulch’s reply came through the cylindrical transmitter in Juliet’s ear.
‘To you, maybe, but to a dwarf female I am the essence of a healthy male. You’re the one that stinks, Mud Girl. To me, you smell worse than a skunk in two-month-old socks.’
Holly stuck her head through the sunroof.
‘Quiet!’ she hissed. ‘Both of you! We’re on a tight schedule in case you’d forgotten. Juliet, your precious principal is stuck in a room up there waiting for me to show up. It’s five minutes past four already. The guards are due to change in less than an hour, and I still have to finish mesmerizing these goons. We have a fifty-five-minute window here. Let’s not waste it arguing.’
‘Why can’t you just fly us up to the ledge?’
‘Basic military tactics. If we split up, then one team might make it. If we’re together, then one goes down we all go down. Divide and conquer.’
Her words sobered Juliet. The fairy girl was right; she should have known that. It was happening again — she was losing concentration at a vital moment. ‘OK. Let’s go. I’ll hold my breath.’ Mulch stuck both palms in his mouth, sucking any last vestiges of moisture from the pores.
‘Hold on,’ he said, having removed his hands from his palate. ‘Here we go.’
The dwarf flexed his powerful legs, leaping one and a half metres to the wall of the Spiro Needle. Juliet bobbed along behind, feeling for all the world as though she were underwater. The problem with riding a Moonbelt was that, as well as the weightlessness, you got the loss of coordination and sometimes the space nausea too. Moonbelts were designed for carrying inanimate objects, not live fairies, and certainly not human beings.
Mulch had not had a drink for several hours, causing his dwarf pores to open to the size of pinholes. They sucked noisily, latching on to the smooth external surface of the Spiro Needle. The dwarf avoided the tinted windows, sticking to the metal girders, because, even though the pair were draped in a sheet of camouflage foil, there were still enough limbs sticking out to be spotted. Cam foil did not render the wearer completely invisible. Thousands of micro-sensors, threaded through the material, analysed and reflected the surroundings, but one shower of rain could short out the whole thing.
Mulch climbed quickly, settling into a smooth rhythm. His double-jointed fingers and toes curled to grip the smallest groove. And where there were no grooves, the dwarf’s pores adhered to the flat surface. His beard hair fanned out under the helmet’s visor, probing the building’s face.
Juliet had to ask. ‘Your beard? That’s a bit freaky. What’s it doing? Searching for cracks?’
‘Vibrations,’ grunted Mulch. ‘Sensors, currents, maintenance men.’
Obviously, he wasn’t going to devote any energy to full sentences. ‘Motion sensor picks us up. We’re finished. Foil or not.’
Juliet didn’t blame her partner for saving his breath. They had a long way to go. Straight up.
As they cleared the buffer provided by the adjacent buildings the wind picked up. Juliet’s feet were plucked from beneath her, and she fluttered from the dwarf’s neck like a scarf. Rarely had she felt so helpless. Events were utterly beyond her control. Training counted for absolutely nothing in this situation. Her life was in Mulch’s hands completely.
The floors slid by in a blur of glass and steel. The wind pulled at them with grabby fingers, threatening to spin the pair into the night.
‘There’s a lot of moisture up here from the wind,’ gasped the dwarf.
‘I can’t hold on much longer.’
Juliet reached in, running a finger along the outer wall. It was slick with tiny beads of dew. Sparks were popping along the sheet of cam foil as the moisture-laden wind shorted out its micro-sensors. Patches of the foil failed altogether. The effect was of blocks of circuits apparently suspended in the night. The entire building was swaying too — maybe just enough to shake off a tired dwarf and his passenger.
Finally, the dwarf’s fingers locked on to the ledge of the eighty-fifth floor. Mulch climbed on to the narrow outcrop, directing his visor into the building.
‘This room is no good,’ he said. ‘My visor is picking up two motion detectors and a laser sensor. We need to move along.’
He scampered down the ledge, sure-footed as a mountain goat.
This was his business, after all. Dwarfs did not fall off things. Not unless they were pushed. Juliet followed cautiously. Not even Madame Ko’s Academy could have prepared her for this.
Finally Mulch arrived at a window that satisfied him.
‘OK,’ he said, his voice sounding strained in Juliet’s earpiece. ‘We got a sensor with a dead battery.’
His beard hair latched on to the windowpane. ‘I don’t feel any vibration, so nothing electrical running and no conversation. It seems safe.’
Mulch trickled a few drops of dwarf rock polish on to the toughened pane. It liquefied the glass immediately, leaving a puddle of turgid fluid on the carpet. With any luck the hole would remain undiscovered over the weekend.
‘Ooh,’ said Juliet. ‘That stinks nearly as much as you do.’
Mulch did not bother returning the insult, preferring instead to tumble indoors to safety.
He checked the moonometer in his visor.
‘Four twenty. Human time. We’re behind schedule. Let’s go.’
Juliet hopped through the hole in the window.
‘Typical Mud Man,’ said Mulch. ‘Spiro spends millions on a security system, and it all falls apart because of one battery.’
Juliet drew an LEP Neutrino 2000. She flicked aside the safety cap and pressed the power button. The light changed from green to red.
‘We’re not in yet,’ she said, making for the door.
‘Wait!’ hissed Mulch, grabbing her arm. ‘The camera!’
Juliet froze. She’d forgotten the camera. They were barely a minute inside the building and she was already making mistakes. Concentrate, girl, concentrate.
Mulch aimed his visor at the recessed CCTV camera. The helmet’s ion filter highlighted the camera’s arc as a shimmering gold stream. There was no way past to the camera itself.
‘There’s no blind spot,’ he said. ‘And the camera cable is behind the box.’
‘We’ll just have to huddle close together behind the cam foil,’ said Juliet, her lip curling at the idea.
Foaly’s image popped up on the computer screen on her wrist. ‘You could do that. But unfortunately cam foil doesn’t work on-screen.’
‘Why not?’
‘Cameras have better eyes than humans. Did you ever see a TV picture on television? The camera breaks down the pixels. If you go down that corridor behind cam foil, you’re going to look like two people behind a projector screen.’
Juliet glared at the monitor. ‘Anything else, Foaly? Maybe the floor is going to dissolve into a pool of acid?’
‘Doubt it. Spiro is good, but he’s not me.’
‘Can’t you loop the video feed, pony boy?’ said Juliet into the computer’s mike. ‘Just send them a false signal for a minute?’
Foaly gnashed his horsey teeth. ‘I am so unappreciated. No, I cannot set up a loop unless I am on-site, as I was during the Fowl siege. That is what the video clip is for. I’m afraid you’re on your own up there.’
‘I’ll blast it then.’
‘Negatori. A Neutrino blast would certainly knock out one camera, and possibly chain-react along the entire network. You may as well dance a jig for Arno Blunt.’
Juliet kicked the skirting board in frustration. She was falling at the first hurdle. Her brother would know what to do, but he was on the other side of the Atlantic. A mere six metres of corridor separated them from the camera, but it might as well have been a thousand metres of broken glass.
She noticed that Mulch was unbuttoning his bum-flap.
‘Oh, great. Now the little man needs a potty break. This is hardly the time.’
‘I’m going to ignore your sarcasm,’ said Mulch, lying flat on the floor, ‘because I know what Spiro can do to people he doesn’t like.’
Juliet knelt beside him. Not too close.
‘I hope your next sentence is going to begin with “I have a plan.” ’
The dwarf appeared to be aiming his rear end.
‘Actually. .’
‘You’re not serious.’
‘Deadly. I have quite a considerable force at my disposal here.’
Juliet couldn’t help smiling. The little guy was a dwarf after her own heart. Metaphorically. He was adapting to the situation, just as she would.
‘All we have to do is swing the camera about twenty degrees on its stand and we have a clear run to the cable.’
‘And you’re going to do that with. . wind power?’
‘Precisely.’
‘What about the noise?’
Mulch winked. ‘Silent, but deadly. I’m a professional. All you have to do is squeeze my little toe when I give you the word.’
In spite of arduous training in some of the world’s toughest terrain, Juliet was not quite prepared to be involved in a wind offensive.
‘Do I have to participate? It seems like a one-man operation to me.’
Mulch squinted at the target, adjusting his posterior accordingly.
‘This is a precision burst. I need a gunner to pull the trigger so I can concentrate on aiming. Reflexology is a proven science with dwarfs. Every part of the foot is connected to a part of the body. And it just so happens that the left little toe is connected to my. .”
‘OK,’ said Juliet hurriedly. ‘I get the picture.’
‘Let’s get on with it then.’
Juliet pulled Mulch’s boot off. The socks were open-toed, and five hairy digits wiggled with a dexterity no human toes possessed.
‘This is the only way?’
‘Unless you have a better idea.’
Juliet gingerly grasped the toe, its black curly hairs obligingly parting to allow her access to the joint.
‘Now?’
‘Wait.’ The dwarf licked his forefinger, testing the air.
‘No wind.’
‘Not yet,’ muttered Juliet.
Mulch fine-tuned his aim. ‘OK. Squeeze.’
Juliet held her breath, and squeezed. And in order to do the moment justice, it has to be described in slow motion.
Juliet felt her fingers close round the joint. The pressure sped up Mulch’s leg in a series of jolts. The dwarf fought to keep his aim true, in spite of the spasms.
Pressure built in his abdomen and exploded through his bum-flap with a dull thump. The only thing Juliet could relate the experience to was crouching beside a mortar. A missile of compressed air shot across the room, heat blur surrounding it like — waves of water.
‘Too much top-spin,’ groaned Mulch. ‘I loaded it.’
The air ball spiralled towards the ceiling, shedding layers like an onion.
‘Right,’ urged Mulch. ‘Right a bit.’
The next unlikely missile impacted against the wall a metre ahead of its target. Luckily, the ricochet clipped the camera box, sending it spinning like a plate on a stick. The intruders waited for it to settle with bated breath. The camera finally creaked to a halt after a dozen revolutions.
‘Well?’ asked Juliet.
Mulch sat up, checking the camera’s ion stream through his visor.
‘Lucky,’ he breathed. ‘Very lucky. We have a path straight through.’
He slapped shut his smoking bum-flap. ‘It’s been a while since I launched a torpedo.’
Juliet took the video clip from her pocket, waving it in front of her wrist computer so Foaly could see it.
‘So, I just wind this round any old cable? Is that it?’
‘No, Mud Maid,’ sighed Foaly, comfortable in his familiar role as unappreciated genius. ‘That is a complex piece of nanotechnology, complete with microfilaments that act as receivers, broadcasters and clamps. Naturally it leeches its power from the Mud People’s own system.’
‘Naturally,’ said Mulch, trying to keep his eyes open.
‘You need to ensure that it is firmly clamped to one of the video cables. Luckily, its multi-sensor does not have to be in contact with all the wires, just one.’
‘And which ones are the video wires?’
‘Well. . all of them.’
Juliet groaned. ‘So I just wind it round any old cable?’
‘I suppose so,’ admitted the centaur. ‘But wind it tightly. All the filaments have to penetrate.’
Juliet reached up, selected a wire at random and wound the clip round it.
‘OK?’
There was a moment’s pause while Foaly waited for reception.
Below the surface, picture-in-picture screens began popping up on the centaur’s plasma screen.
‘Perfect. We have eyes and ears.’
‘Let’s go then,’ said Juliet impatiently. ‘Start the loop.’
Foaly wasted a minute delivering another lecture. ‘This is much more than a loop, young lady. I am about to completely wipe moving patterns from the surveillance footage. In other words, the pictures they see in the surveillance booth will be exactly as they should be, except you won’t be in them. Just be careful never to stand still or you’ll become visible. Keep something moving, even if it’s only your little finger.’
Juliet checked the digital clock on the computer face. ‘Four thirty. We need to hurry.’
‘OK. The security centre is one corridor over. We take the shortest route.’
Juliet projected the schematic into the air. ‘Down this corridor here, two rights and there we are.’
Mulch strode past her to the wall.
‘I said the shortest route, Mud Girl. Think laterally.’
The office was an executive suite, with a skyline view and floor-to-ceiling pine shelving. Mulch hauled back a section of the pine and knocked on the wall behind it.
‘Plasterboard,’ he said. ‘No problem.’
Juliet closed the panel behind them. ‘No debris, dwarf. Artemis said we weren’t to leave any trace.’
‘Don’t worry. I’m not a messy eater.’
Mulch unhinged his jaw, expanding his oral cavity to basketball proportions. He opened his mouth to an incredible one hundred and seventy degrees, and took a whopping bite out of the wall. A ring of tombstone teeth soon reduced the wall to dust.
‘A bi’ dry,’ he commented. ‘Har’ oo shwallow.’
Three bites later they were through. Mulch climbed into the next office without a crumb dropping from his lips. Juliet followed, pulling the pine shelving across to cover the hole.
The next office was not quite so salubrious, the dark cubby of a vice president. No city view, and plain metal shelving. Juliet rearranged the shelving to cover the newly excavated entrance. Mulch knelt at the door, his beard hair latching on to the wood.
‘Some vibration outside. That’s probably the compressor. Nothing irregular, so no conversation. I’d say we were safe.’
‘You could just ask me,’ said Foaly, in his helmet earpiece. ‘I do have footage from every camera in the building. That’s over two thousand, in case you’re interested.’
‘Thanks for the update. Well, are we clear?’
‘Yes. Remarkably so. No one in the immediate vicinity, except a guard at the lobby desk.’
Juliet took two grey canisters from her backpack. ‘OK. This is where I earn my keep. You stay here. This shouldn’t take more than a minute.’
