Spy School by Stuart Gibbs
“How long have you been doing it?” I asked. “Were you already a plant when you started here?”
“No. Remember when I said I used to be just like you, but then someone showed me the light? That was my recruiter. A very successful double agent in the CIA. He turned me around this time last year.”
“Who do you work for?” I demanded. “The Saudis? The Russians? Jihadists?”
“Better,” Murray replied proudly. “You know how America is now outsourcing its peacekeeping, hiring independent contractors to handle part of it? Well, the bad guys are doing the same thing.”
I took a step back, stunned. “The bad guys are outsourcing evil?”
“Well, we don’t refer to it as ‘evil’ per se, but yes. I work for an international consortium of independent agents who cause chaos and mayhem for a price. A very good price. We’re called SPYDER.”
“Why?”
“’Cause it sounds cool. And frankly, calling ourselves ‘an international consortium of independent agents who cause chaos and mayhem for a price’ is a mouthful.”
I was shocked by how blasé he seemed about everything. It was as though he were discussing an after-school social club rather than a criminal organization that had enlisted him to plot the deaths of dozens of people. “Do you even know who contracted you to do this?” I asked.
Murray shrugged again. “What’s it matter, as long as the checks clear? Now, I know what you’re thinking: I’m a callous and selfish jerk. Well, it’s true. I used to be a Fleming like you, only wanting to do good in the world. But then I learned that, even if you always want to do the right thing, it doesn’t mean the people you’re working for do. The fact is, nobody’s good. I mean, yeah, a couple people are . . . but organizations aren’t. Governments aren’t. Look at good old America, bastion of democracy and freedom, right? Except for all the coups we’ve funded in the third world, the useless wars we’ve waged, and the environmental degradation we’ve caused. Look at this academy itself. How has this place treated you? It’s used you as bait. Lied to you from day one. Made you a pawn. Hung you out as a target for the enemy . . .”
“But you’re the enemy!” I protested.
“And we never killed you, even when we had the chance,” Murray said. “Now, think about how much better we’ll treat you when you work for us. Know what you’ll make as a CIA agent, traipsing around third world cesspits, doing the dirty work for politicians? Diddly-squat. SPYDER, on the other hand, pays very well. And it’s all under the table, totally tax-free. Most of our employees retire as multimillionaires before they’re forty. Of course, you have to fake your own death first to throw everyone off your trail, but then you can spend the rest of your life in luxury on a tropical island. How’s that sound?”
“Pretty good,” I admitted. I wasn’t faking that part. Except for the evil bits, Murray had a lot of valid selling points. “How would I fit in?”
“Oh, this is the perfect time to join up,” Murray said. “Most double agents start on the ground floor, like I had to, working as a mole in spy school. But after today, once we behead every espionage organization simultaneously, the American spy complex is going to be in chaos. They won’t know which end is up for months! And SPYDER has highly placed operatives in positions of power all through the government who’ll have even more power after today. We could swing you internships at the CIA, the FBI, or the Pentagon, all with access to highly classified and sensitive material. Or get you a summer job as a page in the Capitol. Or, dare I say, the White House. And from there, who knows how high you can go? SPYDER’s been talking about getting a double agent president in office for some time now. Maybe it could be you. The world can be your oyster, Ben. All you have to do is say yes.”
Murray lowered his gun slightly and looked at me expectantly.
I carefully thought over everything he’d said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Really?” Murray looked thrilled.
“Really,” I repeated. “You’re right. This place has treated me like garbage.” I wasn’t really interested in SPYDER; I was only faking it to get Murray to drop his guard. But the frustrations I had with spy school were genuine. I could barely contain them. “They brought me in as bait, knowing I could get killed, and didn’t even have the decency to tell me. I’ve been set up, humiliated, bullied, locked in the Box, and attacked by ninjas. They let me get captured, and then—when I escaped—they acted like I was the bad guy. If this is any indication of what my life is going to be like when I’m a real spy, it stinks on ice. So let’s do this double agent thing. Where do I sign up?”
Murray broke into a big smile. “You have made a very good choice, my friend. C’mon. Let’s grab ourselves a sundae and watch the fireworks.” He turned his back on me and started toward the door.
I swung the mop handle at the back of his head.
The whole time we’d been in the furnace room, I’d been hoping that, at some point, Erica would suddenly snap to her feet behind Murray’s back—revealing that she’d only been pretending to be unconscious—and take him out. But she hadn’t. Which left me to take care of things and I wasn’t going to get a better opportunity than this.
Unfortunately, Murray was onto me; he’d only been faking his excitement to see if I was faking mine. Now he dodged as I swung. The mop handle missed his skull by a fraction of an inch.
I staggered off-balance, like a baseball player who had whiffed at a fastball, and when I regained my footing, Murray was aiming both a gun and a look of betrayal at me.
“I can’t believe you,” he said. “You lied to me!”
“All you’ve done is lie to me!” I shot back.
