I glanced toward Cyrus, surprised he had said anything remotely nice about me at all. Instead of confirming this, he merely handed me a dossier.
It was stamped FOR YOUR EYES ONLY: OPERATION PUNGENT MUSKRAT. It also had a thick wax seal embossed with the logo of the CIA.
My heart pounded. It was always exciting to get an FYEO dossier. And yet . . . “Operation Pungent Muskrat?” I asked, failing to hide the disappointment in my voice.
“I know, it’s a lousy name,” the president said. “But I assure you, this is an extremely important mission. From what I understand, the Agency used to give their all missions very exciting names like Operation Cobra Strike and Operation Lightning Blast, but by now all those have been used up and we’re kind of left with the dregs. Trust me, it could be worse. The last mission I was party to was called Operation Zesty Walrus.”
That made me feel a little better. I tried to crack open the secure seal on the file. Only, the seal turned out to be a lot more secure than I’d expected. I struggled with it for a few seconds but made no progress.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Cyrus muttered, then snatched the dossier back from me and tried to open it himself. It turned out he couldn’t do it either.
President Stern put a hand over his mouth, trying to hide the fact that he was laughing.
Cyrus threw the dossier on the floor. “You know what? We don’t need to open this blasted thing anyhow. I know everything that’s in it. The headline being this: We have reliable intel that SPYDER is planning to assassinate the president.”
I sat up in my seat, worried for the president; if any organization could determine how to get around all his security and take him out, it was SPYDER. I was also worried because I was with the president. If SPYDER decided to kill him right then, they’d have killed me, too. “What kind of intel?”
“We’ve picked up chatter on various channels we’ve been monitoring,” Cyrus explained. “Enough to make us believe this is a credible threat.”
His tone indicated he expected me to be satisfied with that answer and not pester him with any more questions. However, there was still one I had to ask: “Who’s we?”
“My team,” Cyrus said.
“Who is . . . ?”
“Classified.”
“I mean, is this an official CIA operation?” I asked. “Or is it another unauthorized mission?”
Cyrus lifted his eyebrows, apparently surprised I had dared to ask this.
The president chuckled and gave Cyrus a sly smile. “You did say he was sharp.”
“Too sharp for his own good sometimes,” Cyrus grumbled. Then he turned back to me. “As you know, I have expressed concerns before about the degree to which SPYDER has infiltrated the CIA. With the exception of you and Erica, I don’t believe there is anyone at the Agency we can fully trust.”
“Not even your son?”
“There are two definitions of trust,” Cyrus explained. “You can trust someone not to be a traitor—and you can trust someone to handle things competently. I know my son isn’t working for SPYDER. But as far as his competence is concerned, I’d rather rely on a monkey.”
I knew this to be true—although Alexander Hale had managed to fool the entire CIA into thinking he was actually a good spy for years. His single greatest skill was lying about how great his other skills were. In practice, Alexander was well meaning but inept, careless and prone to knocking himself unconscious. “Do you trust the principal?” I asked. “He was just informed that I was to be activated.”
“How do you know that?” Cyrus asked suspiciously.
I thought about telling the whole story, but then decided to go with the answer Erica always gave me instead. “I’m training to be a spy. It’s my job to know things. Does the principal know what’s going on?”
“The principal wouldn’t know what was going on even if he was here with us right now,” Cyrus said. “Yes, I told him SPYDER was active so he’d authorize your mission without any delay, but I lied to him about everything else. He thinks you’re infiltrating a prep school in Bethesda. And if SPYDER’s tapped his phone lines—which they probably have—then hopefully they bought it too.”
“So, this mission isn’t authorized?” I asked.
“The priority of this mission is to protect the president at all costs,” Cyrus said, deftly avoiding answering my question.
“Are we working with the Secret Service?”
“No,” Cyrus replied. “SPYDER may have infiltrated them as well. As far as I’m concerned, every single government security agency may be compromised.”
I looked to the president, wondering if Cyrus might be overstating things. The president shrugged. “Agent Hale believes SPYDER may already have a mole in the White House—either on my staff or in my security detail—and that this mole may be part of the assassination plot.”
“Can’t you just swap out your staff, then?” I asked.
“The White House has far more employees than most people realize,” the president answered. “On an average day, there are more than one thousand Secret Service agents on the property, not to mention hundreds of staffers in the West Wing, plus cooks, butlers, landscapers, and who knows what else. I have three full-time florists working there, for Pete’s sake. And every one of those people is a government employee, which means it’d take a ton of paperwork to boot even one of them.”
“Plus, it’s still only a hunch that there’s a mole in the first place,” Cyrus added. “All I know is that SPYDER is plotting to assassinate the president. I have no idea how they’re planning to carry it out. Having someone inside—or several people—merely seems like a good way to do it. And heaven knows they’ve infiltrated the CIA before. Which is where you come in, Benjamin.”
I glanced out the window. We were moving slowly through traffic at Dupont Circle. Very slowly. Dupont Circle was one of the worst intersections on earth, where ten streets met at one place, and traffic there often moved at a speed that made glaciers seem fast. Still, we seemed to be heading directly toward the White House, which gave me an idea as to what Cyrus’s plan might be. “You want me to spy inside the White House?”