Juliet cracked open the door, creeping along the corridor on rubber-soled boots. Aeroplane-style lighting strips were inlaid in the carpet; otherwise, the only lighting came from exit boxes over the fire-escape doors.
The schematic on her wrist computer told her that she had twenty metres to go before reaching the security office. After that, she could only hope that the oxygen rack was unlocked. And why shouldn’t it be?
Oxygen canisters were hardly high-risk objects. At least she would have ample warning if any personnel happened to be doing their rounds.
Juliet crept, panther-like, down the corridor, her footfalls muffled by the carpet. On reaching the final corner she lay flat and inched her nose round the bend. She could see the floor’s security station. Just as Pex had revealed under the mesmer, the vault guard’s oxygen canisters were slotted in a rack in front of the desk.
There was only one guard on duty, and he was busy watching basketball on a portable television. Juliet moved forward on her stomach until she was directly below the rack. The guard had his back to her, concentrating on the game.
‘What the hell?’ exclaimed the security man, who was roughly the size of a refrigerator. He had noticed something in a security monitor.
‘Move!’ hissed Foaly in Juliet’s earpiece. ‘What?’
‘Move! You’re showing up on the monitors.’ Juliet wiggled her toe.
She had forgotten to keep moving. Butler would never have forgotten that.
Over her head, the guard employed the age-old method of rapid repair, slapping the monitor’s plastic casing. The fuzzy figure disappeared.
‘Interference,’ he muttered. ‘Stupid satellite TV.’ Juliet felt a bead of sweat run along the bridge of her nose. The younger Butler reached up slowly and slipped two substitute oxygen canisters into the rack. Although ‘oxygen canisters’ was a bit of a misnomer, because it wasn’t oxygen in these canisters.
She checked her watch. It might already be too late.
TEAM TWO, ABOVE THE SPIRO NEEDLE
Holly hovered six metres above the Needle, waiting for the green light. She was not comfortable with this operation. There were too many variables. If this mission weren’t so vital to the future of the fairy civilization, she would have refused to participate in it altogether.
Her mood did not improve as the night progressed. Team One was proving extremely unprofessional, bickering like a pair of adolescents.
Although, to be fair to Juliet, she was barely beyond adolescence. Mulch, on the other hand, couldn’t find his childhood with an encyclopaedia.
Captain Short followed their progress on her helmet visor, wincing at each new development. Finally, and against all the odds, Juliet managed to switch the canisters.
‘Go,’ said Mulch, doing his best to sound military. ‘I say again, we have a go situation on the black op. code red thing.’
Holly shut off Mulch’s communication in the middle of the dwarf’s giggling fit. Foaly could open a screen in her visor if there was a crisis.
Below her the Spiro Needle pointed spacewards like the world’s biggest rocket. Low fog gathered around its base, adding to the illusion.
Holly set her wings to descend, dropping gently towards the helipad. She called up the video file of Artemis’s entry to the Needle on her visor and slowed it down at the point where Spiro keyed in the access code for the rooftop door.
‘Thank you, Spiro,’ she said, grinning, as she punched in the code.
The door slid open pneumatically. Automatic lights flickered into life along the stairwell. There was a camera every six metres. No blind spots.
This didn’t matter to Holly, as human cameras could not detect a shielded fairy — unless they were of the type with an extremely high frame-per-second rate. And even then, the frames had to be viewed as stills to catch a glimpse of the fairy folk. Only one human had ever managed to do this.
An Irish one, who was twelve years old at the time.
Holly floated down the stairwell, activating an Argon laser filter on her visor. This entire building could be crisscrossed with laser beams and she wouldn’t know it until she set off an alarm. Even a shielded fairy had mass enough to stop a beam reaching its sensor, if only for a millisecond. The view before her turned a cloudy purple, but there were no beams. She was certain that wouldn’t be the case when they came to the vault.
Holly continued her flight to the brushed-steel lift doors.
‘Artemis is on eighty-four,’ said Foaly. ‘The vault is on eighty-five; Spiro’s penthouse is on eighty-six, where we are now.’
‘How are the walls?’
‘According to the spectrometer, mostly plaster and wood in the partition walls. Except round key rooms, which are reinforced steel.’
‘Let me guess: Artemis’s room, the vault and Spiro’s penthouse.’
‘Dead on, Captain. But do not despair. I have plotted the shortest course. I am sending it to your helmet now.’
Holly waited a moment until a quill icon flashed in the corner of her visor, informing her that she had mail.
‘Open mail,’ she said into the helmet mike, enunciating clearly. A matrix of green lines superimposed themselves in front of her regular vision. Her trail was marked by a thick red line.
‘Follow the laser, Holly. Foolproof. No offence.’
‘None taken, for now. But if this doesn’t work, I’ll be so offended you won’t believe it.’
The red laser led straight into the belly of the lift. Holly floated into the metal box and descended to the eighty-fifth floor. The guiding laser led her out of the lift and down the corridor.
She tried the door to an office on her left. Locked. Hardly surprising.
‘I’m going to have to unshield to pick this lock. Are you sure my pattern is wiped from the video?’
‘Of course,’ said Foaly.
Holly could imagine the childish pout on his lips. She unshielded and took an Omnitool from her belt. The Omnitool’s sensor would send an X-ray of the lock’s workings to the chip and select the right bit. It even did the turning. Of course, the Omnitool only worked on keyhole locks, which, in spite of their unreliability, the Mud People still used.
In less than five seconds the door lay open before her.
‘Five seconds,’ said Holly. ‘This thing needs a new battery.’
The red line in her visor ran to the office’s centre, and then took a right-angle turn downwards, through the floor.
‘Let me guess. Artemis is down there?’
‘Yes. Asleep, judging by the pictures coming in from his iris-cam.’
‘You said the cell was lined with reinforced steel.’
‘True. But no motion sensors in the walls or roof. So all you have to do is burn through.’
Holly drew her Neutrino 2000. ‘Oh, is that all?’
She chose a spot adjacent to a wall air conditioner and peeled back the carpet. Underneath, the floor was dull and metallic.
‘No trace, remember?’ said Foaly in her earpiece. ‘That’s vital.’
‘I’ll worry about that later,’ said Holly, adjusting the air con to extract. ‘For now, I need to get him out of there. We’re on a schedule.’
Holly adjusted the Neutrino’s output, concentrating the beam so it cut through the metal floor. Acrid smoke billowed from the molten gash, and was immediately siphoned off into the Chicago night by the air con.
‘Artemis isn’t the only one with brains around here,’ grunted Holly, sweat streaming down her face in spite of the helmet’s climate control.
‘The air con stops the fire alarm going off. Very good.’
‘Is he awake?’ asked Holly, leaving the last centimetre of a half-metre square uncut.
‘Wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, to use Centaurian imagery. A laser carving through the ceiling will do that to a person.’
‘Good,’ said Captain Short, cutting through the final section. The metal square twisted on a final strand of steel.
‘Won’t that make a lot of noise?’ asked Foaly.
Holly watched the section fall.
‘I doubt it,’ she said.
ARTEMIS FOWL’S CELL, THE SPIRO HEEDLE
Artemis was meditating when the first laser-stroke cut through the ceiling. He rose from the lotus position, pulled his sweater back on and arranged some pillows on the floor. Moments later, a square of metal fell to the floor, its impact silenced by the cushions. Holly’s face appeared in the hole.
Artemis pointed at the pillows. ‘You anticipated me.’
The LEP captain nodded. ‘Only thirteen, and already predictable.’
‘I presume you used the air conditioner to vacuum the smoke?’
‘Exactly. I think we’re getting to know one another too well.’
Holly reeled a piton line from her belt, lowering it into the room.
‘Make a loop at the bottom with the clamp and hop aboard. I’ll reel you in.’
Artemis did as he was told and, in seconds, he was clambering through the hole.
‘Do we have Mister Foaly on our side?’ he asked.
Holly handed Artemis a small cylindrical earpiece. ‘Ask him yourself.’
Artemis inserted the miracle of nanotechnology.
‘Well, Foaly. Astound me.’
Below, in Haven City, the centaur rubbed his hands together.
Artemis was the only one who actually understood his lectures.
‘You’re going to love this, Mud Boy. Not only have I wiped you from the video, not only did I erase the ceiling falling in, but I have created a simulated Artemis.’
Artemis was intrigued. ‘A sim? Really? How exactly did you do that?’
‘Simple really,’ said Foaly modestly. ‘I have hundreds of human movies on file. I borrowed Steve McQueen’s solitary confinement scene from The Great Escape and altered his clothes.’
‘What about the face?’
‘I had some digital interrogation footage from your last visit to
Haven. I put the two together and voilа. Our simulated Artemis can do whatever I tell him, whenever I say. At the moment, the sim is asleep, but in half an hour I may just instruct him to go to the bathroom.’
Holly reeled in her piton cord. ‘The miracle of modern science. The LEP pours millions into your department, Foaly, and all you can do is send Mud Boys to the toilet.’
‘You should be nice to me, Holly. I’m doing you a big favour. If Julius knew I was helping you, he’d be extremely angry.’
‘Which is exactly why you are doing it.’
Holly moved quietly to the door, opening it a crack. The corridor was clear and silent, but for the drone of panning cameras and the hum of fluorescent lighting. One section of Holly’s visor displayed miniature transparent feeds from Spiro’s security cameras. There were six guards doing the rounds on the floor.
Holly closed the door.
‘OK. Let’s get going. We need to reach Spiro before the guards change.’
Artemis arranged the carpet over the hole in the floor. ‘Have you located his apartment?’
‘Directly above us. We need to get up there and scan his retina and thumb.’
An expression flashed across Artemis’s face. Just for a second.
‘The scans. Yes. The sooner the better.’
Holly had never seen that look on the human boy’s features before.
Was it guilt? Could it be?
‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’ she demanded.
The expression vanished, to be replaced by the customary lack of emotion.
‘No, Captain Short. Nothing. And do you really think that now is the time for an interrogation?’
Holly wagged a threatening finger. ‘Artemis. If you mess with me now, in the middle of an operation, I won’t forget it.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Artemis wryly. ‘I will.’
Spiro’s apartment was two floors directly above Artemis’s cell. It made sense to reinforce the same block. Unfortunately, Jon Spiro did not like the idea of anyone spying on him, so there were no cameras in his section of the building.
‘Typical,’ muttered Foaly. ‘Power-crazed megalomaniacs never like anyone to see their own dirty secrets.’
‘I think someone’s in denial,’ said Holly, focusing a tight beam from her Neutrino at the ceiling.
A section of floating ceiling melted like ice in a kettle, revealing the steel above. Molten beads of metal ate into the carpet as the laser sliced through the flooring. When the hole was of sufficient diameter Holly shut down the beam and popped her helmet camera into the space.
Nothing appeared on the screen.
‘Switching to infrared.’
A rack of suits sprang into focus. They might have been white.
‘The wardrobe. We’re in the wardrobe.’
‘Perfect,’ said Foaly. ‘Put him to sleep.’
‘He is asleep. It’s ten to five in the morning.’
‘Well, make sure he doesn’t wake up then.’
Holly replaced the camera in its groove. She plucked a silver capsule from her belt and inserted it into the hole.
Foaly supplied the commentary for Artemis.
‘The capsule is a Sleeper Deeper, in case you’re wondering.’
‘Gaseous?’
‘No. Brainwaves.’
Artemis was intrigued. ‘Go on.’
‘Basically it scans for brainwave patterns, then replicates them.
Anyone in the vicinity stays in the state they’re in until the capsule dissolves.
‘No trace?’
‘None. And no after-effects. Whatever they’re paying me, it isn’t enough.’
Holly counted off a minute on her visor clock.
‘OK. He’s out, providing he wasn’t awake when the Sleeper Deeper went in. Let’s go.’
Spiro’s bedroom was as white as his suits, except for the charred hole in the wardrobe. Holly and Artemis climbed through on to a white shag-pile carpet with whitewood slide wardrobes. They stepped through the doors into a room that glowed in the dark. Futuristic furniture — white, of course. White spotlights and white drapes.
Holly took a moment to study a painting that dominated one wall.
‘Oh, give me a break,’ she said.
The picture was in oils. Completely white. There was a brass plaque beneath. It read ‘Snow Ghost’.
Spiro lay in the centre of a huge futon, lost in the dunes of its silk sheets. Holly pulled back the covers, rolling him over on to his back. Even in sleep the man’s face was malevolent, as though his dreams were every bit as despicable as his waking thoughts.
‘Nice guy,’ said Holly, using her thumb to raise Spiro’s left eyelid.
Her helmet camera scanned the eye, storing the information on chip. It would be a simple matter to project the file on to the vault’s scanner and fool the security computer.
The thumb scan would not be so simple. Because the device was a gel scanner, the tiny sensors would be searching for the actual ridges and whorls of Spiro’s thumb. A projection would not do. It had to be 3D.
Artemis had come up with the idea of using a memory-latex bandage, standard issue in any LEP first-aid kit — and the same latex used to glue the mike to his throat. All they had to do was wrap Spiro’s thumb in a bandage for a moment and they would have a mould of the digit. Holly spooled a bandage from her belt, tearing off a fifteen-centimetre strip.
‘It won’t work,’ said Artemis.
Holly’s heart sank. This was it. The thing that Artemis hadn’t told her.
‘What won’t work?’
‘The memory latex. It won’t fool the gel scanner.’
Holly climbed off the futon. ‘I don’t have time for this, Artemis. We don’t have time for it. The memory latex will make a perfect copy, right down to the last molecule.’
Artemis’s eyes were downcast. ‘A perfect model, true, but in reverse. Like a photo negative. Ridges where there should be grooves.’
‘D’Arvit!’ swore Holly. The Mud Boy was right. Of course he was.
