Spy School British Invasion Read online

  “Hey!” he said, coming to. “What was that for?”

  “A couple thousand things,” Erica replied. “But it’s time to get up anyhow.”

  As she said this, the plane dipped downward slightly. I lifted the shade over my window. Broad daylight spilled into the body of the plane.

  Below us, I could see long green tracts of land, the curve of a wide river, and in the near distance a large city.

  “Is that London?” I asked.

  “That’s right,” Erica replied. “It’s time to get to work.”

  4 CULTURAL APPRECIATION

  The British Museum

  London, England

  March 31

  0800 hours

  One of the biggest drawbacks to being a spy is that you don’t get to do much sightseeing.

  Technically, I saw a good amount of the Yucatán Province in Mexico, but not in the fun, relaxing way that most tourists would. My visit to an archaeological site was at the tail end of a death march through a hostile wilderness; the only time I got to ride any of the waterslides at our hotel was when I was fleeing for my life down one; and instead of having an enjoyable ATV tour led by a knowledgeable guide, my ATV experience had been a hair-raising chase through the jungle with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.

  My visit to London looked like it would be more of the same. My whole life, I had dreamed of visiting that city; I had a long list of places I wanted to see there. But we had no time for tourism. True, I was heading to the British Museum, which was a major tourist attraction, but I was only going there to acquire Joshua Hallal’s secret cache of information. In the meantime, I merely got brief glimpses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, and the London Eye as we sped past them in a taxi from the private airstrip.

  All seven of us were crammed into one small van. MI6 had not been alerted to our arrival; Catherine feared that her own agency, just like the CIA, was corrupted by double agents for SPYDER. The weather was stereotypically British: cold, gray, and rainy.

  My fellow spies-in-training and I were all dressed for the wrong climate. We only had our tropical resort wear, and there wasn’t time to stop to get properly attired. Catherine had promised to take us to a decent haberdasher later in the day, but for the time being we had the heat in the cab cranked to eleven.

  The adults were better off. Alexander’s suit, which had been horribly out of place in the tropics, now looked quite fashionable, save for a few splatters of mud. Since Catherine had just come from England, she had the right kind of clothes to return in: an extremely stylish dress, boots, and a raincoat.

  Meanwhile, my parents had no idea that I was in England at all. Or that I had been in Mexico the previous few days. They thought I was spending my spring break working on a big thesis project at St. Smithen’s. Not that I could have alerted them to the fact that I was in London anyhow. The mission was top secret, and we were all banned from any non-mission communication. We couldn’t even use our phones, as the GPS would allow us to be tracked and pinpointed by our enemies. (Catherine, Alexander, and Erica had special CIA phones that were immune to tracking, but the rest of us hadn’t been issued those yet. Not that it would have mattered; my phone, along with Murray’s, Zoe’s, and Mike’s, had been destroyed when we’d fallen into a cenote a few days earlier.)

  Erica watched the scenery slide past the window, though I doubted she was looking for landmarks like I was; knowing Erica, she was plotting potential escape routes should we have to flee for our lives. Murray was grumbling about how hungry he was and asking if we could stop to get some food every three minutes. Mike was still catching up on his sleep, having wakened only long enough to shuffle across the tarmac from the jet to the taxi. But Zoe, crammed into the seat beside me, seemed equally bummed that we couldn’t visit any of the places we were passing.

  “Are we near the Tower of London?” she asked hopefully as we wormed our way through the city. “I’ve always wanted to see that.”

  “I’m afraid we’re heading the opposite direction from it right now,” Catherine informed her.

  “How about Harrods? Or Covent Garden? Or Claridge’s? Oh! I’ve always wanted to get tea at Claridge’s.”

  “Don’t bother,” Erica told her. “All they do is charge you eight pounds for a cucumber sandwich with the crusts cut off.”

  “Erica, don’t be a wet blanket,” Catherine said, then told Zoe, “Tea at Claridge’s is simply delightful. Perhaps, after we take care of SPYDER, we could visit there.”

