Then he asked, “Do you have any proof that this was SPYDER’s plot?”
“Um . . . ,” I said. “Well . . . this is based on my general knowledge of how SPYDER operates.”
“So, you have no actual proof at all,” Cyrus said.
“Er . . . I guess not.”
“No one knows SPYDER better than Ben!” Zoe argued supportively. “He’s figured out more of their plots than anyone else!”
“Did I ask for your opinion on this, Miss Zibbell?” Cyrus asked.
“No, but . . .”
“Then keep quiet.” Cyrus turned to the rest of the panel. “There’s only one thing Agent Ripley has said here that makes any sense at all, which is that SPYDER is constantly using misdirection. That’s all this cockamamie theory is: yet another attempt to distract us from the truth. And the truth is that the young people seated before us have all been corrupted by SPYDER. Instead of admitting that, however, they’re using smoke and mirrors to confound us.”
“That’s right!” the principal exclaimed, pointing at me. “You’ve been confounding me ever since you arrived at this school!”
The people on the panel murmured assent, apparently convinced by Cyrus.
“I’m not trying to confound anyone,” I objected. “And if SPYDER really has managed to oust the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, that’s a big problem.”
“The big problem here,” Cyrus said, “is that despite multiple opportunities to admit your guilt and give us information on SPYDER, none of you have done it. Therefore, it is obvious that more aggressive steps need to be taken to get you to admit the truth.”
“More aggressive steps?” Chip asked, sounding worried. “You’re going to torture us?”
Cyrus didn’t answer the question. Instead, he spoke to the stern woman. “Normally, I would say the CIA could handle this, but I still fear my agency is compromised by SPYDER. Since SPYDER is a threat to national security, rooting them out also falls under the jurisdiction of the military. Perhaps we could use your facilities to extract the information we need?”
“Certainly,” the stern woman answered. “They’re ready whenever you want them.”
“Then let’s get started right away,” Cyrus said. “Time is of the essence. I move that we transfer the prisoners immediately.”
“To the military facility?” Alexander asked, aghast. “You can’t be serious, Dad! You know what happens there!”
“It won’t have to happen if they tell us what we need to know,” Cyrus replied. “All agreed?”
“Agreed,” the stern woman said.
“Agreed!” the principal exclaimed, as though he was excited by the idea of having terrible things done to me.
“Agreed,” said the director of the Secret Service, as though he was relieved no one was accusing him of being a SPYDER agent anymore.
“Agreed,” said the two other silhouettes at the table. It was the first time either of them had said anything.
“Very good.” Cyrus banged what was left of his gavel on the table. “This tribunal is concluded.”
The doors to the room opened and a dozen military police stormed in, heading directly for me and my friends.
“You’re making a mistake!” Jawa yelled. “A huge mistake!”
“That’s right!” Chip echoed. “While you guys are dorking around with us, you’re playing right into SPYDER’s hands!”
No one on the panel responded to us, though. Alexander was the only one even looking our way. The rest were now all talking among themselves, congratulating one another on a job well done, probably trying to avoid thinking about what they had condemned us to.
The military police surrounded us. One hoisted Erica onto his shoulder while the rest dragged us to our feet.
Mike no longer looked relaxed. Instead, he was flummoxed by everything that was happening. “But you solved this,” he said to me. “Can’t they see that? Why are they treating us like the bad guys?”
“You’d be surprised how stupid an intelligence agency can be,” Zoe told him.
The military police marched us back out of the lecture hall. On the stage, the people who had sat on the tribunal were ignoring us. I wanted to shout to them that they were making a mistake, but it didn’t seem as though it would do any good. Every attempt I’d made to convince them of my innocence had failed.
SPYDER had once again manipulated everyone brilliantly. They had pulled off a major crime and made me and my friends look like the bad guys. Despite my lack of evidence, I was now positive that SPYDER had targeted the chairman of the Joint Chiefs—only I couldn’t prove it and, in truth, I had no idea why SPYDER had done it.
