“Thanks, D. B.,” said Oz, wiping rice off his face.
“Anytime,” his classmate replied. “But dude, you have got to learn to stick up for yourself.”
Oz sighed. “I know,” he said. “I’m trying. It’s hard when they gang up on me.”
Across the playground, a van pulled into the parking lot. “Hey, isn’t that your mom’s film crew?” he said in surprise.
D. B. blinked, then nodded as Amelia Bean, TV news anchor and one of Washington’s most famous faces, emerged from the Channel Twelve van. Spotting her daughter, she blew her a kiss. D. B. waved back reluctantly.
“What’s she doing here?” Oz asked.
“Beats me,” D. B. replied.
A limousine pulled up behind the van and the news crew sprang into action. Cameras rolled as the rear door of the limo opened and a man emerged. He was dressed in a black pilgrim suit, complete with a tall black hat and square buckles on his belt and shoes.
“Check out that clown,” said D. B.
Another man got out of the limousine. A tall, bearlike man with a dark, shaggy beard.
“Oh, no,” said Oz weakly.
The man was followed by an equally large woman swathed in a purple caftan. Her hair was the same pale blond color as Oz’s.
“Aren’t those your parents?” asked D. B.
Oz scrunched down behind her in reply. His father was scanning the crowd of students, looking for him. “Yeah,” he whispered.
Jordan and Tank materialized. Like sharks scenting blood, thought Oz, huddling lower. Jordan stared across the playground at Oz’s parents, then lifted an eyebrow, causing the pimples on his forehead to scamper for cover in his greasy black bangs. “Chip off the old block, aren’t you?” he sniped nastily. “Like mother, like son.”
Oz blushed. His mother was a world-famous opera star, and like many divas, she was amply proportioned. “Larger than life,” his father always said admiringly. “Fat,” said the rest of the world.
Don’t react, Oz told himself sternly. Reacting only fueled the fire where sharks were concerned. He tried to imagine what James Bond would do if he were here. James Bond was Oz’s hero. Agent 007 would never let a couple of thugs like Jordan and Tank rattle his cage. The British secret agent never let anything rattle his cage. Only problem was, Agent 007 didn’t have parents. At least none that Oz knew about. And Oz knew pretty much everything there was to know about James Bond.
“The name is Levinson. Oz Levinson,” Oz muttered under his breath, trying to bolster his flagging confidence.
Across the playground, Oz’s father shrugged, said something to Oz’s mother, and then ushered her into the school along with the man in the pilgrim suit. Amelia Bean and her crew followed, cameras still rolling.
D. B. leaned over to Oz. “Something’s up,” she whispered.
“No kidding,” Oz whispered back. “I wonder what?”
They didn’t have to wait long for an answer. As soon as they had taken their seats in homeroom, Mrs. Busby clapped her hands.
“Students! I have a surprise for you this morning,” she announced.
Here it comes, thought Oz, suddenly taking a keen interest in the surface of his desk. He scraped at an ink blot with his fingernail and almost—almost!—wished that he were invisible. Before Halloween, Oz had spent a lot of time wishing he were invisible. He still didn’t like being on the radar screen at school, and whatever his teacher’s surprise was, it was going to involve him. He was sure of it. He glanced over at the desk next to him. D. B. was scowling. She didn’t like being on the radar screen any more than he did.
“Ta-da!” trumpeted Mrs. Busby, flinging open the door to her classroom. The man in the pilgrim suit strode in, followed by Oz’s parents, Amelia Bean, and the Channel Twelve news crew. All of them were beaming.
“There you are, my little dumpling!” cried Luigi Levinson, waggling his fingers at his son.
A ripple of laughter spread across the classroom. Oz stared down at his desk again, his face burning. He could practically feel the bull’s-eye growing on the back of his shirt. Jordan and Tank would lose no time making hay with that one.
“Oz, D. B., would you please come up here?” said Mrs. Busby.
Oz and D. B. exchanged a glance. D. B. lifted one skinny shoulder in a half-shrug, then rose from her seat and marched up to the front of the classroom. His face still red with embarrassment, Oz followed reluctantly.
“Roll ’em,” said Amelia Bean.
