“Very well, troops,” he said with forced joviality. “Let’s move it out, as an old friend of mine would say. We have a lemur to catch.”
“What about my gold?” asked Mulch.
“I shall put this as simply as possible. No lemur, no gold.”
Mulch tapped his lips with eight fingers, and his beard hairs vibrated like the tendrils of a sea anemone. Thinking.
“How much is stupendous, exactly, in bucket terms?”
“How many buckets do you have?”
Mulch took this as a serious question. “I have a lot of buckets. Most of them are full of stuff, though. I could empty them, I suppose.”
Artemis almost gnashed his teeth. “It was a rhetorical question. A lot of buckets. As many as you like.”
“If you want me to go any farther down this monkey road, I need some kind of down payment. A good-faith deposit.”
Artemis slapped his empty pockets. He had nothing.
Holly straightened her silver wig. “I have something for you, Mulch Diggums. Something better than a stupendous amount of gold. Six numbers, which I will reveal when we get there.”
“Get where?” asked Mulch, who suspected that Holly was being melodramatic.
“The LEP equipment lockup at Tara.”
Mulch’s eyes glowed with dreams of sky-skis and dive bubbles, laser cubes and fat vacuums. The motherload. He’d been trying to crack an LEP lockup for years.
“I can have anything I want?”
“Whatever you can get onto a hovertrolley. One trolley.”
Mulch spat a marbled blob of phlegm into his palm.
“Shake on it,” he said.
Artemis and Holly looked at each other.
“It’s your lockup,” said Artemis, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “It’s your mission,” countered Holly. “I don’t know the combination.” And then the trump. “We’re here for your mother.” Artemis smiled ruefully. “You, Captain Short, are getting as bad as me,” he said, and sealed the deal with a sopping handshake.
CHAPTER 9
THE FROG PRINCE
The Fowl Lear Jet, Over Belgium
Young Artemis made a video call from his PowerBook to the ancient town of Fez in Morocco. Even as he waited for the connection, Artemis silently fumed that it was necessary to make this intercontinental trip at all. Even Casablanca would have been more convenient. Morocco was hot enough without having to drive cross-country to Fez.
On screen a window popped open, barely containing the huge head of Dr. Damon Kronski, one of the most hated men in the world, but revered, too, in certain circles. Damon Kronski was the current president of the Extinctionists organization. Or as Kronski said in his most notorious interview: The Extinctionists are not just an organization. We are a religion. Not a statement that endeared him to the peace-loving churches of the world.
The interview had run for months on Internet news sites and was sampled every time the Extinctionists made the headlines. Artemis had viewed it himself that very morning and was repulsed by the man he was about to do business with.
I am swimming with sharks, he realized. And I am prepared to become one of them.
Damon Kronski was an enormous man, whose head began its slope into his shoulders just below the ears. Kronski’s skin was translucent, redhead white with a scattershot of penny freckles, and he wore violet sunglasses that were clamped in place by the folds of his brow and cheeks. His smile was broad, shining, and insincere.
“Little Ah-temis Fowl,” he said with a pronounced New Orleans drawl. “You find your daddy yet?”
Artemis gripped the armrest of his chair, squeezing dents in the leather, but his smile was as shiny and fake as Kronski’s. “No. Not yet.”
“Well now, that’s a pity. Anything I can do to help, you be sure to let your uncle Damon know.”
Artemis wondered if Kronski’s amiable uncle act would fool a drunken half-wit. Perhaps it was not supposed to.
“Thank you for the offer. In a few hours we may be able to help each other.”
Kronski clapped his hands delightedly. “You have located my silky sifaka.”
“I have. Quite a specimen. Male. Three years old. Four feet in length from head to tail. Easily worth a hundred thousand.”
Kronski feigned surprise. “A hundred? Did we really say a hundred thousand euros?”
There was steel in Artemis’s eyes. “You know we did, Doctor. Plus expenses. Jet fuel is not cheap, as you are aware. I would like to hear you confirm it, or I will turn this plane around.”
Kronski leaned close to the camera, his face ballooning in the screen.