Not that it would do me any good to figure out what they were up to. I was in no position to stop them. My own agency had decided that I—and everyone I trusted—was a criminal.
SPYDER had won.
INSPIRATION
Covert transportation
En route through Washington, DC
February 13
0700 hours
My friends and I were all bundled into the back of a paddy wagon, strapped into jump seats along the walls, and locked inside. Chip, Jawa, and Zoe sat on one side; Mike, Erica, and I were on the other. There were no windows. The only light came from a single bulb in the ceiling, so feeble that I could barely see Mike beside me.
Erica slumped against my shoulder, remaining stubbornly asleep.
Many people were speaking outside, but their voices were all muffled through the thick, bulletproof walls of the truck. I tried to eavesdrop, but couldn’t understand anything. Plus, someone inside the truck was crying. At first I thought it might have been Zoe, but then realized it was Jawa. “My own agency thinks I’m a criminal,” he sobbed softly. “My parents are going to kill me.”
I finally picked up a sliver of conversation. Cyrus Hale said he would provide protection during our transfer, then climbed into the passenger side of the paddy wagon. Someone else got into the driver’s side, after which the engine started.
That made it even harder to hear, although I thought I detected a few other engines starting, indicating there was a convoy of vehicles escorting us.
The paddy wagon lurched forward and headed out into the city.
The sudden motion jolted all of us. Erica’s head jounced against my shoulder roughly, startling her awake. She was still drowsy, though, her eyelids drooped at half-mast. “Hey,” she murmured. “This looks bad.”
“It is,” I agreed. “Cyrus just arrested us all for collaborating with SPYDER.”
“Grandpa?” Erica asked. In her drugged state, more emotion crept into her voice than she normally would have allowed. She sounded startled and worried. “He arrested me?”
“Because you tried to help me,” I explained. “And you freed Ashley.”
Erica glanced around the interior of the paddy wagon, then frowned. “She got away?”
“The CIA was too busy nabbing us instead,” Zoe said bitterly, then added, “Morons.”
The paddy wagon hooked a sharp right turn. I knew that meant we had pulled out of the main gate of the academy and were heading into the city.
Erica shook her head violently, trying to clear the cobwebs from her mind. When she looked back at me again, she seemed much more lucid. “Where are they taking us?”
“Some military facility where they’re going to torture confessions out of us,” I answered. “I don’t know where it is.”
Erica blinked in surprise. “Military?”
“Your grandfather handed us over to them,” I explained. “He said he didn’t trust the CIA to handle the job.”
“He doesn’t usually trust the military, either. Who’d he hand us over to?”
“Some woman. We never saw her face.”
“Did you hear her? Could you imitate her voice?”
“Um . . . maybe.” I tried my best to imitate the stern woman and said, “You kids are in big trouble.”
“Ben,” Chip said, “I don’t want to hit you while
you’re down, but you stink at imitating people. That didn’t sound anything like that woman.”
“Oh?” Zoe challenged. “And you can do better?”
“Definitely,” Chip said. And then, to all of our amazement, he repeated the same words I had, sounding so much like the stern woman that for a moment I thought she was in the paddy wagon with us. “You kids are in big trouble.”
“Holy cow!” Mike exclaimed. “That was you? How’d you get so good at that?”
“It just comes naturally to me,” Chip said. “It’s one of my many awesome talents.”
“Actually, Chip secretly takes an acting class three nights a week,” Erica announced.
There were several gasps from the other side of the truck: Jawa and Zoe expressing disbelief; Chip expressing surprise that he’d been found out.
“You told me you were going to a martial arts class!” Jawa said.
“I am,” Chip insisted.
“No you’re not,” Erica said. “In fact, before Chip was recruited to spy school, he was at an arts academy, where he specialized in acting, singing, tap dance, and playing the oboe. I have to admit, he’s quite good. His acting instructor wants him to play the lead in their upcoming production of Guys and Dolls.”
