by Eoin Colfer
Opal Koboi’s brain released a few happy endorphins. The thought of revenge always gave her a warm, fuzzy feeling.
The Brill brothers watched Doctor Argon limp up the corridor.
‘Moron,’ muttered Merv, using his telescopic vacuum pole to chase some dust out of a corner.
‘You said it,’ agreed Scant. ‘Old Jerry couldn’t analyse a bowl of vole curry. No wonder his wife is leaving him. If he was any good as a shrink, he would’ve seen that coming.’
Merv collapsed the vacuum. ‘How are we doing?’
Scant checked his moonometer. ‘Ten past eight.’
‘Good. How’s Corporal Kelp?’
‘Still watching the movie. This guy is perfect. We have to go tonight. The LEP could send someone smart for the next shift. And if we wait any longer, the clone will grow another two centimetres.’
‘You’re right. Check the spy cameras.’
Scant lifted the lid on what appeared to be a janitor’s trolley, festooned as it was with mops, rags and sprays. Hidden beneath a tray of vacuum nozzles was a colour monitor split into several screens.
‘Well?’ hissed Merv.
Scant did not answer immediately, taking time to check all the screens. The video feed was from various micro-cameras that Opal had installed around the clinic before her incarceration. The spy cameras were actually genetically engineered organic material. So the pictures they sent were literally a live feed. The world’s first living machines. Totally undetectable by bug sweepers.
‘Night crew only,’ he said at last. ‘Nobody in this sector except Corporal Idiot over there.’
‘What about the parking lot?’
‘Clear.’
Merv held out his hand. ‘OK, brother. This is it. No turning back. Are we in? Do we want Opal Koboi back?’
Scant blew a lock of black hair from one round pixie eye.
‘Yes, because if she comes back on her own, Opal will find a way to make us suffer,’ he said, shaking his brother’s hand. ‘So yes, we’re in.’
Merv took a remote control from his pocket. The device was tuned to a sonix receiver planted in the clinic’s gable wall. This in turn was connected to a balloon of acid which lay gently on the clinic’s main power cube in the parking-lot junction box. A second balloon sat atop the back-up cube in the maintenance basement. As the clinic’s janitors, it had been a simple matter for Merv and Scant to plant the acid balloons the previous evening. Of course the Argon Clinic was also connected to the main grid, but if the cubes did go down, there would be a two-minute interval before the main power kicked in.
There was no need for more elaborate arrangements — after all, this was a medical facility, not a prison.
Merv took a deep breath, flicked open the safety cover and pressed the red button. The remote control emitted an infrared command activating two sonix charges.
The charges sent out sound waves bursting the balloons, and the balloons dumped their acidic contents on the clinic’s power cubes. Twenty seconds later, the cubes were completely eaten away and the whole building was plunged into darkness. Merv and Scant quickly put on night-vision goggles.
As soon as the power failed, green strip lights began pulsing gently on the floor, guiding the way to the exits. Merv and Scant moved quickly and purposefully. Scant steered the trolley and Merv made straight for Corporal Kelp.
Grub was pulling the video glasses from over his eyes.
‘Hey,’ he said, disorientated by the sudden darkness. ‘What’s going on here?’
‘Power failure,’ said Merv, bumping into him with calculated clumsiness. ‘Those lines are a nightmare. I’ve been telling Doctor Argon, but nobody wants to spend money on maintenance when there are fancy company cars to be bought.’
Merv was not waffling for the fun of it; he was waiting for the soluble pad of sedative he had pressed on to Grub’s wrist to take effect.
‘Tell me about it,’ said Grub, suddenly blinking a lot more than he generally did.
‘I’ve been lobbying for new lockers at Police Plaza…I’m really thirsty. Is anyone else thirsty?’ Grub stiffened, frozen by the serum that was spreading through his system. The LEP officer would snap out of it in under two minutes, and be instantly alert. He would have no memory of his unconsciousness, and hopefully he would not notice the time-lapse.
‘Go,’ said Scant tersely.
Merv was already gone. With practised ease, he punched Doctor Argon’s code into Opal’s door. He completed this action faster than Argon ever could, due to hours spent practising on a stolen pad in his apartment. Argon’s code changed every week, but the Brill brothers made certain that they were cleaning outside the room when Argon was on his rounds. The pixies generally had the complete code by midweek.
