Nick and Tesla's Secret Agent Gadget Battle

by Bob Pflugfelder

  A grappling hook.

  Nick yelped, then slapped a hand over his mouth to silence himself.

  For a moment, he and Tesla and Uncle Newt stared in stunned silence at the hook. Then it began to move.

  Down below, Skip must have been pulling on the rope attached to it. It slid slowly across the roof until it wedged against a chimney.

  “Look,” Tesla whispered. “He’s about to climb up here with us.”

  “Why would he do that?” said Nick. “He had all day to plant his bugs.”

  The rope squeaked as it was pulled taut, and they heard a single, muffled grunt.

  “Here he comes,” Tesla hissed.

  “What do we do?” said Nick.

  “Well, I don’t think he’s coming up here to clean out the gutters. Obviously, he’s about to break into the house,” Uncle Newt said. He flashed the kids a cheerful grin. “I think we ought to let him.”

  With a final heave, the man hauled himself onto the roof. It hadn’t been easy getting up there. He’d have to cut back on the pepperoni pizzas and maybe switch to Diet Coke.

  He’d worry about that later, though. For now, he had to focus. He had a mission to complete.

  He moved across the roof with soft, stealthy steps. He was headed for the window he’d worked on that afternoon, carefully scraping away the paint so it would open smoothly.

  When he was just a step away, he froze. He thought he heard something moving behind him, on the other side of the chimney he’d used to brace his grappling hook.

  He looked over his shoulder and saw nothing but the moon hanging big and round in the starry sky.

  It was probably just a bird. Probably an owl. He didn’t know anything about them except that some were big and some were small and he’d run into both kinds while on nighttime assignments. And they were always annoying.

  The man turned back to the window and lifted it up as slowly and gingerly as he could. One rattle or creak could ruin everything.

  When the window was open wide enough, he slipped through into the pitch-black attic. He pulled his flashlight from his utility belt—he loved that he had a utility belt!—and turned it on.

  It took only a few seconds to find his prize. He snatched it up, stuffed it into the bag he’d brought for it, and turned to go.

  Mission accomplished!

  He could already taste that pepperoni pizza.

  He took a step toward the window—and saw three faces peering through it.

  “Welcome back, Skip,” said Tesla. “Not leaving again so soon, are you?”

  The man was marched downstairs with his hands over his head.

  “What is that thing, anyway?” he asked Uncle Newt, who was pointing the parabolic microphone at him.

  “You don’t want to find out,” Nick told him ominously.

  “He is a M.A.D. Scientist, you know,” Tesla added.

  When they reached the dining room, they found Oli setting the table with help from a sullen-looking Silas and DeMarco.

  “We have other guest for dinner?” Oli said. “Good thing I put all the pickles in salad!”

  “He won’t be joining us for supper,” Tesla said.

  “Whoa!” Silas exclaimed, marveling at the man’s all-black outfit. “Skip’s a ninja!”

  “Not a ninja. Just a thief,” said Nick. He took the bag the man had been carrying and plopped it on the table. “And this is what he was after.”

  He reached into the sack and pulled out a huge skull.

  “Cool!” said Silas and DeMarco.

  “Ahh!” cried Oli. “What is this next to Oli’s mustard-and-olive sauce?”

  “It’s a phony Bigfoot skull someone put in the woods to stir up publicity, for some reason,” Uncle Newt explained.

  Oli took off his fedora and scratched his head.

  “Somehow, I still do not understand,” he said.

  “Me neither, actually,” Nick said. “You may as well tell us, Skip. What does that skull have to do with my parents or the cameras and microphones you’ve been planting everywhere?”

  The man lowered his hands, crossed his arms, and sneered at Nick.

  “(A) My name is not Skip. That’s just the name that was on the uniform I stole. And (B) I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He seemed to mean it.

  “Oh, come on,” said Tesla. “We found the mini-mic on my bike. We know you took the pendants. Who are you working for, and what are they up to?”

  The man gave her a corrosive “Are you crazy?” stare.