Chip was so astonished now, he didn’t even try to hide it. “How did you . . . ?”
“I’m studying to be a spy,” Erica said. “It’s my job to know things. By the way, that woman you imitated is Felicia DuVray, assistant director of information acquisition for the U.S. Army. She’s as tough as they come. Three minutes in the room with her and you’ll be telling her everything you’ve ever done wrong in your entire life.”
“Which lead are you up for?” Zoe asked Chip. “Nicely-Nicely or Nathan Detroit?”
“I don’t know,” Chip admitted. “I didn’t even know I was being considered for the lead.”
“Nathan Detroit,” Erica told him.
“Really?” Chip asked excitedly. “Cool!”
“As thrilling as that may be,” Erica went on, “we need to focus on the task at hand. Letting DuVray take a crack at us won’t be fun and it’s going to waste valuable time. We have to figure out what SPYDER is up to right away.”
“Oh, Ben’s already done that,” Mike said.
“He has?” Erica asked. “Then why are we still in this paddy wagon?”
“They didn’t believe him,” Jawa replied.
“SPYDER wasn’t going after the president,” I explained. “They were really targeting the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was in the West Wing at the exact same time.”
“So they merely tried to make it look like a presidential assassination to distract from the real objective,” Erica said, putting everything together quickly. “Of course. Typical SPYDER. But why go after the chairman?”
“I haven’t worked that part out yet,” I admitted. “But I figure it has something to do with SPYDER’s general mission to cause chaos and mayhem.”
“If that’s all they were up to, they could have caused plenty by simply taking out the president,” Erica said. “There has to be something more to this, Ben. Think back to the explosion. Use your memory training. Is there anything else you can recall?”
I did my best to think back, but the events leading up to the explosion were a jumbled blur. “Not really. Everything happened so fast. . . .”
“I need you to try,” Erica said. “It’s important. I know it’s difficult, but you can do it. I believe in you.”
“Erica?” Zoe asked. “Did you actually just say that? You sounded like a greeting card.”
“It’s this stupid sedative I got hit with,” Erica said with a sigh. “It’s dampening my usual tendency to play down my emotions, making me far more honest than I normally feel comfortable with. It’s really annoying.”
Zoe giggled. “So, if I asked you if you considered us friends . . .”
“I’d say yes,” Erica replied, then cursed under her breath. “Ugh! Stupid honesty. I hate it!”
Meanwhile, I was struggling to recall the moments before the explosion. I closed my eyes and tried to re-create the scene in my mind, imagining the West Wing exactly as it was.
I had been passing through with Kimmy Dimsdale and Jason Stern. Then Vladimir Gorsky and all the military officers had exited the Situation Room. There was the secretary of the army, the navy, and the air force, the secretary of defense, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs himself, an older man with a steel-gray crew cut and a chest full of medals.
“Do you consider me a friend?” Jawa asked Erica.
“Yes,” Erica conceded, in a tone that made it sound as though her honesty was actually causing her pain.
Gorsky had responded with surprise upon seeing me, which had startled the chairman and the other officers with him. And then the president had emerged from the Oval Office, tailed by several Secret Service agents.
“What about me?” Chip asked Erica. “Do you like me as a friend?”
“Not really,” Erica said honestly. “I’ve always felt you were kind of a jerk.”
An image suddenly came to me, a freeze-frame from moments before the bomb went off. Gorsky and the other military officers were all staring at me, Gorsky appearing surprised I was there, the others wondering why he was reacting to me in that way. . . .
Except one.
One of the high-ranking officers had his back to me as he was hurrying into the Situation Room. I couldn’t remember his face—it was possible I’d never seen it—but he was definitely in a rush. Like he was trying to get away from me as quickly as possible.
My eyes snapped open again. I had an insight. A very scary insight.
