Spy Ski School (9 page)

“According to Ostby's
Manual of
Practical Undercover Work
, there are four steps to proper acquisition of information,” Zoe said, trying to cram her foot into a ski boot. “What are they?”

“Introduction, ingratiation, inquisition, and deflection,” I rattled off.

“Meaning . . . ?”

“Introduction is making the first connection with the
target. Ingratiation is making them want to be friends with you. Inquisition is subtly getting them to tell you what you need to know. And deflection is convincing them that you've never done any inquisition at all.”

Zoe beamed at me. “That's exactly right!”

At normal schools, kids quizzed each other before their exams to make sure they were prepared. We were prepping for our mission the exact same way, only instead of algebra or Shakespeare, we were reviewing the finer points of espionage. And the penalty for failure wasn't an F. It was death. After which, we would also get an F, posthumously. So I was a bit more nervous than I had been before tests back at normal school.

Zoe and I were at the ski rental, getting our equipment before beginning our mission. Erica, Chip, Jawa, and Warren were also there, but we had lost sight of them. The room was a sea of people. The week between Christmas and New Year's was the busiest of the ski season, and everyone appeared to have shown up at once. Our fellow renters stood in long, snaking lines, waiting for equipment, or clogged the benches, trying said equipment on. All around Zoe and me, people were desperately trying to wrestle their ski boots on. Many were losing the battle. I had managed to wedge my feet into mine, but it had taken five minutes to figure out how to do it.

As far as the mission was concerned, we were on our own. Cyrus and Alexander were busy tailing Leo Shang, who was helicopter skiing. His caravan of car-tanks had left the Arabelle a half hour earlier. Cyrus and Alexander had followed in a rental car, while Hank had remained at the Ski Haüs to coordinate the mission with CIA headquarters. That left the rest of us without any adult supervision for the day, which was both liberating and daunting.

The harried rental room employee who'd given us our boots stopped by to check on us. He was a young guy with a tan line where his ski goggles normally would have been, making him look kind of like a reverse raccoon. “How do those boots feel?” he asked me.

“Way too tight,” I replied. “Like they're two sizes too small.”

“Perfect,” the guy said. “That's exactly how you want them to feel.”

“Really?” I asked skeptically. “They're pretty painful.”

“It takes a little getting used to,” the guy told me. “You want them nice and snug, though.” Before I could protest any more, there was a clatter as Warren knocked over a dozen sets of rental skis across the room. “Nuts,” said the rental guy, and ran off.

“Snug?” I muttered, trying to wiggle my toes inside my boots. “When I fail to get Jessica Shang to give me the info,
maybe we can just use some ski boots and torture it out of her.” I probably wasn't supposed to say things like that out loud, but the room was so packed, it was like being in a train station at rush hour. I could barely hear myself over all the other voices.

Zoe gave me a hard stare. “What's wrong?”

“My feet hurt.”

“Besides that. You just said ‘
When
I fail.' Not ‘
If
   I fail.' ”

“Did I?”

“Yes. You're not going to fail, Ben. You know your stuff backward and forward. You haven't gotten one of my quiz questions wrong all morning.”

I sighed. “That doesn't necessarily mean I'll succeed. There's a big difference between knowing what I'm supposed to do and actually being able to do it.”

“You've succeeded against the enemy before.”

“This time is different.”

“Why?”

I hesitated for a moment, then owned up to it. There wasn't much point in keeping secrets at spy school; everyone would find them out soon enough anyhow. “This time I'm supposed to get a girl to like me. I don't know if I can do that.”

Zoe giggled.

“What's so funny?” I asked.

“You are. You're actually worried about getting a girl to like you? Last time you went on a mission, the bad girl totally fell for you. What was her name? Ashley Spritz?”

“Ashley
Sparks
,” I corrected. “And she didn't fall for me. She only liked me as a friend. Which didn't mean anything because there hadn't been anyone else for her to hang out with for the past year. She would have made friends with a baked potato.”

