Eoin Colfer - Artemis Fowl - The Eternity Code

Artemis wasn’t finished yet. There was one more good deed to be attended to. The success of this venture depended on Foaly being too busy watching the show to notice Artemis hacking into his system.

He brought up the LEP site and set the code breaker working on a password. It took ten valuable seconds per character, but he was soon flying around LEP micro-sites. Artemis found what he needed on Perp

Profiles. Mulch Diggums’s complete arrest record. From there, it was a simple matter to follow the electron trail back to the original search warrant for Mulch’s dwelling. Artemis changed the date on the warrant to read the day after Mulch’s arrest. This meant that all subsequent arrests and convictions were null and void. A good lawyer would have him out of prison in a heartbeat.

‘I have not finished with you yet, Mulch Diggums,’ he whispered,

logging out and clipping the Cube on Holly’s belt.

Juliet came through the door so fast her limbs were a blur. The jade ring trailed behind her like a fishing lure on the end of a line.

Butler would never take chances like this, she knew. He would have some perfectly practical, safe plan — which was why he had his blue diamond tattoo and she didn’t. Well, maybe she didn’t want a tattoo.

Maybe she wanted a life of her own.

She quickly assessed the situation. Holly’s aim was true. The two gorillas were rubbing their scorched hands and Spiro was stamping his feet like a spoiled child. Only Blunt was on the floor, going for his gun.

Even though the bodyguard was on his hands and knees, he was still almost at her eye level.

‘Aren’t you going to give me a chance to get up?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Juliet, whipping the jade ring around like the stone that felled Goliath. It impacted on the bridge of Blunt’s nose, cracking it and effectively blinding him for a couple of minutes. Plenty of time for the

Chicago Police to get down the shaft.

Blunt was now out of the game. Juliet had expected to feel some satisfaction, but all she felt was sadness. There was no joy in violence.

Pex and Chips felt they should do something. Perhaps disabling the girl would earn them a bonus from Mister Spiro? They circled Juliet, fists raised.

Juliet wagged a finger at them. ‘Sorry, boys. You have to go to sleep.’

The bodyguards ignored her, tightening the radius of their circle.

‘I said go to sleep.’

Still no response.

‘You have to use exactly the words that I mesmerized them to respond to,’ said Holly in her ear.

Juliet sighed. ‘If I must. OK, gentlemen; Barney says go to sleep.’

Pex and Chips were snoring before they hit the ground.

That just left Spiro, and he was too busy gibbering to be any threat.

He was still gibbering when the SWAT team put the cuffs on him.

‘I’ll talk to you back at base,’ said the SWAT captain sternly to Juliet. ‘You’re a danger to your comrades and yourself.’

‘Yessir,’ said Juliet contritely. ‘I don’t know what came over me, sir.’

She glanced upwards. A slight heat haze seemed to be drifting towards the lift shaft. The principal was safe.

Holly holstered her weapon, buzzing up her shield.

‘Time to go,’ she said, the volume on her PA turned to minimum.

Holly wrapped the cam foil tightly round Artemis, making certain no limbs were peeking out. It was imperative they leave while the lift was empty. Once forensics and the press got there, even a slight shimmer in the air might be caught on film.

As they flew across the room, Spiro was being led from the lab. He had finally managed to calm down.

‘This is a set-up,’ he proclaimed in his best innocent voice. ‘My lawyers are gonna rip you guys apart.

Artemis could not resist speaking as they floated past his ear.

‘Farewell, Jon,’ he whispered. ‘Never mess with a boy genius.’

Spiro howled at the ceiling like a demented wolf.

Mulch was waiting across the street from the Phonetix lab, revving the van like a Grand Prix driver. He sat behind the wheel on an orange crate, with a short plank taped to his foot. The other end of the plank was taped to the accelerator.

Juliet studied the system nervously. ‘Shouldn’t you untie that foot in case you need to use the brakes?

‘Brakes?’ laughed Mulch. ‘Why would I use the breaks? I’m not doing my driving test here.’

In the back of the van, Artemis and Holly simultaneously reached for their seat belts.

FOWL MANOR

They reached Ireland without major incident, though Mulch did attempt to escape Holly’s custody fifteen times — including once on the Lear jet, where he was discovered in the bathroom with a parachute and a bottle of dwarf rock polish. Holly did not let him out of her sight after that.

Butler was waiting for them at Fowl Manor’s front door.

‘Welcome back. Glad to see everyone’s alive. Now I need to go.’

Artemis put a hand on his arm. ‘Old friend. You’re in no condition to go anywhere.’ Butler was determined. ‘One last mission, Artemis. I have no choice. Anyway, I’ve been doing Pilates. I feel much more limber.’

‘Blunt?’

‘Yes.’

‘But he’s in prison,’ protested Juliet. Butler shook his head.

‘Not any more.’ Artemis could see that his bodyguard was not about to be turned from his path.

‘At least take Holly. She can be of some help.’

Butler winked at the elf. ‘I was counting on it.’

The Chicago police had put Arno Blunt in a van, with a couple of officers. Two would be sufficient, they reasoned, as the perp was handcuffed and manacled. They revised this opinion when the van was discovered six miles south of Chicago, with the officers manacled and no sign of the suspect. To quote Sergeant Iggy Lebowski’s report: ‘The guy ripped those handcuffs apart as though they were links in a paperchain. He came at us like a steam train. We never had a chance.’

But Arno Blunt did not escape clean. His pride had taken a severe beating in the Spiro Needle. He knew that word of his humiliation would soon spread through the bodyguard network. As Pork Belly LaRue later put it on the Soldiers for Hire web site: ‘Arno done got hisself outsmarted by some snot-nosed kid.’ Blunt was painfully aware that he would have to suffer chortles every time he walked into a room full of tough guys — unless he avenged the insult paid to him by Artemis Fowl.

The bodyguard knew that he had minutes before Spiro gave up his address to the Chicago PD, so he packed a few spare sets of teeth and took the shuttle to O’Hare International Airport.

Blunt was delighted to find that the authorities had not yet frozen his Spiro corporate credit card, and used it to purchase a first class British

Airways Concorde ticket to London Heathrow. From there he would enter

Ireland on the Rosslare ferry. Just another one of five hundred tourists visiting the land of the leprechaun.

It wasn’t a terribly complicated plan, and it would have worked if it hadn’t been for one thing: the passport official at Heathrow just happened to be Sid Commons, the ex-Green Beret who had served with Butler on bodyguard duty in Monte Carlo. The second Blunt opened his mouth alarm bells went off in Commons’ head. The gentleman before him fitted the description Butler had faxed over perfectly. Right down to the strange teeth. Blue oil and water, if you don’t mind. Commons pressed a button under his desk and, in seconds, a squad of security men relieved Blunt of his passport and took him into custody.

The chief security official took out his mobile phone as soon as the detainee was under lock and key. He dialled an international number. It rang twice.