The Inside Job (3 page)

“Seriously? Guys, we can do a lot more good if we're not worrying about keeping the lights on,” I said.

Kennedy spoke up. “But . . . Hale. All that money belongs to SRS.”

“Yes. That's why we should take it,” I said impatiently.

“No, you don't get it—it belongs to SRS. Which means they probably got it by doing something terrible. That money is . . . Well. It's . . .
bad
,” Kennedy said. And she was right, of course—SRS made their money in some pretty
terrible ways. Black market deals. Robberies. Heists. Ransom payments.

Still, I shook my head. “Money is money. Whatever SRS did to earn it, it's done. Besides, isn't it better that we do something
good
with that money, to undo the bad?”

“Yes. I think we should give it away. To charity,” Walter said, his voice a little uncertain.

“Oh, good idea,” Ben said. “There's this space camp that would be really grateful—”

“We're not
giving away
millions of dollars while we're eating five-dollar pizzas every night,” Otter scoffed. “We're spies, not Robin Hood and his army.”

“Robin Hood had a gang of thieves, not an army,” Beatrix said. Otter glared, and Beatrix shrank down. The room fell into stony, uneasy silence, save the dusty whir of old computer fans. I looked at Kennedy; she was studying the owl stickers on her boots intently, which was something she did when she didn't agree with me.

I exhaled. Maybe they had a point, and that money was dirty—money earned stealing and hurting and destroying and conning. That didn't make much sense to me, to be honest, but . . . well. Maybe I was thinking too much like an SRS agent. Maybe if I were a better League agent, I would agree with them more, right?

You want to be a hero, don't you, Hale? Like your parents?
I said to myself. I closed my eyes and tried not to daydream too hard about the air-conditioning working all summer.

“All right,” I said, exhaling. “All right—how about we get the money. We see how much it is. And then we take what we
have
to have to cover the basics, and everything else, we give away to that space camp.”

“We are
not giving money to a space camp!
” Otter roared. His head was flushed red and purple, like a giant grape.

“We'll decide once we have it!” I said firmly.

Otter stared at me, then at the others, then back at me.

“I like Hale's idea,” Kennedy said.

“Me too,” Ben answered. The others chimed in one at a time, except Clatterbuck, who seemed torn between the promise of new computers and space camp. Finally he shrugged at Otter.

“No harm in waiting to make a choice,” he said. Clatterbuck wasn't much of a spy, but as the only other adult in the room, his words shut down Otter's argument in a way the rest of ours couldn't.

“Fine,” Otter snipped. “Fine, fine, fine. We'll decide once we've got the money. Which means we have to get the money. Nine hundred hours tomorrow, everyone. We've got to figure out how to get to Switzerland.”

Otter spun around and stomped out of the room, talking about “superior officers” and “subordination” and a few other
s
words I didn't understand but that definitely weren't pleasant. Kennedy and Beatrix bounded away together, and soon Ben and Clatterbuck were off to begin salvaging parts of the BENdy Straw (“Do you think it'll
be bad if we take the hoses from the sinks on the fourth floor?”), leaving me and Walter alone on the command deck.

“Switzerland,” Walter said. “Our first foreign assignment as real agents! Are you nervous?”

“No. You?”

“Well, it does . . . Well. It does sort of feel like I'm stealing from my mom,” Walter said, toeing at the ground.

“Yeah.”

That was a pretty dumb thing to say—“Yeah”—but I didn't know what else
to
say. Walter and I never talked about his mom these days. We never talked about how she was still at SRS. We never wondered if she still believed SRS were the good guys, or if she was siding with them despite knowing they were the bad guys. We never wondered if she missed Walter, and I never asked if he missed her. I never asked if he forgave her for staying at SRS. It wasn't that I wasn't curious about all that—I
was
—it was just . . . Well. I didn't know how to start the conversation, I guess.

So we just didn't talk about it.

CHAPTER THREE

Switzerland wasn't as cold as I expected.

I mean, you think Switzerland, you think snow, right? And there was snow—on the mountains—but Geneva itself was pretty mild, like Castlebury in early fall. It was Kennedy's, Beatrix's, and Ben's first time out of the country; Walter and I had been to London with our parents when we were seven or so while they were doing some undercover work (they never told me the specifics, but I remember Mom spent a lot of time in a palace guard costume). I wouldn't have admitted it out loud, but I was trying to play it casual, like I was unfazed by world travel, because I didn't want to 1) draw attention to myself, 2) remind Otter how inexperienced I was, or 3) look like Clatterbuck, who was wearing a big, floppy
hat and taking photos of everything from the sidewalks to the street signs.

But despite my best attempts, I
was
thrown by how amazingly pretty Geneva was. Like, calendar-photo beautiful. Desktop-of-your-computer beautiful. How the Swiss didn't just walk around, mouths hanging open, I couldn't understand. When no one else was looking, I urged Clatterbuck to take a few photos of the place where the sky met the lake—it looked like the entire world was the same shade of bright, cartoony blue. He obliged, but then got too close and fell
in
the lake. The Swiss guys who fished him out said it happened all the time, but I'm pretty sure they were just being nice.

We set about learning everything we could about the Central Bank of Switzerland. Some of the information we needed was easy enough—the guard rotations, for example, which we got by hanging around the bank building like confused tourists and cataloging each moment a guard left his shift. The floor plans were easy to get too—they were on file with the local building commissioner, and with a little hacking on Beatrix's part, we were able to get access without arousing any suspicion.

But the tricky part—well, the
nearly
impossible part—was getting SRS's actual account number. Without the account number, we couldn't find their vault. Breaking in and robbing the bank was impossible if we didn't even know where in the building we were looking.