  “That’d be great!” Zoe exclaimed.

  “At this point I’d pay eight pounds for a three-day-old tuna sandwich,” Murray groused. “I’m starving.”

  “How is that possible?” I asked him. “You ate all the snacks on the plane.”

  “They were healthy snacks,” Murray grumbled. “With wheat germ and fiber and other stuff that hamsters eat. There was barely any fat in them at all.”

  “I promise you, we will get more food—and clothing—soon,” Catherine told all of us. “But as it is there is no time to waste. For all we know, Joshua Hallal is already here. You’ll just have to be hungry—and chilly—a bit longer.”

  “That’s easy for her to say,” Murray muttered under his breath. “She has a raincoat and a slow metabolism.”

  “It shouldn’t be too much longer,” Catherine said. “We’re here.”

  The British Museum was at the top of my list of places to see in London, but once again it looked like my visit would be very different from that of the standard tourist. We weren’t even coming in through the main entrance. Instead, we had pulled up to a security gate around the back. Rather than facing the museum’s famous neoclassical facade, with its rows of Greek columns, we were facing a drab employee parking lot and three overflowing dumpsters. Catherine flashed her official curator ID to the bored guard on duty, informed him that she was leading a small field trip there for her daughter’s school, and handed over our new passports. The guard gave them all a cursory glance and then waved us through.

  I shook Mike awake. “Hey,” he said drowsily, prying his eyes open. “Is this the museum?”

  “Yes,” I told him.

  Mike stared out the window at the closest dumpster. Two rats the size of Chihuahuas were fighting to the death over a soggy pizza crust. “Doesn’t look that impressive,” Mike observed.

  We all hopped out of the cab and hurried through a light drizzle to the employee entrance. There was a small foyer where another guard was on duty, controlling a second set of secure, alarmed doors. The guard observed the arrival of our wet, improperly dressed group with concern until Catherine breezed through the door. Then her face lit up as though she were a small child who had just found Santa Claus coming down the chimney. “My stars, Mrs. Hale! It’s been far too long since you’ve graced this entrance.”

  “It certainly has, Lizette,” Catherine agreed. “My work in the States has taken much longer than I expected. You’re looking well, though.”

  Lizette started to make more small talk, but then flushed as Alexander came through the door. If Alexander was still nervous about our mission, he wasn’t showing it. Instead, he was displaying his usual calm and collected guise. Lizette was obviously attracted to him—as most women seemed to be. “Mr. Hale! You’re here too?” Lizette exclaimed, then looked to Catherine. “Are you two back together?”

  Catherine reddened a bit. “He’s…just here for a visit.”

  “Oh, I hope it’s more than that.” Lizette leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially to Catherine. “He’s a fine piece of man, that one. And the two of you always looked smashing together, if I might say.”

  Catherine handed our passports to Lizette, seeming like she was in a hurry to change the subject. “We’ve brought some friends from the States as well today. I thought I’d give them a bit of a behind-the-scenes tour, show them the spots that regular tourists don’t get to see.”

  “That sounds like fun.” Lizette leafed through the passports, freezing w
hen she got to Erica’s. She then looked up in shock at Erica herself. “My stars. Is this Princess Buttercup, all grown up?”

  Erica went rigid. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “It is you!” Lizette exclaimed. “I can’t believe it! It’s been more than a decade since I last saw you! Oh, you were always so adorable in your dresses and your crowns.”

  “Dresses?” Murray asked, on the verge of cracking up. “Crowns?”

  “Oh my, yes,” Lizette went on. “And she was always lugging around a little princess doll as well. What was her name? Fifi Frimsy-Popp?”

  “You had a doll?” Zoe asked Erica, astonished.

  “I was pretending to be a secret agent undercover as British royalty,” Erica said through gritted teeth. “The doll was part of the costume.”