The camera’s bright lights were hot, and Oz blinked in the glare. He started to sweat. His glasses crept slowly down his perspiring nose, and he prodded at them anxiously.
The man in the pilgrim suit stepped forward. He pulled a scroll of fake parchment paper from inside his coat, unrolled it, cleared his throat, and then announced: “Hear ye, hear ye! A Thanksgiving proclamation for Miss Delilah Bean and Mr. Ozymandias Levinson courtesy of Mayflower Flour. ‘Your ship always comes in when you bake with Mayflower Flour!’ ”
He paused to let the brief commercial message sink in, then cleared his throat again and continued. “Insomuch as your recipe for pumpkin chocolate-chip bread has been tested and declared worthy, you are hereby declared finalists in the Twenty-Fifth Annual Mayflower Flour Bake-Off, junior division!”
D. B. glared at Oz. “You didn’t tell me you entered us in a contest!” she whispered furiously.
“I didn’t!” protested Oz, prodding at his glasses again. “Honest!”
The two children looked at each other.
“Uh-oh,” said Oz.
They turned and looked at Oz’s father. Luigi Levinson gave them an enthusiastic thumbs-up. “Surprise!” he cried.
“Terrific,” muttered D. B.
Oz’s heart sank. What had his dad gone and done now? A few weeks ago, he and D. B. had been messing around in the Levinsons’ kitchen after school. Like his father, who managed the Spy City Café at Washington’s International Spy Museum, Oz loved to cook. Almost as much as he loved to eat, in fact. He and D. B. had decided to make pumpkin bread to celebrate Oz’s mother’s return from Australia, where she had been on tour. At the last minute they had dumped in a bag of chocolate chips. Oz was a devoted fan of chocolate chips. He firmly believed that there were few dishes, with the possible exception of lasagna, that couldn’t benefit from the addition of chocolate chips.
The experiment had turned out well. So well that Oz’s dad had asked for the recipe and promptly added it to the café’s autumn menu. But a contest? Not a word had been said about that.
The man in the pilgrim suit continued. “Along with eleven other finalists—a total of six in the adult division and six in the junior—you are hereby invited to the island of Manhattan in the great state of New York to compete in tomorrow’s contest. You will be accompanied by parent chaperones and two lucky assistants.”
The classroom erupted in excited cheers. All except for Jordan and Tank, who were doubled over in laughter.
“Bet Pumpkinbutt looks cute in an apron!” jeered Jordan.
“Chef Shamu!” added Tank.
Oz stared miserably at his feet. No doubt about it, he was definitely back on the radar screen again. The sharks smelled blood, and they were beginning to circle. Soon the feeding frenzy would begin.
Amelia Bean thrust a microphone under Oz’s nose. “What do you have to say, Oz? Is this a thrill?”
“Uh—”
“Do you know what the grand prize is?”
“Uh—”
Amelia Bean turned to her daughter. “How about you, Delilah?”
“It’s D. B.,” said D. B., scowling.
Her mother sighed, then turned and faced the camera. “The grand prize in the Mayflower Flour Bake-Off, junior division, is a five-thousand-dollar college savings bond, a year’s supply of Mayflower Flour, and a place of honor on Mayflower Flour’s fabulous float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.”
“You are a float, Fatboy,” whispered Tank.
“Sherman, that??
?s enough,” said Mrs. Busby severely.
Amelia Bean looked directly into the camera. “And now,” she said dramatically, “the lucky finalists will choose the names of their two lucky assistants. Who will it be? Who will accompany them to tomorrow’s Bake-Off in New York?”
Hands flew up all over the room. “Me!” “Oooh, pick me!” “I want to go!” cried Oz and D. B.’s classmates, waving wildly at them.
The man in the pilgrim suit swept his tall black hat from his head with a flourish. Mrs. Busby dumped in a pile of slips of paper containing her homeroom students’ names. Oz scanned the room. Tyler Chin, he thought. He’d be okay. And maybe Katie O’Keefe. Not friends, exactly; D. B. was his only real friend at school. But not sharks, either. Tyler and Katie were safe. They’d be good assistants.
A hush fell over the classroom. Oz and D. B. each plunged a hand into the pilgrim hat. They each plucked a slip of paper from the pile and held it aloft.
