Eoin Colfer - Artemis Fowl. The Opal Deception

‘I remember him,’ said Holly. ‘Boohn. Customs and Excise think he’s one of the goblins behind the B’wa Kell smuggling operation. There’s nothing noble about him.’

Foaly opened a folder on the plasma screen with his laser pointer.

‘Here’s the visitors’ list. Boohn checks in at seven fifty, Lower Elements Mean Time. At least I can show you that on video.’

A grainy screen showed a bulky goblin in the prison’s access corridor nervously licking his eyeballs, while the security laser scanned him. Once it was confirmed that Boohn wasn’t trying to smuggle anything in, the visitors’ door popped open.

Foaly scrolled down the list. ‘And look here. He checks out at eight fifteen.’

Boohn left swiftly, obviously uncomfortable in the facility. The parking-lot camera showed him reverting to all fours for the dash to his car.

Holly scanned the list carefully. ‘So you’re saying that Boohn checked out at eight fifteen?’

‘I just said that, didn’t I, Holly?’ replied Foaly testily. ‘I’ll say it again slowly. Eight fifteen.’

Holly snatched the laser pointer. ‘Well, if that’s true, how did he manage to check out again at eight twenty?’

It was true. Eight lines down on the list, Boohn’s name popped up again.

‘I saw that already. It’s a glitch,’ muttered Foaly, ‘that’s all. He couldn’t leave twice. It’s not possible. We get that sometimes, a bug, nothing more.’

‘Unless it wasn’t him the second time.’

The centaur folded his arms defensively. ‘Don’t you think I thought of that?

Everyone who enters or leaves Howler’s Peak is scanned a dozen times. We take at least eighty facial points of reference with each scan. If the computer says Boohn, then that’s who it was. There’s no way a goblin beat my system. They barely have enough brainpower to walk and talk at the same time.’

Holly used the pointer to review the entry video of Boohn. She enlarged his head, using a photo-manipulation program to sharpen the image.

‘What are you looking for?’ asked Root.

‘I don’t know, Commander. Something. Anything.’

It took a few minutes, but finally Holly got it. She knew immediately that she was right. Her intuition was buzzing like a swarm of bees at the base of her neck.

‘Look here,’ she said, enlarging Boohn’s brow. ‘A scale blister. This goblin is shedding.’

‘So?’ said Foaly grumpily.

Holly reopened Boohn’s exit file. ‘Now look. No blister.’

‘So he burst the blister. Big deal.’

‘No. It’s more than that. Going in, Boohn’s skin was almost grey. Now he’s bright green. He even has a camouflage pattern on his back.’

Foaly snorted. ‘A lot of good camouflage is in the city.’

‘What’s your point, Captain?’ asked Root, stubbing out his cigar.

‘Boohn shed his skin in the visitors’ room. So where’s the skin?’

There was silence for a long moment as the others absorbed the implications of this question.

‘Would it work?’ asked Root urgently.

Foaly was almost dumbstruck. ‘By the gods, I think it would.’

The centaur pulled out a keyboard, his thick fingers flying across the Gnommish letters. A new video box appeared on the screen. In this box, another goblin was leaving the room. It looked a lot like Boohn. A lot, but not exactly. Something wasn’t quite right.

Foaly zoomed in on the goblin’s head. At high magnification it was clear that the goblin’s skin was ill-fitting. Patches were missing altogether, and the goblin seemed to be holding folds together across his waist.

‘He did it. I can’t believe it.’

‘This was all planned,’ said Holly. ‘This was no opportunistic act. Boohn waits until he’s shedding. Then he visits his uncle and they peel off his skin. General Scalene puts on the skin and just walks out the front door, fooling all your scanners on the way.

When Boohn’s name shows up again, you think it’s a glitch. Simple, but completely ingenious.’

Foaly collapsed into a specially designed office chair. ‘This is incredible. Can goblins do that?’

‘Are you kidding?’ said Root. ‘A good goblin seamstress can peel a skin without a single tear. That’s what they make their clothes from, when they bother wearing any.’

‘I know that. I meant, could goblins think of this all on their own? I don’t think so.

We need to catch Scalene and find out who planned this.’

Foaly dialled a connection to the Koboi cam in the Argon Clinic. ‘I’m going to check Opal Koboi is still under. This sort of thing is just her style.’ A minute later, he swivelled to face Root. ‘Nope. Still in dreamland. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I’d hate to have Opal back in circulation, but at least we’d know what we were up against.’

A thought struck Holly, draining the blood from her face.

‘You don’t think it could be him, do you? It couldn’t be Artemis Fowl?’

‘Definitely not,’ said Foaly. ‘It’s not the Mud Boy. Impossible.’

Root wasn’t convinced. ‘I wouldn’t be throwing that word around so much if I

were you. Holly, as soon as we catch Scalene, I want you to sign out a surveillance pack and spend a couple of days on the Mud Boy’s trail. See what he’s up to. Just in case.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And you, Foaly. I’m authorizing a surveillance upgrade. Whatever you need. I want to hear every call Artemis makes and read every letter he sends.’