“You're an idiot,” Zoe told me. “She totally liked you. Like,
liked
you liked you. She invited you to go to Disney World with her, for Pete's sake! You don't invite someone to go to Disney World with you unless you're really into them.”

“Not necessarily,” I said. “I'd go to Disney World with you. But that doesn't mean I'm into you.”

Zoe stopped smiling, like I'd said something wrong. “C'mon,” she said coldly. “Let's go get our skis.” Then she clomped away in her ski boots.

“Wait up!” I called, then tried to run after her.

Running in ski boots was even more difficult than I expected. In addition to being exceptionally tight, the boots were also heavy and oddly balanced. I got exactly one step, then pitched forward and landed on top of two small children, knocking them flat. Just my luck, it turned out to be the same family I'd wiped out on the ice rink the day before. “You again!” the father snarled, while his kids started crying.
Several other adults glared at me accusingly. Behind them all, I caught a glimpse of Chip and Jawa, laughing hysterically.

“No hablo inglés,”
I said to the father. Then I hurried off before he could pound me, doing my best not to crush any other preschoolers.

I found Zoe at the ski counter, trying to act like she didn't know me in front of everyone else. I wasn't sure if this was because she was angry at me—or embarrassed to be seen with me after I'd just made a scene. “That was smooth,” she said under her breath.

I glanced around the rental area, examining all the other faces as carefully as I could.

“What are you looking for?” Zoe asked.

“Jessica Shang. If she saw me wipe out like that, it'll be a hundred times harder to win her over.”

“Relax,” Zoe told me. “She's not here. When you're as rich as Jessica Shang, you don't rent skis. Your daddy just buys you a pair. Heck, she probably has a different set for every day of the week. I got yours, by the way.” She pointed to a pair leaning against the counter next to hers. They were slightly shorter than I was, chipped and scarred from the abuse of a few hundred previous renters, and they were a disturbing fluorescent green.

“Do you have anything less bright?” I asked the girl behind the counter.

“You're
lucky we have anything left in your size, period,” she told me. “Besides, you want bright skis as a beginner. It makes them easier to find again after you wipe out.”

“You mean
if
he wipes out,” Zoe corrected.

“No. I mean
when
,” the ski girl said. “You're beginners. You'll wipe out. In fact, you'll wipe out a lot. And you'll wipe out big. Everyone does. That's skiing. Take your boots off.”

“Why?” I asked. “It just took me five minutes to get them on.”

“I need to adjust the bindings on the skis, and I need your boot for that. It's about a million times easier to do if your foot isn't still in it.”

Zoe and I both sat and pried our boots off. The ski girl adjusted our bindings and then we had to go through the agony of forcing the boots back on. After that, yet another ski rental employee gave us poles and helmets, and then we finally emerged from the shop.

If it had been hard to walk in ski boots to begin with, it was even harder to do while carrying a set of skis, which were extremely unwieldy. I felt like I might topple over at any moment.

Chip and Jawa were waiting for us outside, examining their rental gear with disdain.

“I miss my real skis,” Chip grumbled. “This stuff is garbage.”

“You're supposed to be a beginner,” Zoe pointed out. “Beginners don't have their own skis.”

“I'll bet Jessica Shang does,” Chip argued.

“We're not even supposed to know the name Jessica Shang,” Jawa hissed under his breath. “So stop talking about her before she overhears us and you blow the whole mission.”

“Jessica's not going to overhear you,” Erica said.

She had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. It was something she did all the time, and yet I had never gotten used to it. There was nothing magical about it; Erica simply moved with such stealth and grace that you never saw her coming unless she wanted you to. What made it all the more impressive was that, once I knew Erica was there, I found it almost impossible to take my eyes
off
her again. Not only was she beautiful, but she had a way of making everything around her look good too. Even things that weren't attractive. For example, her rental equipment. The rest of us, with our dented helmets and ill-fitting ski clothes, looked like we'd just been fired out of a cannon. Erica had the exact same stuff, but somehow looked like she should be on the runway at Fashion Week.

