Fowl Manor, Ireland
“Now, explain yourself,” said Holly, once they had floated Butler safely to bed.
She sat on the great stairway’s bottom step. Generations of Fowls glared down at her from oil portraits. The LEP captain activated her helmet mike. “Foaly, record this, would you? I have a feeling we’re going to want to hear it again.”
“This entire incident began at a business meeting this afternoon,” began Artemis.
“Go on.”
“I was meeting Jon Spiro, an American industrialist.”
Holly heard keys being tapped in her ear. Undoubtedly, Foaly was running a background check on this Spiro character.
“Jon Spiro,” said the centaur, almost immediately. “A shady character, even by human standards. Mud Man security agencies have been trying to put this guy away for thirty years. His companies are ecodisasters. And that’s only the tip of the pyramid: industrial espionage, pollution, abduction, blackmail, Mob connections. You name it, he’s gotten away with it.”
“That’s the guy,” said Artemis. “I set up a rendezvous with Mr. Spiro.”
“What were you selling?” interrupted Foaly. “A man like Spiro doesn’t cross the Atlantic for tea and muffins.”
Artemis frowned. “I wasn’t actually selling him anything. But I did offer to suppress some revolutionary technology, for a price, of course.”
Foaly’s voice was cold in his ear. “What revolutionary technology?”
Artemis hesitated for a beat. “Do you remember those helmets Butler took from the retrieval squad?”
Holly groaned. “Oh, no.”
“I deactivated the helmets’ auto-destruct mechanisms and constructed a cube from the sensors and chips. The C Cube, a mini computer. It was a simple matter to install a fiber-optic blocker so you couldn’t take control of the Cube if you detected it.”
“You gave fairy technology to a man like Jon Spiro?”
“I quite obviously didn’t give it to him,” snapped Artemis. “He took it.”
Holly pointed a finger at the youth. “Don’t bother playing the victim, Artemis. It doesn’t suit you. What did you think? That Jon Spiro was going to walk away from technology that could make him the richest man on the face of the planet?”
“So it was your computer that pinged us?” said Foaly.
“Yes,” admitted Artemis. “Unintentionally. Spiro asked for a surveillance scan, and the Cube’s fairy circuits picked up LEP satellite beams.”
“Can’t we block any future probes?” asked the LEP captain.
“Haven’s deflectors will be useless against our own technology. Sooner or later, Spiro will find out about the People. And if that happens, I can’t see a man like him just allowing us to live in harmony.”
Holly glared pointedly at Artemis. “Remind you of anyone?”
“I am nothing like Jon Spiro,” objected the boy. “He’s a cold-blooded killer!”
“Give yourself a few years,” said Holly. “You’ll get there.”
Foaly sighed. Put Artemis Fowl and Holly Short together in a room, and sooner or later there was bound to be a fight.
“Okay, Holly,” said the centaur. “Let’s try to act like professionals. Step one is to call off the lockdown. Our next priority is to retrieve the Cube before Spiro can unlock its secrets.”
“We do have some time,” said Artemis. “The Cube is encrypted.”
“How encrypted?”
“I built an eternity code into its hard drive.”
“An eternity code,” said Foaly. “I’m impressed.”
“It wasn’t that difficult. I invented an entirely new base language, so Spiro will have no frame of reference.”
Holly was feeling a bit left out. “And how long will it take to crack this eternity code?”
Artemis couldn’t resist raising an eyebrow.
“Eternity,” he said, “in theory. But with Spiro’s resources, quite a bit less.”
Holly ignored the tone. “Okay, then, we’re safe. No need to go hunting Spiro if all he has is a box of useless circuits.”
“Far from useless,” countered Artemis. “The chip design alone will lead his research-and-development team in interesting directions. But you are right about one thing, Holly, there is no need to go hunting Spiro. Once he realizes that I am still alive, he will come looking for me. After all, I am the only one who can unlock the full potential of the C Cube.”
Holly dropped her head into her hands. “So, any moment now a team of hit men could come blasting in here, looking for the key to your eternity code. It’s at times like these, we could do with someone like Butler.”
Artemis plucked the wall phone from its cradle. “There’s more than one Butler in the family,” he said.
CHAPTER 4
RUNNING IN THE FAMILY
Sfax, Tunisia, North Africa