Evil Spy School

  Thankfully, the CIA and the Jersey police weren’t gaining on us. Our boat was going so fast, it seemed to be skipping across the water. It wasn’t very comfortable, though. We kept slamming up and down on the surface hard enough to rattle my teeth. Salt water pelted us as we smashed through wave after wave, leaving my eyes stinging from the brine and my body shivering from the wet.

  Only Alexander seemed to be having fun, and that was because he was still zonked from the chloroform. “Whee!” he cried. “This is fun! We should go boating more often, Dad!”

  “This might be naive,” I said to Cyrus. “But is there any sense in letting them catch us? After all, you’re a legend in the CIA. Wouldn’t someone higher up listen to you if you explained what was going on? How could they even think that you, of all people, have joined the enemy?”

  Cyrus sighed, and for a moment he looked much older. “Sadly, there’s precedent. I wouldn’t be the first highly regarded agent to switch sides. Especially at my age. People get packed off into retirement and have a tough time adjusting to the real world on a skimpy pension. After you’ve spent your whole life fighting for freedom and democracy, early-bird specials and bingo nights don’t really cut it. In fact, I suspect SPYDER already has a legend or two working for them. It’d explain how they have such good intel on how the Agency works. And the top brass probably has come to the same conclusion, which means I wouldn’t be above suspicion.”

  “We could prove we weren’t behind this,” Erica argued. “I’m sure there’s surveillance footage showing SPYDER entering the silos long before we got there . . . .”

  “It’s probably been blown to bits,” Cyrus said. “Along with everything else at Sandy Hook.”

  “Even so,” I protested, “if they grill us, we all have the exact same story, which should indicate we’re not lying . . . .”

  “True,” Cyrus agreed. “They’d figure it out eventually. But you’ve been grilled before, kid. You know how that goes. By the time we finally sell them our story, SPYDER will have already launched phase two of their plan—and I can guarantee you there’s a phase two. They didn’t decimate Sandy Hook right now just to take us out of the game.”

  “What are they going to do?” Erica asked.

  Cyrus shrugged. “Don’t ask me. Ask Ben. He’s our undercover man.” Unlike before, Cyrus wasn’t trying to be dismissive of me with this statement; he was too upset at himself for being manipulated by SPYDER to be upset at me as well. But I felt guilty just the same.

  I glanced back toward Sandy Hook, wondering what could be going on. I was sure that I’d encountered some clue or another as to SPYDER’s ultimate plans during my time at Hidden Forest. Unfortunately, I hadn’t made sense of it yet.

  Sandy Hook had dropped far in the distance. The blazing fires were now mere dots of orange on the horizon. But the CIA and the Jersey police were still keeping pace with us. Their boats were as souped up as ours was. As I watched, they unleashed another fusillade of bullets, one of which pocked the stern of our boat.

  “All right,” Cyrus said determinedly. “Time to shake these guys.”

  We had reached the narrow gap between Staten Island and Brooklyn and the going suddenly became much more treacherous. There was a lot more traffic: fleets of fishermen and pleasure boats returning home after a day out on the water, as well as massive container ships from Jersey and a cruise ship from Manhattan on their way out to sea. We were a minnow beside these whales and were probably supposed to give them right of way, but we didn’t have time for that. Instead, Cyrus slalomed through them, trying to lose our pursuers, resulting in some terrifyingly close calls. We barely avoided being flattened by one outbound freighter and nearly got pureed by the rear propellers of another.

  “Woo-hoo!” Alexander yelled.

  Behind us, the CIA and the NJPD got lost in the shuffle. Only one boat—the lead for the CIA—managed to follow us through, only to get clipped by the cruise ship. It was as though a kid had capsized his bathtub toy. The CIA boat was flipped on its side, catapulting the agents into the harbor.

  Cyrus chuckled to himself. “That ought to keep the Agency off our tail.”

  “But what about the New York police?” Erica asked, pointing ahead of us.

