Spy School (11 page)

Several other of my fellow first years introduced themselves
as well. I did my best to commit them and the faces they went with to memory. Dashiell, Violet, Coco, Marni, Buster, and a pair of Kiras . . .

“You’re all pathetic,” someone down the row snapped.

I leaned forward to see who it was—and found Greg Hauser, Chip Schacter’s mess hall goon, glaring back at me. “
He’s
a loser, and you’re all double losers for thinking he’s not.”

“He kicked an assassin’s ass last night,” Zoe shot back. “While you’ve flunked this class how many times? Four so far?”

Hauser’s giant brow furrowed deep enough to plant corn in. “Last night was all a fake. Chip told me. I mean,
look
at him.” He stabbed a meaty finger toward me. “He’s a dork. If that had been a
real
assassin, he’d be dead.”

“If it was a fake, why’d the administration go to DEFCON 4 last night?” Zoe asked. “The principal was freaking out in his bunny slippers. Face it, Ben’s the real deal. He could mop the floor with you.”

“Maybe he and I should put that to the test, then,” Hauser said. “In the gym, after lunch today.”

“You’re on,” said Zoe.

“Wait,” I said. Once again, I’d been stunned by how fast things could take a turn for the worse at spy school. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

“Why?” Hauser taunted. “You chicken?”

“Of course he’s not,” Zoe sneered.

Word that there might be a fight quickly rippled through the room. Now virtually the entire class was staring at me.

I looked to Murray, hopeful he might know how to get me out of this predicament. He was asleep. With his fake-eye glasses on, he appeared to be the only person still paying attention to the lecture.

So I tried my best to wing an answer. “I’d just prefer not to. I fought an assassin last night. I think I ought to rest up today.”

“Mr. Ripley!” Crandall snapped.

All eyes, including mine, turned back toward the podium.

Crandall had finally regained his focus—and turned it all on me. His unruly white eyebrows dipped over angry eyes. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”

“Uh . . . yes.”

“Did you transfer here from a school where it was acceptable to hold court during a professor’s lecture?” Crandall asked.

“No, sir,” I replied.

“Ah. Then am I to presume from your ignorance of my lecture that you feel you have nothing more to learn about the art of self-preservation?”

The other students quickly shifted away from me. Zoe acted as though she’d had nothing to do with the conversation. Even Hauser feigned innocence.

“No, sir,” I repeated.

“Then it must just be today’s topic that bores you,” Crandall said. “I’m assuming you’ve read last night’s assignment, chapters 64 to 67 in Stern’s
Basics of Self-Preservation
?”

I hadn’t even been issued my books yet. It was something I’d planned on asking the professor about at the end of class. “Uh—well—,” I stammered. “I think there’s been a mistake.

“Perhaps,” Crandall said coolly. “Let’s see. Why don’t we test your knowledge with a little pop quiz?”

The moment he said these words, every one of my fellow students went wide-eyed with fear. And then they evacuated the room. The seats around me cleared out as though I’d suddenly turned poisonous. Even Murray snapped awake and bolted. “Nice knowing you,” he said.

Within seconds, the lecture hall was empty except for Crandall and me.

“What kind of a pop quiz is this?” I asked nervously.

“One on today’s topic: ninjas.” Crandall opened a door by the podium and three ninjas vaulted through. They were clad in black from head to toe and armed to the teeth.

You’ve got to be kidding,
I thought. And then I bolted toward the exit. The doors automatically locked as I approached. My fellow students peered through the windows in them, watching with a mixture of concern and relief that it wasn’t
them
inside the room.

A throwing star embedded in the door. I spun to find the ninjas creeping slowly up the steps. The one in front spun a pair of razor-sharp sai knives. The other two twirled nunchucks. Crandall watched from the podium, already frowning at my performance. “Rule number one for fighting ninjas:
Never
turn your back on them,” he clucked.

I held my backpack in front of me. I didn’t think it would do much in the way of defense, but it was all I had. “Can I just take an F for this?” I asked. “I’m very sorry for talking during class. I’ll never do it again!”

“Let’s see what he’s made of,” Crandall said.

The ninjas whooped loud enough to shake the room and charged.

I threw my backpack at them. The first sliced it in half in midair.

I ran. I went straight down the aisle between seats, thinking that this school was even crazier than I could have ever imagined, praying that this was merely another fake-out, that they wouldn’t ever really
hurt
a student. . . .

Something whistled through the air behind me.

I turned to find a nunchuck quickly closing the gap between the ninja who’d thrown it and my forehead.

This was followed by an absolutely incredible amount of pain.

And then everything went black.

The Eagle’s Nest

January 17

2000 hours

“Finally! The young agent awakes!”

I groaned. My head felt like it had been filled with rocks and then rolled down a hill. Even opening my eyes to the light hurt, though it was marginally preferable to going back to sleep again: The last few hours had been filled with nightmares of ninjas and assassins.

My first glimpse of my surroundings seemed light-years away from spy school. So far, everything I’d encountered at the academy had been cold and hard: industrial shades of gray and Cold War décor. But the room I lay in was warm
and cozy. The walls were hung with hunting prints and lined with shelves full of leather-bound books. A fire crackled in a large stone fireplace. I was sprawled on a couch that was wonderfully soft and smelled like a pine forest.

Alexander Hale popped into view, swaddled in a burgundy smoking jacket and sipping a glass of neon green Gatorade. “How’s the noggin?”

“It hurts,” I said. My forehead right between my eyes was the worst. I touched it gingerly and found a lump the size of a robin’s egg.

“Don’t I know it. I remember the first time
I
was attacked by ninjas. North Korea. I’d only graduated from the academy a few months before. My martial arts skills weren’t what they are now, but thankfully, there were only two of them and I had an exploding belt buckle.” Alexander stared into the fire wistfully. “Ah, memories.”

