‘Look at the ring.’ Max ignored his joke as Linden leant in and saw a small ruby ring on the agent’s hand.
‘Eleanor has a ring like that. So does my mum. My grandma gave identical ones to both of them before she died.’
‘Maybe it’s your mum,’ he quipped, knowing from all he’d heard about Max’s mum there was more chance of a herd of elephants performing a ballet.
‘Sure, brainboy. If it is Eleanor, why hasn’t she ever told us?’
‘Maybe because it’s someone else.’ Linden was finding it hard to picture Eleanor as a spy.
‘Maybe.’ But Max wasn’t convinced. It was a pretty unusual ring.
‘Coming?’ Steinberger stood a little way ahead and stopped to let them catch up.
Their shoes sank into richly textured Turkish carpets — except Steinberger’s which hadn’t dried out yet so were still squishing — and took them past glass cabinets crammed with trophies, awards, medals, relics, letters of gratitude and keys to various cities around the world.
Max came across a prominently positioned cabinet that held a blue silken cloth. Cradled in the cloth was an ornate, well-thumbed and important-looking book.
‘What’s in this one?’ she asked.
‘Aah.’ Steinberger placed his hands in front of his face like he was about to pray. ‘That is the original Spyforce manual. Written by Harrison’s father and grandfather themselves. It contains the very essence of the Force itself.’
Steinberger lost himself somewhere Max and Linden couldn’t see.
‘But we must get on. So much time and so little … No wait, I’ve done that. Let’s just go.’
A few steps later, they came to a large wooden door with intricate images of eagles and echidnas carved into it. The eagles made sense, but echidnas? Max was starting to think that sometimes it was better not to ask too many questions.
Steinberger pushed a clump of dampened hair across his forehead and patted down his soggy blue suit in a futile attempt at dewrinkling it. Neither worked to improve his appearance which had been thoroughly restyled by the Japanese pond.
He stared at his watch. The second hand ticked its way towards twelve.
Slowly.
Max and Linden wondered what they were waiting for.
‘Usually when people want to enter these things, they just knock,’ Max offered.
‘Yes, of course.’ Steinberger nodded, his eyes fixed firmly on the dawdling second hand. ‘We’re almost there.’
‘Aah,’ he aahed as the hand pointed to the twelve. ‘It’s time.’
He knocked on the door. First two short knocks, then three longer ones, followed by two more quick ones.
‘Harrison will see you now. May the Force be with you.’
At that he erupted into a throaty, deep from-the-belly kind of laugh that jounced his tall, lanky body like he was being dangled at the end of a piece of elastic. A few seconds later, he calmed down and realised Max and Linden weren’t amused.
‘It’s a bit of a joke here at Spyforce,’ he tried to explain but saw that his young companions were unmoved. ‘Need to attend to my next task. Good luck,’ he offered seriously and squelched off to his terracotta ride.
‘I guess we better go in,’ said Max as she reached for the golden doorknob.
The door opened easily and quietly onto a darkened room with a high ceiling and long stained-glass windows. They could just barely make out the sunken leather lounges crowded with cushions, the plush, red velvet curtains and the fireplace with its twisted marble sides like bleached candy canes. Covering every measure of wall space were more portraits — their faces still obscured — certificates, awards, accolades, diplomas, the odd tennis racket and fishing rod, and shelves of books that looked like they were clinging to each other to stop from tumbling to the floor. Peppered throughout it all like out-of-place garden gnomes were all sizes and shapes of terracotta pots.
Max and Linden squinted through the dim light and spied a heavy oak desk in the centre of the room. They stepped over a collection of smaller-sized pots and came across a sign on the desk that said, ‘The boss’.
‘Looks like we’ve got the right place, but where’s Harrison?’ Linden squinted even harder.
He picked up a copy of Drusilla Knucklehead’s crime thriller Dr Mullet and the Case of the Missing Toilet. ‘I’ve read this one. Not one of her best. Woosed out on the ending.’
Max wasn’t thinking about toilets, she was wondering where Harrison might be.
