Spy School (23 page)

“Yes,” Erica replied. “Did anyone important notice?”

“That he royally screwed up?” Crandall said. “Certainly not. He’s got the big boys eating out of his hand. One of the agents from the secure room got a bit suspicious, though—Fincher, I think—so your father pinned the blame squarely on him and came out looking pristine, as usual. They’ll probably give him another medal for it . . . once they learn Ripley here is alive, of course.”

“But they don’t know that yet, do they?” I asked.

“No, they don’t.” Crandall chuckled. “I suspect the higher-ups are all really freaking out right now.”

“What’s the fallout?” Erica asked.

“Pretty heavy.”

Crandall plopped tea bags in three mugs. “There’s never been an abduction here before. At least three separate internal investigations have been ordered already. And platoons of agents have been mobilized to track down Mr. Ripley. It’s like D-day. The head of the CIA bought your
little ruse about Jackhammer whole hog and is terrified of what would happen if it fell into the wrong hands. I quite think he’s forgotten it was his idea to falsify Ripley’s crypto credentials in the first place.”

“Then maybe I ought to let them know I’m all right,” I said.

“In a rush to be interrogated, are you?” Crandall poured hot water into the mugs. “Because that’s what will happen the moment you show your face. You’ll be tossed in a holding cell and grilled six ways from Sunday.”

I frowned. “Couldn’t they just ask me nicely?”

“Perhaps, but this way lets them cover their asses,” Erica explained. “The last thing the administration wants is for you to show up here looking like a hero for escaping the enemy and then telling the whole student body the truth about what happened tonight. They need time to do damage control and establish their own version of the story, one in which they don’t seem like such idiots that they needed a teenaged girl to rescue you.”

“So why don’t you rest up first?” Crandall handed me the tea and proffered a plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies as well.

I sampled one. It was easily the best thing I’d eaten at spy school. “This is delicious.”

“The secret is, I add a pinch of coconut flakes,” Crandall
said proudly. “Now then, it probably behooves us to do a bit of interrogation ourselves. To get an idea of whom we’re dealing with here. Can you tell me anything about your abductors, Benjamin? What they looked like, sounded like . . . even smelled like?”

“Not really,” I admitted. “I was unconscious with a hood over my head most of the time I was with them. All I know is, they were listening to sports radio. In English.”

Crandall cocked a bushy eyebrow, intrigued. “The prevailing theory right now, based upon the chatter that was picked up, is that our enemy is Arabic. Are you suggesting that might be erroneous?”

“Possibly,” I said. “Though it’s possible that my abductors just like sports. There’s not many radio stations here that broadcast in Arabic. And right after Erica jumped on the roof of the van, one of the bad guys spoke in a language I didn’t know.”

“Could it have been some form of Arabic?” Crandall asked.

“I can’t say,” I admitted sadly. “I didn’t get to hear much. Erica knocked them all unconscious pretty quickly.”

“She tends to do that.” Crandall gave Erica a pleased smile and seated himself back in his easy chair with a cup of tea. “What about you, dear? What were your impressions?”

“They certainly
looked
Arabic,” Erica said. “But I was kind of busy trying not to get killed by them to ask where they were
from. Ben’s point about the radio is interesting. Maybe they were merely trying to look like Arabs to throw the CIA off their scent. Same goes for broadcasting the chatter in Arabic.”

“Why’d they even broadcast the chatter at all?” I asked.

Crandall looked at me curiously. “Do you find something odd about that?”

“Yes,” I replied. “Why alert the CIA to the fact that they were coming after me? If they knew the campus so well, why not just sneak in and grab me in the middle of the night?”

Crandall turned to Erica and arched his brows again. “He’s smarter than you thought,” he said.

Erica shrugged. “He’s getting better.”

Crandall returned his attention to me. “You make a good point. But consider this: The campus was already crawling with agents. The enemy had a limited amount of time to get you, and they couldn’t be sure where you were at any given moment. But with the tip-off, they knew exactly where you’d be: Inside the security room.”

“That still doesn’t take care of all the agents,” I said. “Not unless the enemy
knew
there was going to be a diversion, and they couldn’t have possibly known Mike was coming here.
I
didn’t even know he was coming.”