Oz prodded at his glasses with his other hand. He was breathing hard. The old familiar knot of panic had formed in the pit of his stomach. Please, oh please, he pleaded silently.
Mrs. Busby took the slips of paper from them. She looked at them. She sighed a deep sigh.
“Well?” asked the man in the pilgrim suit. The entire classroom stared at her expectantly. As the cameras continued to roll, Amelia Bean held out the microphone to catch her every word.
Mrs. Busby forced a smile. “Assisting Delilah Bean and Oz Levinson at this year’s Mayflower Flour Bake-Off, junior division, and accompanying them to New York City will be none other than . . . Jordan Scott and Sherman Wilson.”
Oz closed his eyes. Life as he knew it was over.
Jordan flashed him a malicious grin. “You’re mine, Fatboy,” he said. “It’s payback time.”
CHAPTER 3
DAY ONE • TUESDAY • 0830 HOURS
The door to the conference room at Central Command burst open. Dozens of small heads swiveled around as Glory rushed in. Bunsen was right behind her, his helmet askew.
“You’re late,” a stout gray mouse announced smugly.
Glory ignored him. Fumble was always trying to get her into trouble.
“We’ve got news,” she panted, unable to keep a tremor of fear from her voice. “Bad news.”
The conference room buzzed with curiosity at this. Every employee of the Spy Mice Agency was required to attend the Tuesday morning staff meeting, and they had dutifully wedged themselves into a space that normally seated about a dozen. Field agents, foragers, computer gymnasts, surveillance pilots, and lab mice—all were there, some standing, some leaning against the walls, some perched on spools, bottle corks, upended matchboxes, and other bits of foraged furniture. Her colleagues looked at Glory expectantly.
“Well,” said Julius Folger, distinguished elder states-mouse and director of the Spy Mice Agency, “what is it?”
“Dupont can read.”
The conference room went dead silent. Not a whisker moved. Every ear strained in Glory’s direction; every bright little eye stared at her in disbelief. Julius blinked.
“What?” he said.
“Dupont can read,” Glory repeated, more urgently this time.
“Read? You mean as in a book?” Her boss was clearly as stunned as his staff.
“Yes, Julius! A book!” Glory reached over and grabbed Bunsen. “We both saw him just now at the Library of Congress. So did Hank and Ollie. Bunsen even took pictures—isn’t that right, Bunsen?”
The lab mouse nodded vigorously and held up his key-chain camera.
The Spy Mice Agency director regarded them for what felt to Glory like an eternity. “How the dickens did this happen?” he whispered, as if in a daze. Suddenly, he snapped to attention. “This is a Code Red situation,” he said crisply. “For Your Paws Only.”
The gathered mice began whispering in excitement. Top secret!
“Everyone without Paws Only clearance will leave the room immediately and await further orders,” Julius continued, pausing to let the conference room clear out. A trio of junior lab mice stood up and trooped out reluctantly. Fresh from their training with Kelvin Fahrenheit, Bunsen’s uncle, at his laboratory in Baltimore, they were clearly disappointed to miss out on the classified portion of the meeting.
A whiff of something delicious—pumpkin chocolate-chip bread, perhaps?—wafted in as they opened the door to leave. Central Command was located under the floor directly beneath the International Spy Museum’s Spy City Café, and good smells often drifted down through the ventilation shaft. Glory’s stomach rumbled. She hadn’t eaten breakfast yet.
She watched as two apprentice foragers, a cluster of surveillance-pilot trainees, and half a dozen computer-gymnast interns all trailed out after the lab mice.
“You too, Fumble,” said Julius as the last mouse disappeared through the door.
Fumble, who had clearly been hoping that his boss would overlook him, reddened. He stood up and made his way sulkily through the crowded room. Glory waved cheerfully as he passed her, and Fumble glowered. He shut the door behind him with a resentful bang.
“If you’ll take a seat, I’ll begin,” said Julius. He waved Glory and Bunsen toward a pincushion sofa, and the two of them managed to squeeze in next to Glory’s brothers B-Nut and Chip.