‘Maybe he was called away at the last minute on some really important business.’
Linden’s head filled with other ideas. ‘Maybe he’s foiling the plans of top criminals even as we speak!’
‘Maybe he’s —’ Max’s theory was interrupted by a dull thud and a muffled grunt that came from under the desk. She put a finger against her lips in a shhh-like gesture and then, pressing her hands into the green leather top, she leant over the desk as far as she could.
There was a pause as her puzzled mind tried to catch the words in her head to describe what she was looking at.
‘Or maybe he’s under the desk with a flowerpot stuck on his head.’
A stifled snort wriggled out of Linden’s mouth.
‘Right. I can see it now. The head of Spyforce under the desk with his head —’
His sentence was cut short by the appearance of a flowerpot rising from underneath the desk. Attached to the flowerpot were the shoulders and body of a man.
‘Effuff eee or eye aynge affearance uh ah ab im a mit of fubble,’ said the flowerpot.
Max and Linden’s faces screwed into puzzled stares. Was this some sort of code they were supposed to know? Were they also supposed to take a pot and put it on their heads as a sort of cone of silence to keep their meetings top secret? The arms beneath the pot pointed at the place where a head should be.
‘Oou oo eow ee?’
Linden decoded the miffled plant speak.
‘I think he’s asking for our help.’
The pot nodded enthusiastically.
Max and Linden made their way around to the other side of the desk and grabbing hold of either side, tugged at the terracotta headpiece.
‘One … two … three …’ and pulled hard.
The force of the tug pulled the pot away and flung Max and Linden across the room into a clumsily stacked rack of golf clubs.
‘Aahh.’ The man rubbed his head and felt to see if his ears were still attached. ‘Not a bad job at all. I was conducting an investigation that went a bit wrong. Well done. I’m Harrison, by the way. Don’t feel you have to stand so far away. Come closer if you like. Never was one for normalities … I mean, formalities.’
Max and Linden untangled themselves from the clubs and sat down in two huge leather armchairs in front of Harrison’s desk.
As Harrison said nothing.
And still nothing.
Linden was curious. ‘Are we waiting for something?’
‘Should be here any minute.’
More waiting. Then a knock at the door.
‘That’ll be them now.’ Harrison stood up and clapped his hands together in a grand slap. ‘Now that we’re all here, we can sing … I mean, begin.’
Max and Linden turned in their chairs as someone came through the door behind them. As their eyes ran over the guests, two things happened. Max looked like someone who had just sucked on a lemon and Linden’s crooked smile became even more crooked. He may have even blushed a little.
‘Ella!’
‘Linden! They didn’t tell me you were going to be here.’
‘Me either.’ He blushed even more. ‘I mean, they didn’t tell me about you being here. We got here by invisible jet.’
‘Invisible jet? I got here by a Sleek Machine. It’s a cross between a motorbike and a glider and moves at an oscillation level that makes it and objects that touch it undetectable to the human eye, unless you wear these special goggles.’ She pulled a pair of thick-lensed goggles from a jacket pocket
. ‘So you zoom above the cars and buses, and through red lights and no one can stop you.’
Steinberger stepped behind a transfixed Linden, whose lopsided smile got shoved over by a look of amazement. ‘Awesome.’
Max watched it all and was trying to come to terms with the fact that her life had taken a disastrous turn for the worst.
‘Have you had the tour?’ Linden couldn’t talk fast enough.
‘Yeah. How about the Vibratron 5000?’
‘Felt like a fizz frenzy all over me.’
‘That’s what I thought!’
‘Feels like one giant puke fest,’ Max grumbled, unsure how long it’d be before she’d need a life-boat to save her from all the vomit-gush swirling around her.
‘Did you have any Slimy Toadstool?’
‘Two helpings,’ Ella admitted.
‘How’d you go on the Wall of Goodness?’
‘Passed through without a hitch. It was like falling through a feather cloud.’
‘Of course it was,’ Max sneered quietly. ‘Bet she’d slide straight through a Tunnel of Terror without a scratch too. And a Halo of Hellfire or a Fountain of Fear.’