The scanner would read the latex as a completely different thumbprint.
Her cheeks glowed red behind the visor.
‘You knew this, Mud Boy. You knew it all along.’
Artemis didn’t bother denying it.
‘I’m amazed no one else spotted it.’
‘So why lie?’
Artemis walked round to the far side of the bed, grasping Spiro’s right hand.
‘Because there is no way to fool the gel scanner. It has to see the real thumb.’
Holly snorted. ‘What do you want me to do? Cut it off and take it with us?’
Artemis silence was response enough.
‘What? You want me to cut off his thumb? Are you insane?’
Artemis waited patiently for the outburst to pass.
‘Listen to me, Captain. It’s only a temporary measure. The thumb can be reattached. True?’
Holly raised her palms. ‘Just shut up, Artemis. Just close your mouth. And I thought you’d changed. The commander was right. There’s no changing human nature.’
‘Four minutes,’ persisted Artemis. ‘We have four minutes to crack the vault and get back. Spiro won’t feel a thing.’
Four minutes was the textbook healing deadline. After that there were no guarantees that the thumb would take. The skin would bind, but the muscles and nerve endings could reject.
Holly felt as though her helmet were shrinking.
‘Artemis, I’ll stun you, so help me.’
‘Think, Holly. I had no choice but to lie about my plan. Would you have agreed if I had told you earlier?’
‘No. And I’m not agreeing now!’
Artemis’s face glowed as pale as the walls. ‘You have to, Captain. There is no other way.’
Holly waved Artemis aside as though he were a persistent fly and spoke into her helmet mike.
‘Foaly, are you listening to this insanity?’
‘It sounds insane, Holly, but if you don’t get this technology back, we could lose a whole lot more than a thumb.’
‘I can’t believe it. Whose side are you on, Foaly? I don’t even want to think about the legal ramifications of this.’
The centaur snickered. ‘Legal ramifications? We’re a tad beyond the court systems here, Captain. This is a secret operation. No records and no clearance. If this came out, we’d all be out of a job. A thumb here or there is not going to make any difference.’
Holly turned up the climate control in her helmet, directing a blast of cold air at her forehead.
‘Are you sure we can make it, Artemis?’
Artemis ran a few mental calculations. ‘Yes. I’m sure. And anyway, we have no option but to try.’
Holly crossed to the other side of the futon.
‘I can’t believe I’m even considering this.’ She lifted Spiro’s hand gently. He did not react, not so much as a sleep murmur. Behind his eyelids, Spiro’s eyes jittered in REM sleep.
Holly drew her weapon. Of course, in theory, it was perfectly feasible to remove a digit and then magically reattach it. There would be no harm done, and quite possibly the injection of magic would clear up a few of the liver spots on Spiro’s hand. But that wasn’t the point. This was not how magic was supposed to be used. Artemis was manipulating the People to his own ends, once again.
‘Fifteen-centimetre beam,’ said Foaly in her ear. ‘Very high frequency. We need a clean cut. And give him a shot of magic while you’re doing it. It might buy you a couple of minutes.’
For some reason, Artemis was checking behind Spiro’s ears.
‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Clever.’
‘What?’ hissed Holly. ‘What now?’
Artemis stepped back. ‘Nothing important. Continue.’
A red glow reflected from Holly’s visor as a short, concentrated laser beam erupted from the nozzle of her Neutrino.
‘One cut,’ said Artemis. ‘Clean.’
Holly glared at him. ‘Don’t, Mud Boy. Not a word. Especially not advice.’
Artemis backed off. Certain battles were won by retreating.
Using her left thumb and forefinger, Holly made a circle round Spiro’s thumb. She sent a gentle pulse of magic into the human’s hand.
In seconds the skin tightened, lines disappeared and muscle tone returned.
‘Filter,’ she said into her mike. ‘X-ray.’
The filter dropped and suddenly everything was transparent, including Spiro’s hand. The bones and joints were clearly visible below the skin. They only needed the print, so she would cut between the knuckles.
It would be difficult enough reattaching under pressure without adding a complex joint into the equation.
Holly took a breath and held it. The Sleeper Deeper would act more effectively than any anaesthetic. Spiro would not flinch or feel the smallest jolt of discomfort. She made the cut. A smooth cut that sealed as it went. Not a drop of blood was spilt.
Artemis wrapped the thumb in a handkerchief from Spiro’s closet.
‘Nice work,’ he said. ‘Let’s go. The clock is ticking.’
Artemis and Holly climbed back down through the wardrobe to the eighty-fifth. There was almost a mile and a half of corridor on this floor and six guards patrolling it in pairs at any one time. Their routes were specially planned so that one pair could always have an eyeball-sighting of the vault door. The vault corridor was a hundred metres long and took eighty seconds to travel. At the end of that eighty seconds, the next pair of guards stepped round the corner. Luckily, two of the guards were seeing things in a different light this particular morning.
Foaly gave them their cue. ‘OK. Our boys are approaching their corner.’ ‘Are you sure it’s them? These gorillas all look the same. Small heads, no necks.’
‘I’m sure. Their targets are showing up bright and clear.’
Holly had painted Pex and Chips with a stamp generally used by customs and immigration for invisible visas. The stamps glowed orange when viewed through an infrared filter.
Holly pushed Artemis out the door in front of her. ‘OK. Go. And no sarcastic comments.’
There was no need for the warning. Even Artemis Fowl was not inclined to be sarcastic at such a dangerous stage of the operation.
He ran down the corridor straight towards the two mammoth security guards. Their jackets protruded angularly beneath their armpits.
Guns, no doubt. Big ones, with lots of bullets.
‘Are you sure they’re mesmerized?’ he asked Holly, who was hovering overhead.
‘Of course. Their minds are so blank it was like writing with chalk on a board. But I could stun them if you’d prefer.’
‘No,’ panted Artemis. ‘No trace. There must be no trace.’
Pex and Chips were closer now, discussing the merits of various fictional characters.
‘Captain Hook rocks,’ said Pex. ‘He would kick Barney’s purple butt ten times out often.’
Chips sighed. ‘You’re missing the whole point of Barney. It’s a values thing. Butt-kicking is not the issue.’
They walked right past Artemis without seeing him. And why would they see him? Holly had mesmerized them not to notice anybody out of the ordinary on this floor, unless they were specifically pointed out to them.
The outer security booth lay before them. There were approximately forty seconds left before the next set of guards turned the corner. The unmesmerized set.
‘Just over half a minute, Holly. You know what to do.’
Holly turned up the thermo coils in her suit so they were exactly at room temperature. This would fool the lattice of lasers that criss-crossed the vault’s entrance. Next she set her wings to a gentle hover. Any more downdraughts could activate the pressure pad underfoot. She pulled herself forward, finding purchase along the wall where her helmet told her no sensors were hidden. The pressure pad trembled from the air displacement, but not enough to activate the sensor.
Artemis watched her progress impatiently.
‘Hurry, Holly. Twenty seconds.’
Holly grunted something unprintable, dragging herself to within touching distance of the door.
‘Video File Spiro 3,’ she said, and her helmet computer ran the footage of Jon Spiro punching in the vault door code. She mimicked his actions and, inside the steel door, six reinforced pistons retracted,
allowing the counterweighted door to swing wide on its hinges. All external alarms were automatically shut off. The secondary door stood firm, three red lights burning on its panel. Only three barriers left now.
The gel pad, the retina scan and voice activation.
This kind of operation was too complicated for voice command.
Foaly’s computers had been known to misinterpret orders, even though the centaur insisted it was fairy error. Holly ripped back the Velcro strap covering the helmet command-pad on her wrist.
First, she projected a 3D image of Spiro’s eyeball to a height of five foot six. The retina scanner sent out a revolving beam to read the virtual eyeball. Apparently satisfied, it disabled the first lock. A red light switched to green.
The next step was to call up the appropriate soundwave file to trick the voice check. The equipment was very sophisticated, and could not be fooled by a recording. A human recording, that is. Foaly’s digital mikes made copies that were indistinguishable from the real thing. Even stink worms, whose entire bodies were covered with ears, could be attracted by a worm-mating hiss from Foaly’s recording equipment. He was currently in negotiation with a bug-collection agency for the patent.
Holly played the file through her helmet speakers. ‘Jon Spiro. I am the boss, so open up quick.’
Alarm number two disengaged. Another green light.
‘Excuse me, Captain,’ said Artemis, an undercurrent of apprehension creeping into his voice. ‘We’re almost out of time.’
He unwrapped the thumb and stepped past Holly, on to the red floor plate. Artemis pressed the thumb into the scanner. Green gel oozed into the severed digit’s whorls. The alarm display flashed green. It had worked. Of course it had. The thumb was genuine, after all.
But nothing else happened. The door did not open.
Holly punched Artemis in the shoulder.
‘Well? Are we in?’
‘Apparently not. The punching is not helping my concentration, by the way.’
Artemis glared at the console. What had he missed? Think, boy, think. Put those famed brain cells to work. He leaned closer to the secondary door, shifting his weight from his back leg. Beneath him, the red plate squeaked.
‘Of course!’ exclaimed Artemis. He grabbed Holly, hugging her close.
‘It’s not just a red marker,’ he explained hurriedly. ‘It’s weight-sensitive.’
Artemis was right. Their combined mass was close enough to Spiro’s own to hoodwink the scales. Obviously a mechanical device, a computer would never have been fooled. The secondary door slid into its groove below their feet.
Artemis handed Holly the thumb.
‘Go,’ he said. ‘Spiro’s time is running out. I’m right behind you.’
Holly took the thumb. ‘And if you’re not?’
‘Then we go to Plan B.’
Holly nodded slowly. ‘Let’s hope we don’t have to.’
‘Let’s hope.’
Artemis strode into the vault. He ignored the fortune in jewels and bearer bonds, heading straight for the Cube’s perspex prison. There were two bullish security guards blocking the way. Both men had oxygen masks strapped over their faces and were unnaturally still.
‘Excuse me, gentlemen. Would either of you mind if I borrowed Mister Spiro’s Cube?’
Neither man responded. Not so much as a flicker of an eyebrow.
This was undoubtedly because of the paralytic gas in their oxygen tanks, concocted from the venom of a nest of Peruvian spiders. The gas was similar in chemical make-up to a salve used by South-American natives as an anaesthetic.
Artemis keyed in the code, which Foaly was reciting in his ear, and the four sides of the perspex box descended into the column on silent motors, leaving the C Cube unprotected. He reached out a hand for the box. .
SPIRO’S BEDROOM
Holly climbed through the wardrobe into Spiro’s bedroom. The industrialist lay in the same position she had left him, his breathing regular and normal. The stopwatch on Holly’s visor read 4:57 a.m. and counting. Just in time.
Holly unwrapped the thumb gingerly, aligning it with the rest of the digit. Spiro’s hand felt cold and unhealthy to her touch. She used the magnification filter in her visor to zoom in on the severed thumb. As close as she could figure, the two halves were lined up.
‘Heal,’ she said, and the magical sparks erupted from the tips of her fingers, sinking into the two halves of Spiro’s thumb. Threads of blue light stitched the dermis and epidermis together, fresh skin breaking through the old to conceal the cut. The thumb began to vibrate and bubble. Steam vented from the pores forming a mist around Spiro’s hand. His arm shook violently, the shock travelling across his bony chest. Spiro’s back arched until Holly thought it would snap, then the industrialist collapsed back on to the bed. Throughout the entire process, his heart never skipped a beat.
A few stray sparks skipped along Spiro’s body like stones on a pond, targeting the areas behind both ears, exactly where Artemis had been looking earlier. Curious. Holly pulled back one ear to reveal a crescent-shaped scar, rapidly being erased by the magic. There was a matching scar behind the other ear.
Holly used her visor to zoom in on one of the scars.
‘Foaly. What do you make of these?’
‘Surgery,’ replied the centaur. ‘Maybe our friend Spiro got himself a facelift. Or maybe. .’
‘Or maybe it’s not Spiro,’ completed Holly, switching to Artemis’s channel. ‘Artemis. It’s not Spiro. It’s a double. Do you hear me? Respond, Artemis.’
Artemis didn’t reply. Maybe because he wouldn’t; maybe because he couldn’t.
THE VAULT
Artemis reached out a hand for the box, and a false wall hissed back pneumatically. Behind it stood Jon Spiro and Arno Blunt. Spiro’s smile was so wide he could have swallowed a slice of watermelon.
He clapped his hands, jewellery jangling. ‘Bravo, Master Fowl. Some of us didn’t think you’d make it this far.’
Blunt took a hundred-dollar bill from his wallet and handed it to Spiro.
‘Thank you very much, Arno. I hope this teaches you not to bet against the house.’
Artemis nodded thoughtfully. ‘In the bedroom. That was a double.’
‘Yes. Costa, my cousin. We got the same shaped head. One or two cuts and we could be peas in a pod.’
‘So you set the gel scanner to accept his print.’
‘For one night only. I wanted to see how far you’d get. You’re an amazing kid, Arty. No one ever made it into the vault before, and you’d be amazed how many professionals have tried. There are obviously a few glitches in my system, something the security people will have to look at. How did you get in here anyway? You don’t appear to have Costa with you.’
‘Trade secret.’
Spiro stepped down from a low platform. ‘No matter. We’ll review the tapes. There are bound to be a couple of cameras you couldn’t rig.
One thing is for sure; you didn’t do it without help. Check him for an earpiece, Arno.’
It took Blunt less than five seconds to find the earpiece. He plucked it out triumphantly, crushing the tiny cylinder beneath his boot.
Spiro sighed. ‘I have no doubt, Arno, that that little electronic wonder was worth more than you will make in a lifetime. I don’t know why I keep you around. I really don’t.’
