The Knight's Armor Read online

  “Yeah,” Jack said flatly. “Brilliant.”

  * * *

  When they reached the school, Jack’s father pulled up right outside the main gates. “Thanks, Dad,” Jack shouted as he bolted out of the door and straight into the school. The driverless silver car revved in annoyance and then drove off.

  As Jack tumbled into the school, he crashed into Trudy. “You aren’t going to believe what happened again last night.”

  “If we’re going to play a game of ‘you aren’t going to believe,’ then I think I should go first.” She pulled Jack by the cuff of his blazer into the school hall. A group of children was standing and clapping in a large circle.

  “Is it a fight?” Jack asked. Fights were generally the only reason people at his school would have been in a circle clapping. Jack pushed his way through the circle and was astonished to see David spinning on his back before jumping up, body popping, and doing the robot dance.

  Jack didn’t need to see any more. “His mind is definitely being controlled.”

  “No, that’s precisely the point. It can’t be that. If it was that, he’d still be as clumsy as he was before. You dance with your feet and your legs, not your mind. If you used your mind to dance, then Einstein would have been in a boy band. Merlin must be controlling his body somehow.”

  Jack realized Trudy was right. “The driverless car was waiting outside my house again last night. But this time whatever was controlling me didn’t work. I think it was because I didn’t eat the health food.”

  “We should definitely steer clear of anything branded ‘Mr. M,’” Trudy agreed. “But none of this is getting us any closer to stopping Merlin or finding where he’s keeping my mother.”

  Jack and Trudy wandered out of the hall and sat on the steps in front of the entrance. The pylons in front of the school were covered with hundreds of birds. Jack noticed the strange black-and-white bird they had seen recently fly down and land in one of the trees that flanked the school entrance. It began hammering away at the tree with its beak. Jack was convinced that it was still trying to give them some sort of a message.

  “Rats!” Jack exclaimed. “I’d meant to look up Morse code last night so I could figure out what it was trying to tell us.”

  Trudy walked over to the bird and watched it closely. It kept drilling its beak into the tree, seemingly undisturbed by Trudy’s presence.

  “Let’s think about this logically,” Jack said. “Maybe we’ve got too many clues—we just need to focus on one. All Merlin’s health foods seem to consist of muesli-type bars. So where in a city could you store large amounts of grains, nuts, and seeds without anyone noticing?”

  “Jack, stop thinking for a minute. This bird’s trying to tell us something.…”

  “But where in the center of the city could you find a place to store grains, nuts, and seeds … except maybe a…”

  “… Zoo!” Jack and Trudy said at once.

  Jack smiled at Trudy. “You figured it out at the same time!”

  Trudy pointed to the tree where the bird had been hammering with its beak. “The bird wasn’t trying to give us a Morse-code clue, Jack. It’s a woodpecker. It was carving the answer out for us.”

  Jack looked at the branch, which had the word Zoo clearly carved on it. “Mmm. Sometimes I suspect we make things more difficult for ourselves than we need to. So what do we do next?”

  “It makes sense that Merlin would base himself at the zoo. Space to grow genetically modified plants and animals for the model farm he set up, and zoos have lots of space for grain storage—because that’s what half the animals eat.”

  “Agreed, and it also makes sense that’s where a woodpecker would come from—I’m pretty sure they’re not native to Northern Ireland.”

  “We’re going to the zoo. If Merlin’s based there, that might be where he’s keeping my mother.”

  * * *

  MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK

  WOODPECKER

  SKILLS AND ABILITIES

  Ornithologists will try to tell you that woodpeckers use their drilling-beak ability to dig into trees to eat grubs and insects. This is clearly ridiculous, as woodpeckers live in forests, and if there’s one thing that forests are absolutely full of it’s insects. Suggesting that woodpeckers would make life difficult for themselves by eating only bugs from trees would be like walking into a KFC and then insisting they lock your food inside a treasure chest before they give it to you.

