Jack Dervish, Super Spy

SYNOPSIS

Four-year-old Jack Dervish’s super spy parents disappeared without a trace…

…And now, at twelve and after years of living alone in his parents’ super-spy lair, training in every manner of super-spy skills, Jack decides he must attend school. After all, how will he foil the international crime syndicate and fight global evil if he can’t even pass as a normal, youngish Londoner?

Unfortunately, he quickly catches the attention of the Homeland Security Office, along with the meanest bullies at St. John’s Preparatory School. His only hope lies in his new friends, Isobel, William and Squid, and the super spy skills Jack never bothered to test…at least not against actual people.

Action. Adventure. Romance. Will Jack manage to find his parents, save his friends and win the girl? Or will the evil mastermind following him turn him into an enemy of the state? A funny, quirky story with an unforgettable new hero.

Dedicated to Derek Uemura

The smartest, most talented

(and most dangerous!)

Super Spy I know

ONE

The Nasty Incident at 74 Eaton Place

Jack Dervish was approximately four years old when the nasty incident took place at 74 Eaton Place. He knew this, because while he didn’t remember it as if it were yesterday, precisely...he remembered that day very, very clearly.

He remembered his mother’s whiter-than-usual face and her wide, brown eyes with the green and gold flecks. He remembered her leading him to the fireplace by one hand. He remembered her opening the secret compartment which led to the winding staircase that led down to the secret basement catacombs which housed her and his father’s secret spy hideout.

He remembered her kissing him repeatedly, telling him not to make a sound, when the pounding started on the front hall door of 74 Eaton Place, where he lived with his parents in London, England.

He also had a quite clear memory of his father standing by the far wall, wearing his long black trench coat as he peered warily out the heavy drapes of their living room windows. His father’s black hair and narrow face had looked more serious than usual, almost grim.

Looking back on it now, Jack imagined that he remembered seeing regret in his father’s dark eyes, beneath his rather thick, black eyebrows and furrowed brow. Rather less imaginatively, Jack quite distinctly recalled watching his father load a gun that he held in one hand.

Jack, of course, did exactly as his mother told him.

He had no reason not to follow her instructions to the letter. His parents had never been ones to make frivolous requests. When they said be quiet, or hide there was usually a very good reason. Jack didn't consider himself a particularly nervous or talkative boy, so he didn’t get shushed a lot, as a matter of course.

So he crouched inside the closed, secret doorway behind his parents’ large fireplace made of different-colored river stones and he listened.

It was very dark in there, and Jack was frightened. He’s not ashamed to admit he may have even sniffled a bit. He was four, after all.

But he didn’t make a sound anyone would hear on the other side.

In no short time, he heard voices speaking to his mother and his father. The voices rose louder as Jack crouched there, and sounded very angry. Jack heard shouting then, although he couldn’t make much out through the thick walls. Along with the shouting, he heard a fair bit of confused shuffling and messing about, as if someone were banging heavy objects together.

Finally, he heard a phup-phup sound.

Later, he deduced these had been gunshots.

Jack had not recognized the sound as gunshots at the time, because, he realized later, the gun must have been fitted with a silencer. And, as he needed to remind himself sometimes when he felt particularly impatient with his own lack of usefulness on that day...he was four.

Developmentally-speaking, four year-old children simply weren’t very useful.

Not long after the phup-phup sound, everything grew very, very still.

Jack crouched inside the doorway for a very long time anyway. His mother had told him to, after all. She didn’t ask him to do anything that drastic unless she had a very good reason.

So he waited.

And waited.

He waited for a very long time, really. He sat there for what must have been hours, if only because the light eventually grew dimmer through the crack in the door.

Jack did not make a single sound.

But eventually, as one must, Jack decided to do something.

Finding the hook latch that opened the secret door, he ventured into his parents’ living room. He looked around at its heavy gold curtains, its piles of books and Aboriginal paintings and giant wooden masks from Africa and yellowing maps from India and Asia tacked to the walls.

He found no one there. No one at all.

Which was a bit of a relief, really. He’d feared of course, by then, that he might have a rather nasty surprise waiting for him on the other side of that door.

