Evil Spy School

  I watched Ashley scale the high-dive ladder, feeling uneasy. She had been the other reason I couldn’t sleep the night before. After she’d left, my whole room had smelled like her strawberry shampoo, reminding me of her.

  The crazy thing was, I felt guilty for having a crush on her.

  It wasn’t because she was evil. It was because I felt like I was being unfaithful to Erica. Even though Erica and I weren’t in a relationship at all. We were only friends. Or, at least, I’d thought we were friends—up until Erica had sent me on Operation Bedbug and put my life at risk without even giving me so much as a warning.

  “Watch this!” Ashley called to us, then did a double backflip and zipped into the water with barely a ripple.

  “You like her too, don’t you?” Murray asked.

  “No,” I said, way too quickly.

  Murray laughed. “Hey, it’s cool if you do. There’s no rule at SPYDER that says you can’t date your fellow agents. And, frankly, she’d be far better girlfriend material than the Ice Queen you’ve been carrying a torch for all this time.”

  I didn’t want to admit it, but this had already occurred to me. In fact, I’d thought about it quite a lot while tossing and turning in bed the night before. Around two in the morning, I’d begun to wonder if I was growing interested in Ashley because I was upset at Erica. True, Ashley was a SPYDER agent, but she had never betrayed me. Plus, she was always warm and friendly, while Erica was cool and distant and often seemed as if she found the entire concept of friendship baffling. Which made Ashley kind of the anti-Erica—although both of them could have mopped the floor with me in a fight.

  “You changed the subject,” I told Murray, changing the subject myself. “I want to know what SPYDER’s plotting.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t you think that if SPYDER wants me to be part of an operation, it’d make sense for me to know what that operation is?”

  “Not necessarily.” Murray took a bite of his sandwich. It was ostensibly bacon, lettuce, and tomato, but it was really more like bacon, lettuce, bacon, tomato, and more bacon. Murray had been consuming an absolutely astonishing amount of bacon since getting out of prison, as well as astonishing amounts of soda, ice cream, candy, cake, and sausage, too. Even though he’d been at Hidden Forest for only a few days, he seemed to have gained several pounds in that time.

  Across the room, Ashley hopped out of the pool and headed for the water slide.

  “Why would SPYDER want to keep its agents in the dark?” I asked.

  Murray said, “When the Allies were about to invade France on D-day in World War Two, do you think the generals told everyone what the plan was? No. Because they knew that if they did, someone might blab it. Not on purpose, mind you. But it happens. People talk. One guy shoots his mouth off, and the next thing you know, the Allies show up on Normandy Beach to find the entire Nazi army waiting to massacre them.”

  Murray’s comparing SPYDER to the Allied Forces made me feel uneasy. After all, if SPYDER was anyone in a World War II scenario, it was the Nazis. “I get the need for secrecy, but at some point before D-day, the Allies told the soldiers what the plan was. They didn’t just drop them off on the beach and say, ‘Surprise! You’re invading France today!’ ”

  “And you will find out. When the time is right.” Murray took another bite of his sandwich. The single slice of tomato he’d put on it slipped out and plopped into the hot tub, where it quickly disappeared beneath the bubbles. Murray didn’t seem to care.

  Ashley launched herself onto the water slide and whooped with joy all the way down.

  “When’s the time going to be right?” I asked.

  “Soon.”

  “How soon?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not my call.”

  Ashley barreled into the pool with a huge splash, then came up laughing. “That was swawesome!” she yelled. “Ben, don’t just sit there watching me! Get your suit and come on in!”

  “Maybe in a bit,” I called back.

  “Notice how she didn’t invite me to join her?” Murray pointed out. “Only you.”

  “Because she knows you’re too lazy to actually climb the ladder to the slide.”

  “Because she likes you. You think Erica would ever invite you to go down a water slide with her? Or go down a water slide at all? Or do anything fun, ever?”

  “Am I the only one who doesn’t know the plan?” I asked.

  “You keep changing the subject away from Ashley.”

  “And you keep changing it to her. It sure seems like I’m the only one who doesn’t know SPYDER’s plan.”

