The Inside Job: And Other Skills I Learned as a Superspy

  “Wir möchten mit Ihnen reden,” I said quickly. We’d like to talk to you.

  Hastings gave me a confused look. His eyes danced over the seven of us, trying to sort out who we were. Then suddenly it clicked.

  “You were at the bank!” he said in English, horrified. “You’re from SRS—you used the code name, the Antonio Halfred name! What have I done? Did I do something wrong? Are you angry?”

  Whoa—now I was convinced I was right after all, because Hastings looked like he might actually pass out from fear. I said, “No—that’s the point. We’re not with the Sub Rosa Society. We’re with—”

  Hastings’s eyes widened, and his mouth dropped. He stepped back through his door and then tried to slam it, but I jammed my foot into the frame just before he could. I winced as the pressure of the door crushed my toes.

  “We just want to talk!” I said. “We need to tell you—”

  “You’re going to ruin everything! Go away!” Hastings shouted.

  Walter and Clatterbuck jumped forward and pressed on the door; when the two of them couldn’t fling it open, Kennedy and Ben joined in. Otter stood in the back, looking somewhat more dignified than the rest of us.

  Hastings’s back was to the door, pressing it in on us. When Beatrix finally threw her slight weight against it, the door gave, and we all went crashing into Hastings’s foyer, sliding across the marble floor in a heap. We tumbled into a fancy wooden table on the other side, breaking the wood and sending a bowl of fake lemons toppling to the ground. Hastings scrambled to his feet as the rest of us sorted out our limbs.

  “You have to go!” Hastings said, turning to Otter—I supposed he seemed like the most reasonable one there.

  “Believe me, I want to,” Otter said drily. “But that one, there—the chubby one, yes—he insisted we talk to you. The faster the conversation, the faster we’re gone.”

  I glowered at Otter’s low shot but then turned to Hastings. Clatterbuck, Beatrix and Ben, and Walter walked over to stand behind me, while Kennedy walked up beside me and gave Hastings her friendliest smile. Hastings swallowed loudly. For the first time, I got a really solid look at him. He was short, and even though he was young and not exactly fat, he looked like he’d be about as useful in a relay race as I’d be. He’d brushed his hair messily to try to disguise the bald spot near the top of his head, and despite the fact that it was Saturday, was wearing a dress shirt—though he did have the sleeves rolled up.

  Hastings smashed his lips together, and then said, “Fine. Fine. Come on. Let’s get away from the windows, at least.” He waved us all farther into the house, keeping his eyes especially firm on Clatterbuck and Otter, like he expected them to pull out weapons at any second. As we went along he jumped ahead, pulling drapes and closing shutters. The house was dim by the time we’d made it to a parlor in the back. On the walls there were fancy oil paintings of old ladies wearing furs and pearls, and all the sofas were the stiff, tufted kind. I sat down but then wished I hadn’t—the cushions felt like embroidered rocks. There wasn’t enough room, so Kennedy, Beatrix, and Ben all sat cross-legged on the floor.

  “All right, Mr. Hastings, we’ll be quick,” I said. Hastings stood in the parlor door, fidgeting. Kennedy kept smiling at him, which clearly made him even more nervous. “SRS—you’re handling their money for them, right? Helping to keep it hidden?”

  “Maybe,” Hastings said, shrugging.

  “Dude, come on. We obviously already know,” Walter said, sighing.

  I gave Walter a hard look. “Well, let’s say you are,” I continued, trying to be patient. “We just wanted to make sure you know exactly what SRS is. And if they’re forcing you to help them, then we want to help you escape.”

  Hastings cracked his knuckles. “What are you, twelve? Who are you?”

  “We’re The League,” Clatterbuck said, sounding proud—I could tell he’d been waiting a long time to say this again. Ben and Beatrix smiled at their uncle.

  “The what?” Hastings asked, and Clatterbuck’s face fell a little.

  “We’re an opposing spy organization from the States,” Otter explained, his voice growly. “I’m the director. Ben and Beatrix are the tech team. Kennedy’s the cat burglar. Walter’s the right-hand man. Clatterbuck’s the ways-and-means guy. Hale’s the lead agent. We’re the organization meant to stop SRS for good, and if you stop wasting our time, we can explain why you should help us instead of them.”