Blunt grimaced. This set of teeth was perspex, half-filled with blue oil. A macabre wave machine.
‘Sorry, Mister Spiro.’
‘You will be sorrier still, my dentally challenged friend,’ said Artemis, ‘because Butler is coming.’
Blunt took an involuntary step backwards.
‘Don’t think that mumbo jumbo is scaring me. Butler is dead. I saw him go down.’
‘Go down, perhaps. But did you see him die? If I remember the sequence of events correctly, after you shot Butler, he shot you.’
Blunt touched the sutures on his temple. ‘A lucky shot.’
‘Lucky? Butler is a proud marksman. I wouldn’t say that to his face.’
Spiro laughed delightedly. ‘The kid is messing with your mind, Arno. Thirteen years old and he’s playing you like a grand piano in Carnegie Hall. Get yourself a spine, man; you’re supposed to be a professional.’
Blunt tried to pull himself together, but the ghost of Butler haunted his features.
Spiro plucked the C Cube from its cushion. ‘This is fun, Arty. All this tough talk and repartee, but it doesn’t mean anything. I win again; you’ve been outflanked. This has all been a game to me. Amusement. Your little operation has been most educational, if pathetic. But you gotta realize that it’s over now. You’re on your own, and I don’t have time for any more games!’
Artemis sighed, the picture of defeat. ‘All of this has been a lesson, hasn’t it? Just to show me who’s boss.’
‘Exactly. It takes some people a while to learn. I find the smarter the enemy, the bigger the ego. You had to realize that you were no match for me before you would do what I asked.’ Spiro placed a bony hand on the Irish boy’s shoulder. Artemis could feel the weight of his jewellery.
‘Now listen carefully, kid. I want you to unlock this Cube. No more blarney. I never met a computer nerd yet who didn’t leave himself a back door. You open this baby up now, or I’m gonna stop being amused, and, believe me, you don’t want that.’
Artemis took the red Cube in both hands, staring at its flat screen.
This was the delicate phase of his plan. Spiro had to believe that once again he had outmanoeuvred Artemis Fowl.
‘Do it, Arty. Do it now.’
Artemis ran a hand across his dry lips.
‘Very well. I need a minute.’
Spiro patted his shoulder. ‘I’m a generous man. Take two.’ He nodded at Blunt. ‘Stay close, Arno. I don’t want our little friend setting any more booby traps.’
Artemis sat at the stainless-steel table, exposing the Cube’s inner workings. He quickly manipulated a complicated bunch of fibre optics, removing one strand altogether. The LEP blocker. After less than a minute he resealed the Cube.
Spiro’s eyes were wide with anticipation, and dreams of unlimited wealth danced in his brain.
‘Good news, Arty. I want good news only.’
Artemis was more subdued now, as if the reality of his situation had finally eaten through his cockiness.
‘I rebooted it. It’s working. Except. .’
Spiro waved his hands. Bracelets jingled like cat bells. ‘Except! This better be an itty bitty except kinda thing.’
‘It’s nothing. Hardly worth mentioning. I had to revert to version 1.0; version 1.2 was coded strictly to my voice patterns. 1.0 is less secure, if a bit more temperamental.’
‘Temperamental. You’re a box, not my grandmother, Cube.’
‘I am not a box!’ said Foaly, the Cube’s new voice, thanks to the removed blocker. ‘I am a marvel of artificial intelligence. I live therefore I learn.’
‘See what I mean?’ said Artemis weakly. The centaur was going to blow it. Spiro’s suspicions must not be aroused at this stage.
Spiro glared at the Cube, as though it were an underling.
‘Are you gonna give me attitude, mister?’
The Cube did not reply.
‘You have to address it by name,’ explained Artemis. ‘Otherwise it would answer every question within hearing distance of its sensors.’
‘And what is its name?’
Juliet often used the term ‘duh’. Artemis would not use such colloquialisms himself, but it would be apt at this particular moment.
‘Its name is Cube.’
‘OK, Cube. Are you going to give me attitude?’
‘I will give you whatever is in my processor’s capacity to give.’
Spiro rubbed his palms with childish glee, jewellery flashing like ripples in a sunset sea.
‘OK, let’s try this baby out. Cube, can you tell me — are there any satellites monitoring the building?’
Foaly was silent for a moment. Artemis could imagine him calling up his Sat-track information on a screen.
‘Just one at the moment, though, judging from the ion trails, this building has been hit with more rays than the Millennium Falcon.’
Spiro shot Artemis a glance.
‘His personality chip is faulty,’ explained the boy. ‘That’s why I discontinued him, it. We can fix that at any time.’
Spiro nodded. He didn’t want his very own technological genie growing the personality of a gorilla.
‘What about that group, the LEP, Cube?’ he asked. ‘They were monitoring me in London. Are they watching?’
‘The LEP? That’s a Lebanese satellite TV network,’ said Foaly, following Artemis’s instructions. ‘Game shows mostly. Their footprint doesn’t reach this far.’
‘OK, forget about them, Cube. I need to know that satellite’s serial number.’
Foaly consulted a screen.
‘Ah. . Let me see. US, registered to the federal government. Number ST1147P.’
Spiro clenched both fists. ‘Yes! Correct. I happen to already have that information myself. Cube, you have passed my test.’
The billionaire danced around the laboratory, reduced to childish displays by his greed.
‘I’m telling you, Arty, this has taken years off me! I feel like putting on a tuxedo and going to the prom.’
‘Indeed.’
‘I don’t know where to start. Should I make my own money? Or should I rip off somebody else’s?’
Artemis forced a smile. ‘The world is your oyster.’
Spiro patted the Cube gently. ‘Exactly. That’s exactly what it is. And I’m going to take every pearl it has to offer.’
Pex and Chips arrived at the vault door, guns drawn.
‘Mister Spiro!’ stammered Pex. ‘Is this some kind of drill?’
Spiro laughed. ‘Oh, look. Here comes the cavalry. An eternity too late. No, this is not a drill. And I would dearly love to know how little Artemis here got past you two!’
The hired muscle stared at Artemis as though he had just appeared from nowhere. Which, for their mesmerized brains, he had.
‘We don’t know, Mister Spiro. We never saw him. Do you want us to take him outside for a little accident?’
Spiro laughed, a short nasty bark. ‘I gotta new word for you two dumb-bells. Expendable. You are and he isn’t, just yet. Get it? So just stand there and look dangerous, otherwise I may replace you with two shaved gorillas.’
Spiro gazed into the Cube’s screen, as though there were nobody else in the room. ‘I reckon I’ve got twenty years left in me. After that the world can go to hell as far as I’m concerned. I don’t have any family, no heirs. There’s no need to build for the future. I’m going to suck this planet dry, and with this Cube I can do whatever I want to whoever I want.’
‘I know the first thing I’d do,’ said Pex. His eyes seemed surprised that the words were coming out of his mouth.
Spiro froze. He wasn’t used to being interrupted in mid-rant.
‘What would you do, dumb-bell?’ he said. ‘Buy yourself a booth at Merv’s Rib ‘n’ Roast?’
‘No,’ said Pex. ‘I’d stick it to those Phonetix guys. They’ve been rubbing Spiro Industries’ nose in it for years.’
It was an electric moment. Not only because Pex had actually had an idea, but because it was actually a good one.
The notion lit a thoughtful spark in Spiro’s eyes.
‘Phonetix. My biggest competitors. I hate those guys. Nothing would give me greater satisfaction than to destroy that bunch of second-rate phone freaks. But how?’
Now it was Chips’ turn. ‘I hear they’re working on a new top-secret communicator. Super-life battery, or something.’
Spiro did a double take. First Pex, now Chips? Next thing you knew they’d be learning to read. Nevertheless. .
‘Cube,’ said Spiro, ‘I want you to access the Phonetix database.
Copy the schematics for all their projects in development.’
‘No can do, boss man. Phonetix is operating on a closed system. No Internet connection whatsoever in its R & D department. I have to be on-site.’
Spiro’s euphoria disappeared. He rounded on Artemis.
‘What is he talking about?’
Artemis coughed, clearing his throat. ‘The Cube cannot scan a closed system unless the omni-sensor is actually touching the computer or, at least, close by. Phonetix is so paranoid about hackers that the research and development lab is completely contained, buried under several floors of solid rock. They don’t even have e-mail. I know because
I’ve tried to hack it myself a few times.’
‘But the Cube scanned the satellite, didn’t it?’
‘The satellite is broadcasting. And if it’s broadcasting, the Cube can trace it.’
Spiro toyed with the links of his ID chain. ‘So, I’d have to go to Phonetix.’
‘I wouldn’t recommend it,’ said Artemis. ‘It’s a lot to risk for the sake of a personal vendetta.’
Blunt stepped forward. ‘Let me go, Mister Spiro. I’ll get those plans.’
Spiro chewed on a handful of vitamin supplements from a dispenser on his belt.
‘It’s a nice idea, Arno. Good work. But I am reluctant to hand control of the Cube over to anyone else. Who knows what temptation they might yield to? Cube, can you disable the Phonetix alarm system?’
‘Can a dwarf blow a hole in his pants?’
‘What was that?’
‘Eh. . Nothing. Technical term. You wouldn’t understand it. I have already disabled the Phonetix system.’
‘What about the guards, Cube? Can you disable them?’
‘No problemo. I could remote-activate the internal security measure.’
‘Which is?’
‘Tanks of vapour inside the air vents. Sleeping gas. Illegal, by the way, according to Chicago State Law. But clever, no after-effects, untraceable. The intruder comes to in lock-up two hours later.’
Spiro cackled. ‘Those paranoid Phonetix boys. Go ahead, Cube, knock ‘em out.’
‘Night night,’ said Foaly, with a glee that seemed all too real.
‘Good. Now, Cube, all that stands between us and the Phonetix blueprints is an encrypted computer.’
‘Don’t make me laugh. They haven’t invented a unit of time short enough to measure how long it will take me to crack the Phonetix hard disk.’
Spiro clipped the Cube on to his belt. ‘You know something? I’m starting to like this guy.’
Artemis made one last sincere-sounding attempt to contain the situation. ‘Mister Spiro, I really don’t think that this is a good idea.’
‘Of course you don’t,’ laughed Jon Spiro, jangling towards the door.
‘That’s why I’m bringing you along.’
PHONETIX RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT LABORATORIES, CHICAGO’S INDUSTRIAL SECTOR
Spiro selected a Lincoln Town Car from his extensive garage. It was a nineties model, with fake registration. He often used it as a getaway vehicle. It was old enough to be unremarkable, and even if the police did get a shot of the plates, it wouldn’t lead them anywhere.
Blunt parked opposite the Phonetix R & D lab’s main entrance. A security guard was visible at his desk behind the glass revolving door.
Arno pulled a pair of fold-up binoculars from the glove compartment. He focused on the guard.
‘Sleeping like a baby,’ he announced.
Spiro clapped him on the shoulder.
‘Good. We have less than two hours. Can we do it?’
‘If this Cube is as good as it says it is, then we can be in and out in fifteen minutes.’
‘It’s a machine,’ said Artemis coldly. ‘Not one of your steroid-munching associates.’
Blunt glanced over his shoulder. Artemis sat in the back seat, squashed between Pex and Chips.
‘You’re very brave all of a sudden.’
Artemis shrugged. ‘What have I got to lose? After all, things can hardly get worse.’
There was a normal door beside the revolving one. The Cube remote-activated the buzzer, admitting the band of intruders to the lobby.
No alarms sounded, and no platoon of security guards came rushing to detain them.
Spiro strode down the corridor, emboldened by his new-found technological friend and the thought of finally putting Phonetix out of business. The security lift put up no more resistance to the Cube than a picket fence would to a tank, and soon Spiro and Co. were riding the eight floors down to the sunken laboratory.
‘We’re going underground,’ chortled Pex. ‘Down where the dinosaur bones are. Did you know that after a million billion years dinosaur dung turns into diamonds?’
Usually a comment like that would have been a shootable offence,
but Spiro was in a good mood.
‘No, I didn’t know that, Pex. Maybe I should pay your wages in dung.’
Pex decided that it would be better for his finances if he just kept his mouth shut from then on.
The lab itself was protected by a thumbprint scanner. Not even gel.
It was a simple matter for the Cube to scan the fingerprint on the plate then project it back on to the sensor. There wasn’t even a key-code back-up.
‘Easy,’ crowed Spiro. ‘I should have done this years ago.’
‘A little credit would be nice,’ said Foaly, unable to hide his pique.
‘After all, I did get us in here and disable the guards.’
Spiro held the box before him. ‘Not crushing you into scrap metal, Cube, is my way of saying thank you.’
‘You’re welcome,’ grumbled Foaly.
Arno Blunt checked the security monitor bank. Throughout the facility, guards lay unconscious, one with half a rye sandwich stuffed in his mouth.
‘I gotta admit it, Mister Spiro. This is beautiful. Phonetix is even gonna have to foot the bill for the sleeping gas.’
Spiro glanced towards the ceiling. Several camera lights winked red in the shadows.
‘Cube, are we gonna have to raid the video room on our way out?’
‘It ain’t gonna happen,’ said Foaly, the method actor. ‘I wiped your patterns from the video.’
Artemis was suspended by the armpits between Pex and Chips.
‘Traitor,’ he muttered. ‘I gave you life, Cube. I am your creator.’
‘Yeah, well, maybe you made me too much like you, Fowl, aurum potestas est. Gold is power. I’m just doing what you taught me.’
Spiro patted the Cube fondly. ‘I love this guy. He’s like the brother I never had.’
‘I thought you had a brother?’ said Chips, puzzled, which was not unusual for him.
