Spy Ski School Read online

  contents

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  MAP OF LIONSHEAD VILLAGE

  PROLOGUE

  1: ACTIVATION

  2: MEMORIZATION

  3: ACCLIMATIZATION

  4: RECONNAISSANCE

  5: PUNISHMENT

  6: CONNECTION

  7: COMPLICATION

  8: REASSESSMENT

  9: DISTRACTION

  10: ANALYSIS

  11: ASSISTANCE

  12: INFORMATION ACQUISITION

  13: FLIRTATION

  14: INFILTRATION

  15: EAVESDROPPING

  16: DISCOVERY

  17: SNEAK ATTACK

  18: SNOW SAFETY

  19: INSPIRATION

  20: SHOWDOWN

  21: EVASIVE ACTION

  22: NEGOTIATION

  23: NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT STUART GIBBS

  For my best ski buddies over the past years: my parents, my sister, Darragh, Ciara, Andy Gibbs, Mike Matthews, Ken Parker, Mark Middleman, Adam Zarembok, David and Learka Bosnak, Jon Mattingly, Jeff Peachin, John Janke, Kent Davis, Garrett Reisman, “Ches” Thompson, and Ed Cohen—and my favorite new ski buddies, Dash and Violet

  acknowledgments

  In case it isn’t obvious during the reading of this book, I like skiing. A lot. The first place I ever really saw anyone do it was in James Bond movies, which had so many incredible ski sequences that I couldn’t wait to get out onto the slopes myself. Since I grew up in Texas, though, I didn’t get much chance to ski until I was in my teens. And the first time I went was near Cleveland, Ohio, which isn’t exactly famous for its skiing. Still, I’m grateful to the Klein family—Steve, Ann, Alan, and Rob—for taking me. And I owe huge thanks to Saul and Ilene Cohen, who later introduced me to skiing in the significantly better mountains of Vermont.

  When I was in college, though, my parents moved to Colorado, and a whole new world opened up to me. I am indebted to the staff at Vail and Snowmass Mountains, particularly the ski instructors, for all their help in making this book—and for all the great ski days throughout the years. Also, thanks to my editor, Kristin Ostby (who is quite a good skier herself), for her enthusiastic encouragement on this story. Finally, an enormous thank-you to my wonderful, incredibly supportive wife, Suzanne, who doesn’t ski, but who still let me spend so much time on the slopes to research this book. It was difficult work, but it simply had to be done.

  December 4

  To: ,

  Given the evidence you have provided, the review committee has sanctioned Operation Snow Bunny for immediate deployment. Academy of Espionage students and have both been approved for this operation, with the option to activate additional operatives if needed.

  However, the committee would also like to make clear that it has serious reservations about using such young agents on a mission of this caliber. It is only the absolute necessity of —and the unfortunate failure of our previous operations to do so—that has led us to sanction this.

  Should these young agents not be up to the task—should they fail due to their inexperience—the burden of this failure will be placed squarely on your shoulders. The CIA will disavow any knowledge that , or that in order to maintain the secrecy of .

  Enclosed in the attached dossier, you will find plane tickets, ski passes, and forms for reimbursement of expenses.

  Good luck on your mission, and God bless America,

  CIA Director of Operations

  P.S. There’s a restaurant in called Hänsel ünd Grëtel that has excellent fondue. Check it out while you’re there.

  Destroy this document immediately after reading.

  ACTIVATION

  Bushnell Hall

  CIA Academy of Espionage

  Washington, DC

  December 6

  1130 hours

  The summons to the principal’s office arrived in the middle of my Advanced Self-Preservation class.

  Normally, I would have been pleased to have an excuse to get out of ASP, as it was my worst subject. I was only getting a C in it, even though, in real life, I had been quite good at self-preservation. Over the past eleven months, my enemies had kidnapped me, shot at me, locked me in a room with a ticking bomb, and even tried to blow me up with missiles—and yet I’d survived each time. However, my instructors at the CIA’s Academy of Espionage never seemed very impressed by the fact that I was still alive. They just kept giving me bad grades.