  “If you kill me, they’ll know—”

  “Kill you? Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Beatrix said, waving her hands.

  “We’re not killing anyone. It’s not really our thing,” Ben said.

  “We just wanted to make sure you’re not in trouble, basically. That you don’t need rescuing,” Walter finished.

  Markus let his eyes rest on each of us for a moment, and then he shook his head, wiped his face with his hand, and fidgeted some more. If it weren’t his house, and if he were maybe a little more athletic, I was pretty certain he would’ve taken off running. I looked at everyone else. What were we supposed to do now?

  “Well. This was illuminating, Jordan. I told you—they’re paying him, not using him. Let’s go,” Otter said, rolling his eyes. Disappointed, we all rose.

  “Paying me? Ha,” Hastings said. “They aren’t paying me a dime!”

  We stopped. “What?” I asked.

  “SRS. They’ve never given me a penny.”

  “They’re blackmailing you?” Walter said.

  “Of course they’re blackmailing me! I didn’t want anything to do with them, but they’ll ruin me. They’ll take every dime I have! I won’t be able to make my car payments. I won’t be able to go to my house in Monaco. I won’t be able to keep my house in Monaco! They’ll destroy my life!” Hastings said, his face turning bright red as he got louder and louder.

  “How are they blackmailing you? Maybe we can fix it,” I said, ignoring the fact that losing a vacation house had worked this man into hysterics. “You had an affair? You . . . got arrested? Stole from the bank?”

  “No, no, no,” Hastings said mournfully. “Worse.”

  “Tell us,” Kennedy said. “What’s the worst that could happen? You’re already being blackmailed.”

  Hastings considered this for a moment and sighed heavily. He stood up slowly, then walked out of the room.

  “Uh, should we follow him?” Walter asked. I nodded, and we all sprang after him. Hastings led us through the kitchen, down some stairs, and to a little enclosed patio. He pointed to a bright-orange cushion on the ground.

  “That’s how they’re blackmailing me,” he said.

  “They know about your . . . strange taste in beanbags?” Ben asked.

  Hastings looked horrified. “That’s not a beanbag! It’s a dog! An extremely rare red-gold Tibetan mastiff!”

  “A dog?” Kennedy squealed, and before anyone could stop her, she’d dropped to her knees and was crawling toward the cushion—er, the dog—with a hand extended, making kissing noises.

  “This is International Supreme Grand Champion Her Lady’s Most Gracious Reply,” Hastings said. When Hastings said the dog’s name, it lifted its head tiredly. It had giant droopy lips and eyes, and a mane like a lion’s. It had to weigh three times what Kennedy weighed, at least. The dog leaned forward and stuck its nose into Kennedy’s outstretched hand, sniffing her palm. It didn’t get up, but its tail did begin to thump against the floor.

  “She likes me! I like you too, International Supreme Grand . . . What was the rest of her name?” Kennedy said, glowing.

  “Just call her Annabelle. The long name is just for show,” Hastings said. Annabelle, apparently satisfied by the smell of Kennedy’s hand, rolled over slightly, begging in the laziest way possible for her stomach to be rubbed.

  “They’re threatening your dog? That’s evil, even for SRS,” I said, shaking my head.

  “No, no. They know the truth about my dog,” Hastings said. He took a deep breath and then said, “I make my living off A
nnabelle. The bank doesn’t pay much, but Annabelle’s puppies bring in a half million per.”

  My jaw dropped. “A half million dollars for a puppy?”

  “For a Tibetan mastiff puppy!” Hastings said indignantly. “It’s the rarest dog in the world!”

  “You have all this,” Otter said, gesturing to the grandiose house, “from breeding that dog? The one that literally hasn’t moved since we got here. That dog.”

  “She moved! She rolled over!” Kennedy said defensively.

  Hastings went on quickly, “Well, no—I inherited the house—and Annabelle—from my grandmother when she passed. The old lady wouldn’t leave me a dime of actual money. So I got a whole bunch of stuff—this house, some art that I sold, Annabelle . . . I was supposed to get more. There was a set of jewel-encrusted books that I could’ve sold for millions and millions and lived off for the rest of my life, but those were stolen just before she died. So I live off Annabelle now. Without her, I’d lose everything. But SRS knows . . . Well . . . They know . . .” Hastings turned deep red and stared at the ground. His face contorted a bit, like he might cry. He then whispered something under his breath.

