by Stuart Gibbs
Wickham was big enough, though. The grounds were so large that we had to observe the place from a hillock a mile away, using binoculars and scopes. The palace was sprawling and ornate, built from beige stone, and was several football fields wide. It was designed symmetrically, with grand wings that extended out on both sides and a four-story building in the center. The front doors were flanked by columns the size of redwood trees. The roof was adorned with clocks, statues, and thirty-eight separate chimneys.
“How much money can you make in the illegal coding business?” Mike asked, amazed.
“A lot more than you can make in espionage, obviously,” Alexander muttered. “I’m working for the good guys and I can barely afford to pay my electric bill.”
“And yet you have five designer tuxedos,” Catherine said.
“Those are a necessary expense!” Alexander protested. “A good spy has to infiltrate plenty of high-end social events. You don’t expect me to go to a fancy cocktail party in jeans and a T-shirt, do you?”
“No,” Catherine replied. “Although during my entire career I’ve almost never had to infiltrate a fancy cocktail party.”
“We met at a fancy cocktail party!” Alexander exclaimed. “One that you had infiltrated to meet me in the first place. So that you could con me into giving up American secrets.”
“Secrets that America should have been sharing with England in the first place,” Catherine countered.
“Our entire relationship is built on a foundation of lies!” Alexander cried, so loud that a covey of quail spooked and took to the air.
“Guys, this is not the best time,” Erica said, sounding embarrassed by her parents’ behavior. “We’re supposed to be doing surveillance here.”
“You’re right, darling,” Catherine agreed, looking embarrassed herself. “What have you got?”
Erica returned her attention to Wickham Palace, staring through the collapsible scope she always carried in her utility belt. “Orion has a serious security system here. There are plenty of entry points to the palace itself: at least two hundred windows, by my count. But they all appear to be protected by laser grids, and I’ve counted five hundred and sixty security cameras so far. So we’re not breaking in there.”
“We won’t have to,” Mike said confidently. “He has dogs.”
The dogs were out at that very moment. There were three of them, gorgeous golden retrievers that were gamboling about the grounds. They appeared to be of average size, but it was hard to tell. From our distance, they were so dwarfed by the giant lawns that they looked like fleas on a carpet.
The property around Wickham Palace was as staggering as the house itself. According to Catherine, it was larger than Central Park in New York City, more than fifteen square miles of rolling hills, woods, and lakes. Much of it had been professionally sculpted by landscape designers for maximum beauty. Waterfalls had been erected; creeks had been gouged; forests had been planted. Orion had installed ponds the way most people put in swimming pools.
Everything was extremely well tended and beautiful. The only thing that stuck out as odd was a large warehouse to the side of the palace. The walls were aluminum siding, and though it had been painted the same color as the palace to make it blend in with its surroundings, that didn’t work so well. It still looked extremely out of place, like a mustache on a frog.
“What do you think is in there?” I wondered aloud.
Murray said, “With a guy this rich, it could be anything. Expensive cars. Wine. Art. I always figured, when I cashed in big, I’d get myself some elephants. But that was back when I thought SPYDER was actually going to pay me off rather than kill me.”
“Elephants?” Zoe asked.
“Yeah,” Murray said. “They’re really big mammals. Have tusks and very strange noses. You can see them in zoos.”
“I know what they are,” Zoe said. “I’m just surprised that’s what you were going to spend your money on. I figured you more for the type who’d get a yacht.”
“Oh, I was planning on getting a couple of those, too,” Murray said. “And my own spaceship.”
Mike was contemplating the shed too. “If Orion had wine or art, you’d think he’d have plenty of room to store that inside. And it looks like there’s already a garage for cars. So what’s the point of a giant storage shed?”
I couldn’t come up with an answer to that. And neither could anyone else. Besides, there were more pressing things to deal with. Like the wall.
A big, imposing wall surrounded the entire property, and it was dotted with yet more security cameras and crowded with electrical wire and lasers. “Anyone know how we’re supposed to get over that?” I asked.
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Erica said, her eye still to the scope. “It’s too big to fully secure. There must be twenty miles of it. Somewhere, there’ll be a chink we can take advantage of.”
I nodded miserably. Even that little bit of good news didn’t make a dent in my mood, which was dismal and anxious.
I wasn’t upset merely because enemy agents had tried to kill me that day. Or because I was wanted by the British authorities for the malicious destruction of antiquities. Or because I had just spent five hours crammed in the back of a stolen delivery van that reeked of stale beer. Or because the weather in the countryside was lousy; it was gray and grim and we were all getting rained on yet again. Or because I was still wearing the wrong clothes for England. On a normal day, any one of those would have been more than enough to upset me. But there was something else going on.
I felt like a failure.
By my accounting, I hadn’t contributed very much to our mission at all. Mike and Zoe had figured out the font on the key, leading us to the British Museum. Catherine had been our leader, and she and Erica had got us out of trouble several times over. Even Murray had contributed: He’d inspired the whole mission with his knowledge of Joshua’s key in the first place. Whereas I had done very little except take up space.