As I spoke, however, something occurred to me. I didn’t do a very good job of hiding it. Crandall and Erica both sat forward.

“What is it?” the professor asked.

“Do you still have that Post-it note?” I asked Erica.

She withdrew it from her utility belt, still in the plastic evidence bag. “This is from the van they used to abduct Ben,” she informed Crandall.

I took it from her. There on the Post-it was the number 70,200. Exactly as I’d remembered. I’d simply needed to see it again to make sure my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me.

“They
did
know Mike was coming,” I said.

Erica sat down next to me. “How can you tell?”

It was the first time I’d known something that she hadn’t. I probably should have milked it, but I was in too big of a hurry to impress her. “It’s a time. Though, instead of writing it in hours and minutes, they wrote it in seconds. Probably to keep anyone from realizing it’s a time. Seventy thousand two hundred seconds after midnight is seven thirty in the evening.”

“Exactly the time your friend arrived on campus.” Crandall slapped the arm of his chair. “You’re positive about that?” He started to do the math on a piece of paper.

“No need for that,” Erica told him. “Ben’s cryptography skills might be fake, but his math skills are the real deal.”

Crandall set down his pencil. “So they plant the chatter and get the CIA to put you right where they want you. Then they tell your friend to come see you at exactly seven thirty to divert the CIA.”

“How?” I asked.

“Figure that out and you might just find our mole,” Erica said. “We need to talk to your pal.”

“Wait. Where
is
Mike?” Even as I asked it, I was angry I hadn’t thought of it long before. I’d been so wrapped up in my own plight that night, I’d completely forgotten that my best friend had experienced some terrifying things as well. The last I’d seen of Mike, he’d been staring down the barrel of fifty guns at once. Mike was no stranger to run-ins with authority, but this one still must have scared him stiff.

“Last I heard, he was incarcerated,” Crandall said.

“They put him in jail?” I asked, upset.

“No.” The professor raised a hand, signaling me to relax. “They’re only questioning him. But given the circumstances, I’d say it’ll take him quite some time to prove his innocence. For all we know, they’re still working on him.”

I shuddered, figuring that wouldn’t be fun for Mike at all. “And then what happens to him?”

“Probably a full-scale whitewash,” Erica said.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“They lie to him,” Crandall replied. “The most elaborate lie he’s ever encountered, to allay any suspicion he has about this place. They’ll tell him it really is a science academy, but it was being leased to the Marines for practice and he stumbled across their exercises . . . or there was an FBI sting operation
taking place . . . or who knows what. They’ll do whatever it takes to sell the story, even drag in the chairman of the armed forces in if they have to.”

“And if Mike doesn’t buy it?” I knew my best friend well. No one had less respect for authority than he did. I was beginning to think that was a pretty healthy belief system.

Crandall frowned. “Let’s just say it’s in his best interests to buy it.”

I sat forward, worried. “They’ll kill him?”

“No,” Crandall said. “The people who run the CIA might be incompetent, paranoid, and borderline insane, but they’re not psychotic. They’ll simply do whatever it takes to make him forget what he’s seen. There are several different methods, but none of them is a day at the beach.”

I slumped back into my chair, wishing I’d never heard of spy school. It was bad enough that I’d ended up in serious trouble, but at least I’d volunteered for service. Now my best friend had been drawn into danger simply because he wanted to take me to a party at Elizabeth Pasternak’s house. He’d tried to do something nice for me—and was suffering for it. I began to understand why Erica kept all human contact to a minimum; her family had been spies long enough for her to know that, if you got close to someone, they could get hurt.

“So the enemy is running circles around the CIA,” I
said, “And instead of doing something about it, they’re busy working over Mike.”

“Oh, it’s worse than that,” Crandall said. “They’re considering initiating Project Omega.”

I had never seen Erica look truly concerned about anything until that moment. She wheeled on Crandall, eyes wide. “Because of
this
? Why?”

“Because they’re scared,” Crandall told her.

“Hold on,” I interrupted. “What’s Omega?”

“The last-ditch, end-of-the-line program,” Erica said bitterly. “They shut down the academy.”