  “That’s not true.” Murray bit off a huge hunk of corn dog. “Almost no one knows the plan. Not everyone here has the same access as I do. Your future girlfriend over there doesn’t. Nefarious doesn’t. Even some of your instructors don’t. And as for those guys . . .” Murray pointed out the large windows toward the construction zone, which was crawling with workmen. “They’re completely clueless about what’s really going on here.”

  “That’s another thing,” I said. “If secrecy is so darn important to SPYDER that they can’t even tell their own agents what they’re planning, why would they allow all these other people into their compound? Seems like a lot of loose ends.”

  “SPYDER doesn’t leave loose ends.” Murray crammed a handful of Cheetos into his mouth. Several fell into the water, creating a Day-Glo orange slick on the surface around Murray’s chest. “Every guard, maid, landscaper, and pool boy here has never heard a single mention of SPYDER. They were all hired by a shell company designed to look like it works for the Hidden Forest Homeowner’s Association.”

  “And the construction crews?”

  “Employees of Lew Brothers Construction, which is not—as they believe—run by Rocky and Roman Lew, but is in fact secretly owned and operated by SPYDER. Not one of those hammer jockeys has any idea they’ve worked on anything other than your standard everyday gated community. Anything we needed built specially was taken care of by an outside contractor, who—again—had no idea they were working for us.”

  I assumed the secret lair hidden three stories beneath us fell into this category. Whoever had built it wouldn’t have necessarily known it was going to be used for evil. There wasn’t anything particularly insidious about a few underground rooms and a sundae bar. SPYDER had probably lied and told the builders that it was some sort of high-tech security center. I couldn’t ask about any of this, though, since I wasn’t supposed to know that the secret lair existed.

  Instead, I asked, “So what happens to Hidden Forest after we pull off our scheme?”

  “What do you mean?” Murray replied.

  “Well, the word is that SPYDER’s going to make a lot of money this time around. So much that no one here would ever have to work again . . .”

  “Did Ashley tell you that, too?”

  I reflexively glanced across the room, where Ashley was rocketing down the water slide again. “No, I figured it out myself. As you might recall, I was training to be a spy until recently.”

  Murray nodded. “Yes, you were. And so you’re wondering, why go through all the trouble to build this place if we’re not going to need it anymore?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Because Hidden Forest isn’t merely a top-secret base. It’s also a lucrative real estate investment.”

  “You mean, you’re going to sell these homes?”

  “For a ton of money!” Murray grinned. His teeth were full of bacon bits. “You’ve got to hand it to the big boys at SPYDER. They’re brilliant. They needed a headquarters, but they didn’t want to do the whole standard spy-movie bad-guy thing and build an outpost on some remote island somewhere. After all, construction on remote islands is really expensive. You’ve got shipping, travel, labor issues, construction delays. The whole thing’s a giant headache. I know of at least one secret evil organization that blew so much on their island headquarters that they went bankrupt. And even if you don’t go bust, you’re
gonna be stuck with the place. Giant complexes on remote islands are notoriously difficult to sell. But Hidden Forest is multipurpose. We can plot and train for an evil scheme here, then turn it around and sell all the homes for quadruple the construction costs. We’ve already got Manhattan big shots lining up to buy them.”

  I had to admit the whole thing was pretty clever. “Okay. So SPYDER has a plan for Hidden Forest. Do they have one for us?”

  Murray washed down the last of his sandwich with a swig of soda. “How so?”

  Ashley climbed out of the pool nearby, then scampered over to the Jacuzzi and plunged inside before I could inform her that Murray didn’t have any clothes on. “Aaaah.” She sighed. “This is swawesome. Why aren’t you in here, Ben?”

  “Yeah, Ben,” Murray echoed. “Why aren’t you in here?”

  “If we’re going to suddenly be very rich in the next few days,” I pressed on, “isn’t that going to be suspicious? Does SPYDER have some sort of official story for us?”

  Ashley turned to Murray. “Hey, that’s a good point. Do they?”

  “Of course,” Murray told us. “Given that we’re kids, it makes the most sense to say that we inherited the money.”