Yes, I had figured out the math to allow us to escape the gallery at the British Museum, but the plan itself had been Mike’s. Everyone had expected me to be the one to come up with a plan, but in the heat of the moment I had drawn a blank.
Similarly, when Erica had asked me to help her navigate through the streets of London, I had failed. I had sent her down one wrong road after another, and if it hadn’t been for her quick thinking, I would have led us right into a dead end and gotten us all nabbed by MI6.
I was in the same category as Alexander Hale: deadweight. Neither of us was helping at all. But at least Alexander looked good while he was failing.
To make matters worse, it appeared that Zoe had also noticed Mike was better than me. The two of them had been clicking ever since the mission had begun. They had spent the entire van ride chattering about fonts and typefaces, happily bonding over things like how much they preferred Baskerville over Monaco. Zoe had barely even looked at me.
I morosely turned from Wickham Palace and scanned the surrounding countryside. It probably would have been beautiful on a sunny day, with gorgeous green hills and quaint towns and adorable flocks of sheep, but it was close to sunset, the sky was full of ominous clouds, and it was raining. So the countryside was dark and dingy, and all the sheep were damp.
A beat-up pizza delivery car approached the massive front gates of the palace. The driver pulled up to a speaker box mounted on a stone pillar. He was much too far away for us to hear his conversation, but he was obviously receiving instructions about how to get the pizza to the house. The gates didn’t open for him. Instead, he had to get out in the rain and place the pizza box in a hatch built into the pillar. Then he simply closed the hatch and drove away.
“You think Orion even knows that pizza is there?” Murray asked. “Because I’m starving.”
“The pizza isn’t still in the pillar,” Zoe told him. “That’s certainly a pneumatic delivery system designed for fast food. That way strangers don’t get access to the property.”
&
nbsp; “Any chance we could go get a pizza, then?” Murray asked. “As much fun as it is to stand here in the cold rain, staring at a rich guy’s house, I’d rather be someplace warm and dry where there’s hot food.”
“Orion’s definitely home if he’s ordering pizza,” Erica said, as though Murray hadn’t even spoken. “And he must be by himself. Because that was only a single-serving pizza.”
“You think he’s really in that huge place all alone?” Zoe asked. “With no servants or anything?”
“My intel says Orion doesn’t even have so much as a cleaning woman,” Catherine said.
“Sounds awfully lonely,” Zoe observed.
“Yeah, I feel terrible for the guy,” Murray groused. “He’s got more money than he knows what to do with, he owns a freaking palace, and he’s dry and cozy. Unlike us. Honestly, exactly how much longer do we need to watch this place? It’s not like we’re going to suddenly spot a secret entrance. Can we please go and get some food?”
“I could go for a bite myself,” Mike said. “Plus, my plan won’t work until tomorrow morning anyhow.”
In the distance the dogs ran up to one of the forty-eight doors of the house. It opened just enough to allow the dogs inside, then closed again, too quickly for us to get even a glimpse of Orion.
Erica collapsed her scope in a brusque way that indicated she had seen everything she needed to. “All right. We can go.”
We all piled back into the beer delivery truck, which was parked on the side of a dirt road that was quickly degenerating into mud, then jounced along through the muck.
The towns in the Cotswolds seemed to have been christened by the same folks who had named all the pubs back in England. Every place sounded charming, but also a little bit quirky: Notgrove, Uckington, Oddington, Guilting Power, Bourton-on-the-Hill, Mourton-in-Marsh, Stow-on-the-Wold, and the unfortunately named Upper and Lower Slaughter. Catherine insisted both Slaughters were quite delightful, but I felt we should steer clear of them just to be safe.
So we went to Brockton-in-the-Mire instead (the Cotswoldians certainly liked their hyphens). Once again it probably would have been picturesque on a nice, sunny afternoon. But now, in the last light of day, it appeared dreary and decrepit. It was a small farming community perched on a low hill, and the newest building in the place appeared to be five hundred years old. The whole town was crumbling.
Like every other town in England, this one was centered around a pub. The pub was called the Whinging Sprat, and it had rooms for travelers as well. Given the foul weather and the fact that Brockton-in-the-Mire was probably not at the top of anyone’s list of holiday destinations anyhow, the entire place was available, save for a traveling sheep-dip salesman.
The rooms were small and damp and the plumbing was prehistoric, so we didn’t spend much time there. I took a quick shower—although the “quick” part wasn’t really my choice. I had been in it for only two minutes before the hot water ran out. After being doused in what felt like water that had recently melted from a glacier, I quickly toweled off and dressed.
As I started down the old stairs to the pub for dinner, Erica emerged from her room.
“Oh,” she said, like our emerging at the same time was a coincidence. However, I doubted that was the case. Erica left very little to chance, and the stairs were so creaky, she certainly would have heard me coming. Which meant she was only faking our coincidental meeting. “Hi.”
She had cleaned herself up as well, washing her hair and scrubbing some blood from the thugs in London out of her clothes. As usual, she looked and smelled amazing. Normally, Erica saying “Hi” would have made me feel warm all over, but I was so glum, even that failed to lift my spirits.
“Hi,” I replied, trying to sound upbeat and failing miserably.
Erica paused on the stairs. “What’s going on with you?” she asked.
