For Your Paws Only (15 page)

She still couldn't believe that a mouse—
any
mouse, even a little weasel like Fumble—would sell out to the rats. Nothing like this had ever happened before. It was completely unprecedented in mouse history.

Fumble yawned. He placed a plump paw under his chin, as if thinking the question over. “Let's see. Riches, power, fame, and—dare I say it—
glory
?” he replied calmly.

“You traitor!” spat Glory.

“Traitor to what?” countered Fumble, his voice rising in anger. “A bunch of self-important field agents bossed around by a pathetic old has-been? Julius is so blind he can't even recognize talent when it's right under his whiskers. Well, I'll tell you right now, I won't be overlooked any more! I've had it with ‘Silver Skateboard' this and ‘secret mission' that. I'm fed up with stupid ‘For Your Paws Only'! No more being shoved aside, taken for granted, passed over!”

“So
that's
what this is all about?” sputtered Glory in disbelief. “The fact that Julius didn't promote you to field agent?” Her bright little eyes widened as another thought occurred to her. “It was you who taught Dupont to read, wasn't it?”

“So what if I did?” Fumble retorted. “I'm not ashamed of it.”

“But don't you see what you've done? How could you betray us all like that?”

“How?” sneered Fumble. “Easily, that's how. Why? Because I'm smart. Because I can tell which way the wind is blowing. Because there's a new day coming, and I intend to be part of it.”

“A new day!” Glory leaned toward her colleague.
Make that former colleague,
she corrected herself. “Fumble, this is Dupont, remember? He'll chew you up and spit you out like a moldy french fry.” Except of course that a little mold never bothered Dupont, she thought. Dupont never spat anything out.

“He's going to make me Minister of Mouse Affairs,” said Fumble smugly. “When the Global Rodent Roundtable takes over, you and all the others will come crawling to me. Just you wait and see.”

“That's right,” Dupont interjected, waddling closer. Behind him the mob of rodents closed in. “Once I'm in control, you mice—those we don't exterminate—will be our servants. Slaves to the master race. But I'll keep a pawful of smart ones on hand to help us learn everything we need to learn. Smart ones like Fumble here.”

He clapped Fumble on the shoulder. Fumble smirked. Glory stared at the two of them and shuddered. She recognized the look in Fumble's eyes now—it was greed. The same madness that infected Roquefort Dupont. Fumble had clearly gone round the bend. No mouse in his right mind would ever betray his own kind.

Gorgonzola lurched toward her. He lifted his snout and gave a hearty sniff. “Smells like antipasto,
sì
?” he said, flicking a glance at Dupont. “To celebrate your election victory, of course.” He turned back to Glory and leaned closer, so close that his whiskers tickled her face. “In Rome, we like little mouses like you,” he whispered. “A little garlic, a little olive oil, and
presto
!” He kissed his paw in the age-old gesture of his native country. “Dinner is served.”

Glory recoiled in horror. So the rumors about Gorgonzola were true—he was a mousivore! Her heart thudding like a jackhammer, she squirmed as far back
underneath the bench as she could get from the paunchy rat and his evil appetite.

Muenster, the big black rat from Berlin, reached into the shadows and plucked her out again. He smiled, and the scar along his snout puckered. “
Ja,
we like mice in Berlin, too.” He rubbed his dark belly and licked his lips. “
Maus mit sauerkraut,
mmmm.”

Glory couldn't help it. She began to shake uncontrollably.

“I hate to disappoint you,” said Dupont, “but I have other plans for this mouse, remember?”

Brie slinked her way over to her cousin and rested her sleek snout on his shoulder.

“But surely zis one cannot be so important?” she pouted. “What eez one less mouse in zis world tonight?” The she-rat reached out a paw and stroked Glory's elegant brown fur. “Such lovely things zis would make. Eet seems a shame to let zis fine pelt go to waste.” Brie snuggled a little closer to Dupont and scratched him behind one large flea-bitten ear. “Give ze boys here a treat, and let me have ze rest,
oui,
Roquefort?”

Gorgonzola and Muenster looked at their new Big Cheese hopefully. Glory trembled in the German rat's tight grasp. Roquefort Dupont's wall of trophies and the Black Paw seemed positively tame compared to these lunatics! She didn't know which was worse, the flesh-eating mousivore twins or Cruella DeBrie.

