Spy Ski School (2 page)

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 harder 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 grand
father 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.

I broke open the seal and found several photographs inside. They were extremely grainy, as though they'd been taken from a long distance away with a telephoto lens. The first one was of a Chinese man with close-cropped hair wearing sunglasses.

“That is Leo Shang,” Cyrus told me. “He's one of the richest men in China. Worth billions.”

“What's he do?” I asked.

“We have no idea,” Cyrus admitted. “The truth is, we know almost nothing about him: where he grew up, how much education he has, what he owns. He simply appeared on the scene five years ago, loaded with cash.”

Erica shifted closer to me to get a better look at the photos. As usual, she smelled incredible, a combination of lilacs and gunpowder. She stared at the pictures in a way that
suggested she'd never seen them before, which was unusual. Normally, Erica knew everything way before I did. I wondered why Cyrus hadn't shared these with her yet.

“Anyone with an untraceable background and that much money is suspicious,” Cyrus continued. “So the CIA has tried to investigate him. However, the man has the tightest security I've ever come across. His organization is almost impossible to infiltrate. He keeps himself cloistered, interacting with only a few select people, each of whom is also extremely well protected. We've been trying to get an agent close to him for years with virtually no success.”

“Why?” Erica asked. It was only the second time she'd spoken since I'd entered the room. “If he's a Chinese criminal, that's China's problem, isn't it?”

“We have reason to believe his crimes are not merely limited to China,” Cyrus replied. “He seems to be plotting something in the United States. The last agent who investigated him reported he's working on a scheme known as Operation Golden Fist.”

“What's that?” I asked.

“We don't know,” Cyrus confessed. “Our agent was unable to learn any more before he was uncovered and the mission was terminated. However, in his final transmission to us, he did indicate suspicions that Golden Fist might be a Level Eleven threat.”

Erica stiffened slightly in response to this, which was her exceptionally calm way of expressing great concern. “Level Eleven?”

“What's that?” I asked.

“Well,” Erica replied, “a Level Ten threat would be extreme, causing the most chaos, danger, and destruction you can imagine. A Level Eleven threat is even worse.”

I gulped, unsettled by the thought of this.

“Given this, it's of critical importance that we determine what Golden Fist is,” Cyrus said. “That's where you kids come in.”

“Us?” I gasped. “How are we supposed to get close to this guy when the entire CIA hasn't been able to do it?”

“Because everyone has a chink in their armor,” Cyrus explained. “No man is an island. And Leo Shang's weakness is his daughter, Jessica.”

I shifted to the next photo. It was of a Chinese girl about my age. It was even grainier than the first photo, so bad that I could barely make out anything about her except that she had hair. She appeared to be either baking a pie or holding a cat.

“You want us to get close to her,” Erica said.

“Exactly!” Alexander cried. “Leo Shang might be suspicious of any
adult
who tries to get near him, but we doubt he'd ever suspect a teenager would be a CIA agent. And if
you can get close to Jessica, you might be able to get close to her father.”

“All right, I'll do it,” Erica said. “It won't be easy, but I can handle it. With a few hours of extensive makeup, I can pass myself off as Chinese. If you give me the proper identification, I can then insert myself as a new student at Jessica's school. . . .”

A flicker of unease passed between Cyrus and Alexander, as though there was a subject both of them were afraid to broach. Finally, Cyrus seemed to realize he would have to do it. He cleared his throat and said, “Erica,
you're
not the one we're assigning to get close to Jessica.”

Erica's eyes narrowed angrily. “
Ben
is the primary agent on this? You must be joking.”

Cyrus signaled her to calm down. “Sweetheart, the objective here is to befriend Jessica. And the key to making friends with someone is actually being, well . . . friendly. You have a lot of wonderful qualities, but being nice to other people isn't one of them.”

“Other people are usually idiots,” Erica muttered.

“See what I mean?” Cyrus asked. “That attitude is exactly what I'm talking about. Now, when it comes to espionage, I know you have tremendous talents, while Ben here doesn't have many at all. . . .”

“Hey!” I said.

“But he
is
good at making friends,” Cyrus went on.
“People like him. And that's nothing to sneeze at. Which is why he's going to be the primary agent on this operation, while you'll be his main handler.”

“He was the primary agent
last
operation!” Erica snapped. “And I was his handler then! He's barely had any training, while I've been studying for this since I was a baby!”