LITMIR.BIZ

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higher power in the helicopter?’ said Beckett.

      Jeronima smiled tightly. ‘Not exactly, niño. Let us simply say that I am not bound by the rules of your government.’

      ‘That’s very nice,’ said Myles. ‘But we are not donating today. Can you please call again when my parents are home?’

      ‘But I am not here for donations, Myles Fowl,’ said Jeronima. ‘I am here to rescue you.’

      Myles feigned surprise. ‘Rescue us, you say, Sister? But we are in the safest facility on Earth. In fact, I am disobeying my parents’ instructions by speaking with you. So, if you don’t mind …’

      He attempted to close the aforementioned door, but was thwarted by the nun’s left knee-high leather boot, which she had jammed between door and frame.

      ‘But I do mind, niño,’ she said, pushing the door open. ‘You are unsupervised minors under attack from an unknown assailant. It is my duty to escort you to a place of safety.’

      ‘I would like to be escorted in a helicopter, Myles,’ said Beckett. ‘Can we go? Can we, please?’

      ‘Sí, Myles,’ said Jeronima. ‘Can we go, please? Make your brother happy.’

      Myles raised a stiff finger and cried, ‘Not so fast!’

      It was undeniable that this was a touch melodramatic, but Myles felt justified in indulging his weakness as there was a rappelling nun at the front door. ‘How would you know we are under attack, Sister Jeronima?’

      ‘My organisation has eyes everywhere,’ said Jeronima with what Myles would come to know as her customary vagueness.

      ‘That sounds suspiciously illegal, Sister,’ said Myles, thinking he could stall here for several minutes while he winkled out more information about this mysterious ‘organisation’ they were supposed to simply hand themselves over to. ‘That sounds as though you are infringing on my rights, which is unusual for a woman of the cloth.’

      Jeronima crossed her arms. ‘I am unusual for a woman of the cloth. Also, I am a trauma nurse, and I once threw knives in the circo – that is to say, circus. But I am not important now. You are important, and it is true what they say about you, chico. You are the smart one.’

      ‘And I am the one who can climb!’ said Beckett, blowing his brother’s stalling plan to smithereens by vaulting into the helicopter’s rescue basket and scrambling up the winch cable faster than a macaque scaling a fruit tree.

      ‘And he is the one who can climb,’ said Sister Jeronima. ‘And most quickly too.’ She stepped back and opened the basket’s gate. ‘Shall we follow, chico?’

      Myles had little choice in the matter now that Beckett had taken the lead.

      ‘I suppose we should,’ he said, a little miffed that his fact-finding mission had been cut short. ‘But only if you desist with the fake endearments. Chico, indeed. I am eleven years old now and hardly a child.’

      ‘Very well, Myles Fowl,’ said Sister Jeronima. ‘From now on, you shall be tried as an adult.’

      The gate was already closed behind Myles when this comment registered. ‘Tried? I am to be tried?’

      Jeronima fake-laughed. ‘Oh, forgive me, that was – how do you say? – a slip of the tongue. I meant, of course, to say treated. You will be treated as an adult.’

      ‘Hmmm,’ said Myles, unconvinced. There was some form of trial ahead, he felt sure of it.

      Jeronima made a circling motion with her index finger and the winch was activated. As the basket rose into the night sky, Myles glanced downwards, appreciating the aerial view of Villa Éco, which, when seen from above, formed the shape of an upper-case F.

      F for Fowl.

      Still a little of the criminal mastermind in you, eh, Papa? he thought, and wondered how much of that particular characteristic there was in himself.

      However much there needs to be in order to keep Beckett safe, he decided.

      With a tap to the temple of his spectacles, Myles activated the infrared filter in his lenses and noticed that, across the bay, the sniper was packing up his gear.

      We were not the target, he realised now. A sniper with even one functioning eyeball could have easily picked us off on the beach. So, what were you after, Mr Beardy Man?

      He committed this puzzle to his subconscious, to be worked on in the background while he dealt with Sister Jeronima and the other mysterious player in their drama. A player who was now emerging from the seaweed silo – not that anyone but Myles would notice, for the creature, whatever it proved to be exactly, was more or less invisible.

      Invisible, thought the Fowl twin. How mysterious.

      And as his father often said: ‘A mystery is simply an advanced puzzle. Thunder was once a mystery. A wise man learns from the unknown by making it known.’

      And the wise boy, Father, thought Myles now. He magnified his view of the silo creature and saw that a single body part was visible even without the infrared. Its right ear, which was pointed. Somewhere in Myles’s brain, a light bulb flashed.

       A pointed ear.

      And then the pointy-eared creature began to pedal, and it lifted off after the ascending rescue basket.

      Beck was right, thought Myles, glancing upwards at his brother, who was already boarding the helicopter.

      It was indeed a fairy on an invisible bicycle.

      ‘D’Arvit,’ he blurted, shocked that Artemis’s stories had been, in fact, historical rather than fictional.

      Sister Jeronima mistook the blurt for a sneeze. ‘Bless you, chico,’ she said. ‘The night air is cool.’

      Myles did not bother to correct her, because an explanation would be difficult, considering that the word D’Arvit was a fairy swear word, according to Artemis’s fairy tales.

      Myles silently vowed not to use it again, at least not until he knew what it meant exactly.

      Lord Teddy Bleedham-Drye was surprised to find his mood brightening somewhat. This would have been a bombshell to anyone who knew him, as the duke was notorious for throwing royal tantrums when things did not go his way. He’d had an emotional hair trigger since childhood, when he would heave his toys from the pushchair if refused a treat. At family gatherings, his father often embarrassed him with the story of how five-year-old Teddy had hurled his wooden horse over the St George cliffs when the nanny served him lukewarm lemonade. And how Teddy had been so antisocial that it had become necessary to send him to Charterhouse boarding school at the age of five instead of seven, which was more traditional among those of the upper class. Now, one and a half centuries later, the duke’s general mood had not improved much, though he tended to take out his frustrations on other people’s property rather than his own and let his irritation fester in his stomach acid. Good form at all times.

      And so Lord Teddy was surprised to find himself whistling as he packed his gear.

       Whistling, Teddy old boy? Surely you ought to be sinking into your usual vengeful funk.

      But no, he was verging on the exuberant.

      And why would that be?

       It would be, Teddy old fellow, because there is something afoot here. I take a single shot and suddenly the army is swooping in for an extraction?

      The Fowls were an important family, but not that important.

      The island was obviously under the surveillance of some agency or other.

      

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