The battery-powered pad light winked green, and the door slid back. Opal Koboi swung gently before him, suspended in her harness like a bug in an exotic cocoon.
Merv winched her down on to the trolley. Moving briskly and with practised precision, he rolled up Opal’s sleeve and located the scar in her upper arm where the seeker-sleeper had been inserted. He gripped the hard lump between his thumb and forefinger.
‘Scalpel,’ he said, holding out his free hand. Scant passed him the instrument.
Merv took a breath, held it, and made a two-centimetre incision in Opal’s flesh. He wiggled his index finger into the hole and rolled out the electronic capsule. It was encased in silicone and was roughly the size of a painkiller.
‘Seal it up,’ he ordered.
Scant bent close to the wound, placing a thumb at each end.
‘Heal,’ he whispered, and blue sparks of fairy magic ran rings round his fingers, sinking into the wound. In seconds, the folds of skin had zipped themselves together, with only a pale pink scar to show that a cut had been made. A scar almost identical to that which had already existed. Opal’s own magic had dried up months ago, as she was in no position to complete a power-restoring ritual.
‘Miss Koboi,’ said Merv briskly. ‘Time to get up. Wakey wakey.’
He unstrapped Opal completely from the harness. The unconscious pixie collapsed on to the lid of the cleaning trolley. Merv slapped her across the cheek, bringing a blush to her face. Opal’s breathing rate increased slightly, but her eyes remained closed.
‘Jolt her,’ said Scant.
Merv pulled an LEP-issue buzz baton from inside his jacket. He powered it up and touched Opal on the elbow. The pixie’s body jerked spasmodically, and Opal Koboi shot into consciousness, a sleeper waking from a nightmare.
‘Cudgeon,’ she screamed, ‘you betrayed me!’
Merv grabbed her shoulders. ‘Miss Koboi. It’s us, Mervall and Descant. It’s time.’
Opal glared at him, wild-eyed.
‘Brill?’ she said, after several deep breaths.
‘That’s right. Merv and Scant. We need to go.’
‘Go? What do you mean?’
‘Leave,’ said Merv urgently. ‘We have about a minute.’
Opal shook her head, dislodging the after-trance daze. ‘Merv and Scant. We need to go.’
Merv helped her from the trolley’s lid. ‘That’s right. The clone is ready.’
Scant peeled back a sealed-foil false bottom in the trolley. Inside lay a cloned replica of Opal Koboi, wearing an Argon Clinic coma suit. The clone was identical, down to the last follicle. Scant removed an oxygen mask from the clone’s face, hauled it from its resting place and began cinching it into the harness.
‘Remarkable,’ said Opal, brushing the clone’s skin with her knuckle. ‘Am I that beautiful?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Merv. ‘That and more.’
Suddenly Opal screeched. ‘Idiots. Its eyes are open. It can see me!’
Scant closed the clone’s lids hurriedly. ‘Don’t worry, Miss Koboi, it can’t tell anyone, even if its brain could decipher what it sees.’
Opal climbed groggily into the trolley. ‘But its eyes can register images. Foaly may think to check. That infernal centa
ur.’
‘Don’t fret, miss,’ said Scant, folding the trolley’s false bottom over his mistress.
‘Very soon now, that will be the least of Foaly’s worries.’
Opal strapped the oxygen mask across her face. ‘Later,’ she said, her voice muffled by the plastic. ‘Talk, later.’
Koboi drifted into a natural sleep, exhausted by even this small exertion. It could be hours before the pixie regained sustained consciousness. After a coma of that length, there was even the risk that Opal would never be quite as smart as she once was.
‘Time?’ said Merv.
Scant glanced at his moonometer. ‘Thirty seconds left.’
Merv finished cinching the straps exactly how they had been. Pausing only to dab sweat from his brow, he made a second incision with his scalpel, this time in the clone’s arm, and inserted the seeker-sleeper. While Scant sealed the cut with a blast of magical sparks, Merv rearranged the cleaning paraphernalia over the trolley’s false section.
Scant bobbed impatiently. ‘Eight seconds, seven. By the gods, this is the last time I break the boss out of a clinic and replace her with a clone.’