‘OK,’ said Spiro. ‘He’s like a brother I actually like.’
The Phonetix server was located in the centre of the lab. A monolithic hard drive, with python-like cables rippling out to various workstations.
Spiro undipped his new best friend from his belt.
‘Where do you need to be, Cube?’
‘Just pop me down on the lid of the server, and my omni-sensor will do the rest.’
Spiro complied and, in seconds, schematics were flickering across the C Cube’s tiny screen.
‘I have them,’ crowed Spiro, his hands two fists of triumph. ‘That’s the last snide e-mail with stock prices I get from these guys.’
‘Download complete,’ said Foaly smugly. ‘We have every Phonetix project for the next decade.’
Spiro cradled the Cube against his chest.
‘Beautiful. I can launch our version of the Phonetix phone before they do, make myself a few extra million before I release the Cube.’
Arno’s attention was focused on the security monitors.
‘Eh, Mister Spiro. I think we have a situation here.’
‘A situation?’ growled Spiro. ‘What does that mean? You’re not a soldier any more, Blunt. Speak English.’
The New Zealander tapped a screen as if that would change what he was seeing.
‘I mean, we have a problem. A big problem.’
Spiro grabbed Artemis by the shoulders.
‘What have you done, Fowl? Is this some kind of. .?’
The accusation died before it could be completed. Spiro had noticed something.
‘Your eyes. What’s wrong with your eyes? They don’t match.’
Artemis treated him to his best vampire smile.
‘All the better to see you with, Spiro.’
In the Phonetix lobby, the sleeping security guard suddenly regained her senses. It was Juliet. She peeped out from under the brim of a borrowed cap to make sure Spiro had not left anyone in the corridor.
Following Artemis’s capture in Spiro’s vault, Holly had flown them both to Phonetix to initiate Plan B.
Of course, there had been no sleeping gas. For that matter there had only been two guards. One was taking a restroom break and the other was doing the rounds of the upper floors. Still, Spiro wasn’t to know that. He was busy watching Foaly’s family of sim security snoring all over the building, thanks to a video clip on the Phonetix system.
Juliet lifted the desk phone and dialled three numbers.
9. . 1. . 1
Spiro reached two fingers delicately into Artemis’s eye, plucking out the iris-cam. He studied it closely, noting the microcircuitry on the concave side.
‘This is electronic,’ he whispered. ‘Amazing. What is it?’
Artemis blinked a tear from his eye. ‘It’s nothing. It was never here. Just as I was never here.’
Spiro’s face twisted in sheer hatred. ‘You were here all right, Fowl, and you’ll never leave here.’
Blunt tapped his employer on the shoulder. An act of unforgivable familiarity.
‘Boss, Mister Spiro. You really need to see this.’
Juliet stripped off her Phonetix Security jacket. Underneath she wore a Chicago PD SWAT uniform. Things could get hairy in the R&D Lab, and it was her job to make sure that Artemis did not get hurt. She hid behind a pillar in the lobby and waited for the sirens.
Spiro stared at the lab’s security monitors. The pictures had changed. There were no more guards slumbering around the facility.
Instead, the screens played a tape of Spiro and his cronies breaking into Phonetix. With one crucial difference: there was no trace of Artemis on the screen.
‘What’s happening, Cube?’ spluttered Spiro. ‘You said that we’d all be wiped from the tapes.’
‘I lied. It must be the criminal personality I’m developing.’
Spiro smashed the Cube against the floor. It remained intact.
‘Tough polymer,’ said Artemis, picking up the microcomputer.
‘Almost unbreakable.’
‘Unlike you,’ retorted Spiro.
Artemis looked like a doll between Pex and Chips. ‘Don’t you understand yet? You’re all on tape. The Cube was working for me.’
‘Big deal. So we’re on tape. All I have to do is pay the security booth a visit and take the recordings.’
‘It’s not going to be that simple.’
Spiro still believed that there was a way out.
‘And why not? Who’s gonna stop me? Little old you?’
Artemis pointed to the screens. ‘No. Little old them.’
The Chicago PD brought everything they had, and a few things they had to borrow. Phonetix was the city’s biggest single employer, not to mention one of the top five subscribers to the Police Benevolent Fund.
When the 911 call came in the duty sergeant put out a citywide summons.
In less than five minutes there were twenty uniforms and a full SWAT team beating on the Phonetix doors. Two choppers hovered overhead and eight snipers lined the roofs of the adjacent buildings. No one was leaving the area, unless they were invisible.
The Phonetix security guard had returned from his rounds and just noticed the intruders on the monitors. Shortly after that he noticed a group of Chicago PD uniforms tapping the door with their gun barrels.
He buzzed them in. ‘I was just about to call you guys,’ he said.
‘There’s a buncha intruders in the vault. They musta tunnelled in or somethin’, ‘cause they didn’t come past me.’
The security guard on a restroom break was even more surprised.
He was just finishing off the sports section of the Herald Tribune when two very serious-looking men in body armour burst into the cubicle.
‘ID?’ growled one, who apparently did not have the time for full sentences.
The security guard held up his laminated card with a shaking hand.
‘Stay put, sir,’ advised the other police officer. He didn’t have to say it twice.
Juliet slipped out from behind the pillar, joining the ranks of the SWAT team. She pointed her gun and roared with the best of them, and was instantly assimilated into the group. Their assault was cut short by a tiny problem. There was only one access-point to the lab. The lift shaft.
Two officers prised open the lift door with crowbars.
‘Here’s our dilemma,’ said one. ‘We cut the power, then we can’t get the lift up here. If we call the lift up here first, then we tip off our intruders.’
Juliet shouldered herself to the front of the group.
‘Excuse me, sir. Let me go down on the cables. I blow the doors and you cut the power.’
The commander did not even consider it. ‘No. Too dangerous. The intruders would have plenty of time to put a hundred rounds into the lift.
Who are you anyway?’
Juliet took a small gripper from her belt. She clipped it on to the lift cable and hopped into the shaft.
‘I’m new,’ she said, disappearing into the blackness.
In the laboratory, Spiro and Co. were hypnotized by the monitors.
Foaly had allowed the screens to show what was actually happening on the upper levels.
‘SWAT,’ said Blunt. ‘Helicopters. Heavy armament. How did this happen?’
Spiro smacked his own forehead repeatedly.
‘A set-up. This entire thing. A set-up. I suppose Mo Digence was working for you too?’
‘Yes. Pex and Chips too, even if they didn’t know it. You would never have come here if I’d suggested it.’
‘But how? How did you do this? It’s not possible.’
Artemis glanced at the monitors. ‘Obviously it is. I knew you would be waiting for me in the Spiro Needle vault. After that, all I had to do was use your own hatred of Phonetix to lure you here, out of your environment.’
‘If I go down, so do you.’
‘Incorrect. I was never here. The tapes will prove it.’
‘But you are here!’ roared Spiro, his nerves shot. His whole body vibrated and spittle sprayed from his lips in a wide arc. ‘Your dead body will prove it. Give me the gun, Arno. I’m going to shoot him.’
Blunt could not hide his disappointment, but he did as he was told.
Spiro pointed the weapon with shaky hands. Pex and Chips stepped rapidly to one side. The boss was not known for his marksmanship.
‘You have taken everything from me,’ he shouted. ‘Everything.’
Artemis was strangely calm. ‘You don’t understand, Jon. It’s like I told you. I am not here.’ He paused for breath. ‘And one more thing.
About my name — Artemis — you were right. In London, it is generally a female name, after the Greek goddess of archery. But every now and then a male comes along with such a talent for hunting that he earns the right to use the name. I am that male. Artemis the hunter. I hunted you.’
And just like that, he disappeared.
Holly had been hovering above Spiro and Co. all the way from the Spiro Needle to the Phonetix building. She had got permission to enter the facility minutes earlier when Juliet had called to enquire about the public tours.
Juliet had put on her best cutesy voice for the security guide.
‘Hey, mister, is it OK if I bring my invisible friend?’
‘Sure it is, honey,’ replied the guide. ‘Bring your security blanket too, if it makes you happy.’
They were in.
Holly hovered at ceiling level, following Artemis’s progress below.
The Mud Boy’s plan was fraught with risk. If Spiro decided to shoot him in the Needle, then it was all over.
But no, just as Artemis predicted, Spiro had opted to gloat for as long as possible, basking in the glow of his own demented genius. But, of course, it wasn’t his own genius. It was Artemis’s. The boy had orchestrated this whole operation from beginning to end. It had even been his idea to mesmerize Pex and Chips. It was crucial that they plant the idea to invade Phonetix.
Holly was ready when the lift door opened. She had her weapon charged and targets selected. But she couldn’t go. Wait for the signal.
Artemis dragged it out. Melodramatic to the end. And then, just when Holly was about to disregard her orders and start blasting, he spoke.
‘I am that male. Artemis the hunter. I hunted you.’
Artemis the hunter. The signal.
Holly squeezed the manual throttle on her wing rig and descended,
stopping short a metre from the ground. She clipped Artemis on to a retractable cord on her Moonbelt, then dropped a sheet of cam foil in front of him. To everybody in the room, it would seem as though the boy had disappeared.
‘Up we go,’ she said, though Artemis could not hear her, and opened the throttle wide. In under a second they were nestled safely among the cables and ducts that ran along the ceiling.
Below them, Jon Spiro lost his mind.
Spiro blinked. The boy had gone! Just gone! It couldn’t be. He was Jon Spiro! Nobody outsmarted Jon Spiro! He turned to Pex and Chips, gesticulating wildly with the gun.
‘Where is he?’
‘Huh?’ said the bodyguards, in perfect unison. Unrehearsed.
‘Where is Artemis Fowl? What did you do with him?’
‘Nothing, Mister Spiro. We were just standing here playing the shoulder game.’
‘Fowl said you were working for him. So hand him over.’
Pex’s brain was churning. This was an operation akin to a food blender mixing concrete.
‘Careful, Mister Spiro, guns are dangerous. Especially the end with the hole.’
‘This isn’t over, Artemis Fowl,’ Spiro roared at the ceiling. ‘I will find you. I will never give up. You’ve got Jon Spiro’s word on it. My word!’
He began to fire random shots, blowing holes in monitors, vents and conduits. One even came within a metre of Artemis.
Pex and Chips were not quite sure what was going on, but decided that it might be a good idea to join in the fun. They pulled out their weapons and began shooting up the lab.
Blunt did not get involved. He considered his employment contract terminated. There was no way out of this for Spiro — it was every man for himself. He crossed to the wall’s metal panelling and began to dismantle it with a power screwdriver. A section dropped from its casing, behind it a five-centimetre cable space, then solid concrete. They were trapped.
Behind him, the lift door dinged.
Juliet was crouched in the lift shaft.
‘We’re clear,’ said Holly in her earpiece. ‘But Spiro is shooting up the lab.’
Juliet frowned. Her principal was in danger. ‘Knock them out with the Neutrino.’
‘I can’t. If Spiro is unconscious when the police arrive, he could claim a frame-up.’
‘OK. I’m going in.’
‘Negative. Wait for SWAT.’
‘No. You take out the weapons. I’ll handle the rest.’
Mulch had given Juliet a bottle of dwarf rock polish. She poured a little puddle on the lift roof and it dissolved like fat on a pan. Juliet hopped into the carriage, crouching low in case Blunt decided to put a few rounds into the lift.
‘On three.’
‘Juliet.’
‘I’m going on three.’
‘OK.’
Juliet reached up to the door-open button. ‘One.’ Holly drew her Neutrino, locking all four targets into her visor’s targeting system.
‘Two.’ She unshielded for accuracy, the vibration would throw her aim right off. For a few seconds she would have to hide behind the foil with Artemis.
‘Three.’
Juliet pressed the button.
Holly squeezed off four shots.
Artemis had less than a minute to make his move. Less than a minute while Holly targeted and disarmed Spiro and Co. The circumstances were hardly ideal — screaming, gunfire and general mayhem. But then again, what better time to implement the final step in this stage of the plan? A very vital step.
The second Holly unshielded to fire, Artemis scrolled out a perspex keyboard from the C Cube’s base and began to type. In seconds, he had hacked into Spiro’s bank accounts — all thirty-seven of them, in institutions from the Isle of Man to the Cavmans. The various account numbers locked into place. He had access to each secret fund.
The Cube quickly ran a tot on the total funds: 2.8 billion US dollars, not counting the contents of various safety deposit boxes, which could not be touched over the Net. 2.8 billion dollars. Plenty to restore the Fowl’s status as one of the top five richest Irish families.
Just as he was about to complete the transaction Artemis remembered his father’s words. His father, returned to him by the fairy folk. .
. . And what about you, Arty? Will you make the journey with me?
When the moment comes will you take your chance to be a hero?. .’
Did he really need billions of dollars?
Of course I need it. Aurum potestas est. Gold is power.
Really? Will you take your chance to be a hero? To make a difference?
Because he could not groan aloud, Artemis rolled his eyes and gritted his teeth. Well, if he was going to be a hero, he would be a well paid one. He quickly deducted a ten per cent finder’s fee from the 2.8 billion, then sent the rest to Amnesty International. He made the transaction irreversible, in case he weakened later on.
Artemis wasn’t finished yet. There was one more good deed to be attended to. The success of this venture depended on Foaly being too busy watching the show to notice Artemis hacking into his system.
He brought up the LEP site and set the code breaker working on a password. It took ten valuable seconds per character, but he was soon flying around LEP micro-sites. Artemis found what he needed on Perp
Profiles. Mulch Diggums’s complete arrest record. From there, it was a simple matter to follow the electron trail back to the original search warrant for Mulch’s dwelling. Artemis changed the date on the warrant to read the day after Mulch’s arrest. This meant that all subsequent arrests and convictions were null and void. A good lawyer would have him out of prison in a heartbeat.
