The Inside Job

by Jackson Pearce

  The place was flat-out disgusting.

  “This doesn’t look like the house of a guy who’s carefully keeping thousand-year-old jeweled manuscripts,” Walter said warily.

  He was right. My stomach felt pitted, but we couldn’t give up yet.

  Step 2: Find the helium chamber

  If there was a helium chamber. As we picked our way through the house, my hope fizzled. It had to be here. It had to be here somewhere. Beatrix said he was getting a crazy amount of helium delivered. Yes, he was a clown, but from the photos we saw online, he wasn’t a clown many people would hire. He was there the day—

  Stop! I shouted to myself. Doubting yourself was a quick way to get burned. At SRS, they always told us to make a decision and stick with it. This was my decision. I had to . . .

  “Oh, gross,” Kennedy said, gagging as she made her way out of the bathroom.

  “Where is it?” Walter said, growing frustrated. We’d gone through the entire place, and nothing . . .

  “The tanks. He’s getting the helium delivered in tanks, and we haven’t even seen those. We’re missing something,” I said. I closed my eyes, tried to remember what the exterior of the house looked like. Was there a room visible from the outside that we hadn’t gone through inside? I turned the mental picture of the house into a blueprint, traced my way around . . .

  “The crawl space,” I said, turning to them. “There’s probably a crawl space underneath the house. The deck was raised, remember, and the yard was steep? But there’s no real basement.”

  “Million-dollar books in a crawl space. Classy, Twinkles,” Walter said, but he looked excited. After a quick glance to make sure neighbors weren’t watching, we walked out the back door and over the side of the deck railing (Kennedy and Walter dropped neatly into crouches, while I basically hit the ground and rolled like a log). I went first under the deck. There was almost enough room to stand, but not quite. Sunlight peered through the deck slats above us, giving us just enough light to see a very small door—a few feet tall and wide at the most.

  There was a fat lock on it, but the door itself was made of flimsy plywood. Since no one could see us under there, Walter karate-kicked the door; it buckled beneath his foot. He stepped aside so I could look in.

  Automatic lights flickered on, and cool air rushed out. I gasped.

  This room was flawless. Neat, pale gray, and perfectly empty except for a series of helium tanks off to one side, and in the very back, a box that had to be the helium chamber.

  We’d found the Runanko books.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Hale? What do you see?” Kennedy asked urgently. I spun around to her and Walter; they instantly read my expression and grinned. They then shouldered around me to get a look for themselves.

  “Whoa,” Walter said. “Now, that’s what I call a crawl space.”

  “There they are!” Kennedy said at the same time. “I knew Mom and Dad weren’t art thieves!” It was strangely relieving to hear Kennedy as pleased as I was about this. She jumped up, nearly hit her head on the ceiling, and then hugged me.

  “Guys. Now, that’s what I call a crawl space,” Walter repeated, motioning to the room.

  “Right,” I said as Kennedy released me. The room—for all its smooth walls and hissing helium pumps and fanciness—was only about three feet tall. Which meant none of us could safely detach the helium pump from the chamber, because it would flood the room with helium and there’d be no staying low enough to breathe only oxygen-rich air.

  “Ideas?” Walter asked, looking grim.

  I checked my watch—we’d been at the house for nearly a half hour now. We weren’t over time yet, but I wanted to be gone before the full hour was up. I paced in front of the door for a moment, trying to shake the happiness about my parents not being thieves out of my head. Focus on the mission, Hale.

  “All right,” I said, looking at the helium chamber in the back of the crawl space. It was at least ten feet away. “I need a hose. A garden hose.”

  “I’ll find one,” Kennedy said immediately, and darted out from under the house. She returned less than a minute later with a long, dirty garden hose slung over her shoulder. “It’s the neighbor’s,” she explained. I withdrew the BEN of All Trades’s knife and sliced a seven- or eight-foot section of hose off. “Walter, give me the B(reathe)-EN. Good, now, hold this section, and—Kennedy, hand me the duct tape off my belt. Perfect.”

  I’d removed the scuba mask from the B(reathe)-EN and extended the tube length by adding the section of hose. It was now long enough to reach the back wall and, if the pump stayed outside, would still provide the mask-wearer clean oxygen.