  After the matter is given even a second’s consideration, the reason that woodpeckers drill into trees is simple. Birds live in wooden houses. Ornithologists refer to these wooden houses as “nests,” and generally they are made of twigs. However, you occasionally see a proper birdhouse that is stuck to the side of a tree and has walls, a little round door, and a roof. Some people say that these are placed there by humans, but after extensive research we have established that no human ever admits to this. Additionally, it is ridiculous to suggest that humans would put up little houses for wild birds when they never do the same for wild rats, wild fish, or even wild insects.

  Some people have claimed that they have occasionally seen woodpeckers in the wild measuring up a tree with a tape measure. But this has yet to be verified.

  * * *

  25

  HIDE AND SEEK

  After school had finished, Trudy called a Ministry car, which sped them both to the zoo in under ten minutes. There was a large, friendly-looking entrance and a nice man behind the counter sold them two tickets.

  “This place doesn’t seem evil,” whispered Jack.

  “It doesn’t necessarily have to be evil. Maybe Merlin’s just made his base here.”

  Jack and Trudy slowly walked through the zoo looking for anything unusual, but there didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary. Just normal animals wandering around in spacious exhibits. Jack stopped outside the lion enclosure. “It’s strange that lions have beards but not mustaches,”73 Jack observed. “Makes me suspect that they’re up to something.”

  Trudy said nothing and walked on.

  “There must be a real art to designing a zoo,” Jack mused. “I mean, you wouldn’t want to put the tasty animals next to the hungry ones. Like if you were a lion you wouldn’t want to be in an enclosure next to a nice tasty zebra. It’d be too tempting.”

  “Focus, Jack! If Merlin’s here my mother might be here as well.”

  “Okay, so we need to find Merlin, then. Let’s think about where he might be hiding in a zoo.”

  As Jack was thinking, a small electric cart went by, pulling a trailer behind it. Trudy suddenly nudged Jack in the ribs. “Ouch! What?”

  “Look at the animal feed in the trailer!”

  Jack looked. There were large, blue canvas sacks of animal feed. All of them were branded Mr. M’s Delicious Zoo Chow.

  “Okay—Merlin is definitely here somewhere,” Trudy said.

  Jack nodded. “But that still doesn’t help us to figure out where, exactly.”

  Trudy looked around. “I can’t stand it. My mother might be trapped here somewhere and there’s nothing we can do to help her. Maybe we should start asking the keepers some questions.”

  “But for all we know the keepers could be working for Merlin. We need to be careful—we don’t want to give the game away!”

  “I don’t care about careful; I want to rescue my mother.”

  “And what good would it be to your mother if we got caught?”

  “I don’t care if we get caught. If we get caught at least we’d get locked up with her. Anyway, you’re always getting caught and you always manage to escape, don’t you?” Trudy paused in thought and then her eyes lit up. “That’s what we should do! We should deliberately get caught. Then you could perform one of your legendary escapes. It’s a brilliant plan!”

  Jack began backing away from Trudy. “Look, while it’s true that I am excellent at escaping from things, there’s always the chance that I’d mess it up this time.”

  Tr
udy turned away from Jack and started shouting. “Merlin! Where are you? We want to be CAPTURED!”

  Jack cringed. Other visitors to the zoo were looking at them. If they got caught, could he manage to escape again? After all, Trudy’s mother had been a much more experienced Ministry operative than he was and yet she hadn’t managed to escape.

  “Come and GET US!”

  Trudy was good at shouting. Jack noticed that one of the lions was looking at her. It was probably wondering whether Trudy could give it roaring tips. Jack thought about the lion. It was the king of the jungle—and yet it hadn’t managed to escape from the zoo. What chance would he have?

  Jack began thinking about all the animals in the zoo. They all had their own unique skills. The cheetah was super-fast; the monkeys could climb anything; the lion was good at roaring; the giraffes would be the ideal lookout. And yet for some reason, with all these skills the animals hadn’t managed to escape.