“Exactly,” Cyrus replied. “As we found with Operation Snow Bunny, no one expects a child to be a secret agent.”
“Leo Shang didn’t expect me to be a secret agent,” I corrected. “But SPYDER might. They know who I am! I’ve thwarted them before.”
“True,” Cyrus admitted. “That’s why we’re going to keep your profile at 1600 Pennsylvania as low as possible. Hopefully, SPYDER won’t notice. After you helped destroy their headquarters last fall, SPYDER isn’t quite the organization it used to be. Its leaders have scattered around the globe and their intelligence operations are fractured. If we’re careful, there’s a good chance they’ll have no idea you’re on the case.”
“How?” I asked. “Won’t I be obvious as the only kid inside the White House?”
“You won’t be the only kid inside,” the president reminded me.
With that, I realized exactly what my mission was going to be.
President Stern had two children: a fifteen-year-old daughter named Jemma and a thirteen-year-old son named Jason. Although the family tried to keep them out of the spotlight, they were still two of the most famous kids in America, if not the world. I’d seen them on TV a few times: standing behind their father as he was sworn in, attending the White House Easter Egg Roll, waving as they boarded Air Force One. They always appeared to be well mannered and cheerful.
“I’ll be posing as a friend of your son?” I guessed.
“Correct,” the president replied. “Jason is your age. He has friends over on a regular basis. It won’t seem the slightest bit unusual to have you in the house.”
“Of course, you’ll need to stick close to Jason to sell this,” Cyrus added. “However, Jason himself has been briefed and is eager to help out. After all, his own father’s life is on the line. You will present yourself at the White House today—”
r /> “Today?” I repeated.
Cyrus frowned, annoyed by the interruption. “SPYDER’s plans are already in motion. When did you think we were going to start investigating? Next month?”
“No,” I said. “Sorry. This is all just happening so fast. . . .”
“A good agent must always be prepared for activation, anywhere, anytime,” Cyrus informed me. “Your cover story is that you and Jason met through online gaming and hit it off. So he has invited you over to the White House for a playdate this afternoon.”
I cringed. “Agent Hale, I’m a little old for playdates. Can we call it something else? Like ‘hanging out’?”
Cyrus gritted his teeth. “You have a date to play together. It’s a playdate. End of story. Now then, all visitors to the White House present themselves at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the west side of the property. Jason has already placed you on the guest list. I trust you have your student ID with you?”
“Yes, sir.” I took it from my wallet and showed it to him. It said I was a second-year student at St. Smithen’s Science Academy for Boys and Girls, which was a front for the Academy of Espionage. All spies-in-training pretended to be students at St. Smithen’s. The ID looked very official, although my photo on it was one of the worst I’d ever taken. But there was something that concerned me even more: While the school’s name on the ID was a fake, my own name wasn’t. It still said “Benjamin Ripley.”
“I don’t get an alias?” I asked.
“Why would you get an alias?” Cyrus asked grumpily.
“I got one last time. On Operation Snow Bunny.”
“That was different,” Cyrus informed me. “On Operation Snow Bunny, you were trying to fool a thirteen-year-old girl. To get into the White House, you need to be vetted by the U.S. Secret Service. It would take months of work to create a fake background good enough to trick them, and we don’t have that kind of time. The academy has been using St. Smithen’s as a front for more than fifty years, so it’s well established. As for you, the Service has already combed through your records, verified your social security number, and called your parents to confirm you’re not a threat.”
“My parents know I’m going to the White House today?” I asked, surprised.
“Yes,” Cyrus said. “And they’re very excited about it.”
I pulled out my phone. I had been so distracted that afternoon, I hadn’t checked it in an hour. During that time, I had missed four phone calls from my parents and received three dozen text messages from them as well. My mother wanted me to get a selfie with Jason Stern and my father wanted to know if I could get any cool White House swag.
We were still stuck in Dupont Circle traffic. It seemed to be agitating the president far more than the knowledge that a secretive evil organization was plotting to kill him. “This traffic is insane,” he groused. “If we go any slower, we’ll be moving backward.”
Cyrus pressed the intercom button so he could speak to Courtney in the front seat. “Pull over. Ben will take the subway to the White House from here.”
“I will?” I asked.
“You certainly can’t show up with the president,” Cyrus said. “The president doesn’t chaperone playdates. You need to approach the White House the way a normal teenager would. The subway shouldn’t take too long.”
“Given this traffic, it’ll be a heck of a lot faster than driving,” the president said. “Maybe I could take the subway too?”
“Negative,” Courtney replied, edging the SUV toward a red zone. “May I remind you, sir, that people are trying to kill you? It would be incredibly unsafe for you to be on public transit.”
“Maybe no one would think it was actually me,” the president suggested hopefully. “Who would ever expect the president to be on the Metro?”
“I’m afraid that can’t be done, sir,” Courtney said. “We’re going to have to drive back like normal commuters.”
“Ugh.” The president frowned and slumped back in his seat. “Being normal stinks.”