Merv spun the trolley on its castors, pushing it through the open doorway.
‘Five… four…’
Scant did one last check around, running his eyeballs across everything they had touched.
‘Three… two…’
They were out, pulling the door behind them.
‘One…’
Corporal Grub slumped slightly, then jerked to attention.
‘Hey… what the —? I’m really thirsty! Is anyone else thirsty?’
Merv stuffed the night-vision goggles into the trolley, blinking a bead of sweat from his eyelid. ‘It’s the air in here. I get dehydrated all the time. Terrible headaches.’
Grub pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Me too. I’m going to write a letter, as soon as the lights come back.’
Just then the lights did come back, flickering on, one after another, down the length of the corridor.
‘There we go,’ grinned Scant. ‘Panic over. Maybe now they’ll buy us some new circuits, eh, brother?’
Doctor Argon came barrelling down the passageway, almost keeping pace with the flickering lights.
‘Your leg is better then, Jerry?’ said Merv.
Argon ignored the pixies, his eyes wide, his breath ragged.
‘Corporal Kelp,’ he panted. ‘Koboi, is she? Has she…“
Grub rolled his eyes. ‘Calm yourself, Doctor. Miss Koboi is still suspended where you left her. Take a look.’
Argon flattened his palms against the wall, first checking the vitals.
‘OK, no change. No change. A two-minute lapse, but that’s OK.’
‘I told you,’ said Grub. ‘And while you’re here, I need to talk to you about these headaches I’ve been having.’
Argon brushed him aside. ‘I need a cotton bud. Scant, do you have any?’
Scant slapped his pockets. ‘Sorry, Jerry. Not on me.’
‘Don’t call me Jerry!’ howled Jerbal Argon, ripping the lid from the cleaning trolley. ‘There must be cotton buds in here somewhere,’ he said, sweat pasting thin hair across a wide gnome’s forehead. ‘It’s a janitor’s box, for heaven’s sake.’ His blunt finger scrabbled through the trolley’s contents, scraping across the false bottom.
Merv elbowed him out of the way before he could discover the secret compartment or spy screens. ‘Here we are, Doctor,’ he said, grabbing a tub of buds. ‘A month’s supply. Knock yourself out.’
Argon fumbled a single bud from the pack, discarding the rest.
‘DNA never lies,’ he muttered, punching his code into the keypad. ‘DNA never lies.’
He rushed into the room, roughly swabbing the inside of the clone’s mouth. The Brill brothers held their breath. They had expected to be out of the clinic before this happened. Argon rolled the cotton bud’s tip across the sponge pad on his clipboard. A moment later, Opal Koboi’s name flashed on to the board’s mini-plasma screen.
Argon heaved a massive sigh, resting his hands on both knees. He threw the observers a shamefaced grin. ‘Sorry. I panicked. If we lost Koboi, the clinic would never live it down. I’m just a little paranoid, I suppose. Faces can be altered, but…“
‘DNA never lies,’ said Merv and Scant simultaneously.
Grub reset his video goggles. ‘I think Doctor Argon needs a little vacation.’
‘You’re telling me,’ sniggered Merv, rolling the trolley towards the maintenance lift. ‘Anyway, we better get going, brother. We need to isolate the cause of the power failure.’
Scant followed him down the corridor. ‘Any idea where the problem could be?’
‘I have a hunch. Let’s try the parking lot, or maybe the basement.’
‘Whatever you say. After all, you are the older brother.’
‘And wiser,’ added Merv. ‘Don’t forget that.’
The pixies continued down the corridor, their brisk banter masking the fact that their knees were shaking and their hearts were battering their ribcages. It wasn’t until they had removed the evidence of their acid bombs and were well on their way home in the van that they began to breathe normally again.
Merv unzipped Koboi from her sealed hiding place back in the apartment he shared with Scant. Any worries they’d had about Opal’s IQ taking a dip were immediately banished. Their employer’s eyes were bright and aware.
‘Bring me up to speed,’ she said, climbing shakily from the trolley. Even though her mind was fully functioning, it would take a couple of days in an electro-massager to get her muscles back to normal.