  “There’s a big difference between running away and being able to defend yourself,” my ASP instructor, Professor Simon, had explained, shortly before the call from the principal came. Professor Georgia Simon was in her fifties and looked like someone my mother would have played canasta with, but she was an incredible warrior, capable of beating three karate masters in a fight at once. “So far, all you have done in the field is run.”

  “It’s worked pretty well for me so far,” I countered.

  “You’ve been lucky,” Professor Simon said. And then she attacked me with a samurai sword.

  It was only a fake sword, but it was still daunting. (The academy had stopped using real swords a few years earlier, after a student had been literally disarmed in class.) I did my best to defend myself, but it was only twenty seconds before I was sprawled on the floor with Professor Simon standing over me, sword raised, ready to shish kabob my spleen.

  Which was all the more embarrassing, as it happened in front of the entire class. ASP took place in a large lecture hall. My fellow classmates were seated in tiers around me, watching me get my butt kicked by a woman four times my age.

  “Pathetic,” Professor Simon declared. “That’s D-grade work at best. Would anyone here like to show Mr. Ripley how a real agent defends himself?”

  No one volunteered. My fellow second-year students weren’t idiots; none of them wanted to be embarrassed like I had been. Or hurt. Luckily for them, at that moment, the announcement from the principal came over the school’s public address system, distracting Professor Simon.

  There were plenty of other, far less outdated ways to deliver urgent messages to the classrooms at spy school, but the principal didn’t know how to use any of them. In fact, he wasn’t very good at using the PA system, either. There were a few seconds of fumbling noises, followed by the principal muttering, “I can never remember which switch works this stupid thing. This darn system’s a bigger pain in my rear than my hemorrhoids.” Then he asked, “Hello? Hello? Is this thing on? Can you hear me?”

  Professor Simon sighed in a way that suggested she had even less respect for the principal than she had for me. “Yes. We can hear you.”

  “Very good,” the principal replied. “Is Benjamin Ripley in your class right now? I need to see him in my office right away.”

  A chorus of “ooohs” rippled through the room: the universal middle-school response to realizing that someone else has just gotten in trouble.

  Professor Simon gave the class a warning glare and the “ooohs” stopped immediately. “I’ll send him right now,” she replied. Then she looked down at me and said, “Go.”

  I leapt to my feet and hurried for the door, pausing only to snatch my backpack from my seat. Zoe Zibbell, one of my best friends, was in the next seat over. She looked at me inquisitively with her big green eyes, wanting to know if I knew why I’d been summoned. I shrugged in return.

  Next to Zoe, Warren Reeves snickered at my misfortune. Warren didn’t like me much; he had a crush on Zoe and saw me as competition, so he was always rooting for my downfall.

  I made a show of hustling out the door for Professor Simon—and promptly slowed down the moment I was out of her sight. I was in no hurry to get to the principal’s office.

  I had been summoned to the principal fou
r other times, and it had always been bad news: Previously, the principal had sent me to solitary confinement, placed me on probation, informed me that my summer vacation plans were cancelled in favor of mandatory wilderness training—and expelled me from school. (I’d been reinstated, however.) So I dawdled, wondering what trouble lay in store for me this time.

  I exited Bushnell Hall and entered Hammond Quadrangle on my way to the Nathan Hale Administration Building. It was the week after Thanksgiving. Fall had been mild and beautiful in Washington, DC, but now winter had arrived with a vengeance. Frigid winds were stripping the trees bare of leaves, and a crust of icy snow carpeted the ground.

  As I meandered across the quad, my phone buzzed with a text. It was from Erica Hale:

  stop dawdling and get your butt up here. we’re waiting.

  I stared up at the gothic Hale Building, wondering if Erica was watching me—or if she simply knew me well enough to presume I was dawdling. Either was a likely possibility.

