Root mashed the remains of his cigar into the crystal ashtray.
“So, let’s have it, what are your demands?”
“One demand. Singular.”
Artemis slid his notepad across the polished table. Root read what was written there.
“‘One ton of twenty-four-carat gold. Small unmarked ingots only.’ You can’t be serious.”
“Oh, but I am.”
Root sat forward in his chair. “Don’t you see? Your position is untenable. Either you give us back Captain Short or we will be forced to kill you all. There is no middle ground. We don’t negotiate. Not really. I’m just here to explain the facts to you.”
Artemis smiled his vampire smile. “Oh, but you will negotiate with me, Commander.”
“Oh, really? And what makes you so special?”
“I am special, because I know how to escape the time-field.”
“Impossible,” snorted Root. “Can’t be done.”
“Oh, yes it can. Trust me, I haven’t been wrong yet.”
Root tore off the top page, folding it into his pocket.
“I’ll have to think about this.”
“Take your time. We have eight hours . . . excuse me, seven and a half hours, then time’s up for everybody.”
Root said nothing for a long while, tapping his nails on the tabletop. He took a breath to speak, then changed his mind and stood abruptly.
“We’ll be in touch. Don’t worry, I’ll see myself out.”
Artemis pushed his chair back.
“You do that. But remember this, none of your race has permission to enter here while I’m alive.”
Root stalked down the hallway, glaring back at the oil paintings. Better to leave now and process this new information. The Fowl boy was indeed a slippery opponent. But he was making one basic mistake—the assumption that Root would play by the rules. However, Julius Root hadn’t gotten his commander’s stripes by following any rule book. Time for a bit of unorthodox action.
The videotape from Root’s iris-cam was being reviewed by experts.
“You see there,” said Professor Cumulus, a behavioral specialist—“that twitch. He’s lying.”
“Nonsense,” huffed Dr. Argon, a psychologist from below the United States. “He’s itchy, that’s all. He’s itchy so he scratches. Nothing sinister in it.”
Cumulus turned to Foaly.
“Listen to him. How can I be expected to work with this charlatan?”
“Witch doctor,” countered Argon.
Foaly raised his hairy palms.
“Gentlemen, please. We need agreement here. A concrete profile.”
“It’s no use,” said Argon. “I can’t work in these conditions.”
Cumulus folded his arms. “If he can’t work, neither can I.”
Root strode through the shuttle double doors. His trademark purple complexion was even rosier than usual.
“That human is toying with us. I will not have it. Now, what did our experts make of the tape?”
Foaly moved slightly to the side, allowing the commander a clear run at the so-called experts.
“Apparently they can’t work in these conditions.”
Root’s eyes narrowed to slits, bringing his prey into sharp focus. “Excuse me?”
“The good doctor is a half-wit,” said Cumulus, unfamiliar with the commander’s temper.
“I—I’m a half-wit?” stuttered Argon, equally ignorant. “What about you, you cave fairy? Plastering your absurd interpretations onto the most innocent of gestures.”
“Innocent? The boy is a bag of nerves. Obviously lying. It’s textbook.”
Root slammed a clenched fist on to the table, sending a spiderweb of cracks scurrying across the surface.
“Silence!”
And silence there was. Instantly.
“Now, you two experts are on handsome retainers for your profiling work. Correct?”
The pair nodded, afraid to speak in case that broke the silence rule.
“This is probably the case of your lives, so I want you to concentrate very hard. Understood?”
More nods.
Root popped the camera out of his weeping eye.
“Fast-forward it, Foaly. Toward the end.”
The tape hopped forward erratically. On screen, Root followed the human into his conference room.
“There. Stop it there. Can you zoom in on his face?”
“Can I zoom in on his face?” snorted Foaly. “Can a dwarf steal the web from under a spider?”
“Yes,” replied Root.
“That was a rhetorical question, actually.”
“I don’t need a grammar lesson, Foaly, just zoom in, would you?”
Foaly ground his tombstone teeth.
“Okay, boss. Will do.”
The centaur’s fingers prodded the keyboard with lightning speed. Artemis’s visage grew to fill the plasma screen.
“I’d advise you to listen,” said Root, squeezing the experts’ shoulders. “This is a pivotal moment in your careers.”
