S*W*A*G*G 1, Spook

by Jill Marshall

  They didn’t, so when he’d walked far enough away, Flynn chanced a quick look over his shoulder. At first he saw nothing, but then, reflected in a shaft of moonlight, he caught a momentary glimpse of two silvery-white soles as the observer ran off in the opposite direction.

  So that was it. Blonde was his pursuer.

  His heart felt heavier than ever as he stared at his useless hands. His useless, pointless hands that just wouldn’t comply, couldn’t contribute to what his mind could imagine.

  Yes. He really had to stop it. It was time.

  Chapter 16 - Ring, Rifle, Rock

  Just to avoid suspicions, and also to give herself the chance to process what she had seen the night before, Janey tried to keep her day as straightforward as possible. As she had de-Wowed in the Octobus before bed the previous night, she was completely ready to go down for breakfast in her dressing gown and assure her parents that she really didn’t hate them (as they worried why she was spending so much time in her room) and that she was just studying hard for exams. They seemed to buy it, fussing around each other making sandwiches and tea like they were going out of fashion. Janey watched them fondly, remembering Gideon’s expression as he’d surveyed the scene before him. She’d never really known her own grandparents, let alone any other kind of ‘greats’, but his face had shown what she imagined she would feel if she did.

  With a sigh, she pushed away her muesli and packed her bag for school, wishing once more that she could share at least a tiny bit of this with Alfie. If only it wouldn’t blow his mind, she thought. He’d probably be very concerned about her mental health and have serious chats with his parents and then her own. She wondered about confiding with Jack instead. He was certainly very sweet, and from what she’d observed he’d witnessed about as much craziness as she had, if not more. But he wasn’t a spy, and that was the language she spoke.

  As for Matilda Peppercorn – well, Janey still wasn’t sure. She found the other girl overwhelming at times, and somehow Tilly’s overt confidence made her own shrivel into nothingness. There was the disconcerting way she just kept on turning up, everywhere and anywhere, whether she’d been invited or not. And if Janey was completely honest, she was uncomfortable with how easily Tilly got along with the guys. The others. She couldn’t imagine teasing Jack or bantering with Gideon the way Tilly did. Sometimes she felt as though she could hardly get a sentence out in front of Gideon – maybe because he was older, and so … observant.

  It was a very good job, she decided, that there was still one person who always understood her – sometimes when she didn’t even understand herself. So much for keeping the day straightforward. Now that the Spylab was open for business again, Janey couldn’t keep away …

  There were only a few minutes to go before she had to leave for the bus, but Janey figured it would be just enough time to see if G-Mamma had any updates. She dressed quickly and shimmied beneath the mantelpiece into the tunnel. ‘It’s only me,’ she called breathlessly, brushing down her school skirt.

  ‘It’s only me too!’ cried a chirpy voice – but not the one she was expecting. ‘Me, Matilda Peppercorn.’

  Janey looked around, but there was no sign of the blue-and-silver crest of hair that usually heralded Tilly’s presence. Trouble, however, had discovered a friend. Two cats were perched on top of the spy-buy cabinets, out of reach and ready to cause mayhem. Trouble had even Wowed into his uber-cat form, with a gigantic bushy tail and a golden go-faster stripe down the length of his body. The other cat was fluffy and beige.

  ‘Tilly, is that you?’ Janey shielded her eyes against the glare of two sets of eyes like laser beams. ‘I thought you were a leopard cat.’

  ‘Bengal, not leopard,’ the fluffy cat said quite clearly, before explaining, ‘only not all the time. Right now … well, not sure what I am. Persian, maybe? I was trying to match the Fluff Fiend here.’

  She leapt down onto a bench, her body morphing into Tilly’s sturdy frame as she coiled downwards. The girl strutted up and down the bench. ‘Look! I’m on a catwalk,’ she said, striking a pose at the end. ‘Like a model. See? Which is funny, because—'

  ‘You’re a cat,’ said Janey.

  ‘No, well, yes.’ Matilda Peppercorn pointed to her own crazy head. ‘But I meant it’s funny because I’d be probably the worst model ever! I’ve got blue-grey hair like an old lady, and stocky thighs from kickboxing. I’m like a short, female footballer.’