“Why won't she hear us?” Jawa asked, still keeping his voice low.

“Because she's way over at the ski school meeting area,” Erica explained.

Everyone looked that way.

“Don't
all look at once!” Erica snapped.

Everyone turned back to her at the same time, which was even less subtle.

“Try it again,” Erica growled. Although she didn't actually add “you idiots,” the tone of her voice indicated it was there. “Only this time, do it one at a time, and don't stare. Act like you're looking somewhere else.”

We all did our best to casually glance over toward the ski school meeting area, one at a time. It was across a snowy plaza, a little beyond the boarding area for the gondola.

There were hundreds of other skiers in the plaza, but it wasn't hard to pick Jessica Shang out among them. She was the only one surrounded by bodyguards. There were four of them. They were doing their best to blend into the crowd, wearing ski clothes and dopey woolen hats, but it didn't work. They were all so big that they stuck out like islands in the sea of humanity around them. Each had a set of skis the size of a small tree. The scary one with the blond mullet was with them. His stringy hair poked out from below his hat behind his ears.

I couldn't actually see Jessica. She was too short to make out in the crowd. But I could see the tip of a pink ski helmet between all the guards and figured it had to be hers.

“We'd better get over there,” Erica said. “Lessons start at oh-nine-hundred hours. We will all approach the target
separately. And remember, none of us are supposed to know each other. So don't act too familiar and blow our cover.”

“Know what else might blow our cover?” Chip asked. “Saying things like ‘oh-nine-hundred hours.' The only people who talk like that are spies and the guys in charge of launching rockets. Normal people say ‘nine o'clock.' ”

Erica fixed him with a stare sharp enough to bore holes through him. “I'm not a moron. When the time comes, trust me, I can be in character.”

“Sure you can,” Chip said dismissively.

I was about to tell Chip to back off—I'd seen Erica in character before, and she was staggeringly good at it—but before I could, Warren walked out of the rental shop. Or at least, he
tried
to walk out of it. The problem was, he was carrying his skis sideways across the front of his body, the way one might carry firewood, which didn't work very well when trying to go through a doorway. The tips of his skis caught on both sides of the doorframe, stopping Warren so abruptly that he clotheslined himself and collapsed to the ground.

Erica groaned in disgust and turned to me. “Ben, you head over first. We'll all give you a little time to get to know Jessica solo.”

“All right.” I took a deep breath to gather my nerve.

Zoe pulled me aside. “One last quiz. What's the best way to establish a rapport with a target?”

“Find an area of common interest.”

“Exactly! And that's already done for you: You're both beginner skiers. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Start with that and just be yourself. She'll like you. I promise.” She gave me a big smile that actually made me believe her. If she'd truly been upset with me before, it seemed to have passed.

I took another deep breath, grabbed my skis, and plunged into the crowd, stumbling through the mass of fellow skiers to the ski school meeting area. A dozen blue signs ringed it, each marked with the ages of the kids who were supposed to meet there:
5 AND UNDER, 6–7, 8–9,
and so on. There was a surprisingly large crowd around the sign marked
SKIERS 12–15
. Some seemed to have come with friends, or had made friends quickly, while others looked kind of lost and lonely. Despite this, no one had attempted to talk to Jessica Shang yet. The bodyguards surrounding her were too intimidating.

Jessica stood in the center of the four big men, wearing a stylish ski outfit and—as Zoe had predicted—holding a set of brand-new skis. She looked a bit self-conscious, like she was unhappy to be cut off from everyone else her age. I decided to play to that.

I wandered up to the bodyguard with the mullet and asked, “Do you know if this is where ski school for ages twelve to fifteen meets?”

“What's the matter?” Blond Mullet asked gruffly, nodding toward the blue sign. “Can't you read?”

“Oh,” I said. “I didn't see that. Sorry. It's my first day.”