  “What’d he say?” Walter asked me. I shrugged.

  Hastings whispered again, a bit louder, “Theynosheeznodapoorbed.”

  “What?” Ben asked.

  Hastings threw his arms in the air. “They know she’s not a purebred! My Annabelle is a lie! Her great-great-great-great-grandfather wasn’t a Tibetan mastiff—he was a golden retriever!”

  Then Hastings slumped down into a patio chair and buried his head in his hands. Otter regarded him like he was something old from the back of the refrigerator. Walter looked confused. Kennedy and Clatterbuck, who was now also patting Annabelle, didn’t seem to think her scandalous grandfather dog did anything to lessen her charm.

  “So . . . they’re threatening to tell the world that Annabelle isn’t a purebred. That’s how they’re making you handle their money for them,” I said slowly.

  Hastings nodded from behind his hands. “You see? There’s nothing I can do. I have to help them. They’ll ruin me,” he mumbled into his fingers. “This is all my grandmother’s fault, you know. Make your way in the world, she said. Don’t plan on living off my inheritance, she said. Get a job, you deadbeat, she said. Then she gave all the money away and left me with heirlooms, and now there’s nothing left to sell, and so all I’ve got is this dog, and now my house is full of spies.”

  “Well, give us a chance to figure out how to get you out of all this,” Kennedy said, matching his tone. “We’re good at this. We’re professional spies, after all.”

  Otter snorted. I didn’t say anything, but I sort of agreed with Otter.

  Beatrix piped up, “She’s right! They got me out of SRS headquarters, along with about a dozen other kids SRS kidnapped. So they can definitely figure out a way to get you out of being blackmailed.”

  “You can’t make her a purebred, though. I have the papers forged, but if SRS even started a rumor, everyone would want a genetic test done. They’d see the golden retriever in her past.” Hastings sniffed hopelessly.

  “We’ll think of something,” I said, though he had a point. “And if we do this for you, Mr. Hastings, will you tell us which accounts SRS’s money is in?”

  Hastings nodded. “Sure. But there’s no point. There’s nothing you can do.”

  “Give us a chance. Like my sister said”—I took a breath, like saying it aloud might make it more true—“we’re professionals.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “I’m just saying, the man has a job and a fancy house. Doesn’t seem very noble to help a rich man stay rich,” Ben said. Beatrix nodded in agreement.

  He had a point—Hastings wasn’t the most sympathetic of SRS victims. Still, I said, “Think big picture. We’re not helping Markus Hastings—we’re helping The League. We’re helping everyone SRS hurts with that money.”

  We were spread out around the kitchen table again, brainstorming ways we could keep Annabelle’s secret a secret. So far we had:

  1. Fake a DNA test for Annabelle

  (We could fake her test, but a decent lab would likely run an independent control before Annabelle’s, and we couldn’t fake that one so easily.)

  2. Switch Annabelle out with a real red-gold Tibetan mastiff

  (Nope—Annabelle was the only one in the world. In fact, the gold was probably “rare” because it was coming from her golden retriever roots.)

  3. Clatterbuck goes in disguise as a dog-show judge

  (There was no point to the costume, really; I think Clatterbuck just wanted to go somewhere in disguise, so he suggested this.)

  “Maybe . . . maybe we’re thinking about this the wrong way,” Ben said. We looked to him. “See, sometimes when I’m inventing something, I get too fixated on what I want the end machine to be instead of what I want it to do. Like, wanting a woodcutting machine to be an ax-robot rather than do woodcutting.”

  “Is that what that is in the cafeteria closet? The thing with the ax?” Otter asked, horrified. “It can move?”

  “It’s fine, it’s fine—I removed the motion-activation sensor,” Ben said, waving Otter off. He continued, “So maybe, instead of trying to fix Annabelle, we need to think about fixing Hastings. The real problem is that he’ll be ruined if Annabelle is outed. So we actually just need to find another way for him to make money.”

  “What about the books?” Clatterbuck suggested. “Didn’t he say some fancy books were stolen? Gold or something?”