‘Oh hello, Max. You’re here too. How great!’
Finally Miss Perfect has decided I’m not invisible after all, Max thought. ‘Hi, Ella.’ She didn’t put too much effort into trying to muster any enthusiasm.
Steinberger had cleared a pile of terracotta pots from another chair for Ella as Harrison got the meeting under way.
‘I thought it was time to bring my three young flies … I mean, spies … together in London to officially say thank you for thwarting Mr Blue’s evil plans to steal the Time and Space Machine.*
Linden and Ella smiled at each other as Max was thinking of ways to erase the last few minutes of her life and replace them with a different version of events altogether.
One that didn’t involve Ella.
‘How is the machine going? Ben and Francis finished it yet?’ Harrison asked hopefully.
Max hesitated. ‘There’s been a small hitch. They’re really busy at the moment and it’s going to take a little longer than they thought.’
‘Never mind. We’ll get in contact with him and see what help he needs from us. It will revolutionise the world once it’s finished. As long as it stays out of Blue’s hands the world will have everything to worry about … that is, nothing to worry about. We’d also like to offer you something. Steinberger?’
The tall, damp man stepped from behind the chairs and handed them three white scrolls tied with a red ribbon flecked with gold.
‘Max, would you like to read yours out cloud … I mean, loud?’ Harrison invited her.
She unrolled the parchment and read the message. There was a soft click before some official brass band-type music played quietly in the background.
Dear Max Remy,
For your bravery and services to this country and the world, I, Reginald Bartholomew Harrison, the Chief of Spyforce International Spy Agency, hereby invite you to be inducted into the Force and to carry out the noble and time-honoured task of fighting crime and other dastardly acts for the protection of humanity and the betterment of the world.
Signed
And following this was a scribbled smudge that looked like a misguided worm had slid through a puddle of ink and left its scrawled mark.
Steinberger reached across and after another click sound, which Max saw was the stop button on a tape machine, the music stopped.
‘What do you think?’ Harrison’s eyes lit up like a miniature amusement park and, Max thought, the room seemed to go even dimmer. ‘The bravery and skill you exhibited in outsmarting Blue are some of the finest examples of, well, bravery and skill we’ve seen at the Force and we think you’ll make excellent additions to an already highly intelligent network of agents.’
Max turned to look at Linden, but he was smiling at Ella who was looking back at him and blushing like some kind of sunburnt sea slug.
Harrison continued.
‘There’ll be times when you’ll be incognito at some of the world’s richest playgrounds or standing side by side with some of the most sinister human beings to ever get dressed in the mornings. Or times when you’ll be facing situations so terrifying, it’ll take all your energy just to keep sneezing … make that, breathing. Danger will become your closest associate, lurking behind you like a black panther. Quiet and dangerous and ready to strike at any second.’
As Harrison finished, the lights brightened and Max spied Steinberger at the dimmer switch.
She was stupefied. She was sitting in the headquarters of the world’s top spy agency, being asked to become a Superspy.
She tried to find a suitable answer to such an important invitation and cursed in her head when all she could come up with was, ‘Okay.’
Ella and Linden were also in.
‘Yeah.’
‘Sounds great.’
‘Excrement … oops, sorry. I mean, excellent. Of course as Spyforce agents, your identity will remain a secret outside these walls and you will tell no one, not even your closest friends and relatives, of your position. Secrecy is the linchpin of our survival. And once you’ve been inducted as agents of Spyforce, you’re members for life. We just need to get you fitted out, give you your spy pack and a few others strings … make that things, and you’ll be on your way.’
Just then a series of ringing sounds was heard.
‘That’ll be the phone.’ Steinberger began looking around the room. ‘What was it last time, sir?’ he asked Harrison.
‘Cricket bat, I think. It was the iron the time before that, which could have been nasty if it’d been left on.’
Max, Linden and Ella looked on as the two men checked boxes, lifted papers and opened cupboards searching for the phone, and every now and then picking up cups, bells or rulers before saying ‘hello’.
