by Stuart Gibbs
10 INFILTRATION
The Whinging Sprat
Brockton-in-the-Mire, the Cotswolds, England
April 1
0430 hours
One of the key indicators the Academy of Espionage used to determine who would be a decent field agent was to simply test our ability to wake up very early in the morning. As Sanchez’s Maxim on Preparedness put it: “Everything important tends to happen at the least convenient time possible. Usually in the middle of the night.”
We had determined at dinner that our mission needed to begin at 0500 hours on the dot, so I decided to set my alarm for 0430 to give myself time to get properly outfitted and prepared. Waking up at that time wasn’t easy, especially given how exhausting the events of the previous few days had been, but I pried myself out of bed nonetheless. My fellow spies rose in different styles, generally in line with their talents. Mike and Zoe both shuffled into the lobby at 0445, drowsy but dressed (save for a few missed buttons), while Catherine and Erica were already there, wide-awake, on their second pot of tea, already having dressed, groomed, reviewed the mission, scrounged up a few scones for us, and done some calisthenics, even though both had spent a good portion of the previous night on a second scouting expedition to Wickham Palace. Meanwhile, Murray and Alexander each required additional goosing to get out of bed.
Erica deftly picked the locks on both their rooms so we could wake them.
Alexander had slept through the four separate alarms he had set for himself, swatting each one off in his sleep. (Somehow he’d even managed to toss the hotel’s alarm clock in the toilet without waking up.) He was dreaming when we roused him, murmuring, “Don’t worry, Princess Daphne. This isn’t the first nuclear bomb I’ve defused.” When we roused him, he snapped awake, startled and disoriented, and promptly fell out of bed, tangled in his sheets. But at least he got up.
Murray, on the other hand, did everything he could to stay in bed. He cocooned himself in his blankets, buried his head under his pillows, and groaned, “Can’t you guys infiltrate this place without me? I’m only borderline competent anyhow. I’ll probably screw everything up.” Normally, that would have been a decent argument, but we knew we couldn’t let Murray out of our sight. Rather than debate the point, Erica simply went to the bathroom, filled a cup with frigid water, and upended it over Murray’s head.
Fifteen minutes later, we were all ready to go. Murray was still half asleep and grumpy, and so his clothes were all askew, like he had gotten dressed in the middle of a tornado. Alexander, however, was impeccably dressed in his bespoke suit, as usual.
We all piled into the van and clattered back through the countryside to Wickham Palace, where Catherine and Erica had found the best place to get over the wall. A centuries-old oak tree stood only a few yards from the property line, with enough low limbs that it wasn’t too hard to climb. None of the branches extended over the wall, but one got close enough that we could rig a pendulum swing to it, using some heavy rope Erica had scrounged from a toolshed at the inn.
The ability to swing over the wall also corresponded well with our general spy-worthiness. Erica and Catherine both performed the feat with the deft grace of Cirque du Soleil cast members. (I almost felt as though I should applaud for them afterward.) Mike and Zoe handled it well, if a bit clumsily. I didn’t embarrass myself, though I did slip on a wet patch of sod on the landing and tumbled to my knees. Murray missed landing on his feet entirely, belly flopping in the mud.
Alexander fell out of the oak tree. Twice. When he finally managed to grab the rope and swing over, he somehow got his ankle tangled in it and ended up oscillating helplessly while dangling upside down until Catherine—who seemed to have come prepared for this—threw a kitchen knife at the rope, severing it cleanly just below the branch when Alexander was on the proper side of the wall. Alexander came crashing down into a gorse bush and emerged spitting out leaves.
Thankfully, this didn’t trigger any of the alarms, as it happened well above the wire and laser sensors atop the wall.
“You’re sure he might come in handy?” Erica whispered to her mother.
“Everyone has their special talents, my dear,” Catherine whispered back.