I said, “If Cyrus is right, and SPYDER really does have operatives deep inside all branches of the government, what’s the chance that they have a high-ranking agent in the defense department?”
“Anything is possible where SPYDER is concerned,” Erica told me. “How high?”
“Vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” I said.
A hush fell over the paddy wagon as we all considered that. We swerved through another turn. The vehicle was moving surprisingly fast for Washington, DC; we must have been out before morning rush hour had begun.
“It makes sense,” Jawa said. “The chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs are positions assigned by the president. If you’re vice chairman, you’re not guaranteed to become chairman . . .”
“Unless the chairman dies or steps down,” Zoe concluded. “Who’s the vice chairman?”
“Elmore Finch,” Erica answered. “He’s had a sterling service record, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have been a SPYDER operative all along. Which means SPYDER might now have control over the highest-ranking military officer in the entire U.S. armed forces. . . .” She trailed off, as though struck by a frightening thought. “Oh no.”
“What?” I asked.
“The chairman of the Joint Chiefs controls the launch overrides for our entire nuclear missile system,” Erica said.
“You mean he can start a nuclear attack?” Mike asked, astonished. “I thought only the president could do that.”
“No,” Erica corrected. “The president can authorize a launch, but that still has to be confirmed by the military. The ultimate authority lies with the chairman.”
“Um . . . ,” Jawa said nervously. “That’s not the way the military claims it works. They’re not supposed to have that sort of control over the nuclear arsenal.”
“I know,” Erica agreed. “But they do. The military doesn’t want everyone to know the truth because, well . . . it’s a pretty stupid system. But the military has always felt they should be able to make the ultimate call on this, not the president. I don’t think it ever occurred to them that maybe, someday, a sleeper agent from an international consortium dedicated to causing chaos and mayhem would actually become the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and gain the ability to launch a nuclear strike anywhere, anytime he wanted to. Which seems to have
happened.”
“So how does the system work?” I asked worriedly. “Does Elmore Finch just get handed some sort of launch button?”
“It’s not quite that simple,” Erica said. “There is a portable control system kept in a secure briefcase, but there are several layers of security to authenticate the identity of the chairman before he can initiate an attack. Thumbprint readers. Retinal scans. Voice-recognition software. All that has to be set up before the portable system can be used, and the only place that can be done is in a secure room at the . . .” She trailed off once again, only this time it wasn’t in fear. This time she seemed pleased. In fact, she actually started laughing.
“Is the idea of thermonuclear war funny to you?” Mike asked. “Because I’ve always found it pretty terrifying, myself.”
“The secure room is at the Pentagon,” Erica said.
“I still don’t see the humor in this,” Mike told her.
“The military’s information-extraction facilities are also at the Pentagon,” Erica explained. “That’s why Grandpa handed us over to the military! He isn’t suspicious of us anymore! He’s getting us through Pentagon security!” She broke into gleeful laughter again.
This was unsettling. Erica rarely laughed, and she was almost never gleeful. Hearing her do it seemed as bizarre as a cat barking.
“Erica,” Zoe said cautiously, “I know you missed the whole tribunal, seeing as you were unconscious and everything, but your grandfather didn’t seem like he was on our side at all.”
“Well, he couldn’t admit that, could he?” Erica asked. “He knows SPYDER has people everywhere. He already suspects the CIA is corrupted, and he probably suspects the same thing about the military—rightly so, I might add, given Ben’s current revelations. Plus, if you aren’t familiar with SPYDER, the idea that they’d assassinate the president simply to hide the fact that they were really trying to kill the chairman of the Joint Chiefs in order to install their own mole as the head of the entire military would probably seem a bit far-fetched. You’d be accusing the second-highest-ranking person in the military complex of being corrupt—and plotting to kill his superior. There’s no guarantee Cyrus could convince anyone else he was right, and if he suspected that’s what SPYDER was up to, he would have known he didn’t have time to waste. So he had to pretend he was still on their side.”