  Janey couldn’t help smiling. ‘And then there’s the broom butt,’ she reminded her.

  ‘Don’t even mention the broom butt.’ Tilly tried to turn around to inspect her own behind, but gave up after a moment and plonked herself down on the benchtop. ‘Off to school?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Janey, although suddenly she wasn’t so sure. Why was Tilly here? And where was G-Mamma? ‘What about you?’

  Drawing in the great gulp of breath that indicated a long speech was about to pour out of her, Tilly began. ‘No, I’m not on the way to school today, although I usually would be. Sometimes I have normal school and sometimes I go to … well, a special place for kickboxing and stuff. I thought that was where I was going today, but then I got a message from Gideon Flynn and it turns out I have to go and be an athleticy person today. In Kazakhstan.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘That’s exactly and totally what I said. It’s right in the middle of central Asia, apparently, with China on side and Russia above it and Europe sort of to the left, especially Eastern European places like Romania. The Big G – does she really want us to call her that? – well, the Big G has been explaining it all to me. She’s coming too.’

  ‘To … to Kazakhstan?’ said Janey, experiencing a small chill of alarm as she thought of G-Mamma disappearing across the world with Matilda Peppercorn. She wanted to pretend that it was strictly professional because she still had her suspicions about Tilly – which she did – but in reality, she couldn’t help recognising that she was probably just a tiny bit jealous.

  Tilly held up her hands. ‘I know! I wasn’t expecting it either, but the Games start later today so I’ve got to be there, obviously, and the Big G is masquerading as my coach as I’m under-age and I can’t just turn up on my own. As if I couldn’t handle a bunch of lightweight gymnasts on my lonesome! Anyway, them’s the rules. She’s just getting ready now,’ Tilly said, jerking a finger towards the Wower.

  Before Janey could approach the spy shower, however, there was a curious rumbling sound from the downstairs hallway and then Jack Bootle-Cadogan’s black, hairy head emerged through the door. He withdrew it, opened the door properly and entered with his teenage boy hair in place.

  ‘Have I missed anything? I got here as soon as I could,’ he said cheerfully, folding himself onto the opposite end of the bench from Tilly.

  The Spylab was starting to feel very crowded.

  ‘Don’t you have school either?’ she asked Jack.

  He wrinkled his nose. ‘Hm. Don’t know what you call it. Compassionate leave, or something like that? I’ll go back in a couple of weeks, if I can’t get my own thing set up at home.’

  ‘Where’s that, super-posh boarding school?’ said Tilly.

  ‘Nope. Ordinary neighbourhood school. I tried Eton for a while but it wasn’t me.’

  ‘But you’re all posh.’

  ‘I’m also all ordinary.’

  ‘You’re a dog and, err, a god; I don’t think that’s ordinary.’

  What was it with these two? Janey steered them back towards the more important matter.

  ‘Jack, why are you here?’

  ‘Oh!’ He stopped glaring at Tilly. ‘Gideon told me to come here. According to his message we’re going somewhere. I want to say … Afghanistan?’

  ‘Are you sure? You’re not a contestant. What kind of message?’ said Tilly, looking a little put out that her starring role in the Games was turning into a group activity.

  ‘Just a …’ Jack squirmed uncomfortably. ‘Just a message. Like you.’

 
; ‘Okay. Mine – which specifically said I had to do some superbly excellent kick-boxing at the World Community Games - came via a small warlock named Horace,’ said Matilda Peppercorn. Janey wondered once again about where Tilly lived. ‘Did Horace visit you?’

  She obviously knew that he hadn’t, as Jack started to wriggle even more. ‘No, not Horace,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Come on, Jack BC.’ Tilly folded her arms belligerently. ‘Now I’m intrigued. I get my messages by magic and stuff. Jane the Blonde, I’m guessing yours come by some spy-type means, yes?’

  Janey nodded. ‘Yes, actually. Via the Wower, or through Secret Service invisible ink. Even codes and encryptions.’

  She hadn’t thought about it before now. It had never occurred to her that Gideon didn’t inform them all about their missions – or heists – in the same way. Now she was as curious as Tilly.

  ‘Go on, Jack,’ she said gently, in the calm way she knew he responded to. ‘Tell us how Gideon contacts you.’

