On his sixth try—the last four digits of the ambassador’s identification card—the safe opened. Inside were passports, some cash, jewelry, and a gray thumb drive.
“Got it,” Steel said, emerging from the bedroom. “Computer?”
“In here,” Kaileigh said, having found and started up a laptop in the kids’ bedroom. The TV was tuned to the Disney Channel.
The thumb drive was highly encrypted—requiring six groups of four combinations of letters and numbers, like software registration codes—but Steel had been told to expect this, and went about inputting the first of six possible code keys that Randolph had explained they’d intercepted in the string of e-mails that had put them on to the exchange in the first place. The first two failed, but the third took, and the thumb drive’s directory appeared.
Less than a minute later, Steel’s eyes were trained on the laptop screen as he scrolled down one page at a time, information captured in his brain like taking a series of photographs. Page by page he stored the data, moving remarkably quickly through the first two sizable files.
Six files to go…
He felt the clock ticking, the passing time working against him.
“Steel?” Kaileigh said, her voice a combination of demand and insecurity.
“Not now.”
“Yes…now,” she said, moving to the bedside end table and grabbing the television wand.
Steel mentally marked where he’d left off and turned to face her.
A face looked back from the TV screen. It was Penny’s.
She punched the mute button, and they caught him midsentence.
“…my suite friends. I tried calling you…”
Steel patted his pocket, as did Kaileigh. Steel had brought his cell phone with him because he was supposed to call Randolph, but he had it on vibrate and had somehow missed it ringing.
“He means the hotel room,” she whispered. “That was him, just now.”
“Hopefully you can hear me. If you can, you know that only I could figure out to hijack the hotel’s TV system, so you’d better trust me. Just trust me, okay? I’m on your side. There was a scene down here. Your magical friends,” he said with emphasis, “are heading your way. So is Mr. Motorcycle. You have like, three minutes. Do not, repeat, do not, use the elevators.” His image jerked, and Penny said, “A little gift for you.”
“Our side?” she said, as the screen changed to a four-way display, divided into quarters.
“Yeah, I caught that too, believe me.”
It took them both several seconds to understand that Penny was showing them views from various security cameras. The upper left revealed the real Aladdin and Jasmine riding in an elevator. The upper right showed Jason Voorhees and Malfoy in another elevator. Upper right showed…
The choirboys, DesConte and Reddie, also in an elevator.
The screen’s lower left frame displayed a long view of the fourteenth-floor hallway shot from the direction of the elevators and, next to it, a shot looking at the hallway from the other direction: toward the elevators.
The bodyguards stood by the living room door.
“They’re on the sixth floor…seventh…we’ve got to go,” she said, her voice rising in terror.
“No. I’m going to try to finish up here.” He fished out his phone and handed it to her. “Quick: call Randolph! Tell him it’s thrust technology detailed on the thumb drive and ask him what we’re supposed to do.”
“It’s what?”
“Thrust technology. Just tell him. Now!” Steel turned back to the screen and began scrolling again. Kaileigh made the call, but Steel paid little attention.
His eyes shifted from the laptop to the TV, where he saw the elevator information overlaid: the costumed kids were on the ninth floor. The doors opened, and no one boarded. Jason Voorhees, on the adjacent screen, also stopped; again, no one boarded his elevator car—currently on the third floor.
Penny was somehow overriding the elevators and causing them to stop on every floor to buy Steel time.
Steel sped up the pagination, careful to advance to the next screen only once he was certain he’d seen enough to memorize. The third file was short, and he got through it quickly. The fourth file was a PDF document of engineering plans—nozzle specifications. He had to view these a few seconds longer in order to catch every detail, but there were far fewer of them and he was into the fifth, and then the sixth file before Kaileigh returned to the room.
She waited for Steel to acknowledge her.
“He said to flush the thumb drive down the toilet,” she said.
“What?”
“I know. We weren’t supposed to take anything—to steal anything—and I started to say something about it, and he said how making something go away and taking it are different. He said to ‘crush it and flush it.’”
