The morgue gave me the willies, but I did my best to hide it in front of Erica. “Think this note’s really from SPYDER?” I asked.
Erica laid the note on an autopsy table and examined it closely. “Who else do you think it’d be from?”
“Someone playing a prank on me,” I suggested hopefully.
“What kind of person would think it was funny to send a fake note from an enemy organization?”
“Chip Schacter. Or one of his goons.” I didn’t think Chip would have done it to be mean. Although he and I had started off on the wrong foot, we’d actually become friendlier after I’d revealed that Chip wasn’t SPYDER’s mole at spy school. We weren’t really pals, exactly; I felt more like the mouse who’d pulled a thorn out of a lion’s paw. Chip no longer bullied me, but sometimes, it was worse to be on his good side than his bad side. Chip routinely insulted, teased, and mocked his friends. And he had a penchant for lame practical jokes. “Last week, he froze my chemistry textbook in liquid nitrogen,” I told Erica. “I didn’t realize he’d done it until I dropped it in the mess hall and it shattered.”
Erica shook her head. “It’s not from a student. You and I are the only students who know SPYDER exists. In fact, most real agents don’t know SPYDER exists.”
“There have been security leaks before.”
“True, but this information has been highly classified. You remember how hard Internal Affairs came down on us.”
I nodded. After Erica and I had defeated SPYDER’s plot the previous winter, there had been a massive internal investigation at the CIA. The top brass at all the national spy agencies had been extremely annoyed to find out that they had all nearly been killed—and they wanted to figure out who to blame for the security failure. Erica and I had each been grilled for hours on end. Our interrogators had been stunned to find out we’d had contact with SPYDER and then swore us to secrecy under penalty of expulsion from the academy. We were never to mention SPYDER, even to each other. Which probably meant we were violating a dozen security directives at the moment. But then, I don’t think any of the interrogators had expected SPYDER to drop me a note.
“Well, Internal Affairs came down that hard on everyone involved,” Erica went on. “Knowledge of SPYDER is security level AA1.”
“Still, someone could have found out about it.”
“Anyone smart enough to do that would know not to be cavalier with that information. Only a moron would play a practical joke with highly classified data—and this institution does not accept morons. It has a few delinquents, scoundrels, and reprobates, but no morons.”
I nodded. “So then, this note’s really from SPYDER.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then who else could it be from?”
“Another enemy organization who wants you to think it’s from SPYDER.”
I looked at the note warily. It seemed so innocent, lying on the autopsy table. Just a piece of paper with seventeen words typed on it. And yet, the idea that an enemy organization could have somehow gotten it into my room triggered a deluge of unsettling questions. “How do you think they even delivered it to me?” I asked. “There’s a ton of security on campus.”
“SPYDER has gotten past our security before,” Erica replied. “As you may recall, they sent an assassin to your room once.”
“Yes, but the academy has beefed up security significantly since then.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s impermeable.”
“The assassin also infiltrated campus in the middle of the night. This happened during broad daylight. The whole campus was awake.”
“That’s not necessarily a deterrent,” Erica cautioned. “Infiltrating someplace crowded is easier than someplace that isn’t. What looks more suspicious: someone wandering around campus on a warm summer afternoon—or someone creeping around campus in the middle of the night?”
“Good point.” I was annoyed I hadn’t realized that, but then, I wasn’t scheduled to take my first enemy infiltration class until next semester. “Still, it wouldn’t have been easy to get this to my room. There’s guardhouses, armed patrols, security at the dorm entrance—and I had my door locked.”
“You’re right,” Erica said. “So we have to consider that the enemy used the easiest way to get past most of that.”
“Which is what?”
Erica gave me a hard stare. Apparently, the answer should have been obvious to me. It still took me a few seconds to realize what it was.
“Oh no,” I said. “They have someone on the inside?”
“It makes sense,” Erica said. “If they could recruit one mole, why not two? And then, if you do catch one—as we did—you’re so proud of yourself that you drop your guard, allowing number two to quietly wreak havoc.”
“But if that’s the case, why would number two reveal himself—”
“Or herself,” Erica added.
“ . . . like this?” I finished. “Leaving me a note isn’t exactly being quiet.”
“True.” Erica pursed her lips. “It’s a strange thing to do, all right. But SPYDER’s not run by idiots. They must have a very good reason for revealing themselves now. We just have to figure out what it is.”
“Unless, like you said, it’s some other group wanting us to think it’s SPYDER,” I suggested. “Then they’d be using this to deflect our attention.”
“And yet, whoever they are would still need a man inside,” Erica said. “That’d give them relatively easy access to the dorm, and frankly, it’s not that hard to pick the lock on your room.”
“How do you know that?” I asked. “Have you done it?”
“Like I’d ever want to break into your room. The standard dorm door lock here is a Pearson Alpha Dead Bolt. It’s a joke. I’ve been able to pick those since kindergarten.” With most people, I would have assumed this was an exaggeration, but not Erica. I could imagine her as a kindergartener, making a high-tech raid on the family cookie jar.
“The mole would also have to get past the security cameras,” I said. “There’s thousands of them on campus.”