“It’s been quite a long time since I used the old rope pendulum trick,” Alexander told us, trying to save face, while extracting a gorse berry that had somehow gotten lodged in his right nostril. “The last few times I’ve scaled walls, we’ve used grappling hooks, so I guess I’m a bit rusty where ropes are concerned. Why, one time, I was using a grapple to break into the Taj Mahal in Cambodia.… ”
“We need to be quiet, Dad,” Erica admonished him, then quickly added, “And the Taj Mahal is in India.”
“There’s a secret one in Cambodia,” Alexander said quickly, but then clammed up.
We set out across the grounds of Wickham Palace. Once we were past the wall, there didn’t appear to be much security. The property was simply too big to wire it all up, and the wildlife would have been constantly tripping the alarms. There was a lot of wildlife at Wickham, much of which was also stirring at that early hour. Herds of deer grazed in fields. Waterfowl gabbled in the lakes. A badger lumbered across our path and scared the pants off Murray.
Besides that event, we made it across the property relatively quickly and quietly, arriving at the palace before the sun rose. The size of the building was even more startling up close. Although I had been able to tell it was four stories high while surveilling it, I now discovered each of those stories was much taller than I’d realized, twice the size of those in a normal house, and the fancy gables atop the roof added even more height.
We moved stealthily, sticking to the shadows, until we arrived at the door we had seen the dogs enter through the previous night. The door, like everything else about Wickham, was oversize, looking like it was meant for a giant. The wood at the base was marred with thousands of scratch marks and the jambs reeked of dog urine, indicating the dogs often came and went this way.
We all set ourselves down on the patio, our backs to the stone wall, and waited.
There is quite a lot of waiting in the spy business. That morning, it was damp and cold, but we all knew we had to bear it and sit still, without making a sound. (Most of us did this because we didn’t want to mess up the mission. Murray did it because he knew Erica would punch his teeth out if he screwed anything up.)
The seconds crept by. We didn’t really have to wait all that long, but it felt like hours.
After a while the sky brightened to the east. Shortly afterward, we heard the dogs barking. It wasn’t the agitated barking of dogs who smelled intruders on the property. It was simply early-morning, I’m-up-and-I-want-to-go-outside-to-pee barking.
Because of the size of the house, it sounded like they were very far away, which was probably the truth. The barking went on for a few minutes and eventually began to come closer. As the dogs neared the door, I caught the faint sound of someone grumbling to them, sounding quite a bit like Murray had that morning. “Stupid dogs. Can’t sleep in like intelligent beings. Nooo. You have to get up the moment the sun rises. Every stinking day.”
This was the brilliance of Mike’s plan. He had realized that Orion, in trying to protect himself by not having any staff, had created a major weakness in his own protection: He would have to do everything in his household by himself, and thus there would certainly be times when he let his guard down. “Anyone who has a dog has to let it out first thing in the morning,” Mike had explained. “And very few people are totally alert first thing in the morning.”
That certainly seemed to be the case with Orion. He didn’t seem to have his guard up at all. Instead, he was going through the motions, as though this routine had played out every single day for years. He didn’t sound angry at his dogs, so much as teasing them, but there was still a sense of the annoyance that came with having been woken up too early. We heard him trudge through the room closest to us, then a thud and a yelp as he groggily bashed into a piece
of furniture.
We all took our positions outside the door.
On the other side, the dogs were still barking excitedly. If they had a sense that we were outside, I couldn’t tell.
“Calm down,” Orion said. “Give me a chance. I’m getting the door.”
I heard some beeps from inside, the sounds of someone dismantling the alarm system, and then the door opened.
As the dogs rushed out, Erica and Catherine shoved their way in. The dogs obviously weren’t bred for security. Instead, they were your standard golden retrievers. Their reaction upon seeing strangers on the property was surprise, followed by excitement. Two of them mobbed me, having already forgotten about needing to go to the bathroom, wagging their tails so vigorously that their rear ends shimmied. The third ran to Mike.
Zoe grabbed one of the dogs lightly by the collar so it couldn’t run off. Not that it had any intention of doing this. Instead, it turned its attention to her and licked her.
I reluctantly took out the dart gun Catherine had lent me and pressed it to the dog’s head.