  “Why would anyone put a microphone on a bicycle?” he said. His disdainful gaze shifted to the table. “And is that diced pickles with chunks of cheese?”

  “Yes!” said Oli.

  “Ugh,” said the man.

  Oli looked crestfallen.

  “All right. I think it’s clear that Not-Skip here isn’t going to tell us anything,” Uncle Newt said. “So let’s see what the police can get out of him.”

  He handed Tesla the parabolic mic and said, “Keep him covered.” Then he walked into the kitchen and came out a second later with the phone.

  He started dialing.

  “Hey!” he said, surprised.

  He dialed again. Then he lowered the phone.

  “It went dead. No dial tone.”

  “Oh, geez—of course!” said Nick. “They’ve got control of the phone. That’s how they deleted the message from Mom.”

  Tesla turned to Not-Skip.

  “And now his boss has cut us off,” she said.

  The man scoffed.

  “You overestimate my boss.”

  Uncle Newt tossed the phone over his shoulder.

  “New plan,” he said. “Go, go, go, go, go!”

  He began frantically shooing everyone toward the front door.

  “I am very confused,” Oli said as he was herded along with the others.

  “You and me both,” said Not-Skip. “I wish I’d never taken this job. These people are nuts.”

  “Do you think someone’s coming to get us?” Nick asked Uncle Newt.

  “Well, somebody’s been spying on us,” he said. “And if it really wasn’t Skip—”

  “Not-Skip,” the man corrected.

  “Right. If it really wasn’t Not-Skip—”

  It was Tesla who interrupted her uncle this time.

  “Then that means the real bad guys heard everything we just said.”

  “Exactly.”

  The kids started rushing toward the door even faster.

  But not fast enough.

  The door burst open, and a glowering Gladys and Ethel came bounding into the house. They were still in their maid uniforms, and each carried a mop that she twirled over her shoulders and around her sides like nunchucks.

  “Get back,” Gladys growled. “Or we’ll scrub the brains right out of your head.”

  “Oh, give me a break,” Not-Skip said.

  That was a mistake.

  With shocking speed, Ethel lunged forward and whacked the man upside the head with the business end of her mop.

  He let out a loud “Ahh!” and stumbled sideways.

  “Next time you’ll get the handle,” Ethel said. “Now, back!”

  Everyone stepped back.

  “What’s going on?” Tesla said. “What are you two doing here?”

  “They’re cleaning up a mess, of course,” came a cold, silky reply from outside.

  Julie Casserly appeared in the doorway.

  “My mess, I’m afraid. And now we’re going to have to sweep it under the rug once and for all.”

  She stepped inside and closed the door.

  Tesla pointed the parabolic mic at Julie and her mop-wielding henchwomen.

  “Stay back,” she said. “Don’t make me use this.”

  Julie slapped her hands to her face and opened her eyes wide in mock fear.

  “Oh, no! You mean you might listen to us?” she said. She dropped her hands and laughed. “You won’t need a long-distance mic f
or that.”

  Tesla lowered the microphone.

  Not-Skip turned to stare at it with disgust.

  “I thought that looked familiar,” he grumbled.

  “Move them away from the door,” Julie said to Ethel and Gladys.

  The little white-haired maids stepped toward Tesla and Nick and the others, once again spinning their mops.

  Their prisoners backed into the dining room in a closely packed bunch.

  “Julie, is this about your gnome?” Uncle Newt asked. “If it is, I’d be happy to replace it.”

  “Oh, you idiot,” Julie said, and she burst out laughing again. She was dressed as she so often was—in the kind of faded jeans and baggy, drab blouse she liked to garden in—yet she seemed like an entirely different woman. She’d never been nice, but now she radiated malicious, even gleeful evil.

  “I already replaced the garden gnome you broke,” she said. “And then your niece and nephew and their little friends went and broke the replacement just a few hours later. Lucky for me they didn’t notice the camera inside it.”

  “Camera?” said Nick.

  “Oh, yes! I’ve been watching you,” Julie gloated. “And listening, too, of course. Just over the phone, at first. But then I decided I needed to hear more after you finally got the call we’ve been waiting for.”

