[AF03] - The Eternity Code

by Colfer, Eoin

*

  In the laboratory, Spiro and Co. were hypnotized by the monitors. Foaly had allowed the screens to show what was actually happening on the upper levels.

  ‘SWAT,’ said Blunt. ‘Helicopters. Heavy armament. How did this happen?’

  Spiro smacked his own forehead repeatedly.

  ‘A set-up. This entire thing. A set-up. I suppose Mo Digence was working for you too?’

  ‘Yes. Pex and Chips too, even if they didn’t know it. You would never have come here if I’d suggested it.’

  ‘But how? How did you do this? It’s not possible.’

  Artemis glanced at the monitors. ‘Obviously it is. I knew you would be waiting for me in the Spiro Needle vault. After that, all I had to do was use your own hatred of Phonetix to lure you here, out of your environment.’

  ‘If I go down, so do you.’

  ‘Incorrect. I was never here. The tapes will prove it.’

  ‘But you are here!’ roared Spiro, his nerves shot. His whole body vibrated and spittle sprayed from his lips in a wide arc. ‘Your dead body will prove it. Give me the gun, Arno. I’m going to shoot him.’

  Blunt could not hide his disappointment, but he did as he was told. Spiro pointed the weapon with shaky hands. Pex and Chips stepped rapidly to one side. The boss was not known for his marksmanship.

  ‘You have taken everything from me,’ he shouted. ‘Everything.’

  Artemis was strangely calm. ‘You don’t understand, Jon. It’s like I told you. I am not here.’ He paused for breath. ‘And one more thing. About my name —Artemis -you were right. In London, it is generally a female name, after the Greek goddess of archery. But every now and then a male comes along with such a talent for hunting that he earns the right to use the name. I am that male. Artemis the hunter. I hunted you.’

  And just like that, he disappeared.

  Holly had been hovering above Spiro and Co. all the way from the Spiro Needle to the Phonetix building. She had got permission to enter the facility minutes earlier when Juliet had called to enquire about the public tours.

  Juliet had put on her best cutesy voice for the security guide.

  ‘Hey, mister, is it OK if I bring my invisible friend?’

  ‘Sure it is, honey,’ replied the guide. ‘Bring your security blanket too, if it makes you happy.’

  They were in.

  Holly hovered at ceiling level, following Artemis’s progress below. The Mud Boy’s plan was fraught with risk. If Spiro decided to shoot him in the Needle, then it was all over.

  But no, just as Artemis predicted, Spiro had opted to gloat for as long as possible, basking in the glow of his own demented genius. But, of course, it wasn’t his own genius. It was Artemis’s. The boy had orchestrated this whole operation from beginning to end. It had even been his idea to mesmerize Pex and Chips. It was crucial that they plant the idea to invade Phonetix.

  Holly was ready when the lift door opened. She had her weapon charged and targets selected. But she couldn’t go. Wait for the signal.

  Artemis dragged it out. Melodramatic to the end. And then, just when Holly was about to disregard her orders and start blasting, he spoke.

  ‘I am that male. Artemis the hunter. I hunted you.’

  Artemis the hunter. The signal.

  Holly squeezed the manual throttle on her wing rig and descended, stopping short a metre from the ground. She clipped Artemis on to a retractable cord on her Moonbelt, then dropped a sheet of cam foil in front of him. To everybody in the room, it would seem as though the boy had disappeared.

  ‘Up we go,’ she said, though Artemis could not hear her, and opened the throttle wide. In under a second they were nestled safely among the cables and ducts that ran along the ceiling.

  Below them, Jon Spiro lost his mind.

  Spiro blinked. The boy had gone! Just gone! It couldn’t be. He was Jon Spiro! Nobody outsmarted Jon Spiro!

  He turned to Pex and Chips, gesticulating wildly with the gun.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Huh?’ said the bodyguards, in perfect unison. Unrehearsed.

  ‘Where is Artemis Fowl? What did you do with him?’

  ‘Nothing, Mister Spiro. We were just standing here playing the shoulder game.’

  ‘Fowl said you were working for him. So hand him over.’

  Pex’s brain was churning. This was an operation akin to a food blender mixing concrete.