‘Here it is.’ Harrison picked up a golf ball. He pulled the ball in two halves that were joined by a piece of electrical wire and spoke into it.
‘Hello?’
There followed a series of uh-huh’s that became more solemn as the call went on.
Steinberger explained the phone situation. ‘As a security measure, the Central Response Investigative Safety Patrol or CRISP, which is responsible for the internal security of Spyforce, changes the phone system on a regular basis.’
‘I see,’ Harrison continued. ‘We only have one choice then.’
He clicked the two ends of the ball together and looked seriously at his three new agents.
‘Team, you’re about to go on your first mission.’
Mission! Max sat up ready to accept her orders.
‘As you know, when you courageously uncovered the criminal activities of Blue, he resigned from the Department of Science and New Technologies and went very quiet for a while. Now if there’s one thing we’ve learnt about Blue over the years, it’s that when he goes quiet, you can bet your right shoe he’s up to nothing … I mean, something.’
Harrison came back to the desk and sat importantly in his chair.
‘He seemed to have stopped his evil ways and adopted a new public face as the manufacturer of a range of food for kids. He’s marketed his foods with much success. Like the Alien Snot Jelly range, which is the number one jelly in the country. Everything looks innocent enough, but Spyforce has uncovered information which suggests Blue has invented a concoction, that when eaten, controls minds. Now that his foods are so popular he is going to include the ingredient in his recipes and begin his domination of the minds of children all over the world. We must slop him! I mean, stop him. And who better than the three of you to do it. You’ve seen first-hand how Blue’s mind works and as kids you will be the perfect undercover agents for this mission. Of course, you’ll need to be in disguise. As Blue has seen your faces, he will recognise you instantly if he sees you as you are.’
‘We’ll have aliases.’ Linden pictured himself smartly dressed and walking with the swagger and sty
le of James Bond. Max pictured herself dangling from helicopters, climbing mountains and parachuting from planes.
‘What do we need to do?’ asked Ella.
‘You will infiltrate Blue’s factory, Blue’s Foods, and go undercover as …’ Harrison paused to add dramatic effect, ‘BRATTs.’
Max’s shoulders fell.
‘Excuse me?’
‘BRATTs. Bona-fide Registered Authorised Taste Testers.’
‘Is that a real job?’ Linden became excited.
‘It certainly is,’ Steinberger leapt in to clarify. ‘There are kids who travel all around the world simply to taste new foods. They are accompanied by a parent or guardian who ensures they eat well and study for school as well as complete specified BRATT training courses.’
‘Why didn’t anyone ever tell me about this before?’ Linden puzzled. ‘That’s it, I’m switching careers. I know I’ve only been a spy for about five minutes, but I’m not too big a man to say I made the wrong choice.’
Ella giggled as Linden tried for as long as he could to hold the serious pose he’d taken. It didn’t last long.
Max stared at both of them wondering what it would take to have their mission treated a little seriously.
Harrison completed his instructions. ‘An agent has been placed in the factory as a nude technologist … um, excuse me, I mean a fully clothed, food technologist and will be your point of contact once inside. Sleek will take you as close as he can to the factory where another agent will meet you and declothe the rest of the mission details … that’s, um, disclose the details. For now Steinberger will take you to the lab where Quimby will equip you with all the deer you need … um, that’s gear you need, and provide you with your disguises and new aliases.’
He rose and stood at attention. Max, Linden and Ella followed his lead and only just held back an impulse to salute.
‘I believe you’re the best team for this job and have no doubt that Mission Blue’s Foods will be a swift and successful operation. There’s just one thing left to say: all systems are go.’ Harrison surrendered a cheeky smirk. ‘Always sounded so good when the Thunderbirds said it, so I’ve borrowed it for Spyforce. Good luck, team!’
With Harrison’s words resonating in their ears like the bells of Big Ben, Max, Linden and Ella followed Steinberger out of his office to be equipped for their first mission as Spyforce agents.
Spyforce Revealed Page 10