“They can’t do that!” I said. Given how upset I’d been at spy school a minute before, I was surprised by how much I hated the idea of it being closed. Maybe the place wasn’t for me, but without it, where was someone like Erica supposed to go? And how would I ever see her again?

“Sure they can,” Erica replied sourly. “One mole can corrupt decades of work. It doesn’t matter how good I am. If my name gets leaked, I’m useless as a spy. Same goes for everyone else here. So why even bother to keep the place open any longer? It’s just a waste of money. . . .”

“Now, now,” Crandall said reassuringly. “You’re acting like the decision has already been made.”

“Well, why wouldn’t they initiate Omega?” Erica asked. “The enemy has already shown they know this campus inside
and out. They kidnapped Ben out of the security room! How much more compromised could the place be?”

“I’ll admit, it looks bad,” Crandall said. Then he added pointedly, “However, the higher-ups aren’t meeting to discuss Omega until this afternoon. If some significant progress could be made in the mole hunt before then, maybe that’d color their thinking.”

“How significant?” I asked.

“We’d need to find the mole.” Erica turned to Crandall. “What time’s the meeting?”

“One o’clock,” the professor replied. “Right here, in the main conference room.”

“Where’s that?” I asked.

“In the Hale Building, next to the library,” Crandall told me.

I checked my watch. It was two thirty in the morning. We had fewer than twelve hours to catch a mole who’d outfoxed the entire CIA the night before. It didn’t seem possible.

Erica was undaunted, however. She was now revved up, determined to do anything she could to save the academy. “What’s our best lead?” she asked.

It took me a moment to realize she was asking
me
, not Crandall. I scrambled to make sense of everything that had happened in the last day. One name sprang to mind before all others. “Uh . . . Chip Schacter.”

“Chip?” Crandall laughed. “That boy’s a moron.”

“Or maybe he just wants us to
think
he is,” I said, which struck home with Crandall and silenced him quickly. “He wanted me to meet him a few hours ago.” I found the crumpled note in my pocket and showed it to the others:
Meet me in the librery tonight. Midnight. Your life depends on it.

Erica read it, then looked at me, surprised. “That’s Chip’s handwriting, all right. Why didn’t you mention this?”

“It sort of slipped my mind,” I replied. “What with being abducted by the enemy and all.”

“Any idea what this was about?” Erica asked.

“No,” I admitted.

Crandall set his teacup down with a sigh. “No offense, Benjamin, but this isn’t much of a lead. . . .”

“Chip’s connected to the last bomb that was under the school,” Erica said. “Either he planted it or he found it. That puts him closer to the plot than anyone else. And now he’s reaching out to Ben.”

“If this note is even from him,” Crandall cautioned. “Handwriting’s not hard to fake. This could be a wild-goose chase, designed to cost us valuable time.”

“There’s one other thing about Chip,” I said. “He’s dating Tina Cuevo.”

Erica and Crandall both wheeled on me, surprised by the information—and the fact that I knew it before they did.

“How do you know that?” Erica asked.

I started to answer, but Crandall suddenly put a finger to his lips, signaling me to be quiet.

In the ensuing silence I heard the distant sound of feet coming up the main stairwell. It was so faint, it was amazing Crandall had picked it up while we were talking.

Crandall flicked on his television. It appeared to be ancient, but it was actually linked to the campus security system. Crandall quickly found the camera feed from the stairs in the building. Six men were ascending, armed to the teeth.

“The enemy!” I gasped.

“Worse,” Crandall said. “The administration.” He spun toward us. “If they catch you, your investigation is over. Go! Find Chip!”

Erica already had the window open.

I followed her out it. After the warmth of Crandall’s apartment, the cold air hit me like a slap in the face. I leapt the one story to the ground.

They were waiting for us outside. The building was surrounded.

A dozen lights snapped on at once, blinding me. Dark shapes raced at me from the shadows. “Ripley!” one shouted. “Don’t run! We just want to make sure you’re all right!”

“Don’t listen to them!” Erica warned me as she leapt into action, a flurry of kicks and whirls. Several of her attackers
went down quickly, clutching various body parts and groaning in pain. But there were too many for her to save me, too.