So, in comparison, nothing at all was rather a pleasant surprise.

After a bit of searching, however, Jack did find some blood.

Not a large amount of blood. But that was only somewhat comforting.

After some thought, Jack decided to take a bit of cloth from the kitchen and soak up the blood and put it in a ziplock bag and then put that bag in the freezer. Jack had a tendency, even at the rather useless age of four, to assume things that might later be useful should be kept...even if their usefulness was not fully obvious at the time.

After Jack used the toilet and washed his hands, wandered pointlessly through a few more rooms including his mother’s study and his parents’ bedroom...he made himself a peanut butter sandwich with his favorite jam on it, which happened to be apricot. Taking a bite, he brought it with him back into the living room.

Jack sat on the floor, clutching the sandwich in one four-year-old hand.

As he ate it, he had himself a bit of a think.

It had already occurred to Jack that the police would likely be arriving at 74 Eaton Place. That would be especially true if his parents didn’t show themselves within a reasonable timeframe. Since they’d never left him anyplace alone before, even in his own home, Jack had to assume they hadn’t wanted to leave him alone this time, either.

Which meant, wherever they were, they likely hadn’t gone there on purpose. For if they had wanted to go there, Jack reasoned, they most certainly would have brought Jack with them.

Further, his parents knew where the secret compartment lived behind the fireplace with the big, polished river stones.

The police, however, did not.

Therefore, it stood to reason that if Jack were to remain in the secret basement catacombs under the stairs, which housed his parents’ super-spy hideout and his mother’s laboratory and her scientific journals and his father’s gadgets and guns and many, many books, well, then...his parents would likely be able to find him.

It was equally likely that the police would not.

Jack, even at four, knew a few things.

He very much did not like the idea of the police deciding he needed to live with some other, strange adults. Not only did he have serious doubts that those adults would end up being super-spies, like his parents...he quite preferred the set of parents he’d been given in the first go-round, thank you very much.

His decision to stay in the secret basement catacombs and not let the police take him to live with other, strange adults, followed quite naturally from these conclusions. Therefore, once he finished eating his sandwich, Jack spent the rest of that day carting useful things from the upstairs house down into the secret compartment behind the fireplace.

He clomped down the long, winding, curving staircase into the basement catacombs below, leaving cardboard boxes with those same useful things. At first, his selection was somewhat random. Several cans of beans, mayonnaise, bread for toast (of course), blankets (well, yes, it was quite chilly down there), his favorite pillow, a towel, and a bar of soap. Somewhat less useful things he also decided to bring included his stuffed animals Tom-Tom (a polar bear) and Bubbie (a green octopus).

He also brought his pet goldfish, Frank, in his octagonal bowl.

Fish food, of course. A can opener.

A few of his favorite shirts. Shoes. Four pairs of pants. Pajamas.

Later, he would go up to collect more things, as the need occurred to him. Forks and spoons. One very sharp knife. A frying pan. A bowl for cereal. A carton of eggs. Dried soup packets. A box of frozen white sausages. Two packets of kippered fish. A wrist watch from his father’s bureau. Galoshes and a raincoat. A bucket.

And so forth.

Upon discovering a refrigerator and freezer in the basement tucked in one corner of the multi-storied main room of his parents’ basement hideout, Jack found he had almost a proper kitchen. Counters with different-colored stains housed three bunsen burners, several jars of interesting-looking utensils and a great many metal bowls and glass tubes.

The refrigerator itself had already been quite full when he found it, of course.

With all of his mother’s lab samples and other interesting objects inside...toadstools and fly eggs, what looked like tiny vials of blood, dead insects, jars with baby animals floating in them and pieces of toenail clippings...he’d had to move things around a bit to fit the milk, eggs, butter, ham and orange juice.

Tucked way in the back of the freezer, he also found what appeared to be a human hand frozen and stuck in a plastic bag. He put the ziplock bag with the blood next to the frozen hand, and kept the ice cream as far away from both as he could.

Jack then hunkered down to wait.

