Spyforce Revealed (11 page)

Max and Linden followed a squelching Steinberger into the secret elevator that would plunge them through many levels to Harrison's hidden office buried deep within the subterranean bowels of Spyforce. It was a secret elevator because not many people knew about it in the Force, and therefore the world, but also because it was concealed in a series of terracotta pots as big as phone boxes. Harrison had a real delight for terracotta pots, Steinberger had told them. Not all elevators were pots and not all pots were elevators, though, he went on to say, but a simple tap to the side of a pot to test if it was hollow would soon let you know.

Their terracotta elevator descended through the many secret levels of Spyforce as a back-tonormal Steinberger chatted on as he would have done in pre-Frond times.

When it came to a stop, a female voice melodiously hoped that they'd had an enjoyable journey and wished them a pleasant stay. Ducking their heads, they made their way out of the potplanted conveyor to Harrison's floor, leaving the elevator to slip off behind them. Max flicked a clump of dirt from her shoulder and Linden picked a worm from his jumper and returned it to the soil as they took in their surroundings. They were in a
plush and opulent foyer full of dark wooden tables and chairs that stood against the walls, reminding Max of starched waiters waiting for instructions. Lining the walls like a stiff-chinned guard of honour was a line of darkened paintings of suited men and women. They were like old portraits of queens, nobles and rich merchant's daughters, except that all these people had their faces blurred by a coloured, misty fog, like when someone's on the news they don't want you to see so they smudge their faces. And at the bottom of each painting were gold plaques with a series of numbers and letters.

‘These are paintings of the most accomplished agents who have ever been at Spyforce,' Steinberger intoned like he was leading a tour of Buckingham Palace. ‘It's our very own Hall of Fame. Of course we can't show their faces. If any of these agents were to be seen by the wrong eyes, there would be ghastly consequences.'

Max looked at the blurred faces as she followed Steinberger who was recounting tales of brave agents and their missions. She stopped in front of one of the paintings.

‘Linden?' she said softly. ‘Does this remind you of anybody?'

‘Yeah,' he replied seriously. ‘But I was in a
snowstorm at the time so I can't be too sure it's them.'

He smiled broadly.

‘Look at the ring.' Max ignored his joke as Linden leant in and saw a small ruby ring on the agent's hand.

‘Eleanor has a ring like that. So does my mum. My grandma gave identical ones to both of them before she died.'

‘Maybe it's your mum,' he quipped, knowing from all he'd heard about Max's mum there was more chance of a herd of elephants performing a ballet.

‘Sure, brainboy. If it is Eleanor, why hasn't she ever told us?'

‘Maybe because it's someone else.' Linden was finding it hard to picture Eleanor as a spy.

‘Maybe.' But Max wasn't convinced. It was a pretty unusual ring.

‘Coming?' Steinberger stood a little way ahead and stopped to let them catch up.

Their shoes sank into richly textured Turkish carpets — except Steinberger's which hadn't dried out yet so were still squishing — and took them past glass cabinets crammed with trophies, awards, medals, relics, letters of
gratitude and keys to various cities around the world.

Max came across a prominently positioned cabinet that held a blue silken cloth. Cradled in the cloth was an ornate, well-thumbed and important-looking book.

‘What's in this one?' she asked.

‘Aah.' Steinberger placed his hands in front of his face like he was about to pray. ‘That is the original Spyforce manual. Written by Harrison's father and grandfather themselves. It contains the very essence of the Force itself.'

Steinberger lost himself somewhere Max and Linden couldn't see.

‘But we must get on. So much time and so little … No wait, I've done that. Let's just go.'

A few steps later, they came to a large wooden door with intricate images of eagles and echidnas carved into it. The eagles made sense, but echidnas? Max was starting to think that sometimes it was better not to ask too many questions.

Steinberger pushed a clump of dampened hair across his forehead and patted down his soggy blue suit in a futile attempt at dewrinkling it. Neither worked to improve his appearance which had been thoroughly restyled by the Japanese pond.

He stared at his watch. The second hand ticked its way towards twelve.

Slowly.

Max and Linden wondered what they were waiting for.

‘Usually when people want to enter these things, they just knock,' Max offered.

‘Yes, of course.' Steinberger nodded, his eyes fixed firmly on the dawdling second hand. ‘We're almost there.'

‘Aah,' he aahed as the hand pointed to the twelve. ‘It's time.'

He knocked on the door. First two short knocks, then three longer ones, followed by two more quick ones.

‘Harrison will see you now. May the Force be with you.'

At that he erupted into a throaty, deep from-the-belly kind of laugh that jounced his tall, lanky body like he was being dangled at the end of a piece of elastic. A few seconds later, he calmed down and realised Max and Linden weren't amused.

‘It's a bit of a joke here at Spyforce,' he tried to explain but saw that his young companions were unmoved. ‘Need to attend to my next task. Good
luck,' he offered seriously and squelched off to his terracotta ride.

‘I guess we better go in,' said Max as she reached for the golden doorknob.

The door opened easily and quietly onto a darkened room with a high ceiling and long stained-glass windows. They could just barely make out the sunken leather lounges crowded with cushions, the plush, red velvet curtains and the fireplace with its twisted marble sides like bleached candy canes. Covering every measure of wall space were more portraits — their faces still obscured — certificates, awards, accolades, diplomas, the odd tennis racket and fishing rod, and shelves of books that looked like they were clinging to each other to stop from tumbling to the floor. Peppered throughout it all like out-of-place garden gnomes were all sizes and shapes of terracotta pots.

Max and Linden squinted through the dim light and spied a heavy oak desk in the centre of the room. They stepped over a collection of smaller-sized pots and came across a sign on the desk that said, ‘The boss'.