Dupont eyed the three of them, considering. He
shook his head. “No,” he said. “She stays alive until tomorrow when we reach Times Square. After I've finished with her, you can have what's left.”

Muenster tossed Glory back under the bench, and he and Gorgonzola moved away, grumbling. Brie shrugged and slunk off, casting one more calculating look back at Glory as she went. Dupont followed her.

Glory sagged against the cold stone of the floor. Dupont might have just given her a few hours reprieve, but he had also issued her death sentence. Tomorrow in Times Square! A tear trickled down her furry cheek. Her supposedly foolproof plan had backfired completely.
And it's all Fumble's fault,
she thought bitterly.
The traitor.
Back at Grand Central, once the video sunglasses had been dispensed with, it hadn't taken Fumble two seconds to reach inside her collar and pluck out the note.

“Right where your e-mail to Julius said it would be,” he'd said smugly.

The gag had only partly muffled Glory's gasp. Fumble had intercepted their communications with Central Command! That meant Fumble knew what they were planning. And if Fumble knew, Dupont knew. In that very moment she had known that she was doomed—that they were all doomed. Her friends would be walking into a trap tomorrow, and she had no way of warning them.

Worse, when this was all over, Fumble would waltz right back to the Spy Mice Agency with no one the wiser.
A spy spying on the spies. A mole of the very worst sort. Not only their mission, but the whole agency—no, the entire mouse world—was in peril.

As the other rats watched, Dupont had unfolded the note. “For Your Peas Only,” he'd read aloud slowly.

“Uh, that's ‘paws,' Roquefort, buddy. ‘For Your Paws Only,' ” Fumble had corrected.

“I can see that, you idiot!” Dupont had snarled back, cuffing him. Dupont didn't like being corrected. He'd added huffily, “That's what I said, anyway. ‘For Your Paws Only.' That means top secret,” he'd informed his fellow rats, swelling with importance.

He'd stumbled through the rest of the note, which outlined Glory's fictitious rendezvous in Herald Square in front of Macy's, but Fumble had dismissed it with a flip of his paw. “It's a trap,” he'd explained. “They're setting you up.”

“Setting us up, are they? We'll see about that.” Dupont's eyes had narrowed. “I think we'll just have to turn the tables. Make this a parade no one will ever forget. Kids and mice together—twice the revenge for half the effort. My kind of odds.”

And now, here they all were at the Museum of Natural History, waiting for morning. It hadn't taken Dupont long at all to come up with a counterplan. First order of business: Move the Global Rodent Roundtable uptown.

“Might as well stay warm while we wait,” Dupont
had said, herding them all onto the underside of a B train. “No point sitting on a balloon in the cold and dark when you can be inside with a full stomach.”

As usual, food was foremost on Dupont's mind. He and the other rats had gleefully raided the museum café's trash cans, then dragged their smelly booty up to the fourth floor. From this vantage point, they could keep an eye on the giant balloons being inflated outside while gloating over the dead bones of their dubious ancestors inside.

I'm going to be dead bones if I don't find a way to get out of here,
thought Glory. She gazed around at the gigantic skeletons. This place was giving her the creeps.

She closed her eyes. Her small body ached from the rough treatment she'd received, and her heart had never been heavier.
I'm going to die,
she thought miserably, and another tear trickled down her cheek. What was worse, so were Bunsen and her brother and maybe even Oz and D. B., too. The children would have received their pigeon post telling them of the plan by now. Tomorrow, her colleagues would all be walking into Dupont's trap instead of the other way around. They'd be mousemeat, just as Dupont had promised. Gorgonzilla and Muenster the Monster would feast on their flesh, and Brie de Sorbonne would have a whole new wardrobe to take home to Paris.

My first Silver Skateboard mission is a total bust,
thought Glory wretchedly.
I'm a failure.
Bunsen was
right; it was her pride that was to blame. It had gotten her—had gotten them all—into this horrible fix. Her stupid Goldenleaf pride.

Glory slumped under the bench, exhausted, demoralized, and more scared than she'd ever been in her whole young mouse life. The parade was going to be a disaster, they were all going to die, the rats would take over the world, and there was nothing she or anybody else could do to stop it.