Mike did the same thing to the dog with him.
Through the open door, Orion was sleepily trying to make sense of what was going on.
He was much younger than I had expected, only a few years out of college, if that, and unlike the geeky, awkward computer nerds that tended to be depicted in movies, he was a handsome, athletic guy. He was still in his pajamas, with a robe slung over them. The only thing remotely geeky about him was his footwear: He was wearing Chewbacca bedroom slippers.
“Hey!” he said drowsily. “What’s all this about… ?”
“We need you to decrypt something,” Catherine told him. “Something we believe you encrypted in the first place. And if you don’t do it, my associates will be forced to put your dogs down.”
Orion seemed to notice us for the first time. Suddenly, he was wide-awake. He had no idea that our guns didn’t fire bullets—or that, even if they had, we would have only been bluffing. “Whoa!” he cried. “There’s no need for that! I’ll do whatever you need! Just let Porthos and Aramis go!”
I was surprised how quickly he had caved, although this had also been part of Mike’s plan. “People will do anything to protect their dogs,” he had said. “More than they’ll do to protect themselves.”
Still, I hesitated in stowing my gun, unsure whether he was bluffing or not.
“I mean it,” he pleaded. “You’re not asking me to do anything evil here, right? Like hack into NORAD and fire nuclear missiles or anything?”
“No,” Catherine said.
“Then I don’t have any problem with it. Don’t hurt my dogs, okay?”
There was worry and concern in his eyes that I read as genuine. Catherine and Erica had the same reaction. They turned to Mike and me and nodded.
We let the dogs go. The one I’d been aiming at looked at me expectantly, as if hoping I was going to throw the gun so he could fetch it.
Erica held out Joshua’s flash drive. “Recognize this?”
“Oh yeah!” Now that his dogs were no longer under threat, Orion didn’t appear upset in the slightest that we had invaded his house. Instead, he seemed kind of happy, like he was excited to have guests. “I did that about ten months ago for Captain Hook!”
We all could figure out exactly who he meant by that—except Alexander, who reacted slowly. “Captain Hook?” he asked.
“Joshua,” Zoe explained. “Ten months ago, he had a hook instead of that mechanical prosthetic. And without an eye or a leg, he looked kind of like a pirate.”
“He did, didn’t he?” Orion asked, with surprising friendliness for someone whose home had just been infiltrated. “I kept expecting him to say ‘Arrrrrr, matey’ or ‘Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.’ Are you guys friends of his?”
“We work together, in a way,” Erica said. “How long will it take to decrypt that?”
“Oh, not too long,” Orion replied. “Do you folks want some breakfast while you wait? I’ve only got frozen waffles, but I’ve got a couple thousand of them, so there’s plenty to go around.”
“I could go for some waffles!” exclaimed Murray, who always thought with his stomach. He hurried into the house excitedly.
Erica caught him by the collar. “We’re not here for breakfast. We’re just here for the decryption.”
“Oh,” Orion and Murray said at once. Both sounded equally sad about it.
The dog at my side finally seemed to remember that he had to pee and ran off into the enormous yard, as did the other two dogs. So the rest of us filed into the house.
We found ourselves inside what was probably supposed to be a grand living room. The walls and ceiling were covered with intricate paintings of cherubs and mythological creatures surrounded by gilded frames. Ornate chandeliers dangled from the ceiling, bedecked with thousands of pieces of crystal. There was no furniture, not even a carpet, which made the unusually large room echoey and cavernous. At the far end, which seemed a good fifty yards away, there was a self-standing basketball hoop. A lot of the plaster on the walls down behind it was cracked, as though many of the cherubs had taken basketballs to the face.
“Yeah, sure, I can do this,” Orion said. “We just need to go to my office.” He started to leave the room, then paused, confused.
“What’s wrong?” Mike asked.
“I’m just trying to remember where my office is,” said Orion. “There’s over two hundred and fifty rooms in this place. I get lost in here all the time.”
“You do?” I asked before I could catch myself.