“I don’t know which news is worse,” said Julius. “Glory’s, or this.” He held up a sheaf of paper scraps. “The night-shift computer gymnasts just brought in these e-mails. London, Paris, Rome, Berlin—the news is the same from all corners of the globe. Rat kingpins in nearly every major city have been spotted stowing away on flights bound for New York.”
A hush fell over the room as the mice digested this information. Glory and Bunsen exchanged a glance.
“Julius, there’s something else you should know,” said Glory.
“Yes?”
“Dupont might be heading to New York, too.”
Julius frowned. “What makes you think that?”
“We heard him read two words,” Glory explained. “ ‘Grand’ and ‘central.’ ”
“As in the famous train station in New York?”
Bunsen nodded soberly. “I think he was reading a guidebook for Manhattan,” he added. “I’m not a hundred percent positive, but it’s probably here on film.” The lab mouse held up his camera again.
“Is that so,” said Julius softly. “We’ll need to get that developed right away.” He tapped his paw thoughtfully against the stack of e-mails. “Something big is definitely up,” he continued. “Something very big. This is a veritable rogues’ gallery of rodents! Stilton Piccadilly from London! Brie de Sorbonne from Paris! Muenster Alexanderplatz from Berlin!”
“Not Muenster the Monster!” exclaimed one of the mice, as tails around the room began quivering in terror.
“I’m afraid so,” said Julius, nodding soberly. “And it only gets worse—Gorgonzola himself was spotted creeping into the baggage hold of a plane in Rome last night.”
The conference room fell silent once again. Gorgonzola was a legend, as ruthless as Roquefort Dupont. Perhaps even more so, given the horrible rumors about his favorite food.
Julius stared morosely at the stack of papers in his paw. “There’s not a name on this list I’d look forward to tangling with. This is a crisis of enormous proportions. And now with Dupont able to read?” He shook his head. “Word of this must not get out. If the press gets even a whiff of this—especially the Tattletail—it could create mass panic.”
Every head in the room nodded in sober agreement, imagining the uproar this news would cause throughout the tidy network of guilds that formed the backbone of their society.
“Above all, we musn’t panic,” Julius continued. “What we need most are level heads. Calm, cool, clear thinking—that always wins the day. There is one bright spot,” he added, holding up one of the e-mails. “Sir Edmund Hazelnut-Cadbury reports that MICE-Six managed to smuggle two of their top agents onto the same flight that Piccadilly was seen boarding
in London. They’re hidden in a shipment of teapots and will rendezvous in New York with an elite team of our field agents.”
The elder mouse scanned the room. His gaze came to rest on Glory. “I’m putting Morning Glory Goldenleaf in charge of that team.”
Glory’s elegant little ears pricked up in surprise. “Me?”
Julius nodded. “I’m counting on your recent experience with rats—namely Roquefort Dupont—to provide just the edge we need here.”
“I’d like to take B-Nut and Bunsen with me,” said Glory. “Hank, too, if you can spare him.”
“Very well,” Julius replied. “And I’m recalling my nephew Hotspur from overseas to join you.”
Glory and B-Nut exchanged a glance. Snotspur? She and her brother had gone to spy school with Julius’s nephew. Like his uncle, Hotspur Folger was a member of the Library Guild. And not just any library, but Washington’s Folger Shakespeare Library, home to one of the city’s oldest and most distinguished families. Hotspur had graduated at the top of their class and gone on to earn his Silver Skateboard in record time. A good field agent, yes—but he was not exactly a team player. In fact, he was by all accounts a major pain in the tail. “The mouse who puts the ‘do’ in ‘derring-do,’ ” he loved to call himself. Ambitious and arrogant, Hotspur craved the spotlight and the high life, fast skateboards and the fast track to the top. And rumor had it that he was not afraid to step on paws to get there. Glory didn’t relish the thought of having to work with him, but Julius, unfortunately, seemed to have a blind spot where his nephew’s faults were concerned.
“You’ll need a cover story, of course,” added Julius. “And it will have to be a good one. Again, word of this mission must not leak out. It’s strictly For Your Paws Only. We don’t want to panic the guilds in New York or Washington. Or anywhere else, for that matter.”
“I’ve got the perfect cover,” offered B-Nut. “If you’ll give us permission to bring the Steel Acorns along as part of the team, that is.”