  “From who?” Ashley asked.

  “Our very eccentric, incredibly wealthy long-lost great-uncles,” Murray replied.

  “And what happens,” I said, “when someone decides to check into the story and finds out that I don’t have a very eccentric, incredibly wealthy long-lost great-uncle?”

  “Leave that to SPYDER.” Murray upended the Cheetos bag and dumped the remnants into his mouth. Half ended up in the hot tub. “We have people working to create our long-lost uncles as we speak. It’s really not that hard to fabricate a fictional human being, especially one who’s dead. You only need some counterfeit documentation and a corpse to pass off as the body.”

  “A corpse?” Ashley repeated, flicking a rogue Cheeto away from her. “Where do they get the corpse?”

  “I don’t know.” Murray sighed, sounding exasperated. “That’s someone else’s job. It can’t be that hard, though. Thousands of people die every day. Cemeteries are chock-full of them. That’s a lot of corpses to choose from. You don’t have to worry about any of this stuff. In fact, the less you know, the better. All you need to do is keep your trap shut as much as possible. If anyone says, ‘How’d you get so rich?’ you say, ‘My long-lost uncle left me the money.’ And if they ask more, just shrug and say, ‘I didn’t really know him at all.’ End of story.”

  “How about our parents?” I asked. “That story won’t fly with them. They know we don’t have any eccentric, long-lost rich uncles.”

  “Not necessarily,” Murray countered. “I mean, that’s the whole point of being ‘long-lost,’ isn’t it? Lots of families have secrets. Why should ours be any different? And once Mom and Dad learn that dotty old Uncle Whoever-He-Was left you a pile of dough, they’ll probably be thrilled, rather than suspicious.”

  “No kidding,” Ashley agreed, then muttered, “It’ll almost make up for me not making the Olympic team.”

  I had to give the issue some thought. “I guess my folks won’t question it.”

  “Of course they won’t!” Murray exclaimed. “Not unless you give them reason to. After all, which story sounds more plausible: that you suddenly got a bunch of money from a long-lost uncle no one knew you had, or you suddenly got a bunch of money by helping a top-secret evil organization pull off the crime of the century?”

  “Good point,” I admitted. “But don’t we have to worry about the CIA, too?”

  Murray laughed. “They’re not going to thwart us this time. You were their ace, and they cut you loose, the idiots.”

  “They still know me,” I pointed out. “If a huge crime gets pulled off and I’m suddenly stinking rich, someone might start to ask questions. Like Erica.”

  Murray stopped laughing. This apparently hadn’t ever occurred to him.

  “You won’t have to worry about the CIA coming after you,” said a voice behind me.

  All of us spun around to find Joshua Hallal standing there. We hadn’t heard him come in over the roar of the hot tub jets. He was finely dressed, as usual, in slacks, a button-down shirt, and a crisply knotted tie, which made him look extremely out of place in the pool room.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  Joshua gave me a hard stare with his single eye. “What is the single best way to ensure that you get away with a crime?”

  “Don’t leave any evidence behind?” Ashley suggested.

  Joshua gave a disappointed sigh. “Don’t leave evidence behind? That’s child’s play. Does this look like evil preschool to you?”

  “No, sir.” Ashley cringed and shook her head, embarrassed.

  I suddenly understood what Joshua was getting at. “You make sure all the evidence incriminates someone else.”

  The slightest hint of a smile creased Joshua’s scarred face. “Exactly. We here at SPYDER have taken meticulous steps to ensure that, when the dust clears, others will take the fall for this crime. The CIA will round them up to great fanfare, the case will be closed, and we will be free to go on with our lives. Our patsies will all claim they had nothing to do with the crime, of course—but then, all criminals make such claims, don’t they?”

  I asked, “So we’re going to get rich while innocent people go to jail in our place?”

  “Well,” Joshua said, “as you’ve pointed out before, we are evil. And besides, these fall guys won’t be completely innocent. The evidence against them wouldn’t be believable if they were. They are all miscreants: terrorists, mafiosi, and other assorted scum and villainy. The world will be much better off with them in jail. As will we.”