‘I have not finished with you yet, Mulch Diggums,’ he whispered,
logging out and clipping the Cube on Holly’s belt.
Juliet came through the door so fast her limbs were a blur. The jade ring trailed behind her like a fishing lure on the end of a line.
Butler would never take chances like this, she knew. He would have some perfectly practical, safe plan — which was why he had his blue diamond tattoo and she didn’t. Well, maybe she didn’t want a tattoo.
Maybe she wanted a life of her own.
She quickly assessed the situation. Holly’s aim was true. The two gorillas were rubbing their scorched hands and Spiro was stamping his feet like a spoiled child. Only Blunt was on the floor, going for his gun.
Even though the bodyguard was on his hands and knees, he was still almost at her eye level.
‘Aren’t you going to give me a chance to get up?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said Juliet, whipping the jade ring around like the stone that felled Goliath. It impacted on the bridge of Blunt’s nose, cracking it and effectively blinding him for a couple of minutes. Plenty of time for the
Chicago Police to get down the shaft.
Blunt was now out of the game. Juliet had expected to feel some satisfaction, but all she felt was sadness. There was no joy in violence.
Pex and Chips felt they should do something. Perhaps disabling the girl would earn them a bonus from Mister Spiro? They circled Juliet, fists raised.
Juliet wagged a finger at them. ‘Sorry, boys. You have to go to sleep.’
The bodyguards ignored her, tightening the radius of their circle.
‘I said go to sleep.’
Still no response.
‘You have to use exactly the words that I mesmerized them to respond to,’ said Holly in her ear.
Juliet sighed. ‘If I must. OK, gentlemen; Barney says go to sleep.’
Pex and Chips were snoring before they hit the ground.
That just left Spiro, and he was too busy gibbering to be any threat.
He was still gibbering when the SWAT team put the cuffs on him.
‘I’ll talk to you back at base,’ said the SWAT captain sternly to Juliet. ‘You’re a danger to your comrades and yourself.’
‘Yessir,’ said Juliet contritely. ‘I don’t know what came over me, sir.’
She glanced upwards. A slight heat haze seemed to be drifting towards the lift shaft. The principal was safe.
Holly holstered her weapon, buzzing up her shield.
‘Time to go,’ she said, the volume on her PA turned to minimum.
Holly wrapped the cam foil tightly round Artemis, making certain no limbs were peeking out. It was imperative they leave while the lift was empty. Once forensics and the press got there, even a slight shimmer in the air might be caught on film.
As they flew across the room, Spiro was being led from the lab. He had finally managed to calm down.
‘This is a set-up,’ he proclaimed in his best innocent voice. ‘My lawyers are gonna rip you guys apart.
Artemis could not resist speaking as they floated past his ear.
‘Farewell, Jon,’ he whispered. ‘Never mess with a boy genius.’
Spiro howled at the ceiling like a demented wolf.
Mulch was waiting across the street from the Phonetix lab, revving the van like a Grand Prix driver. He sat behind the wheel on an orange crate, with a short plank taped to his foot. The other end of the plank was taped to the accelerator.
Juliet studied the system nervously. ‘Shouldn’t you untie that foot in case you need to use the brakes?
‘Brakes?’ laughed Mulch. ‘Why would I use the breaks? I’m not doing my driving test here.’
In the back of the van, Artemis and Holly simultaneously reached for their seat belts.
FOWL MANOR
They reached Ireland without major incident, though Mulch did attempt to escape Holly’s custody fifteen times — including once on the Lear jet, where he was discovered in the bathroom with a parachute and a bottle of dwarf rock polish. Holly did not let him out of her sight after that.
Butler was waiting for them at Fowl Manor’s front door.
‘Welcome back. Glad to see everyone’s alive. Now I need to go.’
Artemis put a hand on his arm. ‘Old friend. You’re in no condition to go anywhere.’ Butler was determined. ‘One last mission, Artemis. I have no choice. Anyway, I’ve been doing Pilates. I feel much more limber.’
‘Blunt?’
‘Yes.’
‘But he’s in prison,’ protested Juliet. Butler shook his head.
‘Not any more.’ Artemis could see that his bodyguard was not about to be turned from his path.
‘At least take Holly. She can be of some help.’
Butler winked at the elf. ‘I was counting on it.’
The Chicago police had put Arno Blunt in a van, with a couple of officers. Two would be sufficient, they reasoned, as the perp was handcuffed and manacled. They revised this opinion when the van was discovered six miles south of Chicago, with the officers manacled and no sign of the suspect. To quote Sergeant Iggy Lebowski’s report: ‘The guy ripped those handcuffs apart as though they were links in a paperchain. He came at us like a steam train. We never had a chance.’
But Arno Blunt did not escape clean. His pride had taken a severe beating in the Spiro Needle. He knew that word of his humiliation would soon spread through the bodyguard network. As Pork Belly LaRue later put it on the Soldiers for Hire web site: ‘Arno done got hisself outsmarted by some snot-nosed kid.’ Blunt was painfully aware that he would have to suffer chortles every time he walked into a room full of tough guys — unless he avenged the insult paid to him by Artemis Fowl.
The bodyguard knew that he had minutes before Spiro gave up his address to the Chicago PD, so he packed a few spare sets of teeth and took the shuttle to O’Hare International Airport.
Blunt was delighted to find that the authorities had not yet frozen his Spiro corporate credit card, and used it to purchase a first class British
Airways Concorde ticket to London Heathrow. From there he would enter
Ireland on the Rosslare ferry. Just another one of five hundred tourists visiting the land of the leprechaun.
It wasn’t a terribly complicated plan, and it would have worked if it hadn’t been for one thing: the passport official at Heathrow just happened to be Sid Commons, the ex-Green Beret who had served with Butler on bodyguard duty in Monte Carlo. The second Blunt opened his mouth alarm bells went off in Commons’ head. The gentleman before him fitted the description Butler had faxed over perfectly. Right down to the strange teeth. Blue oil and water, if you don’t mind. Commons pressed a button under his desk and, in seconds, a squad of security men relieved Blunt of his passport and took him into custody.
The chief security official took out his mobile phone as soon as the detainee was under lock and key. He dialled an international number. It rang twice.
‘The Fowl residence.’
‘Butler? It’s Sid Commons, in Heathrow. A man came through here you might be interested in. Funny teeth, neck tattoos, New Zealand accent. Detective Inspector Justin Barre faxed out the description from
Scotland Yard a few days ago; he said you might be able to ID him.’
‘Do you still have him?’ asked the manservant.
‘Yes. He’s in one of our holding cells. They’re running a check right now.’
‘How long will that take?’
‘A couple of hours, max. But if he’s the professional you say he is, a computer check won’t turn up anything. We need a confession to turn him over to Scotland Yard.’
‘I will meet you in the Arrivals hall under the departure board in thirty minutes,’ said Butler, severing the connection.
Sid Commons stared at his mobile phone. How could Butler possibly get there in thirty minutes from Ireland? It wasn’t important. All Sid knew was that Butler had saved his life a dozen times in Monte Carlo all those years ago, and now the debt was about to be repaid.
Thirty-two minutes later, Butler showed up in the Arrivals hall.
Sid Commons studied him as they shook hands.
‘You seem different. Older.’
‘The battles are catching up with me,’ said Butler, a palm across his heaving chest. ‘Time to retire, I think.’
‘Is there any point asking how you got here?’
Butler straightened his tie. ‘Not really. You’re better off not knowing.’
‘I see.’
‘Where’s our man?’
Commons led the way towards the rear of the building, past hordes of tourists and card-bearing taxi drivers.
‘Through here. You’re not armed, are you? I know we’re friends, but I can’t allow firearms in here.’
Butler spread his jacket wide. ‘Trust me. I know the rules.’
They took a security lift up two floors, and followed a dimly lit corridor for what seemed like miles.
‘Here we are,’ said Sid eventually, pointing at a glass rectangle. ‘In there.’
The glass was actually a two-way mirror. Butler could see Arno Blunt seated at a small table, drumming his fingers impatiently on the Formica surface.
‘Is that him? Is that the man who shot you in Knightsbridge?’
Butler nodded. It was him all right. The same indolent expression.
The same hands that had pulled the trigger.
‘A positive ID is something, but it’s still your word against his and, to be honest, you don’t look too shot.’
Butler laid a hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘I don’t suppose — Commons didn’t even let him finish. ‘No. You can not go in there. Absolutely not. I’d be out of a job, for sure; and anyway, even if you did prise a confession out of him, it would never hold up in court.’
Butler nodded. ‘I understand. Do you mind if I stay? I want to see how this turns out.’
Commons agreed eagerly, relieved that Butler hadn’t pressured him.
‘No problem. Stick around as long as you like. But I have to get you a visitor’s badge.’ He strode down the corridor, then turned.
‘Don’t go in there, Butler. If you do, we lose him forever. And anyway, there are cameras all over this place.’
Butler smiled reassuringly. Something he didn’t do very often.
‘Don’t worry, Sid. You won’t see me in that room.’
Commons sighed. ‘Good. Great. It’s just sometimes when you get that look in your eye. .’
‘I’m a different man now. More mature.’
Commons laughed. ‘That’ll be the day.’
He rounded the corner, his chuckles lingering in the air. He was no sooner gone than Holly unshielded by Butler’s leg.
‘Cameras?’ hissed the bodyguard from the corner of his mouth.
‘I checked the ion beams. I’m clear right here.’ She pulled a sheet of camouflage foil from her backpack, laying it on the floor. She then twisted a video clip around a cable tacked to the cell’s outer wall.
‘OK,’ she said, listening to Foaly’s voice in her ear. ‘We’re in. Foaly has wiped our patterns from the video. We are camera and mike-proof now. Do you know what to do?’
Butler nodded. They had been through this before, but Holly had a soldier’s need to double-check.
‘I’m going to shield again. Give me a second to move, then put the foil on and do your thing. I give you two minutes, tops, before your friend returns. After that you’re on your own.’
‘Understood.’
‘Good luck,’ said Holly, shimmering out of the visible spectrum.
Butler waited a beat, then took two steps to the left. He picked up the foil and draped it over his head and shoulders. To the casual passerby, he was now invisible. But if anyone paused on his or her way down the corridor, something of the manservant’s bulk was bound to be poking out from under the foil. Best to move quickly. He slid the latch on the cell door across and stepped inside.
Arno Blunt was not unduly worried. This was a bum rap. How long could you be held for having novelty false teeth, for heaven’s sake? Not much longer, that was for sure. Maybe he would sue the British government for trauma, and retire home to New Zealand.
The door swung open thirty centimetres, then closed again. Blunt sighed. It was an old interrogator’s trick. Let the prisoner sweat for a few hours, then open the door to make him think help was on the way. When no one entered the prisoner would be plunged into even deeper despair.
Ever closer to breaking point.
‘Arno Blunt,’ sighed a voice from nowhere.
Blunt stopped drumming his fingers and sat up straight.
‘What is this?’ he sneered. ‘Are there speakers in here? That’s lame, guys. Really lame.’
‘I’ve come for you,’ said the voice. ‘I’ve come to even the score.’
Arno Blunt knew that voice. He’d been dreaming about it since Chicago, ever since the Irish kid had warned him Butler would return. OK, it was ridiculous; there were no such things as ghosts. But there was something about Artemis Fowl’s stare that made you believe everything he told you.
‘Butler? Is that you?’
‘Ah,’ said the voice. ‘You remember me.’
Arno took a deep, shuddering breath. Composing himself.
‘I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m not falling for it. What? I’m supposed to cry like a baby now, because you found somebody who sounds like one of my. . Somebody I knew?’
‘This is no trick, Arno. I’m right here.’
‘Sure. If you’re right there, why can’t I see you?’
‘Are you sure you can’t see me, Arno? Look closely.’
Blunt’s stare hopped wildly around the room. There was no one else in there. No one. He was certain of it. But there was a patch of air in the corner of the room that seemed to be bending light, like a floating mirror.
‘Ah, you’ve spotted me.’
‘I’ve spotted nothing,’ said Blunt shakily. ‘All I see is a heat blur. Maybe from a vent or something.’
‘Oh, really?’ said Butler, throwing off the cam foil. To Blunt it seemed as though he had stepped from the air. The bodyguard stood abruptly, catapulting his chair against the wall.
‘Oh, God! What are you?’
Butler bent his knees slightly. Ready for action. He was older now, true. And slower. But the fairy magic had bolstered his reaction time, and he had so much more experience than Blunt. Juliet would have liked to handle this job for him, but there were some things you had to finish personally.
‘I am your guide, Arno. I’ve come to take you home. There are a lot of people waiting to see you.’
‘H-h-home?’ stammered Blunt. ‘What do you mean home?’
Butler took a step forward. ‘You know what I mean, Arno. Home.
The place you’ve always been headed. The place you’ve sent so many others. Including me.’
Blunt pointed a shaky finger. ‘You stay away from me. I killed you once, I can do it again.’
Butler laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. ‘That’s where you’re wrong, Arno. I can’t be killed again. Anyway, death is no big deal, not compared to what comes after.’
‘What comes after. .’
‘There is a hell, Arno,’ said Butler. ‘I’ve seen it and, believe me, so will you.’
Blunt was utterly convinced; after all, Butler had appeared from nowhere.
‘I didn’t know,’ he sobbed. ‘I didn’t believe it. I never would have shot you, Butler. I was just following Spiro’s orders. You heard him give the order. I was just the metal man; that’s all I’ve ever been.’
Butler laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘I believe you, Arno. You were just following orders.’