I sat up, grimacing, glanced toward the window . . . and found, to my shock, that it was dark outside. “What time is it?”

“Dinner-ish. You’ve been out all day.”

“All day?! Shouldn’t I be in a hospital?”

Alexander chuckled. “For a little bump? This was nothing. Once, in Afghanistan, I was unconscious for eight days. Besides, you seemed like you needed the rest. How about some Gatorade?”

“Uh, sure.”

“Coming right up.” Alexander ducked into a small kitchen and opened the refrigerator. It was full of mineral water and various hues of Gatorade. “Proper hydration is extremely important in our business. Although you don’t want to overdo it either. I once had to urinate so badly during a gunfight in Venice that I lost focus and almost took a bullet to the brain. What flavor? Glacier Freeze? Riptide Rush?”

“Orange.”

“Ah. A traditionalist. Very good.” Alexander poured a tall, chilled glass and brought it to me.

He was right. It
did
make me feel better. The ache in my head subsided and my mind was clearing, although I still felt a bit fuzzy around the edges. For instance, I knew there was something wrong about the room we were in, but I couldn’t put my finger on what.

“Where am I?” I asked.

“You’re still on campus. There
was
some discussion of taking you to the infirmary, but given your precarious situation vis-à-vis enemy agents, I felt it’d be safer to keep you here, in my personal quarters.”

“You mean . . . you
live
on campus?”

Alexander laughed heartily. “Heavens no. I have a real home in the city. This is more of a pied-à-terre—for those
times when work dictates that I need to be here. And right now I need to be here.”

“To help hunt for the mole.”

Alexander’s eyebrows arched. It was the first time I’d ever seen him off guard. Which meant he had no idea Erica had come to see me the night before; for some reason, she hadn’t told him. I wondered why this might be—and if I’d made a mistake mentioning the mole hunt at all.

Thankfully, Alexander didn’t get suspicious. Instead, he seemed pleased. “Figured it out on your own, did you? I
told
them you were smart. How’d you put it all together?”

If Erica wanted her investigation to remain a secret, I decided to keep it a secret. “Well, when I considered my fake cryptography skills, the assassination attempt, and the principal’s reaction to it, it all seemed kind of obvious.”

Alexander laughed again, then slapped my knee and plopped himself into an overstuffed chair nearby. “To you, perhaps. But it wouldn’t have to everyone. Good work, Ben. You remind me of myself when I was younger. A real self-starter. When I was only twenty-two, I tracked down an arms dealer in Djakarta who had eluded the DEA for a decade. Well, now that the wool’s off your eyes, I think you might be of service.”

“I thought the principal wanted to keep me in the dark about all this.”

“And as far as he knows, you’ll be there. In fact, no one has to know you’re helping me but me.”

“Not even Erica?”

Once again, Alexander seemed slightly thrown, as though he wasn’t quite sure what to say about his daughter for a few moments. “Erica’s an excellent student. I admit, I’ve given her quite a bit of tutoring on the side over the years. She’s going to be an incredible agent someday. . . . But I’m not sure she’s ready for this.”

“And
I
am?”

“Well, you don’t really have a choice in the matter, do you? You’re a part of it whether you want to be or not. I think it’d be best if we keep this between us for now. It’ll be our little clandestine operation. You must be starving.”

He said this last bit quickly, as though he was trying to change the subject. But he was right. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. “I am.”

“I have some frozen dinners. Not exactly filet mignon, but it’s still better than anything you’ll get down in the mess.” Alexander sprang back into the kitchenette and rooted through the freezer. “Pizza okay?”

“That’d be great, thanks.”

Alexander dug out a pepperoni one and tossed it in the oven. “All right, let’s get down to brass tacks. Any idea as to who the mole might be?”

“Um . . . ,” I said. “I was hoping
you’d
know that.”

“Oh, I have my suspicions,” Alexander said. “But I only decided to enter the fray today. You’ve been in the thick of this. Ergo, your thoughts matter. So . . . what do you think?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t really had much time to investigate . . . and I’ve been unconscious most of the day. . . .”

“Yes, but you must have some idea. A gut instinct?”

“Chip Schacter.”

“Aha!” Alexander perched on the edge of his chair, eyes wide with excitement. “And why do you suspect him?”

“He knew what was in my file very early on. I’d barely been in my room a minute before he showed up, wanting me to hack into the school mainframe for him.”

“To steal secrets?”

“No. To alter his grades.”

“Or so he claimed,” Alexander said suspiciously. “Decent cover story. I assume he threatened you with force?”

“Yes.”

“So you hack in, he steals the files, and if anything goes wrong, you get burned. Clever.”

Erica’s assessment of Chip from the night before came back to me. “But Chip isn’t really known for being clever, is he?”

“No, but that could all be a ruse. He could be
so
clever, he’s extremely good at appearing not clever at all. After all, he
was smart enough to get into the academy, wasn’t he?”

That was true. Whereas I’d only been accepted for my potential as bait. Which meant that, on some level, Chip was better spy material than me, no matter what Erica thought of him. “I guess.”

“So he has classified knowledge about you, and he quickly tries to use your skills for nefarious purposes. Anything else suspicious about him?”

“Well . . . I didn’t do what he wanted . . . and he wasn’t happy about that. So he threatened me.” I suddenly realized something. “And then, that very night, the assassin came to my room.”

“Interesting.” Alexander remained calm and collected, but his eyes were alive with excitement. “Might be Chip turning the screws on you.”

“Yes! And then, by this morning, he was spreading rumors that the assassination attempt was a fake.”

“A campaign of disinformation. Very clever indeed. I think Mr. Schacter has definite mole potential. Good work, my boy.” Alexander patted my knee, then headed back into the kitchen to check on the pizza.