  I forced a big smile onto my face, hoping it looked authentic. “That’s brilliant.”

  “Yes,” Joshua agreed. “It is. There will be no need for us to go into hiding or assume false identities. And even if your old friend Erica does have suspicions, no one at the CIA will want to hear them. After all, they’ll think they’ve already caught the perpetrators. The last thing they’ll want is for the public to find out they’ve been duped.”

  “That doesn’t mean Erica will back off,” I pointed out.

  “Perhaps not,” Joshua admitted. “But if she—or anyone else—turns out to be a problem, we’ll just take care of them.” He said this calmly, without a hint of menace, the same way he might have said that we’d send them a nice note asking them to back off. But the intent of his words was unmistakable. Anyone who caused SPYDER trouble would die.

  It was getting harder and harder for me to fake pleasure at all this, but I did my best. “Now I’m really glad I switched sides.”

  “So are we,” Murray said, then turned to Joshua. “Is there something else you wanted to tell us? I’m betting you didn’t schlep all the way out here just to discuss logistics.”

  “You’re correct,” Joshua told him. “I’ve come to inform you that all systems are go for tomorrow. Phase one of our plan will initiate at eight p.m.”

  Ashley broke into a huge smile. “That soon? Swawesome! What are we doing?”

  “For now,” Joshua replied, “you will continue your training as if it were any other day. Your assignments will be given to you tomorrow shortly before initiation.”

  Ashley sprang out of the hot tub, so excited she was quivering. She didn’t even notice Murray’s escaped slice of tomato was clinging to her shoulder. “This is so exciting! I can’t believe the big day is finally almost here!” She gave me a big, wet hug that soaked through my T-shirt. “How about you, Ben? Aren’t you thrillighted?”

  “Thrilled plus delighted?” I asked. “You bet.”

  “I told you guys we wouldn’t have to wait much longer.” Murray pried himself out of the water and grabbed a towel. He’d been soaking for so long, he was as red as a boiled lobster.

  Ashley’s enthusiasm dampened when she realized Murray had been naked the whole time they’d been in the hot tub to
gether, but only for a few moments. Then she returned to being exceptionally excited once again. “Can I go tell Nefarious?”

  “Certainly,” Joshua replied.

  Ashley cheered and raced out of the pool room, doing two cartwheels and a handspring en route.

  I struggled to fake excitement as well. I pasted on the happiest face I could muster, although inside, my stomach was churning with anxiety. If I was going to stop SPYDER’s evil plans, I couldn’t wait until right before zero hour to find out what they were. I was running out of time.

  Which meant I was going to have to take some risks.

  Which meant life was about to get a lot more dangerous.

  RETRIEVAL

  SPYDER Agent Training Facility

  September 17

  0200 hours

  I set my watch alarm for two a.m. Even though I was nervous and angst-ridden, I was quite sure I wouldn’t be able to stay up until then for the second night in a row. For starters, I was exhausted after not sleeping much the previous night. And then there was what was known in spy school as Soforenko’s Theory of Inconvenient Narcolepsy: Even if you’re an insomniac, if there’s something incredibly important that you absolutely need to be awake for in the middle of the night, you’ll always fall asleep right before it happens.

  I was right to take the precaution. I passed out right after dinner, while I was doing my math homework. One moment, I was in the middle of one of Mrs. Henderson’s word problems, trying to determine the minimum amount of explosive needed to take down a suspension bridge, and the next thing I knew, it was the middle of the night and I was facedown at my desk.

  Fearing my room was bugged, I had used the silent alarm mode, so I was awakened by my watch vibrating against my wrist rather than any noise at all.

  I’d been dreaming about being chased by bad guys. For most kids my age, this probably would have been a metaphor for some fear or another. For me, it wasn’t. There was an extremely good chance that very soon, I was going to be chased by bad guys.

  It was a relief to be awake. I quickly snapped into action, heading to the bathroom, digging the radio out of the soap, and jamming it in my ear. Instead of speaking, I coughed. Again, because the room was probably bugged.