Cyrus told me, “Once you’re through security at the White House, you’ll meet up with Jason, and he’ll take you around from there.”
“If there’s anywhere you want to go, just ask him,” the president said. “He’s been told to do anything you need to help.”
“Keep your eyes and ears open,” Cyrus ordered. “The moment you learn any actionable information, I want you to contact me. I trust you still have my cell number memorized?”
“Yes.” My gift with numbers was my one great asset in the spy game. There had been plenty of times when I would have preferred better fighting skills—or the ability to shoot straight—but being able to remember every phone number or location coordinates I’d ever heard and do complex computations within seconds had come in handy on occasion.
Courtney finally reached the red zone and pulled over.
“I’ll expect a report once you’re done at the White House today,” Cyrus told me, then reached to unlock the door.
“Wait!” I said. “Is there anything else you can tell me about SPYDER’s plot? Who you think the mole might be? Or if it’s a man or a woman? Anything at all . . . ?”
Cyrus groaned, as though I were being unreasonable with this request. “If I had more intel, I would have shared it with you already. We’re deep down the mineshaft on this one.”
“Down the mineshaft?” I repeated.
“In the dark,” Cyrus explained. “Anyone anywhere could be the mole. And if SPYDER senses we’re onto them, this whole thing could go very bad very quickly. So don’t screw anything up.”
Cyrus might have been a great spy, but when it came to giving pep talks, he was awful.
“Good luck,” the president told me.
“Thanks,” I said. After that, there didn’t seem to be any other option except to get out of the car. So that’s what I did.
Hundreds of pedestrians swarmed the sidewalks around Dupont, but none seemed remotely interested in the black SUV. The only person paying any attention to it was a meter man from the Department of Parking Enforcement, who stormed toward it with the zeal of a Navy SEAL team, already writing a ticket. “You can’t park that here!” he barked. “It’s a red zone!”
Courtney lowered her window and glared at him. “I’m not parked. I’m idling! That’s allowable.”
“Not on my watch,” the meter man huffed. “According to District Code 46a, subsection D, there is to be no blocking of the red zone for any amount of time for any purpose at all. . . .”
“How about national security?” David Stern asked, rolling down his window. “You see, I’m the president of the United States.”
“And I’m the queen of Sweden,” the meter man declared sarcastically. Unaware that he was facing the actual president, he dramatically ripped off the ticket and handed it to Courtney.
“Jerkwad!” Courtney yelled at him, then pulled back into traffic.
I headed for the Metro station, trying to stay calm. Less than an hour before, I had been in the midst of another normal school day. Or, at least, as normal a day as there was at spy school. And now, suddenly, I was being sent undercover on another unauthorized mission against the very same evil organization that had attempted to kill me multiple times. Without the backup of Erica Hale.
It sounded extremely difficult, daunting, and dangerous.
And it was going to turn out even worse than I’d feared.
SECURITY
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC
February 10
1700 hours
It took me only ten minutes to ride the Metro to the closest station to the White House and then walk to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
It took me another whole hour to get through security.
This wasn’t because of any trouble with my alias. As Cyrus had said, the Secret Service had already examined my files ahead of time. Now the agents on duty simply confirmed I was on the offic
ial “playdate” list for Jason Stern and checked my fake school ID. The problem was that lots of other people were trying to gain access to the White House as well. There was a large crowd of senators, congresspeople, diplomats, ambassadors, military officers, and other assorted muckety-mucks, all of whom had at least one aide, if not two or three, and every single one of them insisted that they ought to have higher priority than everyone else going in. As the only person still in middle school, I kept getting pushed to the side.
The worst part was that the security was all outside the EEOB, in the cold. Apparently, the building predated increased modern-day security protocols, and there wasn’t enough room inside for it all. Instead, the security operations were all arranged at a metal gate in front of the building.
Given the long wait, I had plenty of time to scope out everyone in the crowd, trying to determine if any of them might be working for SPYDER. No one seemed particularly evil—although most appeared quite irate about the security lines. Two of the aides to a French diplomat seemed extremely uneasy, however. And there was one businessman who seemed downright shifty: A short, swarthy man in a heavy fur-lined coat, he kept glancing at me suspiciously, as though trying to figure out what I was doing there. Under the guise of pretending to check my e-mail, I took some pictures of him—and everyone else in the waiting area—with my phone.
Eventually, the crowd dissipated and it was finally my turn to enter the EEOB. I was given another ID card, this one much fancier, with all sorts of holograms and built-in sensors, to wear on a lanyard around my neck. Then I passed through a magnetometer, like they had in airport security, and was followed by a pair of bomb-sniffing dogs. The dogs looked a lot like German shepherds, but I knew they were actually a breed known as the Belgian Malinois, which were famed throughout law enforcement for their incredible noses.
The dogs got one whiff of me and went berserk. Both started barking as loud as they could, straining at their leashes, going after me like I was a stray cat who had rolled around in raw meat. Every Secret Service agent instantly went on alert, snapping their weapons from their holsters and aiming them my way. I raised my hands over my head, desperate to show my innocence, and yelped, “Don’t shoot! I’m only here for a playdate!”