  Walter pulled his shirt off so he was down to just the SRS uniform. He clamped the mask over his mouth and, with a quick look at me and Kennedy, made his way into the crawl space. He couldn’t even move on his hands and knees—he had to army crawl along the floor. It really was a genius hiding spot. Who would think to look in such a small space for priceless jeweled books? Yet here was the chamber, the helium, the . . .

  “How do you think Twinkles made all this?” Kennedy asked quietly as Walter’s feet got farther away.

  “Maybe he’s really clever. Ben could make this,” I said.

  Kennedy looked doubtful, but we didn’t have a chance to discuss it, because Walter shouted over his shoulder.

  “Looks like there’s a melting lock on the chamber! Probably easiest to just break the glass case!”

  “Do it!” I answered.

  A few moments later I heard the glass shatter—which meant the air in the crawl space was now filling with helium. I held the oxygen pump as far away from the crawl space entrance as I could so there was no chance it would suck in any helium air. I couldn’t see the helium chamber anymore because of Walter’s body, and I worried that the pump wasn’t making much noise—was it working? Walter was rustling around, moving . . .

  He started backing up, emerging from the crawl space. Without the chamber. He rose up, removed the mask, and shook his head.

  “I can’t get the books out. There’s a plinth alarm underneath that I could disarm, but I think there’s also some sort of alarm on the back of the chamber. I can’t tell what it is, so I’m afraid to unhook it.”

  I pressed my lips together. Who did the alarms call? A security company? Twinkles himself? “All right—I’ll go in and unhook the alarm in the back. Then you go back in and undo the pressure alarm, and—”

  A car revved, loudly, down by the street. Otter’s alarm. Something was wrong—

  “Let’s go,” Walter said frantically.

  “No, no—we’re here, let’s just— Come on, we’ll go in together and just trade off the mask. Kennedy, go get in the car,” I said hurriedly, stripping down to my SRS uniform.

  “No way am I leaving,” she said, folding her arms.

  I scowled at her, but there was no time to argue. Walter handed over the mask and offered me a leg up—the step into the crawl space was a little high for me, unlike for him. I ducked in and tried to control my breath as the closeness of the ceiling hit me. I slid to one side so that Walter could get in behind me, and then I held my breath so I could hand him the mask. He took a few breaths, traded the mask back to me, and then we crawled toward the helium chamber. There were footsteps above us—someone was in the house. How was Twinkles back already? I glanced at my watch as I handed Walter the mask. We should’ve had another hour at the least. If he noticed someone broke in, he’d almost certainly come check the books—

  I tried to crawl faster, but it was hard, what with holding my breath, the tiny space, and the bits of glass that now littered the floor.

  Walter handed the mask back as we got to the chamber. The books were inside, glittering and sparkly, with flecks of broken glass all over them. I held my breath and gave the mask back, then pressed my cheek against the ground to look at the alarm under the chamber—the plinth. This one was simple enough; as long as the button the chamber rested on didn’t p
op up, it wouldn’t go off. It was easy enough to trick with a piece of tape to hold the button down. I wiggled forward to look at the one on the back, and sighed, which meant Walter had to immediately hand me the mask so I could take a breath.

  “Pressure alarm. Cushioned,” I said before taking a breath of oxygen. I handed it back as Walter’s face fell.

  Pressure alarms were similar to plinth alarms, only instead of a button that pops up, they required that the pressure on the object remain the same. They’re not impossible to fool—just tricky. But when they’re cushioned . . . well. Think of a bowling ball on a pillow. You lift the ball up, and the pillow will start to fluff back up instantly.

  More footsteps upstairs. I heard the car rev again. There was no time to fool the pressure alarm. We had to run for it. Even I could outrun an old clown, right? I took the mask back and breathed.

  “Take them and run,” I whispered.

  “What?” Walter asked, his eyes wide, but I was already mouthing, One, two, three—

  Walter winced as he yanked the books off the platform and hugged them to his chest. The pressure alarm clicked off and began to scream as Walter shimmied backward to the door, unable to use his hands. I braced my feet against his shoulders and pushed him, hard, so he slid most of the way out. The alarm was making my ears ring, and I couldn’t hear the footsteps, if Twinkles was coming, if he was yelling.