“He said that?”
“Those words: ‘crush it and flush it.’”
“Well…I suppose…if it’s actually secret stuff and it gets lost, it’s different than us stealing it. But I don’t know…”
“We are stealing it,” she said. “It’s in your head.”
Steel turned back to the laptop and committed the last few pages of data to memory. “It is now…” he said.
On the television, the Iranian girl and the Russian boy reached the fourteenth floor and stepped into the hallway, showing up on both the lower quadrants. They walked steadily toward the guards.
“Okay…” Steel said, “now we’re cooked.”
“We are so dead,” she said.
Steel took in the television and tried to concentrate.
“We’re trapped!” Kaileigh said, her fear turning to panic.
“No…” Steel ejected the thumb drive and removed it. It sat in his hand—so tiny and almost insignificant that it was difficult to see it as something important to the government. He knew that in the real world there were spies, and despite the fact that his father fought a kind of war against them, and who knows what Kaileigh’s parents did, Steel didn’t see himself as one.
“Penny made it so we can time it,” he said, indicating the room’s door. Each room in the suite had its own door leading into the hallway; the bodyguards were positioned at the central main door, outside the living room.
Predetermine your exit strategies. Always have more than one.
He recalled the hotel blueprints without so much as a second thought. “West stairway exit is twenty feet to the left of this door,” he said. “There’s another to the right, maybe thirty yards, but that’s past the bodyguards and past the elevators. We go together.”
He jumped up from the chair, hurried to the bathroom, smashed the thumb drive and flushed it, and joined Kaileigh, who stood at the door.
“I don’t get it,” she said.
“Watch the TV,” he said. The costumed kids came down the hall, and the girl clearly greeted one of the bodyguards. There was confusion and discussion, and Steel could hear muted voices through the living room door.
“We’re going to time it,” he said.
“We’re what?”
On-screen, Jasmine talked to the guard and opened the door.
“Get ready,” he said, pointing to the television screen. “We time it so as they come in, we go out,” he instructed. “Stairway is to the left.”
“Okay.”
He’d seen Kaileigh nervous before—in Washington, D.C., they’d taken some big risks—so he knew she was terrified now; he tried not to show his own fear. If they were caught he had no idea what might happen to them; Randolph had convinced them to break into a hotel room; there had to be laws against that.
As the other Aladdin, Jasmine, and the two guards charged into the living room, Steel and Kaileigh slipped out into the hall and turned left.
The emergency exit door at the end of the hall opened, and Jason Voorhees and Malfoy stepped through.
“Back!” Steel said, turning quickly around, now facing an impossibly long hallway.
“You le
ft the party!” Taddler—dressed as Jason—called out.
“Ignore them,” Steel whispered. But Kaileigh glanced over her shoulder. “They’re coming fast!”
Steel had nowhere to go: every door was locked, the elevators might take a minute or more to arrive, and the far exit suddenly felt like it was in another zip code.
The elevator door sounded, and out stepped Victor DesConte and Reddie Long dressed as choirboys. Concurrently, the other Jasmine and Aladdin and the two security guards rushed out of the suite, bumping into Steel and Kaileigh.
Steel knew immediately what to do: he grabbed Kaileigh’s hand and swung her into the other Aladdin, knocking the boy into the other Jasmine, making sure that he and Kaileigh tangled with them.
The confusion stopped Taddler and Johnny in their tracks.
“I’m seeing double,” Taddler said.
“What the heck?” Johnny gasped.
“You!” one of the bodyguards hollered, grabbing an Aladdin by the scruff of the neck. The boy spouted Russian, crying out.
At Randolph’s instructions, Steel had learned a total of six full sentences in Russian, all with a decent accent: three had to do with politely asking someone to open a door; two involved conversational introductions; and one roughly translated to “I need help.” This was the first, and only, of the sentences that popped into his head as the other Aladdin cried out.