“That was business,” Murray spat. “It wasn’t personal. I just gave you the opportunity of a lifetime—and this is how you thank me? You are such a Fleming.”
“Better that than a double agent,” I shot back.
“At least I’m going to be a live double agent,” Murray sneered. “And after today everyone will think you’re a dead one. You just made the worst decision of what is about to be your very short life.”
Keeping his gun trained on me, he pressed a button on the alarm clock, starting the timer at five minutes. Then he stormed out the door and slammed it shut behind him, locking me and Erica inside the room with a ticking bomb.
BOMB DEFUSION
Nathan Hale Administration Building
Subbasement Level 2
February 10
1315 hours
The first time you find yourself locked in a room with a ticking bomb, a lot of thoughts go through your mind.
And a lot of fluid threatens to go through your bladder.
Which means one of the primary thoughts you have is: Please don’t let me wet myself.
Dying is bad enough, but leaving a corpse with a big damp spot on the pants is just plain embarrassing.
I tried to ignore the urge to pee and deal with the crisis at hand. My first—and only—plan was to rouse Erica; she’d probably been defusing bombs since she was three. I ran to her side and shook her gently, and when that didn’t work, I shook her a lot harder. Then I shouted things like, “Erica! If you don’t wake up now, we are going to die!” Despite this, she stubbornly remained unconscious.
So I left her in the corner and ran over to examine the bomb. In the movies bombs always seem to be attached to only two wires, a green one and a red one. If you yank the correct one, the bomb doesn’t detonate, whereas if you yank the wrong one, it does. Still, that was fifty-fifty—considerably better than my chances of survival if I did nothing.
Unfortunately, a real-life bomb turned out to be far more complicated. There were hundreds of wires snaking about the C4 explosive, in hues ranging from sea green to magenta to cerulean blue. Knowing Murray, I guessed most of them probably didn’t do anything; he’d only included them to make defusing the bomb maddeningly complex. I had no idea where to even begin.
So I decided to try running away instead. True, this would allow
The clock now said there were ninety seconds left. I’d squandered three and a half minutes and hadn’t made a bit of progress.
Panic set in. I had no idea how to defuse a bomb and no ability to contact anyone who did. And I was quickly running out of time.
I struggled to calm myself. Losing control of myself—or my bladder—wasn’t going to help anything. I thought back over my weeks at spy school to see if I could recall anything that would be useful in this situation, but nothing came to mind.
Until I thought about the very last conversation I’d had.
Somewhere in there, Murray had said something strange. Something that didn’t quite make sense. I struggled to remember it.
The clock showed only forty seconds left until detonation.
In a flash the comment came to me. It was virtually the last thing Murray had said before storming out the door. At least I’m going to be a live double agent. And after today everyone will think you’re a dead one.
What had he meant by that? I wondered. Why would everyone think I was a double agent?
The clock now showed only thirty seconds.
The clock!
I ran back to the bomb to inspect it again. I’d been so focused on the wiring before, I hadn’t paid any attention to the timer itself. But now I saw what Murray was talking about.
He’d used my own clock to make the timer.
It was another insidious move on his part. Not only did he plan to kill me, but he planned to frame me as well. After the bomb went off, the government would bring in a Crime Scene Investigation squad to pick over every single piece of debris, no matter how small. And somewhere in the midst of that, they’d eventually find the charred and twisted remains of my clock, which would tie the bomb to me. Once again, Murray would divert attention from himself and make someone else look like the bad guy. Then he’d probably go right back to business as usual.
But there was one thing Murray hadn’t counted on. My clock was a piece of junk.
It can’t be that simple to stop the bomb, I thought. And yet there was only one thing I could come up with.
There were ten seconds left.
I smacked the clock with an open palm.
It froze at 00:07.
I spent the next seven seconds in agony, fearing that the timer didn’t have anything to do with the bomb at all and that I’d be blown sky-high anyhow.
I wasn’t.
The bomb didn’t detonate.
“What’s going on?”
I spun around to find Erica sitting up, groggily clutching her head.
“Now you’re conscious?” I asked. “You couldn’t have come to five minutes ago?”
Erica took in her surroundings and realized what had happened. In an instant she was up on her feet and down to business. “You stopped the bomb?” she asked.
“I think so.”
“How?”
“I stopped the timer,” I said, trying to sound like it was no big deal.
Erica looked it over, then turned to me, impressed. “Nice work. Although the bomb’s still live.”
“Do you know how to defuse it?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said. “I’ve been doing this since I was three.”
“I guessed as much,” I told her.
Erica quickly went to work, removing a pair of wire snippers from her utility belt, inspecting the wires that fed into the timer, tracing them to where they connected to the bomb, and selecting the proper ones to clip.
I stood back to give her room. “How’d you end up down here?”