  Then Jack jumped off the bench, glowering at each of them in turn. ‘He sent a dead person, okay? A spirit. Someone’s ba.’

  Oh no. ‘It wasn’t G-Mamma’s, was it?’

  ‘No. Her ba’s all safely locked up back in her body. It was actually Percy. He used to be a gardener at Lowmount. About a century ago,’ he added under his breath.

  ‘You reckon you go to an ordinary school?’ Tilly shook her head slowly. ‘You are so not ordinary.’

  ‘Well, as far as I know, they don’t have schools for dead people and their ba processors!’

  ‘I think,’ said Janey carefully, stepping between them before a full-blown row broke out, ‘that we’re all missing the point here. The real question is …’ She paused, wondering how phrase it without being insulting to their paymaster. ‘I guess it’s this: who is Gideon Flynn? How does a teenaged boy who’s not much older than any of us have enough money to pay for everything he does, and the means to contact Tilly by magic, and Jack through dead people, and me and G-Mamma in codes and puzzles?’

  The others stopped short, gazing at her. Then Jack nodded. ‘Actually, you’re right. In fact, I didn’t get any messages to begin with. They all came through you, Janey.’

  ‘Tilly, when did you first hear from him?’

  She scrunched up her face, thinking about it carefully. ‘Just before that party,’ she said eventually. ‘Yes. I got a phone call telling me about the Games, and then I met him in that park we all went into, while he explained that he knew all about me. It was a bit of relief to hear that, to be honest. The whole of witchkind knows about me, but not many humans.’

  ‘Aren’t you a human?’ said Jack nervously.

  Tilly shrugged. ‘Mostly. Like I said. Like you.’

  ‘That’s true as well.’ Janey’s senses were prickling beneath her skin. ‘In fact, the only ones who are completely human are me and G-Mamma. So how does he do that? I mean, what do we actually know about him?’

  The three of them were all staring at each other, trying to figure out anything that they genuinely knew for sure about Gideon Flynn, when G-Mamma emerged from the Wower.

  She was definitely prepared for coaching. Decked out in head-to-toe lime green polyester, she wore a tracksuit with go-faster stripes to rival Trouble’s circling her body at intervals; orange trainers which Janey guessed were actually Fleet-Feet; a baseball cap that she wore backwords to keep her Nordic plaits out of the way, and finally, around her neck, a whistle the size of a coconut that could kill someone with a single swipe. Which was probably the intention. She looked like a gangsta rapper who was once a Russian gymnast – which again, was probably the intention.

  ‘Having a little conflab here, are we?’ she said, closing Jack’s jaw which had dropped open at the sight of her. She picked up a bag of sports equipment (and possibly a few spy-buys). ‘Only we’re on a deadline.’

  Janey glanced at her watch. She had about four minutes before she needed to say goodbye to her folks and skip off for the ordinary school bus to her distinctly ordinary school. ‘We’ve just been talking about Gideon and how little we know about him,’ she told her SPI:KE.

  ‘Did you find out anything more last night?’ said G-Mamma with a wink.

  Janey felt herself blushing to the roots of her hair as Jack and Tilly both turned their heads towards her with interest. ‘No. Nothing really. But … but what we’ve discovered today is that he contacts us all in different ways – ways that most people could never access, like dead people for Jack. And we know nothing about him, really.’

  ‘You do have a point, Girly-Girls and Boysy Boy.’ G-Mamma paced the room, thinking. ‘So he’s gathered us all up, sent us all messages in scary freaky ways, and also tried to poison me.’ She nodded when they all stared at her. ‘Yep. The ring was the source of the poison.’

  ‘That could have been me!’ cried Tilly. ‘Not that poisoned you, obviously. The one that got poisoned, I mean.’

  ‘You didn’t wear it, though. It was probably injected through the bottom of the stone. G-Mamma, you had a long scratch on your finger.’ Janey paced the other side of the bench from G-Mamma so that they moved along the room together. ‘So we don’t know who that ring was intended for, or why it didn’t affect Mrs Varley.’

  Tilly jumped up. ‘She was wearing super-thin latex gloves, I bet that’s why – probably because of all those germy hands she had to shake.’