  For a few seconds Jack wondered why you never heard about animals teaming up and staging a mass breakout. And then he remembered that a lot of the animals would have eaten the other ones. It’s generally hard to work together as a unit when you’re always wondering if the people you’re cooperating with consider you a real teammate or only a halftime snack.

  Jack remembered an old war film his dad made him watch every Christmas. It was about a group of World War II prisoners working together to escape from a prison camp. The Great Escape—that was it. They used all sorts of ingenious ways to break out—and then it clicked in Jack’s head.

  “MERLIN, I’M WAIT…”

  Trudy was interrupted in mid-shout by Jack’s hand clamping over her mouth. “Stop shouting. I’ve figured out what’s wrong with the zoo.…”

  Trudy’s eyes, which had been widening, were now looking down at Jack’s hand.

  “… and if you promise to stop shouting, I’ll take you to the place I’m thinking of.”

  Jack dropped his hand from Trudy’s mouth.

  “You think you’ve figured something out?”

  “Yes, there’s one type of animal that you should never see in a zoo. So that’s what we go and look at.”

  “Thanks, Jack.”

  “No problem.”

  Trudy punched Jack hard in the shoulder.

  “What was that for?”

  “Never, ever put your hand over my mouth again.”

  Jack felt that being punched in the shoulder was slightly unfair, particularly when you’d just come up with an idea about how to rescue someone’s mother.

  Trudy then punched Jack in the shoulder again.

  “OWWW! And what was that for?”

  “That was because you really need to start washing your hands more often.”

  Jack gingerly sniffed the palm of his hand. His nose wrinkled and he decided that the second punch had been justified.

  * * *

  MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK

  HANDWASHING

  THE IMPORTANCE OF

  It is worth noting that having clean hands is a matter that has become of paramount importance to the Ministry over the years. However, it has been brought to our attention that this can be problematic.

  When people want to clean their hands because they have germs upon them, they turn on the tap and rub soap on them. Then, after dousing them in water, people generally put the soap back and turn off the tap. The problem with this is clear. Although their hands have been cleaned, afterward they touch the tap to turn it off. The very same tap they touched when their hands were covered in germs. The problem of recontamination is obvious.

  The finest Ministry minds were put to trying to solve the problem of how to keep one’s hands continually clean. A solution was quickly reached to deal with this problem. However, the Minister himself has indicated that it is important for operatives to learn how to think logically and solve problems themselves. Therefore, we shall not explain how this problem was solved.

  We shall merely note that the Ministry is the only organization in the world that owns a laminating machine but doesn’t actually have ID cards.

  * * *

  26

  MEET THE MEERKATS

  Jack and Trudy were standing in front of the meerkat enclosure. The enclosure was surrounded by a ten-foot wall of clear Plexiglas. It had recently been renovated, and a few old iron bars from the previous cage lay at their feet. The fact that the enclosure had been updated recently made Jack even more sure that he was correct that Merlin was somewhere nearby. Jack looked at the small pile of iron bars—there were nowhere near enough to have surrounded the enclosure entirely. He couldn’t help wondering what had happened to the other leftover bars.

  Trudy looked unimpressed. “You think my mother is being guarded by meerkats?”

  “Not precisely.”

  “Then what?” asked Trudy. “They put her in the meerkat enclosure and she was so taken with how cute they are she decided to never come home again?”

  For a brief moment Jack considered pointing out that he really liked meerkats because at least they didn’t punch you in the shoulder all the time. However, he quickly realized that this would be a particularly ironic way to get a punch in the shoulder and decided to say something else instead. “What do you know about meerkats?”

  Trudy looked into the enclosure. A few meerkats were standing up on their hind legs. Their little scruffy snouts were sniffing the air and their little black eyes looked slightly glazed. They slowly swayed back and forth.

  Trudy read the information card outside the enclosure. “They’re from the mongoose family. They’re carnivorous and they’re burrowing animals. So what?”