  “Jewel-encrusted,” Otter said. “We could find the books. He could sell them, live off that. He wouldn’t need Annabelle anymore.”

  “Poor Annabelle!” Kennedy cried. Clatterbuck nodded and patted her shoulder.

  “All right. So. We find the jeweled books. We get them back to Hastings. He gets us SRS’s funding. We go home,” I said, ticking the tasks off on my fingers.

  Otter looked skeptical. “Jeweled books—there are a thousand different people who might want those. Book collectors. Jewel thieves. Art lovers. Everyone from the high-end criminal to some small-time thief looking to make a quick buck. SRS themselves might have taken them, actually, as leverage.”

  “So you’re saying it’s impossible?” Beatrix asked, crestfallen.

  “I’m saying this is not a long-term mission. We can’t stay in Switzerland for ages. Not only would SRS figure us out, but we can’t afford it. We need a backup plan.”

  “Maybe Annabelle could do something else to earn Hastings some money,” Kennedy suggested. “You know, like be one of those Saint Bernards that carries hot chocolate to lost hikers.”

  “That’s just a myth. They never did that,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Well, then she could be the first,” Kennedy said, and stuck her tongue out at me. “Just because she wasn’t born some fancy-pants perfect Tibetan mastiff doesn’t mean she can’t still be a good dog.”

  I sighed, but I sort of understood what Kennedy meant. I wasn’t born the perfect spy, after all. It wasn’t Annabelle’s fault her great-great-whatever was a golden retriever any more than it was my fault that I somehow inherited my great-aunt’s arm flab.

  “All right, all right—you teach Annabelle to do something useful,” I said.

  “I’ll help! I once trained a dog to growl on command!” Clatterbuck said, nodding at Kennedy.

  “Really?” Otter asked.

  “Well, he growled whenever he saw me. Does that count?” Clatterbuck said. Now we all sighed. Unbelievably, this trip seemed a lot simpler when we were just breaking into a few hypersecure bank vaults.

  “It can’t hurt to ask Hastings when the books were stolen. Maybe we can figure it out. If we can’t, we’ll find another way,” I said, shaking my head.

  Otter glanced at me so fast, the others missed it. I knew what he was thinking though: we could threaten to out Annabelle’s true heritage if Hastings didn’t give us the account numbers. Obviously, it was a persuasive
threat, since it worked for SRS. It would be quick. Tidy. Simple.

  I shook my head at him almost imperceptibly. No, we couldn’t—we couldn’t do things like SRS. We were the good guys, after all. Still, years and years of SRS schooling made that solution so very tempting. How was SRS still in my head, even though I knew what they really were? Even though they’d lied to me for my entire life?

  Sometimes, no matter how far I got from SRS, it felt like they were always right behind me.

  Just in case we ever did get around to robbing the bank, we’d still need a way to get everything out from the vaults. Ben began drafting that evening, after we described the thickness of the bank carpet and the number of doorjambs in the lobby to him in detail. Beatrix was helping while Otter explained exactly how many steps it was from the front door to the wall of bankers’ desks. There were twenty-three; I knew not because he’d told me, but because I’d counted them out as well. It’s a spy thing.

  Meanwhile, Clatterbuck was looking up helicopter tours of Geneva. (“Come on, when else will we all be in Geneva? It’ll be fun!”) Walter had gone for a walk, I guessed to see the ponies, since the last time I saw him he was walking toward the barn. I found Kennedy sitting in the bedroom she was sharing with Beatrix, flipping through a newspaper.

  “Are you reading that?” I asked, surprised. She’d already taken German at SRS, but the paper was written in French, which she wouldn’t learn till she was eleven.

  “I’m trying,” she said, sighing. She dropped the paper and slumped back on her bed, her red hair fanning out around her. Her side of the room was already ransacked—her suitcase was spilling pink and purple clothes onto the floor, and her sheets were in knots. Kennedy kicked the newspaper to the ground, where I suspected it would stay until we left.

  I walked over and picked up the top piece of paper. “What did you want to read? I can translate it for you, maybe.”

  Kennedy gave me a hesitant look. “The classifieds.”

  I stopped and looked at her, then nodded. “I already checked this morning. But I’ll go through them again, just in case.”