Goldwhiskers (25 page)

Oz heard them before he saw them. A soft rustling filled the air at first, like leaves snatched up in a puff of wind. He opened his eyes and leaned forward on the wall that encircled the balcony. The stone was cold beneath his hands.

The sound drew closer, and louder: the whispery flapping of many wings. Hope soared in Oz, and he craned his neck, smiling in anticipation as he tried to spot the rescue birds. The SAS had heard his call! The Summoner still worked after all these years!

He squinted at the flock of dark forms that suddenly materialized,
silhouetted against the full moon. As they drew close enough for him to make them out more clearly, his smile faded. Oz drew back against the cathedral wall with a gasp.

The Summoner had worked, all right. But Squeak was wrong about one thing. The SAS wasn't a squadron of swallows. The Summoner had not brought birds. It had brought bats. Thousands and thousands of bats.

Oz swallowed hard. He was shaking uncontrollably. ‘The name is Levinson. Oz Levinson,' he whispered aloud, trying not to hear the soft, leathery flapping of their wings. He had to go through with this if he wanted to save Glory. He held the Summoner aloft and managed to croak out the code signal, just as Squeak had taught him: ‘
Lux tenebras exstinguit!
'

The wind snatched away his words, and for a moment there was no response. Then he felt something brush against his face. He choked back a scream.

‘What issssss it?' he heard, or thought he heard. The voice was soft and sibilant, nearly as soft as the bats' own silent wings. ‘Issssss not moussssse.'

‘Issssss human,' came another voice, soft as a sigh. ‘Not to be trusssssted.'

Oz squeezed his eyes tightly shut. He couldn't look. He just couldn't.
James Bond would look
, he told himself. Agent 007 laughed in the face of danger. Oz cracked one eye open. He found himself face-to-furry-face with an upside-down bat. He quickly shut the eye again. Laugh? He felt more like crying. Every nerve in his body was screaming,
run
! But Oz thought again of Glory, and the orphans, and all the other mice in London who were depending on him. He stood his ground.

‘He knowsssss the sssssignal,' whispered a third voice.

‘No,' said the second voice. ‘Imposssster. Not to be trussssted.'

‘Wait!' called Oz in desperation, as he heard the bats begin to fly away. Mustering every ounce of courage he possessed, he opened both eyes and took a step forward. The bats hesitated, dipping and fluttering before him like dark moths against the moonlit sky. ‘The name is Levinson,' Oz announced firmly. ‘Oz Levinson. Friend of mice and fellow soldier against evil. Against rats.'
And sharks
, he almost added. He paused, unsure of what else he should say.

A single bat detached itself from the flock and
circled closer. He stared at Oz with fathomless, unblinking eyes. ‘Fellow sssssoldier against ratsssssss?' he whispered, his voice a low hiss.

Oz nodded.

‘Batsssss hate ratsssss.'

Oz nodded encouragingly. ‘That's right. And the mice are in trouble tonight. Just as they were a very long time ago. During the Blitz. The rats are holding some of them prisoner right now. Mouselings. They're planning to kill them, and to exterminate the rest of London. We need your help.'

‘Mousssssselings?'

Oz nodded.

‘Exxxxxxterminate?'

‘Yes,' said Oz soberly.

‘We haven't heard the sssssssummons in a very long time,' sighed the bat.

‘No,' agreed Oz. ‘Not since Sir Peregrine Inkwell.'

‘You knew Ssssssssir Peregrine?'

Oz shook his head. ‘I'm here under orders from his great-grandson, Sir Edmund Hazelnut-Cadbury. He's the head of MICE-6 now.'

The bat flitted away again and rejoined the others. Oz could hear them consulting among themselves as they flickered in the air above him,
their words like the whisper of dried leaves.

The three who had spoken detached themselves from the others and darted towards him again with such speed that he drew back in alarm. They swooped to a stop at eye level and clung by their claws, upside down, to the stone parapet overhead. The bats' small, eerie faces were hideous and wild, their mouths bristling with sharp, evil-looking fangs. Oz gulped.
How do I get myself into these things?
he wondered.

‘What are our ordersssssss?' whispered the leader.

‘It's a r-r-r-escue mission,' stuttered Oz. ‘Glory's been captured.'

‘Who issssss Glory?' the bat asked.

‘Glory Goldenleaf. She's a spy mouse,' Oz explained. ‘A very brave spy mouse, and one of my best friends in the whole world. She's been captured with one of her colleagues, Bubble Westminster, and a whole bunch of orphan mouselings. They need to be airlifted to safety.'

He reached into his pocket for the slip of paper with the coordinates to the Savoy Hotel and read them off. Then he held up the paper, trying not to flinch as a leathery wing brushed the back of his hand when one of the bats snatched it from him.

The three bats studied the note, then looked back at him and nodded their fierce little heads. ‘Yesssssss,' they whispered in unison. And without another word they rose into the air above St Paul's Cathedral and disappeared into the night.

‘Be brave, mouselings,' whispered Glory, as Big Ben chimed the quarter hour. The orphans clustered closely around her. Twist was glued to her side, and Farthing had clambered up on to her back again. He was sucking his tail furiously. At her side, Bubble Westminster stood his ground staunchly.

‘It's been an honour working with you, Glory,' Bubble said.

‘Likewise, Bubble. You're true blue.'