“Yes, although as you know, those aren’t tremendously difficult to elude. Still, I’ll jack the security system and check the camera feeds to see if anything suspicious shows up. Hmmm.” Erica seemed to notice something. She grabbed a large magnifying lens and examined the note through it.
“Find a clue?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Erica replied. “This note’s practically sterile. It’s not just that there aren’t fingerprints; there’s nothing. No dust, no dirt, no fibers. It looks like it’s been kept in a vacuum. Which kind of fits SPYDER’s modus operandi. But there is this.” Erica used the tweezers to pluck something off the note. Or at least, she made the motion of plucking something off it. When she held the tweezers up to me, they appeared empty.
“I don’t see anything,” I told her.
“Oh, come on.” Erica’s voice was heavy with disappointment. “It must be at least half a millimeter across.”
I peered through the magnifying lens. On the very tip of the tweezers was a dot so small, it looked like something a fly would have coughed up. “What is that?”
“A clue to the identity of whoever wrote this.” Erica whipped out another evidence bag and dropped the tiny grain inside. “It was embedded deeply in the paper, as though it was lying on a table and the paper got pressed down on top of it. That’d be far more likely to happen when the note was being prepared, rather than when you—or whoever delivered it—were just carrying it around. Looks like a piece of soil or a rock fragment. If I can figure out where it’s from, that might be a lead.”
“Can you really determine that from something so small?” I asked.
“Well, not everyone can, but I’m not everyone. You made the right call, bringing this to me.” Erica gave me a quick, perfunctory pat on the shoulder and headed for the door.
“Wait!” I called, a bit more desperately than I’d intended. “That’s it? You’re going?”
“Yes.” Erica held up the evidence bag with the grain of whatever-it-was. “I have work to do.”
“But according to the note, SPYDER . . . or whoever sent it . . . is coming for me soon.”
“And you were hoping I’d protect you?”
“Well . . . yes.” It was embarrassing to admit—and yet, Erica had protected me from bad guys before. “I’m not even sure what I should expect. Are they coming to kill me?”
“I doubt it,” Erica said.
“Capture me?”
“Far more likely.”
“Or maybe they’re just coming to have a nice talk with me.”
“Don’t get your hopes up.”
I frowned. I’d figured that last one was a long shot, but it was still disappointing to have Erica confirm it so definitively. “So, you really think it’s a capture situation?”
“I can’t guarantee it, but that’s what seems the most logical. SPYDER offered you a job as a double agent before. They obviously see some potential in you. I’m not sure why, exactly, but they do. You shot them down, but these aren’t the kind of guys who generally take no for an answer. My guess is, they’re looking to up the stakes.”
“How?”
Erica shrugged. “I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.” She abruptly turned for the door again.
I was thrown by this. Erica was treating me the way she treated . . . well, pretty much everyone. The way she’d treated me when we first met, before I’d proved myself to her. It wasn’t as though I expected Erica to give me a hug good-bye, but I felt I at least deserved more than being abandoned in a morgue after learning I was in danger. Before I could stop myself, I asked, “Erica . . . Are you angry at me?”
Erica paused once more, then looked at me curiously, as if she didn’t quite understand the question. Erica was probably the most brilliant person I’d ever met, but while she could comprehend a dozen languages, she was often at a loss picking up on basic human emotions. “You? No. I’m not angry at you.”
That begged another question, of course. Who was she angry at? But before I could ask it, Erica cut me off.
“Don’t worry about SPYDER, Ben. I’ll be keeping an eye on you.” With that, she disappeared out the door.
She’d left the note behind for me. I used the tweezers to place it back in its evidence bag. As I did, I noticed my hands were beginning to shake.
Despite Erica’s reassurances, I was worried about SPYDER. The last time I’d faced them, they’d been one step ahead of me, Erica, and the entire CIA until the very end. The organization was clever—and it was dangerous. There was always a method to their madness. So then it seemed there must be a far more sinister purpose to their leaving the note than simply giving me a heads-up that they were going to drop by. Unfortunately, I had no idea what it could be.
I only hoped we could figure it out before it was too late.
REASSIGNMENT
Armistead Dormitory
June 10
1700 hours
Although I figured Erica wouldn’t be happy about it, I decided to seek out some backup. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Erica; I trusted her more than anyone else. It’s simply that, when you get a potentially life-threatening message from an organization that has previously sent an assassin after you, it makes sense to inform someone other than a fifteen-year-old girl.
Like an eighteen-year-old girl.
Tina Cuevo was the resident adviser on my first-year floor. She served as an intermediary between the students and the administration because the administration generally wanted as little to do with the students as possible. And, unlike much of the administration, Tina was approachable and competent. She’d been extremely helpful when I’d found the assassin in my room—and, perhaps just as important, had been there for the entire hall when the toilets had backed up in the communal bathroom two weeks earlier.
She was almost finished packing when I found her. It was a shock to see her room so bare. Tina’s room had always been the most welcoming on the hall, full of homey touches like throw rugs and comforters. She was the probably the only person on the whole campus who actually put photographs in frames, rather than just tacking them to the wall. But now, with everything stuffed into suitcases, the room looked as cold and boring as everyone else’s.