  Erica was only a fourth-year student, but she was easily the best spy-in-training at school. However, she’d had a head start on the rest of us: She was a legacy. The very building I was heading toward was named after her family. Her ancestors had all been spies for the United States, going back to Nathan Hale himself—and her grandfather, Cyrus, had been teaching her the family business since she was born. When I’d been learning how to assemble Legos, she’d been learning how to assemble semiautomatic machine guns. Blindfolded.

  I picked up my pace, hurrying toward the Hale Building. If Erica was waiting for me with the principal, that probably meant I wasn’t in trouble. Plus, I was excited to see her.

  I had a massive crush on Erica Hale. She was the most beautiful, intelligent, and dangerous girl I’d ever met in my life. I knew Erica didn’t like me nearly as much as I liked her, but the fact that she liked me even a little was a big deal. Erica regarded most of her fellow students—and professors—with complete disinterest. As though they were rocks. And not even pretty rocks. Boring, gray rocks. Gravel. Even though her text to me had been curt and cold, it was still a text from her, which was more human contact than Erica usually parceled out. There were plenty of guys at school who would have killed to get a text from Erica Hale.

  I burst into the Hale Building and took the stairs up to the fifth floor two at a time. The security agents stationed there quickly waved me through to the restricted area. “Come right on in, Mr. Ripley,” one said. “We’ve been expecting you.”

  I stopped and spread my arms and legs for the standard frisking, but the second guard shook her head. “No need for that. They want to see you ASAP.” She pointed me toward a door.

  This was a different door than the usual one for the principal’s office. A piece of paper was taped to it. It said PIRNCIPAL. Given the misspelling, I figured the principal had written it himself.

  The principal was very likely the least intelligent person in the entire intelligence community. We had a lot of decent teachers at school, most of whom had been decent spies earlier in their careers. Meanwhile, the principal had been a horrible spy. He had failed on every single mission. No one wanted him teaching anyone anything, so he was made an administrator instead. He mostly handled paperwork that no one else wanted to deal with.

  The principal wasn’t using his normal office because I’d blown it up by firing a mortar round into it. (It was an accident.) The damage had been extensive, and since the government was in charge of the repairs, they were taking a very long time. The official completion date was set for three years in the future, but even that was probably optimistic; my dormitory had been waiting to have its septic system replaced since before the Berlin Wall fell. In the meantime, the principal had been moved down the hall.

  Into a closet.

  It was a rather large closet, but it was still a closet. Given the pungent smell of ammonia, I presumed that, until recently, cleaning supplies had been stored there. Instead of a nice big, imposing desk, the principal now had a card table. He sat behind it in a creaky folding chair, glowering at me from beneath the world’s most horrendous hairpiece. It looked like a raccoon had died on his head. And then been run over by a truck. The closet would have been crowded enough with only the principal and me, but three other people were crammed in there as well, waiting for me. All of them were Hales.

  Erica stood beside her father, Alexander, and her grandfather, Cyrus.

  Alexander Hale had been an extremely respected spy for years, despite the fact that he was a complete fraud. The Agency had finally caught on and kicked him out, but he had subsequently proved himself on an unsanctioned mission and been reinstated. Now he was back to his usual debonair self, wearing a tailored three-piece suit with a perfectly folded handkerchief and a crisply knotted tie.

  Meanwhile, Cyrus Hale was the real deal, as good a spy as there was in the CIA, even though he was in his seventies. He’d been retired but had recently reactivated himself. Cyrus didn’t bother with fancy suits, which he considered impractical. Instead, he wore warm-ups, sneakers, and a fanny pack; he looked like he was about to go walk around the mall for exercise.

  Erica wore her standard black outfit, her standard utility belt, and her standard bored expression. She barely glanced at me as I came in. “Nice of you to finally join us.”

  “Sorry I kept you waiting.” I realized the closet didn’t have a window. Which meant Erica hadn’t seen me dawdling. She’d simply known I was doing it.

  “No worries, Benjamin,” Alexander said cheerfully. “I just got here myself.”