Steel shouted, “I need help!” quickly and loudly, accomplishing his goal of further confusing the bodyguard. If both boys spoke Russian, who was the real Aladdin?
The girls struggled off the floor. One of them called out in Farsi, followed by the other girl saying the exact same thing in the exact same voice. Two voices, two girls, sounding perfectly alike, stunned both guards, who were responsible for defending one of them.
Taddler stepped forward as if to help one of the girls, when his sole intention was to pick her pockets. The bodyguard stepped to block Taddler. But as he did, Steel saw the man’s eyes go wide, and now Steel saw why: Lyle had arrived in the hallway through the same exit door Taddler and Johnny had used. A big man and heavily muscled, he was moving fast, right for the guard.
The guard’s reaction was too late. Lyle threw him against the wall and raised his arms to fend off a blow from the man’s partner. While Lyle fought the second guard, Taddler, a.k.a. Jason Voorhees, shouted something incoherent and went for body contact with the nearest Jasmine. He’d just gotten his hand on her when DesConte caught him with a flying elbow to the hockey mask. Taddler staggered back. Reddie Long dived for Johnny, who had crept behind the fight between Lyle and the bodyguard, and tackled Steel, frisking him in the process. Reddie caught Johnny by the cape, spun him around, and kicked out, knocking him down.
Steel came to his feet, facing the two Jasmines. Kaileigh might have sounded Iranian, and might have been able, by keeping her head down, to avoid being spotted as a fake by the two bodyguards, but the two girls looked nothing alike. He grabbed her by the hand for a second time and dragged her with him, saying, “We’re out of here!”
He took two steps and fell flat on his face. The Russian Aladdin had tackled him. Crawling up Steel’s legs and punching him in the stomach, the boy was saying in passable English, “Thief! Thief! Give it back!”
Kaileigh grabbed the kid and tried to drag him off, at which point she flew sideways, struck in a flying body ram by the Jasmine counterpart, the Iranian girl.
Lyle subdued the second bodyguard, but failed to account for the first, and was caught from behind. The fight between the three lasted only a matter of seconds; the bodyguards were well trained, and without the element of surprise in his favor, Lyle was quickly overwhelmed.
Likewise, DesConte and Reddie Long were no match for the street-smart Taddler and Johnny. It was barely a fight at all, despite DesConte throwing a few wrestling moves that managed to delay Taddler’s victory. But in only a few seconds, Taddler had knocked the wind out of DesConte, leaving him gasping for air and doubled up on Reddie, knocking his legs out and sending the choirboy sprawling.
Steel rolled, breaking the grip of the Russian. As the boy came for him a second time, Steel realized he already knew the way the boy favored his left foot as he struck with his right. Two months earlier, his incredible memory wouldn’t have helped him one bit with this, but now, thanks to ga-ga, he saw a person’s movements in a new way, each action connected to the next in what was instantly a predictable string. He spun to his left, counterclockwise, arriving to a point two feet from where Aladdin expected him, just as he might have to avoid a well-thrown ball in a match. The Russian kid not only missed him completely, but fell off balance in the process. Steel pushed him from behind, shoving him to the wall.
“Steel!” It was Kaileigh, who had also managed to get herself free.
They ran for the bank of elevators, two of which came open at the exact same moment.
In the elevator to their left stood Mr. Randolph. To the right, Benny the Bulb Morgan.
As if choreographed, both teachers stepped out of the elevators but held the automatic doors with a trailing arm.
The two teachers saw each other and barely reacted.
“Mr. Trapp!” Randolph reached out his free hand. “Hurry!”
“DO NOT TAKE ANOTHER STEP!” Benny shouted, catching both kids and managing to stop them. Steel and Kaileigh stood frozen. “He’s a fraud!”
Randolph responded. “Me? Pay no attention to him, Mr. Trapp! Mr. Morgan is the enemy.”
The others down the hall moved toward them, the bodyguards in the lead.
“Stop!” one called out.