  I looked in that direction and groaned. I think Cyrus might have even done the same.

  Sure enough, the NYPD had been alerted about us as well, and they were coming in full force. It looked as though Homeland Security and the U.S. Coast Guard had also joined the hunt. A dozen boats were converging on us, as well as two helicopters, which shot overhead, spotlights sweeping the water.

  “Hang on,” Cyrus warned. “This might get dangerous.”

  “Now it’s getting dangerous?” I gasped. “What was that before?”

  “Mildly treacherous.” Cyrus suddenly veered wildly to starboard. This kicked up a wall of water, which temporarily shielded us from view while Cyrus quickly switched direction again. We blasted through our own wave and bore down on our attackers, aiming for a narrow gap between two police boats.

  The police shouted warnings at us through their bullhorns, and when we didn’t stop, they opened fire.

  We dropped onto the floor of the cockpit and curled up tight, pulling our Kevlar vests over our heads like safety blankets.

  Bullets raked both sides of us as we zoomed between the police boats. I could hear things cracking and splintering above my head. One shot must have glanced off my Kevlar. It felt like someone had pounded it with a hammer.

  And then the shooting stopped. We were through the gap and the other boats were struggling to pull U-turns and come after us. I sat up to find the neon blue paneling of our cigarette boat shredded, the windshield riddled with holes, and one engine trailing smoke.

  “Hey,” Alexander said, his chloroform haze finally dissipating. “Those people were trying to kill us! This isn’t fun at all!”

  “Nice of you to join us.” Cyrus turned toward the pier in New Jersey, where we’d started out that night, but now saw there were reinforcements coming from that direction. A lot of reinforcements. Twelve boats in all.

  Alexander’s eyes grew as big as golf balls with fear. “They’ve cut off our escape route!”

  “I noticed.” Cyrus cursed under his breath and reoriented us toward the tip of Manhattan.

  All the other boats slewed in the water a bit as they changed course behind us, then revved their engines and rejoined the chase.

  “Without an escape route, we can’t escape!” Alexander babbled. “What do we do now?”

  “Keep your pants on. I have a plan.” Cyrus kept his eyes locked on the city ahead.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Leave the getaway to me,” Cyrus said. “You focus on figuring out what SPYDER’s up to. Without that, everything we’re doing here is for naught.”

  I racked my brain, struggling to make sense of everything I’d seen and heard over the past few weeks. It would have been difficult under normal circumstances, but I found it almost impossible to concentrate with the bullets flying and the boat jouncing over the water and Alexander whimpering and the constant threat of death everywhere around us. The fact that Erica was staring at me expectantly also didn’t help.

  After a mere fifteen seconds had gone by, she asked, “Well? Any ideas?”

  “No,” I admitted. “None.”

  “Then think harder.”

  “What is that even supposed to mean?” I snapped. “How could I possibly think harder? That’s like telling someone to see harder or taste harder. The problem isn’t that I’m not thinking hard enough! It’s that your stupid plan to send me undercover wasn’t any good!”

  Erica’s cold stare grew even colder. “Our plan was perfectly fine.”

  Cyrus sliced directly behind another container ship, which had left a cavernous wake in its path. We launched into the air, sailed across it, and came down hard on the far side. One of the boats pursuing us wasn’t as lucky. It plunged into the trough and flipped ster
n-over-bow, landing upside down in the harbor.

  “SPYDER never believed I was really working with them!” I argued. “They knew I was a mole the whole time. Any information they fed me was false!”

  Erica shook her head. “They might have suspected you were a mole, but they weren’t sure. They wouldn’t have brought you in merely to set us up. That’d be far too risky. They wanted you for something.”

  “No, they didn’t. I was just a patsy.”

  One of our motors coughed and died, cutting our power in half. The pursuing boats quickly started gaining on us.