  ‘Careful, Mister Spiro, guns are dangerous. Especially the end with the hole.’

  ‘This isn’t over, Artemis Fowl,’ Spiro roared at the ceiling. ‘I will find you. I will never give up. You’ve got Jon Spiro’s word on it. My word!’

  He began to fire random shots, blowing holes in monitors, vents and conduits. One even came within a metre of Artemis.

  Pex and Chips were not quite sure what was going on, but decided that it might be a good idea to join in the fun. They pulled out their weapons and began shooting up the lab.

  Blunt did not get involved. He considered his employment contract terminated. There was no way out of this for Spiro — it was every man for himself. He crossed to the wall’s metal panelling and began to dismantle it with a power screwdriver. A section dropped from its casing, behind it a five-centimetre cable space, then solid concrete. They were trapped. Behind him, the lift door dinged.

  Juliet was crouched in the lift shaft.

  ‘We’re clear,’ said Holly in her earpiece. ‘But Spiro is shooting up the lab.’

  Juliet frowned. Her principal was in danger. ‘Knock them out with the Neutrino.’

  ‘I can’t. If Spiro is unconscious when the police arrive, he could claim a frame-up.’

  ‘OK. I’m going in.’

  ‘Negative. Wait for SWAT.’

  ‘No. You take out the weapons. I’ll handle the rest.’

  Mulch had given Juliet a bottle of dwarf rock polish. She poured a little puddle on the lift roof and it dissolved like fat on a pan. Juliet hopped into the carriage, crouching low in case Blunt decided to put a few rounds into the lift.

  ‘On three.’

  ‘Juliet.’

  ‘I’m going on three.’

  ‘OK.’

  Juliet reached up to the door-open button. ‘One.’ Holly drew her Neutrino, locking all four targets into her visor’s targeting system.

  ‘Two.’ She unshielded for accuracy, the vibration would throw her aim right off. For a few seconds she would have to hide behind the foil with Artemis.

  ‘Three.’

  Juliet pressed the button.

  Holly squeezed off four shots.

  Artemis had less than a minute to make his move. Less than a minute while Holly targeted and disarmed Spiro and Co. The circumstances were hardly ideal — screaming, gunfire and general mayhem. But then again, what better time to implement the final step in this stage of the plan? A very vital step.

  The second Holly unshielded to fire, Artemis scrolled out a perspex keyboard from the C Cube’s base and began to type. In seconds, he had hacked into Spiro’s bank accounts — all thirty-seven of them, in institutions from the Isle of Man to the Cavmans. The various account numbers locked into place. He had access to each secret fund.

  The Cube quickly ran a tot on the total funds: 2.8 billion US dollars, not counting the contents of various safety deposit boxes, which could not be touched over the Net. 2.8 billion dollars. Plenty to restore the Fowl’s status as one of the top five richest Irish families.

  Just as he was about to complete the transaction Artemis remembered his father’s words. His father, returned to him by the fairy folk . . .

  . . . And what about you, Arty? Will you make the journey with me? When the moment comes will you take your chance to be a hero? . . .’

  Did he really need billions of dollars?

  Of course I need it. aurum potestas est. Gold is power.

  Really? Will you take your chance to be a hero? To make a difference?

  Because he could not groan aloud, Artemis rolled his eyes and gritte
d his teeth. Well, if he was going to be a hero, he would be a well paid one. He quickly deducted a ten per cent finder’s fee from the 2.8 billion, then sent the rest to Amnesty International. He made the transaction irreversible, in case he weakened later on.

  Artemis wasn’t finished yet. There was one more good deed to be attended to. The success of this venture depended on Foaly being too busy watching the show to notice Artemis hacking into his system.

  He brought up the LEP site and set the code breaker working on a password. It took ten valuable seconds per character, but he was soon flying around LEP micro-sites. Artemis found what he needed on Perp Profiles. Mulch Diggums’s complete arrest record. From there, it was a simple matter to follow the electron trail back to the original search warrant for Mulch’s dwelling. Artemis changed the date on the warrant to read the day after Mulch’s arrest. This meant that all subsequent arrests and convictions were null and void. A good lawyer would have him out of prison in a heartbeat.