She watched listlessly as across the room the mob of rats fell upon their revolting feast with gusto. Moldy orange rinds and petrified sandwich crusts, half-eaten cookies and half-empty cartons of sour milk—everything a rat needed for a party. Glory turned away in revulsion.

“Eat up, my friends!” cried Dupont, licking the last few drops of leftover fruit smoothie from a styrofoam cup. “We move out at dawn.”

DAY THREE • THURSDAY • 0830 HOURS

“How come whenever
I'm with you, I always end up in some dumb costume?” grumbled D. B. “This is worse than the apron and the donkey suit combined.”

Oz was wrestling with the silver buckle on the belt of his pilgrim-boy suit, which was at least one size too small. He glanced over at D. B. She was wearing a long black pilgrim-girl dress, complete with white apron and white hat. He sighed. “You're right. We look ridiculous.”

The Mayflower Flour man strode into the gilded lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria, where the winners of the Bake-Off had gathered to await the arrival of their limousine. Lavinia Levinson and Amelia Bean were seated on one of the fancy sofas, discussing cheese twists with Mary Lou Swenson of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Jordan, dressed as a bag of Mayflower Flour, and Tank, who had been stuffed into an enormous pumpkin costume, were posing sullenly for yet another picture.

“Doesn't Sherman look adorable!” squealed Mrs. Wilson to Mrs. Scott. “And your Jordan, too.”

The Mayflower Flour man clapped his hands. “Winners! We need you winners in the limo now! On the double! The parade is starting soon!”

A blast of cold air struck Oz as the group was herded out of the lobby. It was perfect Thanksgiving weather, clear as a bell but bitter cold.
At least the pilgrim-boy suit was wool
, Oz thought, shivering. He climbed gratefully into the warmth of the limousine, which whisked them up Park Avenue and across Central Park toward West Seventy-seventh Street.

The limousine came to a halt, and the chauffeur leaped from the car and opened the rear door smartly. The adults got out first, and then it was Oz's turn. As he heaved himself awkwardly across the low-slung leather seat, Jordan poked him in the back.

“Could you swim a little faster, Shamu?”

The chauffeur reached in and hauled Oz out bodily.

“Thanks,” Oz mumbled, red-faced. For about the millionth time in his life, Oz wished that he were James Bond. Riding in a limousine was no big deal to Agent 007. When the superspy wasn't driving fast sports cars, he rode in limousines all the time. But then, James Bond didn't need help getting out of a limousine. James Bond wasn't built like a baby whale.

“There's the float!” cried Amelia Bean.

The surface of the Mayflower Flour float was a small
replica of Plymouth Harbor, complete with painted sea and a Styrofoam Plymouth Rock to represent where America's first settlers had stepped ashore. Tethered to the float by four sturdy ropes was a gigantic full-rigged balloon ship with
MAYFLOWER
painted on its side.

“Wow!” said D. B., and even Jordan and Tank looked dazzled.

“Isn't this exciting, kids?” said Lavinia Levinson.

Mayflower Flour had persuaded Oz's mother to provide some entertainment during the parade, and she started humming the medley of seasonal music she'd chosen to warm up the crowd. Amelia Bean, of course, was busy filming everything with her camcorder.

Oz and D. B. exchanged a glance. Their mothers were far more excited than they were. But then again, their mothers didn't have to ride on the balloon ship with a pair of sharks.

A Mayflower Flour employee dressed as Squanto propped a ladder alongside the ship. Oz, D. B., Jordan, Tank, and Mary Lou Swenson of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, climbed aboard. Down below, “ashore” on the float's surface, the four mothers waved.

“Smile for the camera, Shermie!” coaxed Mrs. Wilson. “My little pumpkin!”

“You are so dead, Fatboy,” promised Tank through teeth gritted in a smile.

Oz ignored him. He was determined not to react. Reacting only got the sharks all worked up. James Bond
never reacted. James Bond was always as cool as a cucumber.
I am as cool as a cucumber,
Oz told himself sternly, but he couldn't help eyeing Tank and Jordan with suspicion. The sixth graders were whispering to themselves, clearly up to something.

“Duck!” shouted Tank, as a pigeon swooped low overhead. He and Jordan dove for cover. Oz looked up just in time to catch the small scroll of paper that dropped from the sky.