He figured his parents, being the super-spies they were, must be in a great deal of trouble if they hadn’t come back by the time he had the hideout stocked full of useful things. He expected them to find him quite resourceful when they returned, and looked forward to seeing his father smile under his black, bushy eyebrows.

So Jack curled up in his favorite blanket, a quilt made by his Aunt Lacy for Christmas one year in Brighton, and he waited.

And he waited.

And he waited some more.

Until it crossed Jack’s mind one day that it was his birthday.

At the end of that day, as it finally sank in that his mother really wasn’t going to pop out from behind the secret door at the top of the stairs with a cake and five candles, his father in tow, it occurred to Jack to become a little worried.

When a second birthday passed, a full year later, Jack grew more worried still.

And still, Jack continued to wait.

While Jack waited, he did his best to learn as much as he possibly could. He also made it his goal to collect as many high-calibre, super-spy,  intelligence-grabbing, and undeniably useful skills as he possibly could. Jack reasoned that, when his parents returned, he would be very much behind in his super-spy studies if he didn’t make an effort to keep up on his own.

Also, if Jack discovered them in danger somewhere, like, say...Portugal...he would need to be a good deal less useless than his four year-old self had been that day behind the fireplace door.

While he waited, Jack found the world above him slowly changed.

TWO

Jack Meets His First Real Peer

If his calculations were correct (and they usually were), Jack was now twelve years old.

A great deal had happened upstairs at 74 Eaton Place, London, England, during that time.

Jack was also a good deal taller.

About a month after his parents had disappeared, prior to that first birthday when his mother and father didn’t magically reappear, Jack heard a great deal of stomping about and adult voices from the top of the staircase. Climbing up to be nearer to the sounds, he crouched by the secret passage behind the fireplace, and did his best to listen through the walls.

Clearly, someone had reported something, and it had been discovered that something fishy had occurred at 74 Eaton Place. The stomping went on for a few days, although with bigger and bigger gaps between bouts.

Eventually, it grew quiet again.

Then, a good deal after that first birthday following the nasty incident, someone or other must have decided that Jack’s parents weren’t likely to come back...at least not anytime soon.

Arrangements were made, by the sort who did that kind of thing.

As a result, when Jack was close to six years old and had just begun to teach himself how to hack into government databases using his father’s basement computer...another bout of stomping occurred. This time the voices were cheery, and decidedly un-police-like.

Which told Jack that likely no one was looking for his parents anymore.

More weeks passed, and then a great racket ensued upstairs.

Saws sawed wood, paint was painted on, hammers slammed against nails as shelves were hung and carpets ripped up and put back down again.

When things finally settled down that time, the Bumbertons lived upstairs.

Jack, over the course of those years, kept himself quite occupied.

He’d never been an idle boy, even at the rather useless age of four. But previously he’d had a good deal more in the way of distractions...what with having parents and aunts and uncles and neighbors and play dates and trips to France and brunch outings and birthday parties and boating and so forth.

All of that had gone now, which, on the plus side, left Jack hours of fruitful accomplishment in the seemingly bottomless task of making himself an exceedingly useful citizen and super-spy in training.

He pored over his mother’s journals, teaching himself to read the odd, hieroglyph-type code she used in the margins of the pages. He deciphered her many and cryptic notes and scribbles to explain her many complicated and interesting experiments and inventions.

He went through file after file of his father’s, looking at the reams of information he had collected on various arch-villains, enemy super-spies, terrorists and tax evaders.

Jack learned about every kind of poison in his father’s big book of poisons. He spent hours on the computer, practicing his skills against the security systems of government databases, banks, the post office, the telephone company, the military, his favorite comic book company...and, somewhat more peevishly, the people who discontinued making his favorite brand of biscuits.

All the while, Jack waited, and wondered when his parents would return.

Then, on his twelfth birthday, sitting on the floor inside the main room of his parents’ secret basement catacombs, placing twelve candles on the chocolate cake he had stolen from the Bumbertons' freezer a few weeks back for this very occasion...Jack had a rather unpleasant thought.

His parents weren’t coming back.

Not on their own.

Something, or someone, had made it impossible for them to return.