  ‘I have not finished with you yet, Mulch Diggums,’ he whispered, logging out and clipping the Cube on Holly’s belt.

  Juliet came through the door so fast her limbs were a blur. The jade ring trailed behind her like a fishing lure on the end of a line.

  Butler would never take chances like this, she knew. He would have some perfectly practical, safe plan — which was why he had his blue diamond tattoo and she didn’t. Well, maybe she didn’t want a tattoo. Maybe she wanted a life of her own.

  She quickly assessed the situation. Holly’s aim was true. The two gorillas were rubbing their scorched hands and Spiro was stamping his feet like a spoiled child. Only Blunt was on the floor, going for his gun.

  Even though the bodyguard was on his hands and knees, he was still almost at her eye level.

  ‘Aren’t you going to give me a chance to get up?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ said Juliet, whipping the jade ring around like the stone that felled Goliath. It impacted on the bridge of Blunt’s nose, cracking it and effectively blinding him for a couple of minutes. Plenty of time for the Chicago Police to get down the shaft.

  Blunt was now out of the game. Juliet had expected to feel some satisfaction, but all she felt was sadness. There was no joy in violence.

  Pex and Chips felt they should do something. Perhaps disabling the girl would earn them a bonus from Mister Spiro? They circled Juliet, fists raised.

  Juliet wagged a finger at them. ‘Sorry, boys. You have to go to sleep.’

  The bodyguards ignored her, tightening the radius of their circle.

  ‘I said go to sleep.’

  Still no response.

  ‘You have to use exactly the words that I mesmerized them to respond to,’ said Holly in her ear.

  Juliet sighed. ‘If I must. OK, gentlemen; Barney says go to sleep.’

  Pex and Chips were snoring before they hit the ground.

  That just left Spiro, and he was too busy gibbering to be any threat. He was still gibbering when the SWAT team put the cuffs on him.

  ‘I’ll talk to you back at base,’ said the SWAT captain sternly to Juliet. ‘You’re a danger to your comrades and yourself.’

  ‘Yessir,’ said Juliet contritely. ‘I don’t know what came over me, sir.’

  She glanced upwards. A slight heat haze seemed to be drifting towards the lift shaft. The principal was safe.

  *

  Holly holstered her weapon, buzzing up her shield.

  ‘Time to go,’ she said, the volume on her PA turned to minimum.

  Holly wrapped the cam foil tightly round Artemis, making certain no limbs were peeking out. It was imperative they leave while the lift was empty. Once forensics and the press got there, even a slight shimmer in the air might be caught on film.

  As they flew across the room, Spiro was being led from the lab. He had finally managed to calm down.

  ‘This is a set-up,’ he proclaimed in his best innocent voice. ‘My lawyers are gonna rip you guys apart.

  Artemis could not resist speaking as they floated past his ear.

  ‘Farewell, Jon,’ he whispered. ‘Never mess with a boy genius.’

  Spiro howled at the ceiling like a demented wolf.

  Mulch was waiting across the street from the Phonetix lab, revving the van like a Grand Prix driver. He sat behind the wheel on an orange crate, with a short plank taped to his foot. The other end of the plank was taped to the accelerator.

  Juliet studied the system nervously. ‘Shouldn’t you untie that foot in case you need to use the brakes?

  ‘Brakes?’ laughed Mulch. ‘Why would I use the breaks? I’m not doing my driving test here.’

  In the back of the van, Artemis and Holly simultaneously reached for their seat belts.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 11:THE INVISIBLE MAN

  FOWL MANOR

  THEY reached Ireland without major incident, though Mulch did attempt to escape Holly’s custody fifteen times — including once on the Lear jet, where he was discovered in the bathroom with a parachute and a bottle of dwarf rock polish. Holly did not let him out of her sight after that.

  Butler was waiting for them at Fowl Manor’s front door.

  ‘Welcome back. Glad to see everyone’s alive. Now I need to go.’

  Artemis put a hand on his arm. ‘Old friend. You’re in no condition to go anywhere.’ Butler was determined. ‘One last mission, Artemis. I have no choice. Anyway, I’ve been doing Pilates. I feel much more limber.’