Tina herself didn’t look quite as warm as usual. Instead of her usual bright smile, I got one that looked forced. “Hey, Smokescreen,” she said. “I was hoping I’d see you before I left. You’re getting in just under the wire.”
I winced. With everything else that had happened that afternoon, I’d forgotten the last day of classes was also A-Day for the sixth-year students: the day they got their field assignments. Everyone was assigned to an internship at a field office for the summer before reporting to the University of Espionage in the fall. It was something that every student eagerly awaited. From Tina’s grumpy demeanor, I could tell the news wasn’t good. “Where are you going?” I asked.
She proffered her assignment papers to me. I took them, expecting to find she was shipping out to some war-torn third world cesspit. Instead, I found . . .
“Vancouver? That’s not so bad.”
“Oh, come on,” Tina groused. “It’s in Canada.”
“I hear it’s really beautiful,” I said helpfully. “And it’s supposed to have very good restaurants.”
“You know what it doesn’t have?” Tina asked sullenly. “Crime. It was ranked the second-safest city in the world last year. Its homicide rate is almost nonexistent. What kind of field experience am I gonna get there?”
“There’s been an increase in smuggling exotic animals through the port there,” I suggested. “Maybe you’ll get to help investigate that.”
“I didn’t join the CIA to bust panda smugglers.” Tina flopped into her armchair. “I joined to keep the world safe. Remember when the administration said they wouldn’t hold any of that business with Murray against me?”
“Yes.” Tina had been heavily investigated after the whole SPYDER fiasco at school because Murray Hill, SPYDER’s mole, had used her to get his information. Tina hadn’t known, of course, but several of the higher-ups had been unhappy that she’d been duped.
“Well, they obviously held it against me.” Tina sighed. “I wanted to go somewhere dangerous. Mogadishu. Bogotá. Anywhere in Pakistan. And they’re sending me to Vancouver. They think I’m a screwup.”
“No,” I said. “You’re one of the best in your class. . . .”
“Tell me about it. I have the highest GPA and I’m the only one qualified to fly a helicopter or do field surgery. But one lousy mole takes advantage of me and I’m a pariah. A mole who suckered the entire administration, I might add. But you don’t see the principal taking the hit for this. Just me.”
“It could be worse,” I said, desperate to find something comforting to offer. “They could be sending you to Geneva. Talk about a city that’s safe. They haven’t had a murder there in five years.”
“That’s a lie,” Tina said, but she gave me a genuine smile this time. “I appreciate the sentiment, though.” Her eyes flicked to the note in the evidence bag in my hand. “Is that a good-bye note? You’re so sweet. . . .”
I winced again. “Uh, actually . . . it’s not a note for you. It was for me.” I held it up so Tina could read it through the plastic.
Her smile faded again. “You have to be kidding me. I’m getting shipped off to the most boring place on the planet and you’re getting sucked into more international intrigue? It’s not fair!”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to drop this on you now. . . .”
“You’re only a first year!” Tina cried. “And you’re already getting death threats! Do you have any idea how lucky you are?”
“I was actually hoping it was more of a capture threat . . . ,” I began.
“I’m never going to get a death threat,” Tina muttered. “Certainly not in Vancouver. You probably don’t even know what the proper protocol for t
his is, do you?”
“Er . . . no. That’s why I came to you.”
Tina sighed and took the note in the baggie from me. “Okay, I’ll get into it. Might as well. It’s not like I’ll get to do anything this exciting in Canada. First thing is, you’ll have to fill out an SP-68 Unsolicited Enemy Contact Form. Then you’ll have to get an evidence voucher and messenger this note to the central lab. Meanwhile, I’ll inform the administration and see about establishing a covert security detail for you so we can catch their guys when they come for you again. Unfortunately, that’s probably all I’ll have time for. I’m shipping out tonight, so I’ll need to pass the baton to your resident adviser for next year.”
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“Here he is now. Speak of the devil.”
I followed Tina’s gaze to the door of her room and reacted with surprise. The guy standing there looked like someone had cloned Chip Schacter, then tried to make him even better. He was taller, his jaw was squarer, his hair was thicker, and even more muscles bulged under his sweater-vest. He wore a big smile that was so bright it was almost blinding.
“This is Chip’s older brother,” Tina said, “Hank Schacter. Hank, this is Benjamin Ripley.”
Hank snapped his fingers and pointed at me. “Smokescreen, right? I’ve read your file. And all the transcripts from your interrogation. Good to finally put a face with the name.” He extended a hand that dwarfed mine.
I shook it. “Chip never told me he had a brother.”
“That’s because he doesn’t like me. I’ve just spent a semester abroad, studying in London at the top secret school for British agents.”
Before I could express surprise that there was a top secret school for MI-6, Tina asked, “How was it?”
“All right, I guess,” Hank replied. “I picked up a few new forensic techniques, learned how to be in a car chase while driving on the other side of the road, drank a boatload of tea. It’s good to be home, though. What’s going on here?”