“What is going on here?” he demanded, his accent decidedly German.
All faces turned to him. He was magnetic.
“Who are you?” asked Derph.
Artemis snorted. “Who am I? the little man asks. Did you not invite my master here from Berlin? My name is not important. All you need to know is that I represent Herr Ehrich Stern.”
“H–H–Herr Stern, of course,” stammered Derph. Ehrich Stern was a legend in the field of precious stones and how to dispose of them illegally. He also disposed of people who disappointed him. He had been invited to the tiara’s auction and was sitting in row three, as Artemis well knew.
“We come here to do business, and instead of professionalism we find some kind of dwarf feud.”
“There is no feud,” said Mulch, still playing the part of Sergei. “Just a little misunderstanding. We are deciding how to dispose of an unwelcome guest.”
Again, Artemis snorted. “There is only one way to dispose of unwanted guests. As a special favor, we will perform that service for you, for a discount on the tiara, of course.” He paused in disbelief, his eyes widening. “Tell me this is not she,” he said, picking the tiara off the ground where Holly had dropped it. “She lies in the dirt like some cluster of common stones. This truly is a circus.”
“Hey, take it easy,” said Mulch.
“And what is this?” demanded Artemis, pointing to Mulch’s helmet in the dirt.
“I dunno,” said Derph. “It’s an LEP … I mean, the intruder’s helmet. It’s her helmet.”
Artemis waggled a finger. “I think not, unless your tiny intruder has two heads. She is already wearing a helmet.”
Derph did the maths. “Hey, that’s right. So where did that helmet come from?”
Artemis shrugged. “I just got here, but I would guess that you have a traitor in your midst.”
The dwarfs turned, as one, toward Mulch.
“The mask!” growled Derph. “Take it off! Now!”
Mulch shot Artemis a look through the mask’s eyeholes. “Thanks a bunch.”
The dwarfs advanced in a semicircle, knives raised.
Artemis stepped in front of the group. “Halt, little men,” he said imperiously. “There is only one way to save this operation, and that is certainly not by staining the earth with blood. Leave these two to my bodyguard, and then we shall commence negotiations.”
Derph smelled a rat. “Wait a minute. How do we know you’re with Stern? You waltz in here just in time to save these two. It’s all a bit convenient if you ask me.”
“That’s why nobody asks you,” retorted Artemis. “Because you’re a dullard.”
Derph’s dagger glittered dangerously. “I’ve had it with you, kid. I say we get rid of all witnesses and move on.”
“Fine,” said Artemis. “This charade is beginning to bore me.” He raised his palm to his mouth. “Time for plan B.”
Outside the tent, Butler wrapped the tent’s mainstay around his wrist and pulled. He was a man of prodigious strength, and soon the metal pegs began to slide from the mud that held them. The canvas cracked, rippling and ripping. The dwarfs gaped at the billowing canvas.
“The sky is falling,” screamed a particularly dense one.
Holly took advantage of the sudden confusion, grabbing a stun grenade on her belt. She had seconds left before the dwarfs cut their losses and went subterranean. Once that happened it was all over. No one could catch a dwarf below ground. By the time Retrieval got here, the dwarfs would be miles away. The grenade was a strobe that sent out flashing light at such high frequency that too many messages were sent simultaneously to the watcher’s brain, shutting it down temporarily. Dwarfs were particularly susceptible to this kind of weapon, as they had a low light tolerance in the first place.
Artemis noticed the silver orb in Holly’s hand.
“Butler,” he said into his mike. “We need to get out of here! Now. Northeast corner.”
He grabbed Mulch’s collar, leading him backward. Overhead the canvas was falling, its descent cushioned by trapped air.
“We go,” screamed Derph. “We go now. Leave everything and dig.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” gasped Holly, her breath rasping along a bruised windpipe. She twisted the timer, rolling the grenade into the midst of the Significants. It was the perfect weapon against dwarfs. Shiny. No dwarf can resist anything shiny. Even Mulch was watching the glittering sphere, and would have kept watching until the flash, had Butler not slit a five-foot gash in the canvas and yanked the pair through the gap.
“Plan B,” he grunted. “Next time we pay more attention to the backup strategy.”
“Recriminations later,” said Artemis briskly. “If Holly is here, then backup won’t be far away. There must have been some kind of tracker on the helmet, something he hadn’t detected. Perhaps in one of the coatings. “Here’s the new plan. With the arrival of the LEP, we must split up now. I will write you a check for your share of the tiara. One point eight million euros, a fair black-market price.”