  ‘Blunt?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But he’s in prison,’ protested Juliet. Butler shook his head.

  ‘Not any more.’ Artemis could see that his bodyguard was not about to be turned from his path.

  ‘At least take Holly. She can be of some help.’

  Butler winked at the elf. ‘I was counting on it.’

  The Chicago police had put Arno Blunt in a van, with a couple of officers. Two would be sufficient, they reasoned, as the perp was handcuffed and manacled. They revised this opinion when the van was discovered six miles south of Chicago, with the officers manacled and no sign of the suspect. To quote Sergeant Iggy Lebowski’s report: ‘The guy ripped those handcuffs apart as though they were links in a paperchain. He came at us like a steam train. We never had a chance.’

  But Arno Blunt did not escape clean. His pride had taken a severe beating in the Spiro Needle. He knew that word of his humiliation would soon spread through the bodyguard network. As Pork Belly LaRue later put it on the Soldiers for Hire web site: ‘Arno done got hisself outsmarted by some snot-nosed kid.’ Blunt was painfully aware that he would have to suffer chortles every time he walked into a room full of tough guys — unless he avenged the insult paid to him by Artemis Fowl.

  The bodyguard knew that he had minutes before Spiro gave up his address to the Chicago PD, so he packed a few spare sets of teeth and took the shuttle to O’Hare International Airport.

  Blunt was delighted to find that the authorities had not yet frozen his Spiro corporate credit card, and used it to purchase a first class British Airways Concorde ticket to London Heathrow. From there he would enter Ireland on the Rosslare ferry. Just another one of five hundred tourists visiting the land of the leprechaun.

  It wasn’t a terribly complicated plan, and it would have worked if it hadn’t been for one thing: the passport official at Heathrow just happened to be Sid Commons, the ex-Green Beret who had served with Butler on bodyguard duty in Monte Carlo. The second Blunt opened his mouth alarm bells went off in Commons’ head. The gentleman before him fitted the description Butler had faxed over perfectly. Right down to the strange teeth. Blue oil and water, if you don’t mind. Commons pressed a button under his desk and, in seconds, a squad of security men relieved Blunt of his passport and took him into custody.

  The chief security official took out his mobile phone as soon as the detainee was under lock and key. He dialled an international number. It rang twice.

  ‘The Fowl residence.’

  ‘Butler? It�
��s Sid Commons, in Heathrow. A man came through here you might be interested in. Funny teeth, neck tattoos, New Zealand accent. Detective Inspector Justin Barre faxed out the description from Scotland Yard a few days ago; he said you might be able to ID him.’

  ‘Do you still have him?’ asked the manservant.

  ‘Yes. He’s in one of our holding cells. They’re running a check right now.’

  ‘How long will that take?’

  ‘A couple of hours, max. But if he’s the professional you say he is, a computer check won’t turn up anything. We need a confession to turn him over to Scotland Yard.’

  ‘I will meet you in the Arrivals hall under the departure board in thirty minutes,’ said Butler, severing the connection.

  Sid Commons stared at his mobile phone. How could Butler possibly get there in thirty minutes from Ireland? It wasn’t important. All Sid knew was that Butler had saved his life a dozen times in Monte Carlo all those years ago, and now the debt was about to be repaid.

  Thirty-two minutes later, Butler showed up in the Arrivals hall.

  Sid Commons studied him as they shook hands.

  ‘You seem different. Older.’

  ‘The battles are catching up with me,’ said Butler, a palm across his heaving chest. ‘Time to retire, I think.’

  ‘Is there any point asking how you got here?’

  Butler straightened his tie. ‘Not really. You’re better off not knowing.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Where’s our man?’

  Commons led the way towards the rear of the building, past hordes of tourists and card-bearing taxi drivers.

  ‘Through here. You’re not armed, are you? I know we’re friends, but I can’t allow firearms in here.’

  Butler spread his jacket wide. ‘Trust me. I know the rules.’

  They took a security lift up two floors, and followed a dimly lit corridor for what seemed like miles.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Sid eventually, pointing at a glass rectangle. ‘In there.’

  The glass was actually a two-way mirror. Butler could see Arno Blunt seated at a small table, drumming his fingers impatiently on the Formica surface.