  “That’s not exactly something to be proud of,” Cyrus told him disapprovingly. “Seeing as you were supposed to be here half an hour ago.”

  Alexander winced, the way he usually did when his father dressed him down, then tried to save face. “I was doing some important prep work for this mission.”

  “What mission?” I asked. In the cramped closet, there was barely room to move. “What’s going on?”

  “You’re being activated!” Alexander announced excitedly.

  Cyrus grimaced, as though Alexander had said something he wasn’t supposed to.

  “What?” The principal snapped to his feet, flabbergasted, obviously unaware of this news. “You’re activating this little twerp? For a real mission?”

  “It wouldn’t make much sense for us to activate him for a fake mission, now, would it?” Cyrus asked.

  “Well, he can’t go!” the principal declared childishly. “He blew up my office!”

  Cyrus exhaled slowly, trying to be patient. “As I have explained to you multiple times, that was not entirely Ripley’s doing. It was a setup to make our enemies at SPYDER believe that he had actually been expelled so that they’d recruit him. . . .”

  “He nearly killed me!” the principal protested, immune to Cyrus’s logic. “It’s bad enough that I had to take him back here as a student . . .”

  “He was instrumental in thwarting SPYDER’s plans,” Alexander pointed out.

  “. . . but now you’re going to send him out into the field again?” the principal railed on. “He hasn’t even been at this academy a year yet! He’s not qualified for the field!”

  “He is,” said Cyrus. “He’s proved it.”

  “But—” the principal began.

  “It doesn’t really matter if you agree with me on this,” Cyrus interrupted. “Because the chief of the CIA agrees with me. And he’s the one who authorizes the missions, not you. The only reason we’re even having this meeting here is that, as the principal of this institution, you officially have to be informed when students are being sent into the field.”

  If there had been anyplace to sit down in the office, I would have sat down. It was surprising enough to hear that I was being activated by the CIA. But I was completely floored to hear Cyrus defend me. Cyrus didn’t give out praise easily. In fact, it was a good bet that he’d never given any to Alexander at all.

  The principal sank back into his folding chair, glowering even h
arder at me.

  I tried to avoid his gaze, shifting my attention to Erica instead. “You’re being activated too?”

  Erica arched an eyebrow at me but didn’t say anything.

  “I mean, you’re here,” I explained. “And your grandfather just said ‘students’ were being activated. So it’s not only me. . . .”

  “Excellent deductive work, as usual!” Alexander pronounced, patting me on the back. “You’re right. Erica will also be with you on assignment, as will my father and I!”

  Erica’s expression didn’t change. I had no idea if she was pleased with any of this or not. She might as well have just been told she needed a root canal.

  I was pleased, though. Even more than pleased; the idea of being on assignment with Erica was thrilling. In the first place, there was no one I trusted more. Second, it meant I now had an excuse to spend a lot of time with her.

  In theory, I should have had plenty of other excuses to spend time with Erica, seeing as we both went to the same top-secret boarding school. But Erica could be as cold and distant as Antarctica. While the other kids at school bonded over pickup games of capture the flag or James Bond movie marathons, Erica kept to herself. Even though I was considered her closest friend on campus, that didn’t mean much. A few months before, at the end of our last mission, when we were both doped up on painkillers after nearly being vaporized by a missile, Erica had said a few nice things to me and held my hand. But since then she had behaved as though that had never even happened. There had been weeks when she hadn’t so much as glanced at me.

  So I was excited for an excuse to hang out with her. Even one where my life might be in danger. As far as I was concerned, it was worth the risk.

  “What’s the mission?” I asked.

  Cyrus produced a sealed manila envelope from the inner pocket of his warm-up jacket and handed it to me. It was labeled OPERATION SNOW BUNNY and stamped FOR YOUR EYES ONLY. My heart leapt. Getting an honest-to-God “For Your Eyes Only” manila envelope in spy school was like being named king of homecoming in regular school.