“I was looking over Chip’s evidence against Tina while I was talking to you.” Erica snipped an aquamarine wire in two. “But it didn’t quite add up, like someone had faked it to make Tina look bad. And then I started thinking, what was the point of putting a bomb in the tunnels anyhow? There’s nothing down here really worth destroying . . . although if you built a big enough bomb, like this bad boy here, you could take out the entire building above it.” She snipped two more wires, eggshell and crimson. “And the moment I thought that, I realized there wasn’t a better target than the Omega conference. So I came down here to see what I could find. Unfortunately, Murray got the jump on me. I was a little distracted by that conversation you and your pal were having about me.”
I felt my ears turn red. “Why didn’t you tell me what you were doing? I could’ve helped.”
“Guess I just got cocky. You know me and my hero complex.” Erica sliced through a tangle of fuchsia wires, then heaved a sigh of relief. “There we go. Bomb’s not live anymore.” To prove her point, she patted the C4.
I cringed reflexively, but Erica was right. Without the charge connected to it, it was as dangerous as Play-Doh.
Erica ripped off a handful and started toward the door.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“You want to get out of here or not?” She jammed the explosive into the crack around the dead bolt, backed across the room, and lifted her pant leg to reveal a holster strapped to her leg.
I stared at the gun nestled in it. “That would’ve been good to know about when Murray was here.”
“Why? Did he try to kill you?”
“Uh . . . no. He offered me a job.”
Erica turned to me, surprised. “That’s interesting.” Then she pointed behind the furnace. “You might want to take cover.”
I did. She crowded in next to me and shot the C4 around the dead bolt.
There was an explosion. When I peeked out from behind the furnace again, the door was hanging open, a hole the size of a cannonball where the lock had been.
“C’mon,” Erica said, racing into the hall. “Before Murray escapes.”
I followed right on her heels. “You mean, you want my help?”
“I’d say you’ve proven yourself today.” Erica snapped a radio out of her pocket—something else it would have been nice to know about earlier—and spoke into it. “Dad, it’s me. There’s a bomb in the furnace room under the library. . . . Whoa, don’t freak out. It’s been neutralized. But someone needs to get down there to remove it. Ben and I are on Subbasement Level Two in pursuit of the mole. His name’s Murray Hill. . . . No, I didn’t suspect him. . . . Because I didn’t, that’s why. This is not the time to discuss my analysis skills. I’m hanging up now.” She flipped off the radio and gave an exasperated sigh. “Parents. Don’t get me started.”
“Any idea where Murray is?” I asked.
“Not exactly. Though I’m betting he’s still on campus. A good mole wouldn’t flee before the bomb goes off—that’d look suspicious. But our guy now knows something’s wrong. The bomb didn’t detonate, which means you and I are still alive—and we know who he is. Now he has to run. But he’s only known that for . . .” Erica checked her watch.
“Three minutes and thirteen seconds, “ I said.
“Right. So we only need to check the cameras.” We arrived at the security room from which I’d been kidnapped the day before. The door was still off its hinges. A construction crew was currently repairing it. Erica swung through the gaping hole where the door had been and froze in her tracks. “Nuts.”
The security system was down. Every monitor was black. One of the agents who controlled it was frantically leafing through the user’s manual. The other was on hold with tech support.
“What happened here?” Erica demanded.
“It just went down,” the agent with the manual said.
“About three minutes and fifteen seconds ago?” I asked.
The surprise on her face was all the answer we needed.
“Murray,” Erica and I said at the same time.
Erica kicked a trash can angrily. “This campus is two hundred ninety squ
“Not necessarily,” I said. “You have a phone on you?”
APPREHENSION
Academy Training Grounds
February 10
1340 hours
One of the advantages of being gifted with mathematics is that you never forget a phone number. I called Zoe first, because she always knew everything that was happening on campus. She answered on the third ring. “Hello?” It was lunchtime, and I could hear the usual cacophony of the mess hall around her.
“Zoe, it’s Ben.”
“Smokescreen! Where have you been? You missed an awesome psychological warfare lecture today.”
“Have you seen Murray in the last few minutes?”
Erica led me up a flight of stairs and through a secret doorway to emerge from behind a rack of guns in the armory. Greg Hauser, who worked at the weaponry checkout desk, snapped awake and tried to look like he hadn’t been napping on the job, even though there was a strand of drool hanging from his lip.
“Why’re you looking for Murray?” Zoe asked.
“Because he’s a mole!” I told her.
“Washout? No way. He’s way too lazy.”
“It’s a front. He just tried to blow up the Hale Building and now he’s on the run. Do you know where he is or not?”
“I haven’t seen him, but hold on.” I heard Zoe shout at the top of her lungs, “Has anyone seen Murray?” Someone shouted a response, and then Zoe got back on the phone. “Blackbelt says she saw Murray leaving Bushnell Hall two minutes ago, heading toward the training grounds.”
That made sense. The grounds were the opposite direction from the main gate, which had the highest security. Murray was probably looking to sneak through the woods and go over the wall.
“Training grounds,” I told Erica.
Erica had already grabbed two M16 rifles off the rack. She tossed one to me along with two extra clips of ammunition. “Let’s go.”