‘But, Julius. I supervised his mind wipe myself. It was a sweet job. I scooped out his fairy memories cleaner than a goblin sucking a snail out of its shell. If we were to turn up at Artemis’s front door dancing the cancan, he still wouldn’t remember us. It would take some kind of planted trigger to initiate even partial recall.’

Root did not appreciate being argued with. ‘One, don’t call me Julius. Two, do what I say, horsy boy, or I’ll have your budget slashed. And three, what in Frond’s name is the cancan?’

Foaly rolled his eyes. ‘Forget it. I’ll organize the upgrades.’

‘Wise move,’ said Root, plucking a vibrating phone from his belt. He listened for several seconds, grunting affirmatives into the speaker.

‘Forget Fowl for the moment,’ he said, closing the phone. ‘Trouble has located General Scalene. He’s in E37. Holly, you’re with me. Foaly, you follow us in the tech shuttle. Apparently the general wants to talk.’

Haven City was waking up for morning trade. Although to call it ‘morning’ was a bit misleading, as there was only artificial light this far underground. By human standards, Haven was barely more than a village, having fewer than ten thousand inhabitants. But in fairy terms, Haven was the largest metropolis since the original Atlantis, most of which lay buried beneath a three-storey shuttle dock in the new Atlantis.

Commander Root’s LEP cruiser cut through the rush-hour traffic, its magnetic field automatically shunting other vehicles out of the way into slots on the slow lane.

Root and Holly sat in the back, wishing the journey away. This situation was becoming stranger by the minute. First of all, Scalene escapes, and now his locater shows up and he wants to talk to Commander Root.

‘What do you make of this?’ asked Root eventually. One of the reasons he made such a fine commander was that he respected his officers’ opinions.

‘I don’t know. It could be a trap. Whatever happens, you can’t go in there alone.’

Root nodded. ‘I know. Even I am not that stubborn. Anyway, Trouble will probably have the situation secured by the time I get there. He doesn’t like waiting around for the brass to arrive. Like someone else I know, eh, Holly?’

Holly half grinned, half grimaced. She had been reprimanded more than once for ignoring the order to wait for reinforcements.

Root raised the soundproof barrier between them and the driver.

‘We need to talk, Holly. About the major thing.’

Holly looked her superior in the eyes. There was a touch of sadness in them.

‘I didn’t get it,’ she blurted, unable to hide her relief.

‘No. No, you did get it. Or you will. The official announcement is tomorrow. The first female major in Recon history. Quite an achievement.’

‘But, Commander, I don’t think that —’

Root silenced her with a wave of his finger. ‘I want to tell you something, Holly.

About my career. It’s actually a metaphor for jour career, so listen carefully and see if you can figure it out. Many years ago, when you were still wearing one-piece baby suits with padded backsides, I was a hotshot Recon jock. I loved the smell of fresh air. Every moment I spent in the moonlight was a golden moment.’

Holly had no trouble putting herself in the commander’s shoes. She felt exactly the same way about her own surface trips.

‘So I did my job as well as I could, a little bit too well as it happened. One day I went and got myself promoted.’

Root clamped a purifier globe around the end of a cigar so that the smell would not stink up the car. It was a rare gesture.

‘Major Julius Root. It was the last thing I wanted, so I marched into my commander’s office and told him so. I’m a field fairy, I said. I don’t want to sit behind a desk filling out e-forms. Believe it or not, I got quite agitated.’

Holly tried to look amazed, but couldn’t pull it off. The commander spent most of his time in an agitated, red-faced state, which explained his nickname, ‘Beetroot’.

‘But my commander said something that changed my mind. Do you want to know what that was?’

Root ploughed on with his story without waiting for an answer.

‘My commander said: “Julius, this promotion is not for you, it’s for the People.”’

Root raised one eyebrow. ‘Do you see what I’m getting at?’

Holly knew what he meant. It was the flaw in her argument.

Root placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘The People need good officers, Holly. They need fairies like you to protect them from the Mud Men. Would I prefer to be zipping around under the stars with the wind in my nostrils? Yes. Would I do as much good? No.’

Root paused to suck deeply on his cigar, and the glow illuminated the purifier globe. ‘You’re a good Recon officer, Holly, one of the best I’ve seen. A bit impulsive at times, not much respect for authority, but an intuitive officer nonetheless. I wouldn’t dream of taking you off the front lines if I didn’t think you could serve the LEP better below ground. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, Commander,’ said Holly glumly. He was right, even if her selfish side wasn’t ready to accept it just yet. At least she had the Fowl surveillance to look forward to, before her new job anchored her in the Lower Elements.

‘There is a perk to being a major,’ said Root. ‘Sometimes, just to relieve the boredom, you can give yourself an assignment. Something on the surface. In Hawaii maybe, or New Zealand. Look at Trouble Kelp. He’s a new breed of major, more hands-on. Maybe that’s what the LEP needs.’

Holly knew that the commander was trying to soften the blow. As soon as the major’s acorns were on her lapel, she wouldn’t get above ground as much as she did now. If she was lucky.

‘I’m putting my neck on the block here, Holly, recommending you for major. Your career so far has been eventful, to say the least. If you intend turning the promotion down, tell me now and I’ll withdraw your name.’

Last chance, thought Holly. Now or never.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I won’t turn it down. How could I? Who knows when the next Artemis Fowl will turn up?’