  “You weren’t a patsy!” Erica told me. “SPYDER has always wanted you on their side. Because you’re not as incompetent as you believe you are! So think! What did they want you for?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Did they train you for anything special?”

  “No!”

  “Did they ask you to do anything unusual?”

  “No! I haven’t done anything for the past few weeks except workouts and math problems!”

  The moment the words were out of my mouth, I had a sudden flash of understanding. Everything that had happened at Hidden Forest fell into place. Everything I hadn’t grasped instantly came into focus.

  Erica seemed to sense this. In the sweep of the helicopter searchlights, I saw her cold stare fade. “What is it?”

  “I know what SPYDER’s up to . . . ,” I said.

  But that was as far as I got. As we passed Liberty Island, another police boat ambushed us. This one was built like ours, and it came up fast, looking to broadside us. Cyrus wrenched us to the right to avoid it, but with the other boats closing the gap and the helicopters overhead, there was nowhere for us to go. Gunfire rang out and something sparked off our bow. Both engines went up in flames.

  “Abandon ship!” Cyrus yelled.

  “What?” Alexander cried.

  Cyrus slammed into him a second later, lifting him up and over the side of the boat. Erica lunged for me in the same way, although I was already moving when she hit me.

  The engines blew as we jumped. The shock wave sent us cartwheeling through the air. I saw the city skyline flip over twice and then the surface of the harbor smacked me in the face. It was like being punched in the head. I was dazed, only vaguely aware of the cold embrace of the water and the fact that I was sinking. I tried to swim, but something heavy snagged around my foot, dragging me down toward the bottom.

  Above me, at the surface, I saw the bright flare of the explosion, the churn of the bubbles as boats raced overhead, and a vision of a woman’s face . . . all fading quickly as I was pulled farther and farther away.

  And then the darkness swallowed me.

  SECURE LOCATION

  Liberty Island

  September 17

  2300 hours

  I was only vaguely aware of being pulled from the water, the experience a jumble of images: the sensation of being dragged back up from the darkness and emerging into the light and noise once again; the roar of helicopter blades in the distance; the feeling of being hauled, wet and cold, onto muddy ground; Erica yelling, “Fight, Ben! Fight!” and then leaning over me; a woman with a stoic gaze looming behind her; the groan of stone against stone as a passage opened in a rock; a Komodo dragon in a pink tutu, doing pirouettes atop an elephant.

  It’s quite possible that I dreamt the last one, as I lost consciousness more than once.

  I came to lying on a cold granite floor. A voice echoed nearby while footsteps paced. Erica. She must have been on the radio with someone, because I couldn’t hear their half of the conversation.

  “He hasn’t regained consciousness yet, but he’s stable . . . . No, I’m not going to try to rouse him. He needs time to recover . . . . Yes, I understand what’s at stake. What’s the situation there?”

  I opened my eyes and immediately wondered if I was still dreaming. Directly in front of me was a toe the size of a bathtub. It was bronze, part of an enormous bronze foot, which wore an enormous bronze sandal, draped by the fringe of an enormous bronze dress.

  “Let me guess,” I groaned. “We’re inside the Statue of Liberty.”

  “He’s up,” Erica reported into her radio. “I’ll call you back.”

  I sat up, confirming my suspicions. We were inside the museum in the statue’s base. The giant foot I’d been staring at wasn’t part of the real statue; it was a scale model.

  Erica stood by a smaller model of the entire statue in the middle of the room. She had traded her wet clothes for souvenirs from the gift shop: a tacky T-shirt and a beach towel, which she’d wrapped around her waist like a skirt. Without her usual, primed-for-action outfit, she looked more like a normal teenage girl than usual.

  I realized that my wet clothes had been removed as well. I was cocooned in souvenir towels, naked save for my underwear.

  Erica hurried to my side, apparently relieved that I was conscious again. “How are you feeling?”

  “All right, I guess.” I met her eyes. “You saved me?”

  She nodded. “The anchor rope snagged around your leg. By the time I got you free, you were . . . Well, it could have been bad.”