Jack realized that he, himself, had to make a decision about what would happen next in his life. No adult would be around to do it for him.

Jack spent several more days thinking about this. This included a fair bit of mulling and scribbling of formulas on the giant chalkboard that took up most of one wall on the ground floor of the brick-walled catacombs. It also included some pacing, and time spent staring at Fred, his increasingly aged goldfish, who had grown so fat and large he could barely make two full turns around his octagonal tank.

At the end of all this, Jack came to one, very important conclusion.

He must attend school.

It stood to reason, in Jack’s eyes, that he had a gap in his education. Not so much from the lessons he would receive in school...although he looked forward to those with a great deal of anticipation, particularly the idea of learning particle physics from real scientists and being able to debate the ethics of genetic manipulation with legal scholars.

No, the true gap, in Jack’s eyes, came from his almost complete lack of contact with other children. In particular, since his parents’ demise, Jack had experienced very little contact with children his own age.

Before Jack could contemplate becoming a super-spy himself, he would need to be able to associate seamlessly with his fellow human beings. He would need to know what made them happy and sad, angry or afraid. He would need to understand the reasons why they did what they did. Otherwise, how would he know who was evil and who was good?

Despite frequent raiding trips through the catacombs and sewers to the neighboring houses for food, the occasional tech gadget or a faster internet connection...or to interact with the few professional contacts he had developed in the outside world, Jack had noticed a distinct distance between himself and his fellow Londoners. In point of fact, most seemed to stare at him blankly, blinking a lot, whenever he opened his mouth to speak.

Luckily, this gap would be easy to address.

Jack began his new project with all of the gusto he used to attack any new area of inquiry. He did a thorough examination of the records, grounds, teaching faculty, crime rate, quality of education and equipment of the eligible schools. Meaning, those schools within a thirty kilometer radius of 74 Eaton place...but not any closer than eight kilometers, so it was less likely Jack's classmates might discover his rather peculiar living situation.

Once he’d narrowed the list down to four schools, Jack did what any entrepreneurial child would do, and spied on all of the teachers. He wanted to ensure they were valuable members of society and had at least a base level grasp of the subjects they claimed to have mastered.

He found them, in most cases...adequate.

Slowly, however, it dawned on Jack that he might be approaching this the wrong way.

Shocking as it was, in the course of his research, Jack learned that most children of twelve simply would not need an advanced knowledge of astrophysics to feel satisfied with their scholastic experience. More shocking still, most children his age did not feel any desire to compete in knowledge and education with the criminal mastermind element of the entire global syndicate of evil.

Most kids, in fact, from Jack’s observation, seemed quite content to eat jam on toast and watch very silly and demeaning programs on the television.

Jack tried to do this himself, in an attempt to understand the minds of the other boys and girls he would soon be meeting. After several days, however, and several hours of actual television watching, Jack soon became quite bored (although the toast was quite good, even burnt a bit on the edges from the bunsen burner’s blue flame...and he did find a few episodes of Pinky and the Brain amusing).

Jack decided he was done with research.

Tossing out his list, he chose the wealthiest public school located within the radius he’d marked out for himself on the map. From his observation, a school of that type was far more likely to have foreigners and eccentrics.

Arranging for his own admission proved to be little trouble at all, given that he’d been hacking into government databases since he was six years old.

He created a fictitious past, falsifying school records from New Delhi, India and inventing a diplomat uncle with familial ties to the Russian Royal family of Romanov. He decided that these two things might make him sufficiently interesting to the other children and also confuse them into not asking him too many pointed questions.

Dispensing with all of the usual orientation nonsense...which he couldn’t attend anyway without parents...Jack showed up in uniform on a day of his choosing. His backpack contained his laptop, a jumper and a number of gadgets in case things got sticky. He also carried a printed out copy of his school schedule, with a mix of classes that seemed similar to that of the other students...with perhaps just a few of the sillier subjects not included.

Jack entered the school gates, late for class (by calculation of course, hoping they would shuffle him through, assuming any misses in paperwork as their own mistake in their haste to get him to the proper classroom)...when he stumbled upon a little girl of approximately his own age, crying outside the school’s gates.

And that,