“I’m generally a good judge of character, Ah-temis,” he said. “I know what people are capable of. But you, I have no idea what you might do. I think it’s because you haven’t reached your limit yet.” Kronski leaned back in his chair, the leather creaking under his weight. “So, very well. One hundred thousand euros, as we agreed. But a word of warning . . .”
“Ye-es?” said Artemis, stretching the word to two syllables, in the New Orleans fashion, to demonstrate his lack of awe.
“You lose my lemur, my little silky, then you’d better be ready to cover my expenses. The trial is all set up, and my people don’t like to be disappointed.”
The word expenses sounded a lot more sinister when Kronski used it.
“Don’t worry,” snapped Artemis. “You will get your lemur. Just have my money ready.”
Kronski spread his arms wide. “I’ve got rivers of gold here, Ah-temis. I’ve got mountains of diamonds. The only thing I don’t have is a silky sifaka lemur. So hurry down here, boy, and make my life complete.”
And he hung up a second before Artemis could click the terminate-call button.
Psychologically, that puts Kronski in the power seat, thought Artemis. I must learn to be quicker on the mouse.
He closed the PowerBook lid and reclined his chair. Outside, sunlight was burning through the lower layers of mist, and jet trails drew tic-tac-toe patterns in the sky.
Still in busy airspace. Not for long. Once we hit Africa, the jet streams will thin out considerably. I need a few hours’ sleep; tomorrow will be a long and distasteful day.
He frowned. Distasteful, yes, but necessary.
Artemis hit the recline button and closed his eyes. Most boys his age were swapping football cards or wearing out their thumbs on game consoles. He was in a jet, twenty thousand feet over Europe, planning the destruction of a species with a deranged Extinctionist.
Perhaps I am too young for all this.
Age was immaterial. Without his efforts, Artemis Fowl Senior would be lost forever in Russia, and that was simply not going to happen.
Butler’s voice came over the jet’s intercom. “All quiet up front, Artemis. Once we get out over the Mediterranean, I’m going to put her on autopilot for an hour and try to wind down. . . .”
Artemis stared at the speaker. He could sense that Butler had more to say. Nothing but static and the beep of instruments for a moment, then . . . “Today, Artemis, when you told me to shoot the lemur, you were bluffing. You were bluffing, weren’t you?”
“It was no bluff,” said Artemis, his voice unwavering. “I will do whatever it takes.”
Tara
Access to the Tara shuttleport was hindered by several steel doors, various scans and codes, tamper-proof biolocks, and a 3600 surveillance network at the entrance, which is not as easy to set up as it is to say. Of course, all of this could be bypassed if one knew a secret way in.
“How did you know I had a secret way in?” pouted Mulch.
In response, Artemis and Holly simply looked at him as though he were an idiot, waiting for the penny to drop.
“Stupid time travel,” muttered the dwarf. “Told you all about it myself, I suppose.”
“You will,”confirmed Holly.“And I don’t see what you’re so upset about. It’s not as if I can report you to anyone.”
“True,” admitted Mulch. “And there is
all that lovely loot.”
The three sat in a stolen Mini Cooper outside the boundary fence of the McGraney farm, underneath which was concealed the Tara shuttleport. Thirty thousand cubic feet of terminal hidden by a dairy farm. The first light of dawn was diluting the darkness, and the lumpy silhouettes of grazing cows ambled across the meadow. In a year or two, Tara would become a bustling tourist hub for the fairies, but for the moment, all tourism had been suspended since the Spelltropy outbreak.
Mulch squinted at the nearest beast through the back window. “You know something, I’m a tad peckish. I couldn’t eat a whole cow, but I’d put a fair dent in one.”
“Mulch Diggums hungry. Stop the presses,” commented Artemis drily. He opened the driver’s door and stepped onto the grassy verge. A light mist clung to his face, and the clean smell of country air ran through his system like a stimulant.
“We need to get going. I have no doubt that the lemur is already twenty thousand feet in the air.”
“That’s a nimble lemur,” sniggered the dwarf. He climbed over the front seat, tumbling onto the verge.