Mission: Get SRS's account number

Step 1: Play dress-up

We didn't exactly have the money to buy designer clothing for our cover story, but luckily, The League had some fancy clothes from the 1970s in storage. They looked . . . well. I wouldn't say they looked
good
, but they were expensive when they were bought and had been around long enough that the styles were vintage cool rather than outdated gross. Otter was wearing sunglasses and a suit with stripes and had slicked his hair back in a way that accentuated the bald spot on the crown of his head. Kennedy looked pretty acceptable in this weird red dress with swoopy sleeves and cheetahs running around the hem—I think it was supposed to be a short dress on an adult, but on her, it passed for a drapey long one. And me?

The League never had kid agents like SRS did, which meant none of the clothing fit me. Ben actually knew how to work a sewing machine, given the number of fabric-related inventions he'd made, so he tried to cut down a suit for me to wear. Except the jacket turned out all wrong, which meant I was currently wearing pale green suit pants with a sort of punk T-shirt we'd found in the storage box. Beatrix called it rocker chic. I called it legs-eaten-by-a-frog chic.

But hey, rich people always dress weird, right? And that was our cover—a rich man and his two kids. More specifically, Antonio Halfred and his two kids.

The bank was a giant old building, the sort that had placards everywhere talking about how this wall or that painting or that ceiling was built a billion years ago. The exterior was magnificent—all bright-white marble and columns so fat that four or five people could easily hide behind one. The doors were strange and modern by comparison—automatic revolving doors that I managed to get stuck in, because of course I did.

Inside, the ceiling stretched high above us, arching at the top, where a chandelier hung amid elaborate gold ceiling panels. There were windows created in the swoops and curves where the ceiling met the walls, which let in light that bounced happily off sleekly polished wooden floors. Straight ahead was a long row of bankers at wooden desks set behind glass, and on either end was a smattering of offices with open doors and big windows, where people typed furiously at their computers. Otter held his head high and clacked his dress shoes across the marble floor to the nearest banker. He flipped his chrome-shiny sunglasses up on top of his gel-shiny hair. The banker—a pretty girl with ultrablond hair—looked up at him and smiled.

“Hey there,” he said in a flirty voice, and winked at the banker. I wondered if it would be impolite to throw up in the bank?

“Hello, sir. How can I help you?” she said with a smidge of a Swiss accent and eyes that said,
Nice try, man, but no
.

Otter looked a bit crestfallen for a moment, but he bounced back. “I'd like to make a deposit into my account.”

“Of course. We'll need your identification and account number,” said the banker—LEONIE, according to her name tag.

Step 2: Get behind the desk

This was my and Kennedy's cue—to start getting bored. I exhaled, like this entire trip was just
too much
, and began to kick my shoes at the ground. Leonie glanced at me, but Otter had her attention again within the second.

“Here's my ID, but I'm afraid I've forgotten the account number and lost my deposit slips. So many banks and countries to keep track of . . .” Otter said, and fished a fake Antonio Halfred passport from his pocket. As Otter removed the passport, he let a few stubs from a nearby horse race spill across the counter—pocket litter we'd planted to subtly seal the “rich guy” cover. Leonie noticed them as she took the passport and then typed a few things into the computer. Meanwhile, Kennedy and I continued being bored, until finally I pulled out a phone and began playing a game. Kennedy, who didn't have a phone, wandered forward, pretending to play hopscotch along the floor tiles. Leonie glanced over at her.

“I'm in a bit of a rush,” Otter said politely. Kennedy continued to hopscotch.

Leonie looked back to Otter. “All right, Monsieur—er, Mister—Halfred . . . Let's see . . . Yes, here we are. You wanted to make a deposit?”

“Indeed, just a bit from my winnings. I won't be able to take this back to the US without having to declare the money at customs. More trouble than it's worth!” Otter said. Then to me, “Georgie—son, fetch your sister!”

I groaned dramatically. And while Otter held most of Leonie's attention, I stomped over to grab ahold of Kennedy's arm.

Step 3: Get a picture of the computer screen with the account number

All I needed was a decent image of the monitor. Beatrix could blow it up later so we could read the account number. While I bickered with Kennedy quietly, I casually tilted the phone, positioning my fingers to snap the photo.

Leonie was in the way.

She was sitting slightly off to one side, and her shoulder was blocking the screen. I tried again, but no luck—then she glanced back at me, so I had no choice but to grab Kennedy's arm.

“Hey!” Kennedy whined, and we began to retreat to Otter. I made eye contact with him and shook my head quickly, letting him know we needed more time.

“The deposit, mademoiselle?” Otter said slickly, drawing Leonie's attention back to him.

“Yes, Mr. Halfred—it looks like this account is flagged. Only one of my coworkers, Markus Hastings, can deal with the account.” She said Markus Hastings's name like he was a slug or centipede or something else people pretty much universally wanted to squish.

“You mean,
you
can't help me?” Otter said, turning up the charm again. I added him to the list of things people wanted to squish.

“No,” Leonie said politely. “Just let me give Markus a call, though. He'll be right down.”

Leonie picked up the phone at her desk and then ran her finger along an employee directory taped to the wood below it. She stopped her finger and then dialed. Kennedy and I were passing the desk now. I still didn't have a clear shot of the number.

I hooked my foot into the corner of the desk and tripped forward. I released Kennedy's arm and, on the way down, grabbed the desk for support. I missed, though, and wound up grabbing the phone. Me, the phone, some paperwork, and three pencils careened into the floor. Leonie gasped, and a few people nearby spun around to see what the commotion was about. I could feel my knee swelling and rug burn spreading down my shins. I groaned and sat up—