  “You had to resuscitate me?”

  “Yes.”

  I felt my face grow warm as blood rushed to it.

  Erica immediately understood why I was blushing. “Don’t get all worked up. Yes, our lips touched. But it wasn’t kissing. I was only forcing air into your lungs.”

  “I know,” I said, wishing I could remember it better. The bizarre thought occurred to me that it was almost worth dying to have my lips touch Erica’s. “How’d we get in here?”

  “There’s a secret entrance. Granddad knew about it.”

  I’d had enough experience with the Hale family to guess what this meant. “Are you telling me that the Statue of Liberty is really part of some top-secret New York City defense system?”

  “Yes. Although, unlike the Washington Monument, it’s not really that big a secret. The military started using this island back in 1807. The fort’s not even hidden. They put the statue right on top of it.” Erica pointed to a photo mounted on the wall, a bird’s-eye view of the statue.

  I’d never seen the Statue of Liberty from above before. Now that I did, I was startled by how obvious the fortress was. What I’d always thought was an exceptionally large base for the statue was, in fact, a massive defensive structure shaped like an eleven-pointed star.

  “There were soldiers stationed here right up through the Civil War,” Erica continued. “And this wasn’t the only place. There were more than a dozen forts around the city at one time or another: Governor’s Island, Battery Park, Fort Washington, Fort Brooklyn. Eventually, during the late eighteen hundreds, the military decided it needed a lookout tower so it could see threats coming from out at sea.”

  “So they built the statue?”

  “You didn’t really think it was a gift?” Erica laughed. “From France? Why would France give us a giant statue of a woman?”

  “To celebrate our nation’s hundredth birthday.”

  “Oh, please. I can’t believe you bought that story.”

  Now that I thought about it, the tale of how the United States had ended up with the Statue of Liberty did seem kind of odd. And yet I couldn’t help feeling defensive. “I’m pretty sure everyone bought that story. Even the park service.” I pointed to a placard on the wall, which was all about how the French had donated the statue to us.

  “All part of the disinformation campaign,” Erica informed me. “It was actually pretty brilliant, making the tower a statue. They put an observation platform three hundred feet up around the torch, high enough to see for thirty miles in any direction—and convinced the whole world it was some crazy art project.”

  “Is that where Alexander and Cyrus are right now?”

  “The torch is too exposed. They’re in the crown, keeping an eye on our surroundings, waiting for the coast to be clear.”

  “Aren’t they worried that
someone else in the CIA knows the statue is a fortress and will come looking for us here?”

  “No. Apparently, most of the history of these places has been forgotten, even by the government itself. Back when this statue was built, it was the tallest structure for miles. But once skyscrapers started going up in the city, they offered better vantage points and this place lost its purpose. The government stopped using it, and over the years, they bought their own disinformation about it. Granddad knows the truth only because his father told him. And Granddad hasn’t told anyone about it except us.”

  I got to my feet, keeping the towels wrapped around me, taking in the entire museum. It was amazing to be inside it at night. Just as it had been amazing to be inside the Washington Monument at night with Erica. There was something almost magical about being let in on such great national secrets, to be one of only a handful of people who knew the truth.

  “Is there any iconic American monument that wasn’t secretly built for national security reasons?” I asked.

  Erica pursed her lips, considering this. “I don’t think the Gateway Arch in St. Louis was. It’s too wobbly. And frankly, what’s the point of a lookout tower in the middle of the country?”

  “How about the Seattle Space Needle?”

  “A big tower right near the border with Canada?” Erica asked. “C’mon. That’s definitely for security.”

  “Really? We’re worried about Canada?”

  Erica shrugged. “You can’t trust anybody. How’s your strength? Do you think you can climb?”

  I took a few tentative steps. To my surprise, despite everything that had happened, I felt perfectly fine. “Yes.”

  “Then let’s go up. They’re waiting for us.”