I stopped beside her. The stairs were narrow, so we were awfully close together. “Nothing,” I said.
“Really?” she asked. “Because you kind of seem like you’re depressed because you’ve contributed diddly-squat to this mission.”
If I had felt like there was a cloud over my head before, I now felt as though that cloud had drenched me with rain. And possibly hit me with a lightning bolt as well. I thought about denying this but then realized it would be pointless. Erica would have seen right through it. “That’s true.”
“It also seems like you feel like a failure,” Erica went on. “Especially given that Mike has succeeded when you haven’t, and so Zoe is getting interested in him when she used to be interested in you.”
“This talk really isn’t helping improve my mood,” I said. “I kind of liked it better when you didn’t understand human emotions very well.”
“I still don’t understand them,” Erica said matter-of-factly. “There’s no point to being depressed. It doesn’t help anything.”
“I know. But I can’t help it. I’ve been useless. I couldn’t figure a way out of the gallery at the museum. I haven’t beaten anyone up. I couldn’t even give you directions properly on the bus. I didn’t lead you to the archway knowing you’d be able to jam the bus into it. That was a mistake.”
“Oh. I know that.”
I blinked at Erica, surprised. “You do? But afterward you said I was very clever to come up with that escape.”
“Well, if I’d said, ‘Way to bollix up the directions,’ it would have made you look like a moron in front of everyone else.”
I sagged against the wall. “I guess so.”
I heard water churning through the pipes in the wall, followed by a startled yelp. “Oh dear Lord!” Alexander cried.
I figured he had just discovered there was no hot water. Given how clearly I could hear him, I realized the walls of the inn were extremely thin, which would make it very easy for someone else to overhear my conversation with Erica.
Erica seemed to realize the same thing. She crooked a finger and led me down the stairs.
Zoe, Mike, and Murray were already in the pub. True, its primary purpose was to serve beer, but England seemed to care far less about age restrictions than America did. Plus, it was the only place in town to get food. Murray had already tucked into a chicken pot pie; his face and the front of his shirt were covered in gravy and chicken bits.
Erica led me past the pub door before any of the others noticed us, and we headed out the back door into the rear yard. It was still pouring rain, but there was a small roof that protected a few square feet of patio, and the sound of the water on the roof was more than enough to drown out our conversation to anyone more than two feet away.
There were three sheep in the yard, grazing on a small patch of grass, lacking the sense to get out of the rain. They were so waterlogged, they looked like soggy cotton balls.
Erica said, “If you’re upset about failing to contribute to the mission, then stop moping around and start contributing.”
“Oh,” I said. “I see what the problem is now. I’ve been trying not to contribute all this time. In fact, I’ve actively been trying to fail. But now I’ll just try to do the opposite and everything will work out perfectly fine.”
Erica gave me a hard look. “That was sarcasm, right?”
“Yes. If I could contribute, I would have done it already. I have been trying. That’s the problem.”
“Maybe. All I’m saying is, don’t dwell on it. If you think you’re a failure, you’ll become a failure. You’ll lose your confidence and then lose your edge. But if you want to contribute, then you need to buck up and get your head in the game. It’s not enough for me to think you can help. You have to think you can help.”
I turned from staring at the sodden sheep, surprised. “You think I can help?”
“Of course I do. You’ve helped on missions before. We never would have figured out what the bad guys were plotting before without you.” Erica didn’t say this in a particularly emotional way, like most people would have when trying to raise my spirits. Instead, she stat
ed it as a simple fact, which might have meant more to me. It seemed that Erica wasn’t saying she believed in me. She was saying that she didn’t need to believe in me at all. And that did make me feel better, despite the rain and the musk of wet sheep.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll try.”
Erica nodded appreciatively, then started to go inside. Then she stopped herself and looked back at me. “There’s something I need to tell you. When you first came to the academy, I thought you were the worst spy-in-training I had ever met.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“The point is, I was wrong. Not only have you proven yourself, but you’ve also taught me something.”
“Really?” I asked, unable to hide my surprise. “What?”
“That other people have value. When we first met, I thought I was better solo than with a team. I thought other people could only hinder me. But that’s not true…with the right team. And we have the right team here now. If I thought anyone on this mission wasn’t able to contribute, I wouldn’t have allowed them to come along.”
“Even your father?”
Erica considered that for a few moments before answering. “Yes. My father might be a fraud and a charlatan, but even he has talents.”
“Like what?”
“I’m not sure yet. But my mother says he’s not as bad as I think, so I trust her judgment. The man has survived as a spy for a long time. He can’t be a total idiot.”
This was the nicest thing I had ever heard Erica say about her father. And she had also admitted that I had taught her something. I wondered if Erica was finally feeling close enough around me to drop her guard—or if there was an ulterior motive to her behavior. I hoped it was the former, but my previous experience with Erica made me think it was the latter.
Her brief bit of emotional openness appeared to have made Erica uncomfortable. “I’m going back in,” she said abruptly. “You should come get some food too. And some rest. We’ve got a big day tomorrow. We don’t want to screw anything up.”
With that she headed back into the pub, leaving me alone in the rain hoping I could live up to her expectations.