  “Sure it was, Princess Buttercup,” Murray taunted.

  “Call me that one more time and I will forcibly remove your head from the rest of your body, then cram it up your rear end,” Erica threatened, then looked to her mother. “Can we please go? Time is wasting.”

  “Of course,” Catherine said, then turned to Lizette. “You don’t mind if we hurry along, do you? There’s so much to see.”

  “By all means!” Lizette pressed a button under her desk, which allowed the secure doors to click open. “Come on in, folks. Have a good time!”

  There was a security booth with a metal scanner and an X-ray machine, but Lizette trusted the Hale family so much, she didn’t even ask us to pass through it. We were allowed direct access to the museum. Which was good, because I was relatively sure Catherine was packing a weapon or two.

  We passed through the security door quickly, nodding our thanks to Lizette. Alexander flashed her a warm smile, and she fluttered her eyelashes at him in return.

  “This way,” Catherine told us, leading the way through the secure doors. Now that she didn’t have to make friendly small talk with Lizette, she was all business.

  I had been hoping our path through the museum might lead us past some of the famous artifacts that were stored there, so that I could at least get to see them, even if only for a few seconds. Sadly, that wasn’t the case. Instead, Catherine immediately guided us down a set of stairs and into the basement level of the museum, which looked like the basement level of pretty much every other building I had ever been in. It was drably painted, dingily lit, and—because it was in London—slightly damp. Since we had arrived early, no other employees were there yet, or at least we didn’t see any. The subterranean hallways were eerily empty.

  Catherine obviously knew her way around; she moved quickly through the maze of halls, never bothering to check a map, the same way that Erica was always able to navigate through the secret tunnels under spy school.

  Zoe was equally upset that this was the only part of the museum we were seeing. “Catherine,” she asked. “If we actually find what we’re looking for, is there any chance we might be able to see some of the museum? Even for just a minute or two?”

  “Ugh,” Murray said. “All that’s up there is a bunch of old rocks. You’re like the only person on earth who would think that’s interesting.”

  “Me and the five million people a year who visit the museum,” Zoe pointed out.

  Catherine said, “It would be a tragedy to bring you here and not let you see any of the collection. If we’re right about the key, I’d love to show you the head of Pazuzu, but then, I’ve always had a soft spot for the Babylonian empire. Ah! Here we are!”

  We arrived at a set of double doors that didn’t look much different from any of the other doors we had passed, except that there was more security around them. Wires snaked away from them, indicating they were alarmed, security cameras were mounted overhead, and there was a card reader on the wall. Luckily, Catherine’s ID worked in it. She swiped the card through and the doors clicked open.

  We passed into a small glass-enclosed anteroom with another secure door on the other side. “This is for climate and pest control,” Catherine explained. “Many of the objects stored down here are extremely delicate. We don’t want them getting moldy or eaten by bookworms.” She slid her card through a second reader, and the next set of doors clicked open too.

  We entered the vault. It was almost the size of a soccer field—so big it was hard to make out the far end of it. Every once in a while there was a massive column shoring up the floor above. As opposed to the dingy hallways we had just come through, the vault was beautiful. The walls were almost entirely taken up with lockboxes, but they were all fronted with polished wood, rather than being dull metal. There were thousands of them, stretching off into the far recesses of the room.

  Instead of drab industrial flooring, there was stylish carpeting, although paths had been worn in it over the decades of use. The middle of the room was filled with dozens of long wooden tables, but there were also several spots with large, plush leather chairs. Due to the climate control, it was much warmer and drier than the rest of the basement. Every now and then there was an ancient artifact on display, simply for the people lucky enough to visit: a few gorgeous ink drawings from Asia were framed on the walls, while intricate sculptures sat atop pedestals throughout the room. A few curators had come in early; two were perusing a large ancient map on one of the tables, while others were reading ancient texts or carefully examining small artifacts. They all looked up curiously as we entered, then immediately returned to their work. It was like being in a library, although one that was kept secret from most of the world.