Standing shoulder to shoulder, the two spy mice agents faced the waiting rats. Several more minutes ticked by. Finally, the London Eye reached the height of its arc. As it did, it seemed to pause and hang
there in space. The rats closed in. For each step forward that Goldwhiskers, Dupont and Piccadilly took, the two spy mice and the throng of mouselings took one step back, until they teetered at the very brink of the glass observation car's sloping edge. Glory drew a deep breath, still determined to meet her end with the dignity befitting both a Goldenleaf and a member of the Spy Mice Agency.

‘Are you really going to go through with it, Goldwhiskers?' she said. ‘Send all these innocent mouselings to their deaths?'

‘Nobody double-crosses Double G,' snarled Goldwhiskers, who had completely reverted to his sewer-bred roots. ‘Especially not mouselings!'

‘They should call you Coldwhiskers,' said Glory bitterly. ‘You've got nothing but an ice cube for a heart.'

The big rat sneered and stepped closer. Glory edged back. The tiny flame of hope she had been tending inside sputtered and went out. She was out of time. It was too late. There was nothing more she could do.

Then Glory caught a flutter of something in the distance, out of the corner of her eye. Probably nothing. But she decided to stall for time, just in case.

‘Isn't it tradition for condemned prisoners to be granted a last request?' she asked.

Goldwhiskers's eyes narrowed. ‘Be quick about it, then,' he said.

‘I'd love to see the Koh-i-Noor one more time,' Glory replied.

Goldwhiskers regarded her shrewdly. ‘This had better not be a trick.'

Glory turned around to show that her paws were still bound. The big rat gave a curt nod and opened his velvet duffel bag. He reached in and drew out the gem. If possible, the diamond was even more beautiful in the moonlight. The moon's silver rays twinkled and danced across its luminous facets like starry lights on a Christmas tree. Mice and rats alike fell silent for a moment under the Koh-i-Noor's spell.

And then –

‘INCOMING!' screamed Roquefort Dupont, as thousands of bats dropped from the night sky. Leading them, astride her pigeon, was Squeak Savoy.

Instantly, all was chaos. The mouselings shrieked and scattered, even more terrified of the ferocious-looking bats than they were of their rat captors. They tumbled across the top of the glass observation car like furry marbles, and Goldwhiskers scrambled after them,
furiously trying to round them up. Dupont and Piccadilly swatted frantically at the dive-bombing bats, who nipped at the rats' heads and snouts like moths around a trio of flames.

Glory and Bubble instantly moved into back-to-back position, the emergency manoeuvre they'd learned in spy school, and untied each other's paws.

‘Get the credit card!' cried Squeak, glancing anxiously at Big Ben. ‘Code Red!'

Her urgent words fuelled her two colleagues to ever greater efforts and, the moment they were free, Glory and Bubble raced towards Goldwhiskers. He saw them coming and slashed at them with an enormous paw, sending them spinning away, tail over whiskers. Glory rolled to a stop right in front of Roquefort Dupont.

‘How convenient,' he said, and dived for her, dragging Fumble, who was still attached to his hind paw, with him. Glory rolled quickly to one side. Dupont missed her by a whisker. He lunged again. Glory rolled back the other way, but Dupont was too quick for her this time. He pounced, grabbing her with his sharp claws, and bared his fangs in a smile of triumph.

The smile quickly turned to a snarl of terror,
however, as behind him Fumble stood up. Glory's former colleague teetered on the edge of the observation car, shot Glory a cryptic glance and slowly toppled over the side.

Glory gasped.

‘NO!' screeched Dupont, as the lead slithered after Fumble, dragging him with it. He let go of Glory and scrabbled for a pawhold, but Fumble's weight was enough to tow him slowly, agonizingly, inch by inch, towards the edge. The rat's sharp claws scraped and clawed across the glass as he slid, emitting a hideous screech, like fingernails dragging across a blackboard.

Stilton Piccadilly saw him and rushed across the glass, swatting bats fiercely out of his way.

‘Grab my paw, Piccadilly!' screamed Dupont.

Instead, the head of London's rat forces reached out and yanked the Sovereign's Ring from round his rival's scruffy neck. ‘I think I'll grab this instead.'

‘DOUBLE-CROSSER!' howled Roquefort Dupont, his final words echoing as he vanished over the side.

Glory lay there for a moment in shock. What had just happened? Had Fumble slipped, or had he sacrificed himself in a bid to save her and the orphans?

‘Glory, I need that credit card
NOW
!' Squeak cried desperately. ‘No time to explain!'

All of her Silver Skateboard training kicked in as Glory responded to her colleague's urgent plea. No time to think about Fumble – she had to act. She scrambled up and raced towards Goldwhiskers.

Across from her, Bubble was bravely battling Stilton Piccadilly. Overhead, Glory saw members of the SAS plucking terrified orphans off the observation car one by one, while Goldwhiskers, who appeared to have come completely unhinged, swung at them with his gem-filled velvet pouch.

‘Those are MY mice!' he thundered. ‘MASTER's mouselings!' There was a loud
THWACK
as the pouch connected with a bat. Stunned, the creature dropped like a stone. Goldwhiskers whirled the pouch round his head and prepared to deliver the final blow.

Glory dived for him. ‘No, you don't, Goldwhiskers,' she cried, crunching down on his tail with her sharp little teeth.

The big rat yelped and swung round with a murderous glance. Before he could attack, however, a whole squadron of bats surrounded him. Grabbing him by his ears, whiskers, paws and tail, they lifted
him bodily into the air. He dangled there, howling in frustration.

‘I'll take that,' said Glory, plucking the velvet pouch from his grasp. ‘Diamonds are a mouse's best friend, remember?' She rummaged through the pouch's contents. ‘And credit cards aren't bad, either. Here, Squeak!' she called, holding up the card.