‘Looks like we've got the right place, but where's Harrison?' Linden squinted even harder.

He picked up a copy of Drusilla Knucklehead's
crime thriller
Dr Mullet and the Case of the Missing Toilet
. ‘I've read this one. Not one of her best. Woosed out on the ending.'

Max wasn't thinking about toilets, she was wondering where Harrison might be.

‘Maybe he was called away at the last minute on some really important business.'

Linden's head filled with other ideas. ‘Maybe he's foiling the plans of top criminals even as we speak!'

‘Maybe he's —' Max's theory was interrupted by a dull thud and a muffled grunt that came from under the desk. She put a finger against her lips in a shhh-like gesture and then, pressing her hands into the green leather top, she leant over the desk as far as she could.

There was a pause as her puzzled mind tried to catch the words in her head to describe what she was looking at.

‘Or maybe he's under the desk with a flowerpot stuck on his head.'

A stifled snort wriggled out of Linden's mouth.

‘Right. I can see it now. The head of Spyforce under the desk with his head —'

His sentence was cut short by the appearance of a flowerpot rising from underneath the desk.
Attached to the flowerpot were the shoulders and body of a man.

‘Effuff eee or eye aynge affearance uh ah ab im a mit of fubble,' said the flowerpot.

Max and Linden's faces screwed into puzzled stares. Was this some sort of code they were supposed to know? Were they also supposed to take a pot and put it on their heads as a sort of cone of silence to keep their meetings top secret? The arms beneath the pot pointed at the place where a head should be.

‘Oou oo eow ee?'

Linden decoded the miffled plant speak.

‘I think he's asking for our help.'

The pot nodded enthusiastically.

Max and Linden made their way around to the other side of the desk and grabbing hold of either side, tugged at the terracotta headpiece.

‘One … two … three …' and pulled hard.

The force of the tug pulled the pot away and flung Max and Linden across the room into a clumsily stacked rack of golf clubs.

‘Aahh.' The man rubbed his head and felt to see if his ears were still attached. ‘Not a bad job at all. I was conducting an investigation that went a bit wrong. Well done. I'm Harrison, by the way.
Don't feel you have to stand so far away. Come closer if you like. Never was one for normalities … I mean, formalities.'

Max and Linden untangled themselves from the clubs and sat down in two huge leather armchairs in front of Harrison's desk.

As Harrison said nothing.

And still nothing.

Linden was curious. ‘Are we waiting for something?'

‘Should be here any minute.'

More waiting. Then a knock at the door.

‘That'll be them now.' Harrison stood up and clapped his hands together in a grand slap. ‘Now that we're all here, we can sing … I mean, begin.'

Max and Linden turned in their chairs as someone came through the door behind them. As their eyes ran over the guests, two things happened. Max looked like someone who had just sucked on a lemon and Linden's crooked smile became even more crooked. He may have even blushed a little.

‘Ella!'

‘Linden! They didn't tell me you were going to be here.'

‘Me either.' He blushed even more. ‘I mean,
they didn't tell me about you being here. We got here by invisible jet.'

‘Invisible jet? I got here by a Sleek Machine. It's a cross between a motorbike and a glider and moves at an oscillation level that makes it and objects that touch it undetectable to the human eye, unless you wear these special goggles.' She pulled a pair of thick-lensed goggles from a jacket pocket. ‘So you zoom above the cars and buses, and through red lights and no one can stop you.'

Steinberger stepped behind a transfixed Linden, whose lopsided smile got shoved over by a look of amazement. ‘Awesome.'

Max watched it all and was trying to come to terms with the fact that her life had taken a disastrous turn for the worst.

‘Have you had the tour?' Linden couldn't talk fast enough.

‘Yeah. How about the Vibratron 5000?'

‘Felt like a fizz frenzy all over me.'

‘That's what I thought!'

‘Feels like one giant puke fest,' Max grumbled, unsure how long it'd be before she'd need a life-boat to save her from all the vomit-gush swirling around her.

‘Did you have any Slimy Toadstool?'

‘Two helpings,' Ella admitted.

‘How'd you go on the Wall of Goodness?'

‘Passed through without a hitch. It was like falling through a feather cloud.'

‘Of course it was,' Max sneered quietly. ‘Bet she'd slide straight through a Tunnel of Terror without a scratch too. And a Halo of Hellfire or a Fountain of Fear.'

‘Oh hello, Max. You're here too. How great!'

Finally Miss Perfect has decided I'm not invisible after all, Max thought. ‘Hi, Ella.' She didn't put too much effort into trying to muster any enthusiasm.

Steinberger had cleared a pile of terracotta pots from another chair for Ella as Harrison got the meeting under way.

‘I thought it was time to bring my three young flies … I mean, spies … together in London to officially say thank you for thwarting Mr Blue's evil plans to steal the Time and Space Machine.
^*

Linden and Ella smiled at each other as Max was thinking of ways to erase the last few minutes of her life and replace them with a different version of events altogether.

One that didn't involve Ella.

‘How is the machine going? Ben and Francis finished it yet?' Harrison asked hopefully.

Max hesitated. ‘There's been a small hitch. They're really busy at the moment and it's going to take a little longer than they thought.'

‘Never mind. We'll get in contact with him and see what help he needs from us. It will revolutionise the world once it's finished. As long as it stays out of Blue's hands the world will have everything to worry about … that is,
nothing
to worry about. We'd also like to offer you something. Steinberger?'

The tall, damp man stepped from behind the chairs and handed them three white scrolls tied with a red ribbon flecked with gold.

‘Max, would you like to read yours out cloud … I mean, loud?' Harrison invited her.

She unrolled the parchment and read the message. There was a soft click before some official brass band-type music played quietly in the background.