‘That’s right.’
‘But that’s not enough. You need to clear your conscience. If you don’t, I have to take you with me.’
Blunt’s eyes were red with tears. ‘How?’ he pleaded. ‘How do I do that?’
‘Confess your sins to the authorities. Leave nothing out, or I will be back.’
Blunt nodded eagerly. Prison was better than the alternative.
‘Remember, I will be watching. This is your one chance to save yourself. If you don’t take it, I will be back.’
Blunt’s teeth popped from his open mouth, rolling across the floor.
‘Don’ worry. I’ll confesh. I promish.’
Butler lifted the cam foil, concealing himself completely.
‘See that you do, or there’ll be hell to pay.’
Butler stepped into the corridor, stuffing the foil inside his jacket.
Seconds later, Sid Commons reappeared with a security badge.
He caught sight of Arno Blunt standing stunned in his cell.
‘What did you do, Butler?’ he said.
‘Hey, it wasn’t me. Check your tapes. He just went crazy, talking to thin air. Yelling how he wanted to confess.’
‘He wants to confess? Just like that?’
‘I know how it sounds, but that’s what happened. If I were you, I’d give Justin Barre a call over at Scotland Yard. I have a feeling that Blunt’s statement could clear up a lot of outstanding cases.’
Commons squinted at him suspiciously. ‘Why do I have a feeling that you know more than you’re telling?’
‘Search me,’ said Butler. ‘But feelings aren’t evidence, and your own surveillance tapes will prove that I never set foot in that room.’
‘Are you sure that’s what they’ll show?’
Butler glanced at the patch of air shimmering above Sid Commons’s shoulder.
‘I am positive,’ he said.
FOWL MANOR
The return trip from Heathrow took over an hour, thanks to some particularly strong turbulence and an easterly wind over the Welsh hills.
When Holly and Butler finally touched down in the grounds of Fowl Manor the LEP was busy humping their mind-wiping gear up the avenue, under cover of night.
Butler undipped himself from the Moonbelt, leaning against the trunk of a silver birch.
‘You OK?’ asked Holly.
‘Fine,’ replied the bodyguard, massaging his chest. ‘It’s this Kevlar tissue. Handy if you get shot with a small calibre, but it’s playing havoc with my breathing.’
Holly sheathed her mechanical wings. ‘It’s the quiet life for you from now on.’
Butler noticed an LEP pilot attempting to park his shuttle in the double garage, nudging the Bentley’s bumper.
‘Quiet life?’ he muttered, heading for the garage. ‘I wish.’
Once Butler had finished terrorizing the pixie pilot he made for the study. Artemis and Juliet were waiting for him. Juliet hugged her brother so tightly that the air was squeezed from his lungs.
‘I’m OK, little sister. The fairies have fixed it so that I will live to well over a hundred. I’ll still be around to keep an eye on you.’
Artemis was all business. ‘How did you fare, Butler?’
Butler opened a wall safe behind an air-conditioning vent.
‘Pretty well. I got everything on the list.’
‘What about the custom job?’
Butler laid out six small vials on the baize-covered desk.
‘My man in Limerick followed your instructions to the letter. In all his years in the trade, he’s never done anything like this. They’re in a special solution to stop corrosion. The layers are so fine that once they come into contact with the air they begin to oxidize right away, so I suggest we don’t insert them until the last possible moment.’
‘Excellent. In all probability, I am the only one who will need these, but, just in case, we should all put them in.’
Butler held the gold coin up by its leather thong. ‘I copied your diary and fairy files on to a laser minidisc, then brushed on a layer of gold leaf. It won’t stand up to close examination, I’m afraid, but molten gold would have destroyed the information on the disc.’
Artemis tied the thong round his neck. ‘It will have to do. Did you plant the false trails?’
‘Yes. I sent an e-mail that has yet to be picked up, and I hired a few megabytes on an Internet storage site. I also took the liberty of burying a time capsule in the maze.’
Artemis nodded. ‘Good. I hadn’t thought of that.’
Butler accepted the compliment, but he didn’t believe it. Artemis thought of everything.
Juliet spoke for the first time. ‘You know, Artemis. Maybe it would be better to let these memories go. Give the fairies some peace of mind.’
‘These memories are part of who I am,’ responded Artemis.
He examined the vials on the table, selecting two.
‘Now, everybody, it’s time to put these in. I’m sure the People are eager to wipe our minds.’
Foaly’s technical crew set up shop in the conference room, laying out a complex assembly of electrodes and fibre-optic cable. Each cable was connected to a plasma screen that converted brainwaves to actual binary information. In layman’s terms, Foaly would be able to read the humans’ memories like a book and edit out what shouldn’t be there.
Possibly the most incredible part of the entire procedure was that the human brain itself would supply alternative memories to fill the blank spots.
‘We could do the mind wipes with a field kit,’ explained Foaly, once the patients were assembled. ‘But field kits are just for blanket wipes. It would erase everything that’s happened over the past sixteen months.
That could have serious implications for your emotional development, not to mention your IQ. So, better we use the lab kit and simply erase the memories that pertain to the People. Obviously, we will have to erase the days you spent in fairy company completely. We can’t take any chances there.’
Artemis, Butler and Juliet were seated round the table. Technical gnomes swabbed their temples with disinfectant.
‘I’ve thought of something,’ said Butler.
‘Don’t tell me,’ interrupted the centaur. ‘The age thing, right?’
Butler nodded. ‘A lot of people know me as a forty-year-old man. You can’t wipe them all.’
‘Way ahead of you, Butler. We’re going to give your face a laser peel while you’re unconscious. Get rid of some of that dead skin. We even brought a cosmetic surgeon to give your forehead a Dewer injection to smooth out the wrinkles.’
‘Dewer?’
‘Fat,’ explained the centaur. ‘We take it from one area, and inject it into another.’
Butler was not enthused by the idea. ‘This fat. It doesn’t come from my behind, does it?’
Foaly shuffled uncomfortably. ‘Well, it doesn’t come from your behind.’
‘Explain.’
‘Research has shown that of all the fairy races, dwarfs have the greatest longevity. There’s a miner in Poll Dyne who is allegedly over two thousand years old. Haven’t you ever heard the expression “smooth as a dwarf’s bottom”?’
Butler slapped away a technician who was attempting to attach an electrode patch to his head.
‘Are you telling me that fat from a dwarf’s backside is going to be injected into my head?’
Foaly shrugged. ‘The price of youth. There are pixies on the west bank paying a fortune for Dewer treatments.’
Butler spoke through gritted teeth. ‘I am not a pixie.’
‘We’ve also brought some gel to colour any hair you may decide to grow in the future, and some pigment dye to cover the cell corruption on your chest,’ continued the centaur hurriedly. ‘By the time you wake up, your exterior will look young again, even if your interior is old.’
‘Clever,’ said Artemis. ‘I expected as much.’
Holly entered with Mulch in tow. The dwarf was wearing cuffs and looking extremely sorry for himself.
‘Is this really necessary,’ he whined, ‘after all we’ve been through?’
‘My badge is on the line,’ retorted Holly. ‘The commander said to come back with you, or not at all.’
‘What do I have to do? I donated the fat, didn’t I?’
Butler rolled his eyes. ‘Please, no.’
Juliet giggled. ‘Don’t worry, Dom. You won’t remember a thing about it.’
‘Knock me out,’ said Butler. ‘Quickly.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ grumbled Mulch, attempting to rub his behind.
Holly uncuffed the dwarf, but stayed within grabbing distance.
‘He wanted to say goodbye, so here we are.’ She nudged Mulch with her shoulder. ‘So, say goodbye.’
Juliet winked. ‘Bye, Smelly.’
‘So long, Stinker.’
‘Don’t go chewing through any concrete walls.’
‘I don’t find that kind of thing funny,’ said Mulch, with a pained expression.
‘Who knows. Maybe we’ll see each other again.’
Mulch nodded at the technicians, busy firing up their hard drives.
‘If we do, thanks to these people, it’ll be the first time.’
Butler knelt to the dwarf’s level.
‘You look after yourself, little friend. Stay clear of goblins.’
Mulch shuddered. ‘You don’t have to tell me that.’
Commander Root’s face appeared on a roll-down screen erected by an LEP officer.
‘Maybe you two would like to get married?’ he barked. ‘I don’t know what all the emotion is about. In ten minutes you people won’t even remember this convict’s name!’
‘We have the commander online,’ said a technician, a tad unnecessarily.
Mulch stared at the button camera mounted on the screen. ‘Julius, please. Do you realize that all of these humans owe me their lives? This is an emotional moment for them.’
Root’s rosy complexion was exaggerated by poor reception.
‘I couldn’t care less about your touchy feely moment. I’m here to make sure this wipe goes smoothly. If I know our friend Fowl, he’s got a few tricks up his sleeve.’
‘Really, Commander,’ said Artemis. ‘Such suspicion is wounding.’
But the Irish teenager couldn’t suppress a grin. Everybody knew that he would have hidden items to spark residual memories; it was up to the LEP to find them. Their final contest.
Artemis stood and approached Mulch Diggums.
‘Mulch. Of all the fairy People, I will miss your services the most. We could have had such a future together.’
Mulch looked a touch teary. ‘True. With your brains and my special talents.’
‘Not to mention your mutual lack of morals,’ interjected Holly.
‘No bank on the planet would have been safe,’ completed the dwarf.
‘A missed opportunity.’
Artemis tried his best to look sincere. It was vital for the next step in the plan.
‘Mulch, I know you risked your life betraying the Antonelli family, so I’d like to give you something.’
Mulch’s imagination churned with visions of trust funds and offshore accounts.
‘There’s no need. Really. Although it was incredibly brave, and I was in mortal danger.’
‘Exactly,’ said Artemis, untying the gold medallion from round his neck. ‘I know this isn’t much, but it means a lot to me. I was going to keep it, but I realized that in a few minutes it will mean absolutely nothing. I would like you to have it; I think Holly would too. A little memento of our adventures.’
‘Gee,’ said Mulch, hefting the medallion. ‘Half an ounce of gold.
Great. You really broke the bank there, Artemis.’
Artemis gripped the dwarf’s hand. ‘It’s not always about money, Mulch.’
Root was craning his neck, trying to see more. ‘What’s that? What has he given to die convict?’
Holly snatched the medallion, holding it up for the camera.
‘Just a gold coin, Commander. I gave it to Artemis myself.’
Foaly glanced at the small medal. ‘Actually this kills two stink worms with one skewer. The medallion could have triggered some residual memories. Highly unlikely, but possible.’
‘And the other stink worm?’
‘Mulch gets something to look at in prison.’
Root mulled it over for several moments.
‘OK. He can keep it. Now get that convict into the shuttle and let’s get on with this. I’ve got a Council meeting in ten minutes.’
Holly led Mulch out, and Artemis realized that he really was sorry to see the dwarf go. But more than that, he was sorry that the memory of their friendship could be gone forever.
The technicians descended like flies on a carcass. In seconds every human in the room had electrodes attached to temples and wrists. Each set of electrodes ran through a neural transformer and on to a plasma screen. Memories flickered on the screens.
Foaly studied the images. ‘Way too early,’ he announced. ‘Calibrate them to sixteen months ago. Actually, make that about three years. I don’t want Artemis planning his initial kidnap all over again.’
‘Bravo, Foaly,’ said Artemis bitterly. ‘I was hoping you might miss that.’
The centaur winked. ‘That’s not all I didn’t miss.’
On the pull-down screen, Root’s pixelated mouth stretched into a smile.
‘Tell him, Foaly. I can’t wait to see the human’s face.’
Foaly consulted a file on his hand-held computer.
‘We checked your e-mail and guess what?’
‘Do tell.’
‘We found a fairy file, just waiting to be delivered. We also ran a search on the Internet in general. And lo and behold, someone with your e-mail address had rented some storage megabytes. More fairy files.’
Artemis was unrepentant. ‘I had to try. I’m sure you understand.’
‘Nothing else you want to tell us about?’
Artemis opened his eyes wide, the epitome of innocence. ‘Nothing.
You’re too clever for me.’
Foaly took a laserdisc from a toolbox, sliding it into the drive of a networked computer on the table. ‘Well, just in case, I’m going to detonate a data charge in your computer system. The virus will leave your files unharmed, unless they pertain to the People. Not only that but the virus will monitor your system for a further six months, just in case you have outwitted us somehow.’
‘And you’re telling me all this because I won’t remember it anyway.’
Foaly did a little four-step, clapping his hands together. ‘Exactly.’
Holly pushed through the door, dragging a metallic capsule behind her.
‘Look what they found buried in the grounds.’ She flipped the lid, pouring the capsule’s contents on the Tunisian rug. Several computer disks and hard copies of Artemis’s diary fanned across the carpet.
Foaly examined a disk. ‘Something else you forgot to mention?’
Artemis was not quite so cocky now. His lifelines to the past were being cut one by one.
‘It slipped my mind.’
‘That’s it, I suppose. There’s nothing else.’
Artemis returned to his chair, folding his arms. ‘And if I say yes, you’ll believe me, I suppose.’
Root laughed so hard that it seemed the screen was shaking.
‘Oh, yes, Artemis. We trust you completely. How could we not after all you’ve put the People through? If you don’t mind, we’d like to ask you a few questions under the mesmer, and this time you won’t be wearing sunglasses.’
Sixteen months previously, Artemis had successfully deflected Holly’s hypnotic gaze with mirrored sunglasses. It was the first time he had outwitted the fairies. It was not to be the last.
‘Well then, let’s get on with it.’
‘Captain Short,’ barked Root. ‘You know what to do.’
Holly removed her helmet, massaging the tips of her ears to get the circulation going.