  By the time I got out the door, Walter had the chamber lifted and pressed against his chest. Shadows appeared in the strips of sunlight caused by the deck boards—someone was above, running down. Kennedy and Walter cut to the right, away from the stairs, and were nearly out of sight. I opened my mouth—I could distract Twinkles while they ran for it.

  “Hurry! Give the books to me!” I roared, like I was still mid-robbery. Only, my voice wasn’t a roar. My voice sounded like a cartoon animal. Stupid helium. I yelled again anyhow, sounding like the most precious burglar in existence. A foot in a cherry-red shoe appeared on the stairs—Twinkles was falling for it.

  But then, no. He must have seen Kennedy and Walter, because suddenly he went back up; the shadow was running across the deck. I sprinted out from under it, gasping for non-helium air and squinting in the bright sunlight. Kennedy and Walter were in the side yard, backing up toward the deck as Twinkles—who looked really, really scary at the moment—stalked toward them, shouting in German. Did he have a weapon? I couldn’t tell—

  An engine revved, tires squealed, and suddenly a car burst over the edge of the driveway, right at Twinkles. It was Otter, his face red and eyes narrowed. Twinkles leaped out of the way just in time to avoid becoming road kill—he was spry for a guy who looked as roughed-up as he did. This gave Kennedy and Walter the time they needed. Otter leaned over and opened the passenger-side door. Walter chucked the books in and then jumped in himself, while Kennedy grabbed for the back door. I ran for the car, unsure if there was enough time for me to make it, but I was relieved to know that unlike my friends, Otter would leave me here.

  “Steve?” Twinkles said.

  Everyone froze. Except Twinkles, whose hands slackened out of fists. He tilted his head to the side. “Steve? Steve Otter?”

  I always thought that Otter, for all his arrogance, had probably been a sort of crappy field agent. I mean, great field agents don’t get retired and stuck teaching year-six SRS classes, right? But in this moment, Otter’s years of spy training kicked in a thousand times faster than mine, Walter’s, or Kennedy’s. He smiled brightly—

  “Kevin!”

  Twinkles started to smile but then forced his lips back into a straight line. “The tune?”

  Without hesitation, Otter whistled a short melody. I had no idea if it was right or not—or how Otter would know it—but Twinkles grinned.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “We needed the books back, and you weren’t here,” Otter said warmly. “Thought it’d be a nice, easy smash-and-grab mission for my junior agents. Walter, Hale, Kennedy—you have the honor of meeting Kevin Stroganoff. One of SRS’s finest deep-cover agents.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Twinkles the Clown was the Runanko book thief. He was also Kevin Stroganoff. He was also, apparently, an SRS agent.

  The guy had a lot of identities.

  Otter turned and smiled at me flawlessly, but I read the urgency in his eyes: I had to move, or Twinkles was going to know something was amiss. I strode forward and extended my hand and then shook his sharply.

  “It’s an honor to meet you, sir.”

  “Honor? Ha. I bet you’d never heard of me before you got to Geneva!” Twinkles said. Kennedy and Walter climbed out of the car, smiles plastered on their faces.

  “Not your name, since it’s a gold-level mission, but I assure you, everyone’s heard of the deep-cover agent in Switzerland,” Otter said. He was brief, but in that sentence he told the three of us exactly what story we were to play along with, and the exact truth of the situation: Twinkles had been in deep cover for a very long time. So long that he didn’t know everyone in his presence had ditched SRS.

  “Gold-level?” Twinkles asked, his eyes shining a bit. He blushed right through his white face makeup. “I didn’t know it was elevated to gold-level!”

  Otter looked taken aback. “Really? Wow, you are in deep cover. I admire it, Kevin, I really do. Takes a certain type of agent to maintain deep cover this long.”