  “Wow,” Zoe gasped, echoing my thoughts. “This is amazing.”

  “Of course you’d say that,” Murray taunted. “Books, art, and scientists. It’s nerd heaven down here.”

  The lockboxes along the walls varied greatly in size. There were long, flat ones that I figured held maps and paintings, thicker ones that probably held texts, and larger ones for bulkier artifacts. Each had a number on a tiny brass plate. The ones closest to our left started at 1 and then continued clockwise throughout the room.

  Zoe and Mike both gasped with excitement when they saw the font the numbers were etched in. “Tottenham!” they exclaimed at once, then beamed at each other proudly in a way that made me feel slightly jealous.

  “Looks like we’re on the right track, thanks to you font-natics,” Catherine said, impressed. Then she fished the silver key from her pocket and ordered, “Let’s find number 1206.”

  Although the lockboxes were numbered sequentially, the fastest way to find the right one was still to fan out to different points of the room and see who ended up the closest to it rather than circumnavigating the whole place in a clump. (We had all learned this in a “Time Optimization” seminar a few weeks before.) I headed toward the farthest side, though I kept a close eye on Murray. Despite his claims to be against SPYDER, I still didn’t trust him. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d concocted this entire plan to get us into the vault so that he could steal something.

  If Murray was up to no good, though, he didn’t play his hand. Instead, he went directly to another part of the wall and diligently began searching for the right box.

  “I’ve got it!” Mike yelled from across the room.

  All the other curators immediately shushed him.

  The rest of us hurried over.

  Box 1206 was the size of a loaf of bread, surrounded by other boxes of about the same size. A stunning Japanese watercolor print hung on the wall above it.

  Erica ran her hand along the edge of the boxes around it, then displayed a residue of dust her fingers had picked up. “A lot of these haven’t been opened in years,” she observed, then pointed to 1206, which was dust-free. “But not this one. It’s been opened more recently.”

  “How recently?” Alexander asked.

  “I don’t know,” Erica admitted. “But sometime in the last few months, I’d guess.”

  There was a small keyhole at the edge of the wooden door. It looked like it was the right size for Joshua’s key, but th
ere was only one way to tell for sure.

  We all looked to Catherine expectantly.

  “Here goes nothing,” she said, sounding slightly nervous that this might have all been a mistake. She inserted the key in the lock and turned.

  It worked.

  There was a click, and the wooden door swung open, revealing…

  “It’s empty,” Mike said.

  Indeed, there was nothing inside except shadows. A sense of gloom immediately descended on everyone. Catherine made a squeak of dismay.

  “That’s just great,” Zoe muttered.

  “Hold on,” Erica said. “Sometimes there’s more than meets the eye.” She reached through the tiny door. The lockbox went farther back than we had realized, far enough to almost swallow her entire arm. Erica felt around inside, then broke into a sudden smile. Then she triumphantly withdrew her hand.

  She was holding a single flash drive.

  “That’s it?” Alexander asked. “That’s all there is?”

  “This is plenty,” Erica replied. “This single drive can hold more information than all the books in most libraries. Let’s get out of here before anyone else comes looking for it.” She closed the door to the lockbox, turned the key, then put it in her pocket.

  We all headed for the door. The other curators were so intent on their work, they barely seemed to notice us.

  I kept an eye on them, however. I’d been caught off guard by SPYDER enough times that I didn’t trust anyone. Even the elderly, harmless-looking woman scrutinizing jade trinkets might have been a double agent.

  She wasn’t, though. She didn’t try to kill us as we left the vault, and neither did anyone else.

  I breathed a sigh of relief as we returned to the basement hall and found ourselves without anyone else around once again. Catherine led us back through the maze.

  Erica removed her smartphone and a connecting cable from her utility belt, then jacked the flash drive into the phone.

  “What’s on there?” Zoe asked eagerly.