  “The one from Mom,” Tesla said. She was glaring at Julie so fiercely it looked as if she wanted to snatch the mustard-and-olive sauce off the table and throw it at her. “The one warning us about you.”

  Julie gave her a smug smile.

  “Your parents are being extremely selfish,” she said. “They know something a lot of other people would like to know. But they’re not sharing, and now they’re even trying to hide. Fortunately, my employers were thinking ahead. They reassigned me next to your uncle last month, and now that move is paying off. The call from your mother almost gave your parents away. We have a pretty good idea where they are now. We haven’t been able to get at them yet, but when we do we’re going to have a very persuasive message: We’ve got your kids. Now talk.”

  “All this fuss over how to grow soybeans,” Uncle Newt said, shaking his head. “You people need to get your priorities straight.”

  Julie only snorted. But her reaction was enough to confirm what Nick and Tesla had long suspected.

  They’d been told that their parents were horticulture experts for the Department of Agriculture, that they’d been sent to Uzbekistan to study a new method of soybean irrigation. But whatever they were really working on was a lot more important—and dangerous—than figuring out the best way to water beans.

  “Look, lady,” DeMarco said to Julie, “if you’ve been spying on Nick and Tesla the past few weeks, then you know they’ve got people looking out for them. You try anything, and Agent McIntyre is going to come busting in here with half the FBI.”

  “I thought she was with the CIA,” said Silas.

  DeMarco shushed him.

  “Nice try,” Julie said. “But Agent McIntyre’s not going to have a clue anything’s wrong until it’s too late. I had Ethel fetch me Tesla’s little trinket this morning. It was time I had a look at what’s inside.”

  Julie reached into her pocket and pulled out Tesla’s star pendant and necklace. One side of the pendant had been pried off, revealing circuitry inside.

  “You two were right—it’s a tracking device,” Julie said to Nick and Tesla. “And just a tracking device. As long as it’s in this house tonight, Agent McIntyre’s going to assume everything’s hunky dory.”

  She tossed the pendant and chain onto the table beside the pickle salad.

  Nick turned to Not-Skip.

  “So if you’re not working for her,” he said with a jerk of the head at Julie, “why did you steal my pendant?”

  Not-Skip gave him a listless, chagrined shrug.

  “Everyone was making such a big deal about the other pendant being missing, I figured they must be valuable. So I took one for myself. I always boost a bonus item or two. I was just hired to grab the skull—there’s a certain someone out there who thinks it’s real and shouldn’t be hidden away in some brainiac’s attic. But let me tell you, I am not getting paid enough for all this aggravation.”

  “Where is the pendant now?” Julie asked.

  “In my car,” Not-Skip said.

  “Good. Give me your keys.”

  Julie held out her hand.

  “Why don’t you let me go out and get it for you?” Not-Skip said. “And then maybe you could just let me drive away.”

  “Ethel,” Julie said. “Get the keys.”

  Ethel started toward Not-Skip, mop at the ready.

  “Okay! Okay!” Not-Skip said.

  He put one hand to the side of his head where Ethel had smacked him a few minutes before. With the other hand, he pulled out his keys and tossed them to Julie.

  “Really, though? Why not let me go?” he said. “We’re more or less in the same business. It’d be professional courtesy.”

  Julie scoffed.

  “Our profession isn’t exactly known for courtesy,” she said. “Isn’t that right, Oli?”

  “Oli?” said Uncle Newt.

  He and the kids turned toward Oli.

  The big man looked profoundly ashamed of himself.

  “Go ahead. Tell them,” said Julie, obviously relishing his embarrassment. “You’ve been snooping around, too.”

  Oli nodded.

  “I am sorry, Dr. Newt. Is true. I am spy, like these—”

  He scowled at Not-Skip and Julie and her minions and said a foreign word that, though unknown to everyone present, clearly wasn’t a compliment.

  “But I do not want to be!” he went on. “My family owns Vakuum Vlasti. Power Vacuum, in the English. Most popular home-cleaning devices in all the former Soviet republics! When my uncle Yorgi hears that Dr. Newton Holt of U. S. of A. is working on food-powered vacuum—there was article in M.A.D. Scientist newsletter, I think—he sends me here to steal its secrets. But this is not what Oli wants to do!”