  “What about you, Steve? What have you—” Twinkles looked down at his clown costume. The armpits were soaked through with sweat stains, and the whole thing had a faded, flappy sort of look to it. “Come on in. Let me change and wash all this makeup off. I’ll get everyone some coffee. I was on my way to a party, you know—SRS set me up in the whole clown cover and told me to keep it up. But god, I’m tired of the act. You know I still can’t juggle?” He said this as he climbed the stairs up the deck and to the house. Otter hurried to walk beside him. I made eyes at Kennedy and Walter; they understood my instructions and went about quietly moving the helium chamber, with the books still inside, to the trunk of the car, so the oxygen-filled air wouldn’t eat away at them. I went on in with Twinkles and Otter in the meantime.

  “Anyway, I was on my way to some kid’s birthday party on a horse farm or something, when I realized I’d forgotten my balloons.” Twinkles stopped in his kitchen and reached between a stack of dirty plates and a row of empty cereal boxes, where he found a bag of long skinny balloons. “We must have just missed each other!”

  “Indeed! You know I don’t have long to catch up— we’ve got an exit flight in a few hours. But how have you been? Last I saw you was, what? We were eighteen, maybe? Nineteen?”

  “I was nineteen, I think, because I’d only just learned Romansh when they sent me here. Remember, they had me doing that undercover elephant trainer work out by the border? You were there for a little while too, I think.”

  Otter nodded. “Yes, of course! Right, and there was that—”

  “Massive power outage!” they said at the same time.

  I smiled. Twinkles dumped some instant coffee into five mugs and swirled it around with his paint-stained finger to mix it. Not gagging as I sipped it was one of the more impressive acting jobs of my life, if you ask me.

  “What’ve you been up to? How’s the old gang? Most of them still alive?” Twinkles said lightly.

  “Oh, sure. I’m teaching now—that’s why I’m running around with junior agents. Liz Hartman is teaching too. Will Green is in deep cover in Russia, now, I think.”

  “What about Katie Mercutio?” Twinkles said, ushering us to his living room. He shoved a load of dirty laundry off a recliner and sat down, crossing his legs so that his giant clown shoes bobbled in front of him.

  “Katie Mercutio married Joseph Jordan, actually! They’re great—in and out field agents, never undercover for long,” Otter said casually. I nodded, doing my best to look a little bored, when in reality my stomach was spinning around, bouncing off my rib cage. They were talking a
bout my parents.

  Twinkles nodded knowingly. “Well, then—what all did you need? The Runanko books, obviously, but did you come for the rest? I can help you load it, and we’ll have time to eat dinner together! I can make schnitzel!”

  “Just the books, actually, though they did ask me to check on the rest of it—make sure it’s been cataloged correctly and all,” Otter lied smoothly.

  Twinkles scoffed. “As if I have anything better to do. The paintings are all upstairs in the attic, temperature controlled. A few others are actually behind the drywall over there”—he nodded to the exterior wall—“in alcoves. SRS finally looking to sell it, now that it’s been a while and the hunt for it’s cooled off?”

  “Exactly,” Otter said, and set his coffee down on an end table. “And sure, come on—let’s load up, and we’ll get . . . uh . . . schnitzel.”

  “Perfect!” Twinkles rose, kicked off his clown shoes, and made his way upstairs, I assumed to the attic. Otter followed, then me, then Kennedy and Walter, who’d finished transferring the books from the chamber to the helium tank in the trunk. They let their guards down long enough to give me baffled looks; I shrugged. This was weirding me out too.

  At the top of the stairs, Twinkles grabbed ahold of a cord and pulled down the attic steps. Rather than leading straight into the attic, however, they led to a sliding steel door. Twinkles put a key in the door but didn’t turn it—he didn’t need to. The steel panel slid open with an electric whoosh, taking his key with it, revealing lights just like those in the crawl space downstairs.

  “Why keep the books downstairs and the art up here?” Otter asked.

  Twinkles blanched a little. “I . . . well. I can’t carry those helium tanks up the attic stairs anymore. But I swear, the crawl space is perfect! I sealed it—there’s no way a rat can get in there! Can you leave that out of your report, please?”

  Otter sighed. “Fine. Fine.”

  Twinkles grinned. “Whew. Anyway—do you have a checklist? I might have one, somewhere. I don’t really know who it’s by. Not my style, you know?”