Three figures emerged from the Needle. Two large men in black and a smaller, nervous-looking individual. Mulch’s feet were treading air so fast that he seemed to be performing an Irish jig. Not that he had any hope of escaping. Pex and Chips had him tighter than two badgers fighting over a bone.
‘Here comes Mulch now. We better give him back-up. Just in case.’
Holly strapped on her mechanical harness, extending the wings with the touch of a button.
‘I’ll follow them from the air. You keep an eye on Artemis.’
Juliet ran a video lead from one of the spare helmets’ hand-held computers. Artemis’s point of view sprang to life on the screen.
‘Do you really think Mulch needs help?’ she asked.
Holly buzzed into invisibility. ‘Help? I’m just going along to make sure he doesn’t harm those two Mud Men.’
Inside the vault, Spiro was finished playing the gracious host.
‘Let me tell you a little story, Arty,’ he said, lovingly caressing the C Cube. ‘There was this Irish kid who thought he was ready for the big time. So he messed with a very serious businessman.’
Don’t call me Arty, thought Artemis. My father calls me Arty.
‘This businessman didn’t appreciate being messed with, so he messed back, and this kid is dragged kicking and screaming into the real world. So now this kid has to make a choice: does he tell the businessman what he needs to know, or does he put himself and his family in mortal danger? Well, Arty, which one is it?’
Spiro was making a serious mistake by toying with Artemis Fowl. It was difficult for adults to believe that this pale-faced thirteen-year-old could actually be a threat. Artemis had tried to take advantage of this by wearing casual clothes in place of his usual designer suit. He had also been practising an innocent, wide-eyed look on the jet, but wide-eyed was not how you wanted to look when one iris did not match the other.
Blunt prodded Artemis between the shoulder blades.
‘Mister Spiro asked you a question.’ His new teeth clicked as he talked.
‘I’m here, am I not?’ replied Artemis. ‘I’ll do whatever you wish.’
Spiro placed the Cube on a long steel table that ran down the centre of the vault.
‘What I wish is for you to disable your Eternity Code, and get this Cube working right now.’
Artemis wished that he could make himself perspire so that his anxiety would seem more authentic.
‘Right now? It’s not that simple.’
Spiro grabbed Artemis by the shoulders, staring him in the eye.
‘And why wouldn’t it be that simple? Just punch in the code word and away we go.’
Artemis averted his mismatched eyes, staring at the floor.
‘There is no straightforward code word. An Eternity Code is built to be irreversible. I have to reconstruct an entire language. It could take days.’
‘Don’t you have any notes?’
‘Yes. On disk. In Ireland. Your monkey wouldn’t let me bring anything in case it was booby-trapped.’
‘Can we access your hard drive online?’
‘Yes. But I only keep my notes on disk. We could fly back to Ireland. Eighteen hours, round trip.’
Spiro wouldn’t even consider that option. ‘Forget it. As long as I have you here, I’m in control. Who knows what kind of reception is waiting for me in Ireland? We do it here. As long as it takes.’
Artemis sighed. ‘Very well.’
Spiro replaced the Cube in its perspex case.
‘Get a good night’s sleep, kid, because tomorrow you’re going to peel this gizmo apart like an onion. And if you don’t, what’s about to happen to Mo Digence will happen to you.’
Artemis wasn’t unduly worried by that threat. He didn’t believe Mulch to be in any danger. In fact, if anyone was in trouble, it was those two musclemen Pex and Chips.
CHAPTER 9: GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE
VACANT LOT, MALTHOUSE INDUSTRIAL ESTATE, SOUTH CHICAGO
JON Spiro had not hired Pex and Chips for their debating skills. In the job interview they had only been set one task. A hundred applicants were handed a walnut and asked to smash it however they could. Only two succeeded. Pex had shouted at the walnut for a few minutes, then flattened it between his giant palms. Chips opted for a more controversial method. He placed the walnut on the table, grabbed his interviewer by the ponytail and used the man’s forehead to smash the nut. Both men were hired on the spot. They quickly established themselves as Arno Blunt’s most reliable lieutenants for in-house work. They were not allowed outside Chicago as this could involve map reading – something Pex and Chips were not very good at.
At the moment, Pex and Chips were bonding under a full moon while Mulch dug a dwarf-sized pit in the dry clay behind an abandoned cement factory.
‘You wanna guess why they call me Pex?’ asked Pex, flexing his chest muscles as a hint.
Chips opened a packet of the potato chips he was forever crunching.
‘I dunno. Is it, like, short for something?’
‘Like what?’
‘I dunno,’ said Chips. He used the phrase a lot. ‘Francis?’
This sounded dumb, even to Pex. ‘Francis? How could Pex be short for Francis?’