  Oli gazed wistfully at the pickle salad and mustard-and-olive sauce.

  “Oli wants to be nutritionist,” he said.

  “Wow,” said Uncle Newt, looking stunned. “So I don’t have a M.A.D. Scientist apprentice after all.”

  “Oh, but you do,” said Oli. “Her name is Marta and she is to come next week. You know, your memory would improve much if you ate more fresh greens and fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids.”

  A loud, rough, snorting-gasping sort of sound filled the room, and everyone turned toward its source: Gladys.

  She was pretending to snore.

  “Oh, sorry,” she said, fluttering her eyes and shaking her head as if she’d just awakened. “I must have nodded off while you folks were having your little ice cream social or whatever the heck it is you’ve been doing.” She shot a pointed look Julie’s way. “Can we knock off all the blah-blah and get this over with? My bunions are killing me.”

  “Yeah,” Ethel snarled. “What she said.”

  “You two need to learn to slow down and savor these moments of triumph,” Julie told them.

  Gladys shrugged.

  “I’d rather savor them at home with my feet soaking in Epsom salt.”

  “All right, fine,” Julie sighed. “I’ll go get the other pendant and let Control know things are ready on our end. You make sure the brother and sister are able to talk when the time comes. The weirdo, too—we might need him. The others I don’t care about … so long as they don’t leave this house.”

  She didn’t say “ever,” but her tone of voice seemed to imply it.

  She spun on her heel, marched briskly to the door, and left.

  “Which one of us is the weirdo?” Uncle Newt asked.

  “You are,” Tesla said. “You’re Dad’s brother. I guess they think they can use you to threaten him, too.”

  Uncle Newt folded his arms across his chest.

  “Well,” he harrumphed, “I must say
I find that insulting on multiple levels.”

  Seemingly out of nowhere, a yowling gray shape launched itself onto the dining room table, startling everyone.

  It was Uncle Newt’s hairless cat, Eureka, intent on helping himself to more cheese from the pickle salad. Not-Skip used the distraction to make a mad dash for the nearest window.

  Tesla was on the move, too, but not in the same direction. She was diving through the doorway into the kitchen and grabbing the phone off the floor.

  She dialed 9-1.

  She didn’t make it to the other 1.

  Gladys pole-vaulted over the dining room table with her mop, then swung it around to knock the phone from Tesla’s hand. Behind her, Ethel was sending her own mop spinning across the room into Not-Skip’s legs. He went tumbling to the floor; by the time he’d recovered enough to get up, Ethel was on him, vigorously mopping his head.

  “I give up! I surrender! Stop!” he spluttered.

  Ethel gave him a final swabbing across his face, then stepped back, leaned against her mop, and admired her handiwork.

  “You’re cleaner,” she said, “but you sure ain’t prettier.”

  “How long do you think that Julie woman is gonna be?” asked Gladys. She wasn’t giving Tesla the same rough treatment Not-Skip got, but she was brandishing her mop as if she might. “I don’t like the idea of just standing around waiting for these freaks to make another break for it.”

  “She’s calling us freaks?” DeMarco muttered.

  Without so much as a glance at him, Gladys reached into a pocket of her powder-blue smock, pulled out a dry pink sponge, and threw it at him.

  It hit DeMarco between the eyes.

  “Ow!”

  Ethel didn’t even seem to notice.

  “We oughta stick ’em somewhere,” she said. “Lock ’em up.”

  “Good idea,” said Gladys. “But where?”

  “Oh, please—not the attic!” Nick cried. “Anywhere but the attic! I’ll die of fright up there! It’s so dark and icky and nasty and full of bugs!”

  Ethel gave her rheumy blue eyes a weary roll.

  “If you’re gonna try reverse psychology, kid, at least be subtle about it.” She turned to Gladys. “He wants to go in the attic.”

  “Obviously,” Gladys said. “So we should put ’em in the basement.”