“Yeah. I’d always dreamed about having a palace like this, ever since I was a kid. But there are some serious problems with it. I mean, it’s exhausting to live here. It’s like half a mile from my bedroom down to the kitchen.” He snapped, suddenly remembering where he needed to go, then reversed direction and led us out of the makeshift basketball court.
We followed him into another enormous room. The only furniture in this one was a large-screen TV and a few beanbag chairs.
Orion rambled on. I was definitely getting the sense that his self-imposed exile had made him lonely and desperate for company. “Also, I can’t ever find anything. My car keys, my wallet, my phone. I think I bought a pool table last year, but I have no idea where it is. And another bummer: The palace is haunted.”
“Haunted?” Alexander asked, so worried that he stumbled over his own feet.
“Yeah,” Orion said. “The sixteenth Duke of Earlchester died here. Or maybe it was the sixteenth Earl of Dukechester. It was a couple hundred years ago. Supposedly, the guy was a big jerk. The peasants all rose up against him and burned him alive, and now his ghost roams the property, looking for a fire extinguisher or something like that. I haven’t seen him, but some nights, when there’s a full moon, you can hear him wailing. Sounds like a guy whose pants are on fire.”
“You knew about this and you still bought the place?” Alexander asked, startled.
“No, I didn’t know about the ghost. There’s no law that you have to disclose a domain of the undead in this country. Apparently, you could buy a castle full of zombies and it’d be totally legal.” Orion led us through another completely empty room. “Sorry about the decor. That’s another problem with a place like this. It’s impossible to furnish. Do you have any idea what two hundred and fifty sofa and chair sets costs? Half a million dollars. And that’s at IKEA. So I opted out. Not that I’m doing a whole lot of entertaining anyhow.”
“Still, you must have friends over sometimes,” Zoe said, sounding truly concerned.
“Not really. It’s not so easy being a secretive criminal genius. I mean, the pay is great, but it’s hard to have a social life. After I decrypt this, do you guys want to hang out for a bit? I just got a new croquet set.” Orion led us through another door, and we finally arrived at our destination.
This room was considerably smaller than the others and was the first one that looked like someone lived in it. The walls had no
fancy paint or gilding, which led me to believe that the room had probably been a servant’s quarters. Now they were plastered with posters and framed jerseys for the Manchester United soccer team, along with assorted other sports memorabilia. A large desk sat in the corner, topped by an enormous computer monitor and a dozen hard drives, attesting to a tremendous amount of computing power. The desk was a mess, covered with piles of papers and other random items, like several dirty plates of half-eaten waffles. A tower of empty pizza boxes teetered in the corner. Obviously, Orion’s no-servants policy had left him without any housecleaning.
“I’m sorry,” Catherine told Orion earnestly. “But we will have to leave very quickly. This is a precision operation. In and out.”
“Oh,” Orion said sadly, then looked Catherine over and smiled. “What are you doing after the operation’s done? Want to meet for dinner sometime?”
Catherine took a step back, surprised yet flattered. “Orion! I’m old enough to be…well, not quite your mother. But a young aunt.” She then took a good look at him. “Although, if I were your age, I would definitely say yes.”
“Mother!” Erica gasped at the exact same time that Alexander gasped, “Catherine!”
“Face it,” Catherine said. “He’s handsome.”
I wasn’t sure if she really meant this or if she was merely saying it to make Orion feel good, but it certainly put him in a positive frame of mind. “All right,” he said, jacking the flash drive into his computer. “Let’s see what I did here.… ”
“Careful!” Zoe warned. “You built a worm into that file!”
“Not a problem,” Orion said confidently. “I build worms into everything. But my own system knows how to get around them.”
His hard drives whirred into action, but they didn’t get fried. A window popped open on his monitor, filled with gibberish. It wasn’t merely letters and numbers, but all sorts of other random symbols and emojis.
Orion examined it thoughtfully. “Looks like I used a Snodgrass encryption system on this with a hexidecimal Watusi overgrid.”