Merv helped her on to a low sofa. ‘Everything is in place. The funds, the surgeon, everything.’
Opal drank greedily, straight from a jug of core water on the coffee table. ‘Good, good. And what of my enemies?’
Scant stood beside his brother. They were almost identical, except for a slight wideness in Merv’s brow. He had always been the smart one.
‘We have kept tabs on them, as you asked.’
Opal stopped drinking. ‘Asked?’
‘Instructed,’ stammered Scant. ‘Instructed, of course. That’s what I meant.’
Koboi’s eyes narrowed. ‘I do hope the Brill brothers haven’t developed any independent notions since I’ve been asleep.’
Scant stooped slightly, almost bowing. ‘No, no, Miss Koboi. We live to serve. Only to serve.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Opal. ‘And you live only as long as you do serve. Now, my enemies. They are well and happy, I trust.’
‘Oh yes. Julius Root goes from strength to strength as LEP Commander. He has been nominated for the Council.’
Opal smiled, a vicious wolverine’s smile. ‘The Council. Such a long way to fall. And Holly Short?’
‘Back on full active duty. Six successful reconnaissance missions since you induced your coma. Her name has been put on the list for promotion to major.’
‘Major, indeed. Well, the least we can do is to make sure that promotion never comes through. I plan to wreck Holly Short’s career, so she dies in disgrace.’
‘The centaur Foaly is as obnoxious as ever,’ continued Scant Brill. ‘I suggest a particularly nasty…’
Opal raised a delicate finger, cutting him off. ‘No. Nothing happens to Foaly just yet. He will be defeated by intellect alone. Twice in my life someone has outsmarted me. Both times it was Foaly. Just killing him requires no ingenuity. I want him beaten, humiliated and alone.’ She clapped her hands in delighted anticipation. ‘And then I will kill him.’
‘We have been monitoring Artemis Fowl’s communications. Apparently the human youth has spent most of the past year trying to find a certain painting. We have traced the painting to Munich.’
‘A painting? Really?’ Cogs turned in Opal’s brain. ‘Well, let’s make sure we get to it before he does. Maybe we can add a little something to his work of art.’
Scant nodded. ‘Yes. That’s not a problem. I’ll g
o tonight.’
Opal stretched out on the sofa like a cat in the sunlight. ‘Good. This is turning out to be a lovely day. Now, send for the surgeon.’
The Brill brothers glanced at each other.
‘Miss Koboi?’ said Mervall nervously.
‘Yes, what is it?’
‘The surgeon. This kind of operation cannot be reversed, even by magic. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to think — ’
Opal leaped from the sofa. Her cheeks were crimson with rage.
‘Think! You’d like me to think about it! What do you imagine I have been doing for the past year? Thinking! Twenty-four hours a day. I don’t care about magic. Magic did not help me to escape, science did. Science will be my magic. Now, no more advice,
Merv, or your brother will be an only child. Is that clear?’
Merv was stunned. He had never seen Opal in such a rage. The coma had changed her.
‘Yes, Miss Koboi.’
‘Now, summon the surgeon.’
‘At once, Miss Koboi.’
Opal lay back on the sofa. Soon everything would be right in the world. Her enemies would shortly be dead or discredited. Once those loose ends were tied up, she could get on with her new life. Koboi rubbed the tips of her pointed ears. What would she look like, she wondered, as a human?
Chapter 2: The Fairy Thief
MUNICH, GERMANY, PRESENT DAY
Thieves have their own folklore. Stories of ingenious heists and death-defying robberies. One such legend tells of the Egyptian cat burglar, Faisil Mahmood, who scaled the dome of St Peter’s basilica in order to drop in on a visiting bishop and steal his crozier.
Another story concerns confidence woman Red Mary Keneally, who dressed as a duchess and talked her way into the King of England’s coronation. The palace denied the event ever took place, but every now and then a crown turns up at auction that looks very like the one in the Tower of London.
Perhaps the most thrilling legend is the tale of the lost Herve masterpiece. Every primary-school child knows that Pascal Herve was the French Impressionist who painted extraordinarily beautiful pictures of the fairy folk. And every art dealer knows that Herve’s paintings are second in value only to those of Van Gogh himself, commanding price tags of over SO million euro.