“I am special,” said the mouth on the screen, “because I can escape the time-field.” “Now tell me,” said Root. “Is he lying?” “Run it again,” said Cumulus. “Show me the eyes.” Argon nodded. “Yes. Just the eyes.” Foaly tapped a few more keys, and Artemis’s deep blue eyes expanded to the width of the screen. “I am special,” boomed the human voice, “because I can escape the time field.” “Well, is he lying?” Cumulus and Argon looked at each other, all traces of antagonism gone. “No,” they said simultaneously. “He’s telling the truth,” added the behaviorist. “Or,” clarified the psychologist, “at least he thinks he is.” Root swabbed his eye with a cleansing solution. “That’s what I thought. When I looked that human in the face, I figured he was either a genius or crazy.” Artemis’s cool eyes glared at them from the screen. “So which is it?” asked Foaly. “A genius or crazy?” Root grabbed his tri-barreled blaster from the gun rack.
“What’s the difference?” he snapped, strapping his trusty weapon to his hip. “Get me an outside line to E1. This Fowl person seems to know all of our rules, so it’s time to break a few.”
CHAPTER 7
MULCH
Time to introduce a new character to our other-worldly pageant. Well, not strictly speaking a new character. We have encountered him before, in the LEP booking line. On remand for numerous larcenies: Mulch Diggums, the kleptomaniac dwarf. A dubious individual, even by Artemis Fowl’s standards. As if this account didn’t already suffer from an overdose of amoral individuals.
Born to a typical dwarf cavern-dwelling family, Mulch had decided early that mining was not for him, and resolved to put his talents to another use, namely digging and entering, generally entering Mud People’s property. Of course this meant forfeiting his magic. Dwellings were sacred. If you broke that rule, you had to be prepared to accept the consequences. Mulch didn’t mind. He didn’t care much for magic anyway. There had never been much use for it down in
the mines.
Things had gone pretty well for a few centuries, and he’d built up quite a lucrative aboveground memorabilia business. That was until he’d tried to sell the Jules Rimet Cup to an undercover LEP operative. From then on his luck had turned, and he’d been arrested over twenty times to date. A total of three hundred years in and out of prison.
Mulch had a prodigious appetite for tunneling, and that, unfortunately, is a literal translation. For those unfamiliar with the mechanics of dwarf tunneling, I shall endeavor to explain them as tastefully as possible. Like some members of the reptile family, dwarf males can unhinge their jaws, allowing them to ingest several pounds of earth a second. This material is processed by a superefficient metabolism, stripped of any useful minerals and . . . ejected at the other end, as it were. Charming.
At present, Mulch was languishing in a stone-walled cell in LEP Central. At least, he was trying to project an image of a languishing, unperturbed kind of dwarf. Actually, he was quaking in his steel-toe-capped boots.
The goblin/dwarf turf war was flaring up at the moment and some bright spark LEP elf had seen fit to put him in a cell with a gang of psyched-up goblins. An oversight perhaps. More likely a spot of revenge for trying to pick his arresting officer’s pocket in the booking line.
“So, dwarf,” sneered the head-honcho goblin, a wart-faced fellow covered in tattoos. “How come you don’t chew your way outta here?”
Mulch rapped on the walls. “Solid rock.”
The goblin laughed. “So what? Can’t be any harder than your dwarf skull.”
His cronies laughed. So did Mulch. He thought it might be wise. Wrong.
“You laughin’ at me, dwarf?”
Mulch stopped laughing.
“With you,” he corrected. “I’m laughing with you. That skull joke was pretty funny.”
The goblin advanced, until his slimy nose was a centimeter from Mulch’s own. “You pay-tron-izin’ me, dwarf?”
Mulch swallowed, calculating. If he unhinged now, he could probably swallow the leader before the others reacted. Still, goblins were murder on the digestion. Very bony.
The goblin conjured up a fireball around his fist. “I asked you a question, stumpy.”
Mulch could feel every sweat gland on his body pop into instant overdrive. Dwarfs did not like fire. They didn’t even like thinking about flames. Unlike the rest of the fairy races, dwarfs had no desire to live above ground. Too close to the sun. Ironic for someone in the Mud People Possession Liberation business.