  ‘How did you get your message this morning, GM?’ asked Jack, his eyes casting around her body as if he was expecting her ba to clamber out of it at any second.

  ‘Encrypted email.’ The SPI:KE opened up her laptop. ‘Accompany Tilly to Kazakhstan for the World Community Games. Once cleared, divert to Transnordia and acquire the Rock.’

  ‘That’s the same message I received by Percy-gram,’ said Jack.

  They were all staring at each other, intrigued, but Janey could feel her anger rising. Suddenly she was outraged again. ‘And … and I was just supposed to go to school, while you go to Central Asia and wherever Transnordia is, and Tilly’s entered in the most important Games the world has ever known?’

  G-Mamma peered at the message. ‘It doesn’t say that you shouldn’t come, Blonde and Brainy Janey Zaney,’ she said at length, but Janey could tell she was trying to pacify her.

  ‘Gideon Flynn,’ she said venomously, ‘can tell us in whatever way he likes to do whatever he wants, but there is no way on this planet – on several planets, actually, because I’ve been to more than one! – that he is sending anyone on a mission or a heist or whatever he calls it, without me being there. No way at all.’

  Janey stared the other three down, daring them to say anything. When they all simply nodded, she said, ‘Give me five minutes.’ Then she raced back through to her own house, rushed off for the bus as she always did, told Alfie she was horribly ill and would have to go home, then rounded back on herself and re-entered the spy-lab by way of G-Mamma’s front door.

  For a moment she thought the room was empty, and she almost cried with frustration. Even Trouble had disappeared. They’d gone without her. ‘What is going on?’ she screamed, even if nobody was there to hear it.

  ‘The ladies have gone on ahead,’ said a muffled voice.

  Jack’s ebony, dog-eared head shot into view at ground level from behind the furthest bench, and Janey rushed round to see what had happened to the rest of him. He was standing on a narrow ledge that surrounded a meter-wide crater in the Spylab floor. So deep and dark was it that Janey couldn’t even see the bottom. Her heart leapt; this indicated some form of travel by spy-buy. She just knew it.

  ‘GM thought there probably was some cause for concern about Gideon,’ Jack explained. ‘She’s taking Tilly to the Games in Kazakhstan as ordered, and then she’s going to double back and keep tabs on Gideon. You and I are going to Transnordia to get this rock he’s after.’ Holding up a scrap of paper, Jack grinned cheerfully. ‘These are the coordinates, and although I offered to whoosh us, it seems we’ll take less time and
be at less risk if we shoot through this hole practically through the centre of the earth.’

  ‘ESPIdrilles,’ whispered Janey, remembering the last time she’d travelled this way.

  ‘No, an upgrade, apparently. GM had her Chinese takeaway on it the other night – I think they call it a Lazy Susan?’ The object was a round wooden platform positioned on a smaller wooden disk, rather like a spinning breadboard. ‘But this one’s not lazy at all. She called it a Lazy Spisan.’ Jack shrugged helplessly, still unfamiliar with the inexplicable ways of G-Mamma.

  ‘She would,’ said Janey with a laugh. ‘Right, let me Wow up and we’ll get going.’

  In mere moments, attired in her spysuit, she was back at the edge of the hole the floor where Jack waited patiently with the Lazy SPIsan clutched under his arm like a vast Frisbee.

  ‘You punch the coordinates in the bottom,’ he explained, ‘and then we both have to stand on it.’

  ‘Back to back?’

  Jack shrugged. ‘Depends how much mud you want in your face.’

  But Janey had done this kind of thing before, and although some of G-Mamma’s gear could be at the prototype stage, she guessed that this wouldn’t cause too much mess. Taking the piece of paper from Jack, she inserted the coordinates for the place in Eastern Europe where they would find the rock – probably another ruby, or possibly a diamond? – and pushed the hovering Spisan out into the middle of the shaft.

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘Can’t be any worse than much of the stuff I’ve already done,’ replied Jack with his usual affable smile.

  So they stepped onto the circlet together, turned back to back, and linked their arms together. After a tiny pause, the SPIsan began to spin, and their journey began, down and round, down and round into the depths of the earth, until they could see no more, and darkness and fire enveloped them completely.