  Jack pointed at them. “And yet they’re inside the enclosure, right?”

  “Of course they’re in the enclosure.”

  Jack laughed. “There’s no ‘of course’ about it. In fact, it’s ridiculous.”

  Trudy still hadn’t realized what Jack meant.

  “Look, every Christmas my dad makes me watch films about prisoners of war escaping from military camps. And in every single one of those films the best way to escape is by building a tunnel.”

  Trudy looked at Jack and then back at the meerkats. “Burrowing!”

  “Exactly—if those meerkats were just in a normal enclosure, they’d have dug a thousand escape tunnels by now and would be roaming free all over Belfast.”

  “But since they’re still here something’s keeping them inside the enclosure.”

  Jack nodded. “And that’s probably because Merlin did something to them. If he can control humans, he can probably control meerkats,” suggested Jack. “And remember, he was trying to dig to find the stone. What creature would have been better suited to making a cavern around the stone than nimble little meerkats?”

  Realization dawned across Trudy’s face. “Jack, you’re brilliant.”

  Jack smiled to himself, feeling very brilliant.

  “Now we’ll just wait until no one is watching and climb into the enclosure,” said Trudy.

  Jack felt slightly less brilliant. He hadn’t realized they’d have to climb into the enclosure. If it had been made of old-style metal bars or chicken wire it might have been possible, but with a modern Plexiglas it was different. Jack was sure that this must have been why Merlin had renovated the enclosure by getting rid of old-style iron bars.74

  Jack looked at the meerkats. With their black glass-like eyes, little snouts, and tiny sharp teeth they looked a lot less friendly than they were made out to be in wildlife documentaries.

  The meerkats were one of the most popular animals at the zoo, and in another country Jack and Trudy might have had to wait for a long time before they could have sneaked in. Luckily, because they lived in Northern Ireland they didn’t have to wait long before there was a rain shower. The zoo visitors scurried for cover and headed for the cafeteria to enjoy a Popsicle.75 Trudy confidently strode toward a tree that was hanging over the edge of the enclosure. She scrambled up it so nimbly that a monkey in the encl
osure next door gave her a round of applause. “Come on, Jack, it’s easy. You must have climbed trees when you were younger.”

  Jack hadn’t climbed any trees when he was growing up. He liked the look of trees and in many ways admired their work, but that was as close a relationship as he had with them. He scrabbled at the base of the tree briefly. The rain wasn’t helping. “I can’t help feeling that if trees wanted to be climbed they would grow in the shape of a ladder.”

  Trudy sighed and then started pointing out a series of footholds and handholds Jack should use. Under this direction he made it to the overhanging branch, barely even breaking his neck once. “All right, so how do we get down?”

  “We’re going to let gravity take care of that.” Trudy smiled.

  Jack muttered under his breath again. He really wasn’t at all a fan of gravity. It always seemed to be trying to hurt him in some way. He would have much preferred to be falling down a bottomless pit where gravity wasn’t such a worry.

  One branch hung far over into the enclosure, and Trudy edged her way toward the end of it. As Trudy got farther along the branch, it started bending down more and more. She shimmied farther along and hung herself off the end of the branch so it lowered her to within six feet of the ground. Jack wondered how she was going to make it that final six feet when she suddenly let go. The branch catapulted back up with Jack hanging on for dear life. Trudy landed as nimbly as a cat. She stood up and smiled. “Your turn. It’s easy!”

  Five minutes later Jack was lying in the grass, rubbing his back and groaning softly. Trudy’s face appeared over his. He stopped groaning long enough to speak. “I’m thinking of training for the Olympic gymnastics next year. But I’m not sure I’d look good in a leotard.”

  The meerkat habitat was rather unremarkable. There were several small grassy hillocks, with occasional sandy hollows. Every now and then Jack almost twisted his ankle by putting his foot in the mouth of a burrow.