‘I’m going to mesmerize you and ask a few questions. It’s not the first time you’ve been under, so you know that the procedure is not painful. I advise you to relax; if you try to resist, it could cause memory loss or even brain damage.’
Artemis held up his palm. ‘Wait a moment. Am I right in thinking that when I wake up again this will all be over?’
Holly smiled. ‘Yes, Artemis. This is goodbye, for the last time.’
Artemis’s face was composed, in spite of the emotions churning inside him.
‘Well then, I have a few things to say.’
Root was curious, in spite of himself. ‘One minute, Fowl. Then nighty night.’
‘Very well. Firstly, thank you. I have my family and friends around me thanks to the People. I wish I didn’t have to forget that.’
Holly laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘It’s better this way, Artemis. Believe me.’
‘And secondly, I want you all to think back to the first time you met me. Remember that night?’
Holly shuddered. She remembered the cold individual who had attacked her at a magical hot spot in southern Ireland. Commander Root would never forget escaping an exploding tanker by the skin of his wings, and Foaly’s first glimpse of Artemis had been a recording of the negotiations for Holly’s release. He had been a despicable creature.
‘If you take away the memories and influences of the People,’ continued Artemis, ‘I might become that person again. Is that what you really want?’
It was a chilling thought. Were the People responsible for Artemis’s transformation? And were they to be responsible for changing him back?
Holly turned to the screen. ‘Is it possible? Artemis has come a long way. Do we have the right to destroy all that progress?’
‘He’s right,’ added Foaly. ‘I never thought I would say this, but I kinda like the new model.’
Root opened another computer window on the screen. ‘The Psych
Brotherhood did this probability report for us. They say the chances of a reversion are slim. Fowl will still have strong positive influences from his family and the Butlers.’
‘The Psych Brotherhood?’ objected Holly. ‘Argon and his cronies?
And when exactly did we start trusting those witch doctors?’
Root opened his mouth to yell, but thought better of it. Not something that happened every day.
‘Holly,’ he said, almost gently. ‘The future of our culture is at stake here. The bottom line is that Artemis’s future is not our problem.’
Holly’s mouth was a grim slash. ‘If that’s true, then we’re as bad as the Mud People.’
The commander decided to revert to his usual mode of communication.
‘Listen to me, Captain,’ he roared. ‘Being in command means making tough decisions. Not being in command means shutting up and doing what you’re told. Now mesmerize those humans before we lose the link.’
‘Yes, sir. Whatever you say, sir.’
Holly stood directly in front of Artemis, careful to make eye contact.
‘Goodbye, Holly. I won’t see you again, though I’m sure you will see me.’
‘Just relax, Artemis. Deep breaths.’
When Holly spoke again, her voice was layered with bass and alto.
The hypnotic layers of the mesmer.
‘That was some job we did on Spiro, eh?’
Artemis smiled sleepily. ‘Yes. The last adventure. No more hurting people.’
‘How do you come up with these plans?’
Artemis’s lids drooped. ‘Natural ability, I suppose. Handed down by generations of Fowls.’
‘I bet you would do anything to hang on to your fairy memories?’
‘Almost anything.’
‘So what did you do?’
Artemis smiled. ‘I played a few little tricks.’
‘What kind of tricks?’ pressed Holly.
‘It’s a secret. I can’t tell you.’
Holly added a few more layers to her voice.
‘Tell me, Artemis. It will be our secret.’
A vein pulsed in Artemis’s temple. ‘You won’t tell? You won’t tell the fairies?’
Holly glanced guiltily at the screen. Root gestured at her to continue.
‘I won’t tell. It will be just between us.’
‘Butler hid a capsule in the maze.’
‘And?’
‘I sent myself an e-mail. But I expect Foaly to find that. It’s to throw him off-guard.’
‘Very clever. Is there anything you don’t expect him to find?’
Artemis smiled craftily. ‘I hid a file on an Internet storage site.
Foaly’s data charge won’t affect it. The providers will mail me a reminder in six months. When I retrieve the data it should trigger residual memories and possibly total recall.’
‘Anything else?’
‘No. The storage site is our last hope. If the centaur finds that, then the fairy world is lost forever.’
Root’s image crackled on the screen. ‘OK. The uplink is breaking up. Knock them out and wipe them. Tape the whole process. I won’t believe Artemis is out of the game until I see the footage.’
‘Commander. Maybe I should ask the others a few questions.’
‘Negative, Captain. Fowl said it himself. The storage site was their last hope. Hook them up and run the program.’
The commander’s image disappeared in waves of static.
‘Yes, sir.’ Holly turned to the technical crew. ‘You heard the fairy. Let’s go. Sun up is in a couple of hours. I want us below ground before that.’
The techies checked that the electrodes had strong contacts, then unwrapped three sets of sleep goggles.
‘I’ll do that,’ said Holly, taking the masks.
She hooked the elastic over Juliet’s ponytail.
‘You know something?’ she said. ‘Personal protection is a cold business. You have too much heart for it.’
Juliet nodded slowly. ‘I’ll try to hold on to that thought.’
Holly settled the eyepieces gently.
‘I’ll keep an eye on you.’
Juliet smiled. ‘See you in my dreams.’
Holly pressed a small button on the sleep mask, and a combination of hypno-lights in the eyepieces and sedative administered through the seals knocked Juliet out in less than five seconds.
Butler was next. The technical crew had added a length of elastic to the mask’s strap so that it could encircle his shaven crown.
‘Make sure Foaly doesn’t go crazy with that mind wiper,’ said the bodyguard. ‘I don’t want to wake up with four decades of nothing in my head.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Holly reassuringly. ‘Foaly generally knows what he’s doing.’
‘Good. Remember, if the People ever do need help, I’m available.’
Holly pressed the button.
‘I’ll remember that,’ she whispered.
Artemis was last in the line. In his mesmerized state he seemed almost peaceful. For once, there were no thought lines wrinkling his brow and, if you didn’t know him, he could almost be a normal thirteen-year-old human.
Hollv turned to Foaly. ‘Are you sure about this?’
The centaur shrugged. ‘What choice do we have? Orders are orders.’
Holly placed the mask over Artemis’s eyes and pushed the button.
Seconds later, the teenager slumped in his chair. Immediately, lines of Gnommish text began to flash across the screen behind him. In the days of Frond, Gnommish had been written in spirals. But reading in spirals gave most fairies a migraine.
‘Commence deleting,’ ordered Foaly. ‘But keep a copy. Some time when I have a few weeks off I’m going to find out what makes this guy tick.’
Holly watched Artemis’s life being written in green symbols on the screen.
‘This doesn’t feel right,’ she commented. ‘If he found us once, he could find us again. Especially if he becomes the monster he used to be.’
Foaly tapped commands into an ergonomic keyboard. ‘Maybe. But next time we’ll be ready.’
Holly sighed. ‘It’s a pity, because now we were almost friends.’
The centaur snorted. ‘Sure. Like you can be friends with a viper.’
Holly suddenly shut her helmet visor, hiding her eyes.
‘You’re right, of course. We could never have been friends. It was circumstance that pushed us together, nothing more.’
Foaly patted her shoulder. ‘That’s the girl. Keep your ears up. Where are you going?’
‘Tara,’ replied Holly. ‘I’m going to fly. I need the fresh air.’
‘You don’t have clearance for a flight,’ objected Foaly. ‘Root will have your badge.’
‘For what?’ said Holly, firing up her wings. ‘I’m not supposed to be here, remember?’
And she was gone, flying in a lazy loop through the entrance hall.
She cleared the main door with centimetres to spare, climbing quickly into the night sky. For a second, her slim frame was backlit by the full moon, and then she disappeared, vibrating out of the visible spectrum.
Foaly watched her go. Emotional creatures, elves. In some respects they made the worst Recon operatives. All decisions were taken by the heart. But Root would never fire Holly, because policing was what she was born to do. And anyway, who else would save the People if Artemis Fowl ever found them again?
Mulch sat in the shuttle’s holding booth feeling extremely sorry for himself. He tried to sit on the bench without actually touching it with his tender behind. Not an easy task.
Things did not look good, it had to be said. Even after all he’d done for the LEP they were going to lock him up for at least a decade. Just for stealing a few measly bars of gold. And it didn’t seem likely that he’d get an opportunity to escape. He was surrounded by steel and laser bars, and would remain so until the shuttle docked in Haven. After that it was a quick jaunt to Police Plaza, a summary hearing and off to a secure facility until his beard turned grey. Which it would, if he was forced to spend more than five years out of the tunnels.
But there was hope. A tiny glimmer. Mulch forced himself to wait until all the technical staff had cleared their equipment from the shuttle.
Then he casually opened his right hand, rubbing his temples with thumb and forefinger. What he was actually doing was reading the tiny note concealed in his palm — the one slipped to him by Artemis Fowl when they shook hands.
I have not finished with you yet, Mulch Diggums — the note read. On you’re your return, tell your lawyer to check the date on the original search warrant for your cave. When you are released keep your nose clean for a couple of years. Then bring the medallion to me.
Together we will be unstoppable.
Mulch crumpled the note. He made a cylinder of his fingers and sucked the paper into his mouth. His dwarf molars quickly destroyed the evidence.
Mulch breathed deeply through his nose. It wasn’t time to pop the Skaylian Rock Worm Wine cork just yet. A review of his case could take months, possibly years. But there was hope.
The dwarf wrapped his fingers round Artemis’s medallion. Together they would be unstoppable.
ARTERMS FOWL’S JOURNAL, DISK I ENCRYPTED
I have decided to keep a diary. In fact, I am surprised that the idea has never occurred to me before. An intellect such as mine should be documented so that future generations of Fowls can take advantage of my brilliant ideas.
Of course, I must be careful with such a document. As valuable as it would be to my descendants, it would be more valuable to the law enforcement agents who are forever trying to gather evidence against me.
It is even more important that I keep this journal a secret from my father. He is not himself since his escape from Russia. He has become obsessed with nobility and heroism. Abstract concepts at best. As far as I know, nobility and heroism are not accepted by any of the world’s major banks. The family’s fortune is in my hands, and I will preserve it in the way I always have, through ingenious plots. Most of these plots will be illegal. The best always are. Real profit lies in the shadowy areas beyond the law.
I have decided, however, out of respect for my parents’ values, to change my criteria for victim selection. It would seem better for the world’s ecology if several global corporations went bankrupt, and so I have resolved to help them on their way. Not victimless crimes, but ones where few tears will be shed for the injured parties. This does not mean that I have become a weak, latter-day Robin Hood. Far from it. I intend to reap substantial benefits from my crimes.
My father is not the only one to have changed. Butler has grown old almost overnight. His appearance is the same as ever, but he has slowed down considerably, no matter how he tries to hide it. But I will not replace him. He has been a loyal employee, and his expertise in matters of intelligence will be invaluable. Perhaps Juliet will accompany me when actual protection is needed, though she now claims that a life in personal protection is not for her. Next week she travels to the United States to try out for a wrestling team. Apparently she has chosen ‘Jade Princess’ as her stage name. I can only hope that she fails the audition. Though I doubt it.
She is a Butler, after all.
Of course, I have some ongoing ventures that I can work on without the aid of a bodyguard. In recent years I have developed software to divert funds from various bank accounts to my own. This software will have to be upgraded to stay ahead of the computer crime squads. Version 2.0 should be online within six months. Then there is my talent for art forgery. In the past I have favoured the Impressionists, but now, for some reason, I am drawn to more fantastical subject matter, such as the fairy creatures depicted by Pascal Hervй in his Magical World series. But these projects must be suspended temporarily, for today I discovered that I am the victim of a conspiracy.
The day began strangely. When I awoke I experienced an instant of weakness. For a single moment before I opened my eyes, I felt content, my drive to accumulate wealth forgotten. This has never happened before. Perhaps the mood was left over from some magical dream, or perhaps my father’s new-found positive attitude is contagious. Whatever the cause, I must be careful to avoid such lapses in the future. With my father in his current frame of mind, this is no time to lose my resolve. I must remain as driven as always. Crime is the way forward for the Fowls, aurum potestas est.
Minutes later, a greater mystery presented itself. As I washed my face at the basin, a tiny object fell from one of my eyes. Close examination in the lab revealed it to be a semi-corroded, tinted contact lens. Not only that, but a mirrored layer had been added behind the tinted lens. Ingenious. Undoubtedly the work of a master craftsman. But to what purpose? It is strange, but even though I have no knowledge of this lens, or how it came to be in my eye, I feel the answer is somewhere in my own brain. Hidden in the shadows.
Imagine my surprise when Juliet and Butler discovered mirrored lenses in their own eyes. These lenses are so clever they could have been my own invention, so obviously this unknown adversary must not be underestimated.
I will track the culprit down, make no mistake. No clue will be left uninvestigated. Butler has a contact in Limerick, an expert in the field of lenses and scopes. He may recognize our intruder’s handiwork. Butler is on his way there, as I write.
And so, a new chapter begins in the life of Artemis Fowl the Second.
In a matter of days my father returns with his new-found conscience. I will shortly be shipped off to boarding school, where I will have access to a pathetic computer centre and an even more pathetic laboratory. My bodyguard seems to be too old for physical tasks and there is an unknown adversary planting strange objects on my very person.
Overwhelming difficulties,you may think. An ordinary person would draw the shutters and hide from the world. But I am no ordinary person. I am Artemis Fowl, the latest in the Fowl crime dynasty, and I will not be turned from my path. I will find whoever planted those lenses and they will pay for their presumption. And once I am rid oj this nuisance, my plans will proceed unhindered. I shall unleash a crime wave the like of which has never been seen. The world will remember the name of Artemis Fowl.
2003 year