DesConte and Reddie Long came to their feet and ran for the far elevator, disappearing through it.
Predetermine your exit strategies, Steel thought.
Benny said, “Steel, you have to ask yourself how Pennington got control of the hotel’s television system, and how he always seemed to be where you needed him to be at the right time. Get in this elevator right now. There are police in the lobby.”
“Don’t listen to him!” Randolph called out from his elevator. “Hurry!”
Steel took another step in Randolph’s direction, but Kaileigh, still holding his hand, held him back.
“This hallway has been seen by every television in this hotel,” Benny called out. “You must come now or risk arrest!”
“Don’t be a fool!” Randolph called. “He’s the enemy, Mr. Trapp. Beware the enemy.”
Lyle came to his feet, drawing the interest and attention of the bodyguards.
“Lyle’s ours,” Benny said. “Part of the Program,” he whispered, running shivers up Steel’s spine.
“Get in this elevator RIGHT NOW!” thundered Randolph.
“Just as your father was,” Benny said. “I graduated a year behind him.”
The door alarms to both elevators began sounding their obnoxious beeps.
Steel looked down the hall in both directions. He looked at Randolph, then Mr. Morgan. The distant exit was unblocked—but only for a moment. A winded Nell Campbell stepped into the hallway.
“Nell tried to warn you,” Benny said. “Now you must heed that warning.”
Randolph lunged for Steel, giving up holding the elevator. But Kaileigh saw the attack and spun around Steel, putting herself in the way.
“Go!” she shouted, pushing Steel at the same time toward Benny.
Steel stumbled forward and into Benny the Bulb’s elevator, calling out, “Kai!” Benny stepped back and the doors closed.
The last Steel saw of Kaileigh, Nell Campbell was running toward her and Randolph with a look of fire in her eyes.
“Ms. Augustine will be fine, I promise you,” Benny said calmly. “We’ll see her at the safe house.”
“The what?” Steel said. The elevator was heading up. It had taken Steel a moment to feel its direction. “Where are you taking me?” He panicked that he’d made the wrong choice.
“Quite enough excitement for one night, wouldn’t you say?”
The elevator doors opened right into an enormous living room that made the ambassador’s residence look second class.
Benny motioned for Steel, but the boy didn’t move, sensing a trap. Benny waved a second time. Still, Steel didn’t move. Benny stepped out, holding the door, saying, “Who but the federal government—your government—could arrange the Penthouse Terrace Suite at the Armstrad on a moment’s notice? Take that into account, Mr. Trapp, and then come and enjoy the surroundings. This may be the only night of your life you’ll ever experience something like this.” Steel remained unable to move. “And in case you’re wondering: there are four bedrooms, six televisions, and Ms. Augustine and Ms. Campbell will be up shortly to join you. Ms. Campbell knows the drill.”
“Who are you?” Steel choked out.
“Haven’t you figured it out?” Benny asked. “I’m your future.”
Kaileigh and Steel, swallowed by a couch, faced Benny the Bulb Morgan, while Nell Campbell occupied a chair at the dining table, working at a laptop. Penny sat in a chair to Mr. Morgan’s left.
“So,” Benny said, addressing Penny, “where should I start? Do you want to explain what you can?”
“I’m in the Program,” Penny told them.
“One of only a few Fourth Form students ever invited,” Benny said. “You two will be the first Third Form students.”
Penny said, “I caught the two of you snooping around campus by monitoring the school security cameras, one of my jobs for the Program.”
“And you were assigned to keep an eye on us,” Steel answered.
Penny nodded. “Yeah. Sorry about that, but I wasn’t allowed to tell.”
“And our friendship?” Kaileigh asked, clearly wounded.
Penny shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad we’re friends.”
“But it started out as an assignment,” Steel said.
Penny nodded.
“My doing, I’m afraid,” Benny said. “He was only following the assignment. When a secret has been well kept for over fifty years, you hate to have it broken on your watch.”
The Academy Page 23