“A check? Are you joking?” objected Mulch. “How do I know I can trust you, Mud Boy?”
“Believe me,” said Artemis. “I am not to be trusted, generally. But we made a deal, and I don’t cheat my partners. You could, of course, wait here for the LEP to arrive and discover your miraculous recovery from the usually fatal affliction of death.”
Mulch snatched the offered check. “If this doesn’t clear, then I’m coming to Fowl Manor, and remember I know how to get in.” He noticed Butler’s angry glare. “Though obviously, I hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“It won’t. Trust me.”
Mulch unbuttoned his bum flap. “It’d better not.” He winked at Butler. And he was gone, below the earth in a flurry of dust, before the bodyguard could respond. It was just as well, really.
Artemis closed his fist around the blue diamond on the tiara’s crown. It was already loose in its setting. All he had to do now was leave. Simple. Let the LEP clean up their own mess. But even before he heard Holly’s voice, Artemis knew that it couldn’t be that easy. Nothing ever was.
“Don’t move, Artemis!” said the fairy captain. “I won’t hesitate to shoot you. In fact, I’m quite looking forward to it.”
Holly activated the Polaroid filter on her visor just before the stun grenade detonated. It was difficult to concentrate enough to perform even that simple operation. The canvas was flapping, the dwarfs were popping their bum flaps, and from the corner of her eye she noticed Fowl disappearing through a slit in the tent. He would not escape again. This time she would get a mind-wipe warrant and erase the fairy People from the Irish boy’s memory permanently.
She closed her eyes, in case any strobe light leaked through her visor, and waited for the pop. The flash, when it came, lit up the tent like a lampshade. Several seams of weak stitching were burned out, and rays of white light shot skyward like wartime searchlights. When she opened her eyes, the dwarfs were unconscious on the tent floor. One was the unfortunate Sergei, who had managed to climb from his tunnel just in time to get knocked out. Holly searched her belt for a sleeper-seeker hypodermic. The hypodermic contained small tracker beads loaded with a charged sedative. When the beads were injected into a fairy’s bloodstream, that fairy could be tracked anywhere in the world, and knocked out at will. It made retrieving rogue fairies a lot easier. Holly quickly fought her way through the folds of canvas, tagged all six dwarfs, then crawled to the flaps. Now Sergei and his band could be apprehended at any time
. This left her free to pursue Artemis Fowl. The tent was around her ears now, held up by pockets of trapped air. She had to get out, or it would completely collapse on her. Holly activated the mechanical wings on her back, creating her own little wind tunnel, and hovered through the flap, boots scraping the earth.
Fowl was leaving along with Butler.
“Don’t move, Artemis!” she yelled. “I won’t hesitate to shoot you. In fact, I’m quite looking forward to it.”
This was fighting talk, brimming with bravado and confidence—two things that were in short supply. But at least she sounded ready for a fight.
Artemis turned slowly. “Captain Short. You don’t look so well. Maybe you should get some medical attention.”
Holly knew she looked terrible. She could feel her fairy magic healing the bruises on her ribs, and her vision was still jumpy from stun-grenade overspill.
“I’m fine, Fowl. And even if I’m not, the computer in my helmet can fire this gun all on its own.”
Butler took a step to one side, splitting the target. He knew Holly would have to shoot him first.
“Don’t bother, Butler,” said Holly. “I can drop you and hunt the Mud Boy down in my own time.”
Artemis tutted. “Time is something you don’t have. The circus hands are already coming. In seconds they will be here, followed closely by the circus audience. Five hundred people all wondering what is going on here.”
“So what? I’ll be shielded.”
“So there is no way for you to take me in. And even if you could, I doubt that I have broken any fairy law. All I did was to steal a human tiara. Surely the LEP don’t get involved in human crime. I can’t be held responsible for fairy criminals.”
Holly struggled to keep her gun hand steady. Artemis was right, he hadn’t done anything to threaten the People. And the shouts from the circus folk were growing louder.
“So you see, Holly, you have no choice but to let me go.”
“And what about the other dwarf?”
“What dwarf?” said Artemis innocently. “The seventh dwarf. There were seven.”
Artemis counted on his fingers. “Six, I believe. Only six. Perhaps in all the excitement …”