Agents of the Glass Read online

  Also by Michael D. Beil

  Lantern Sam and the Blue Streak Bandits

  Summer at Forsaken Lake

  The Red Blazer Girls series

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2016 by Michael D. Beil

  Cover art copyright © 2016 by Jason Cook

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhousekids.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Beil, Michael D., author.

  Title: A new recruit / Michael D. Beil.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, [2016] | Series:

  Agents of the Glass | Summary: Andy witnesses a bank robbery and becomes

  recruited to a secret organization that finds and eliminates evil.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015033930 | ISBN 978-0-385-75321-0 (trade) |

  ISBN 978-0-385-75324-1 (pbk.) | ISBN 978-0-385-75322-7 (lib. bdg.) |

  ISBN 978-0-385-75323-4 (ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Good and evil—Fiction. | Spies—Fiction. | New York

  (N.Y.)—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.B38823495 Ne 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/​2015033930

  ebook ISBN 9780385753234

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Michael D. Beil

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  A Prologue Just for You: Do Not Skip This!

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Acknowledgments

  To Maggie, Isabel, and good dogs everywhere

  By the time I heard about the explosion at the First Mutual Bank on Seventy-Seventh Street, Andy Llewellyn had already made the decision that would change his life. And mine. And, although you didn’t know it until this very moment, yours.

  As long as we’re on the topic, let’s get one thing out of the way right now. You may think that the decision to read this book was your own, but that’s not quite true. You’re reading it because I—we—want you to read it. In fact, we’ve gone to quite a bit of trouble to make certain that it ended up in your hands at this very moment. Don’t bother asking how we did it; it’s the kind of thing that we’ve become very good at. After all, we’ve had a few centuries to hone our skills.

  Why you? That’s simple. Because we see something in you—something special, a quality that sets you apart from your friends and classmates. We saw that quality in Andy right away, and he didn’t disappoint us. That doesn’t mean that we expect you to follow in his footsteps. Andy is, well, a special case. Keep reading, and you’ll see what I mean. You’re a bit more of a calculated risk, but I have a good feeling about you, too.

  Of course, you could set the book down right now and walk away, but I don’t think you will. I’ve been watching you for a while now, and I can picture the expression on your face as you read this; I’ve seen that mixture of fear, curiosity, and skepticism before.

  I’ve also been wrong before, though, as my colleagues are eager to point out. If this is one of those times, and you want to stop reading right now, just set the book down and walk away. I’ll take care of the rest. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention what you’ve read to anyone else, but to be honest, it doesn’t really matter, because no one will believe you, anyway.

  It’s up to you.

  There’s no doubt about it—Andy’s full name sounds a bit stuffy: Andover James Llewellyn. His story, however, starts with an ordinary pickle, the kind that fast-food joints put on their burgers.

  “It wasn’t even supposed to be on the hamburger,” he told Silas at their first meeting. “I told the guy: no pickles. When I opened the wrapper and saw that slimy thing staring at me from beneath those sesame seeds, I thought seriously about taking it back. And I would have if there hadn’t been a long line at the counter. I really hate pickles. So I used a French fry to push it onto a napkin and wadded it up. I had to throw away that fry, too, because it had touched the pickle.”

  Five minutes later, he was on his way home, ready to face the fact that it was the Friday before Labor Day, with school starting in five days, and he had precisely zero plans for the long holiday weekend.

  “All that changed in a hurry,” said Andy. “My mom is always telling me that life is like that. It just…happens.”

  He made the turn from Seventy-Seventh onto York Avenue and was walking north, a few steps behind a guy pushing a shopping cart full of bags of cans and bottles. The latest album from Karina Jellyby, his favorite singer, was pouring into his head through his earbuds when the blast hit him. According to the laws of physics, there could only have been a fraction of a second between the time he saw the flash and flying glass and heard the explosion, but Andy insists that, in his memory, they are two distinct events.

  “When I close my eyes, I still see the poor guy with the shopping cart flying sideways and slamming into a parked car, and all those cans and bottles being blown clear across the street,” he said. “A blizzard of glass and aluminum. And I hear Karina Jellyby’s song ‘Don’t Blame Me,’ the part where there’s just the piano at the beginning.”

  The explosion knocked Andy’s feet out from under him and rolled him between the front and rear wheels of a delivery truck that was screeching to a stop.

  “The way I see it, that pickle saved my life,” Andy insisted. “If they had made the burger the way I wanted it, I would have finished eating a few seconds earlier and would have been a few steps ahead of where I was, and instead of a cut on the forehead from a chunk of flying glass and some bruises from bouncing off the street, I would have ended up exactly like the guy with the shopping cart—dead.”
r />   Instead, Andy was alive. Disoriented, confused, and bleeding a little—actually, a lot—but definitely alive. He was lying under the truck, curled up into a ball and waiting for the next explosion, when he felt a hand on his shoulder and heard a voice that sounded miles and miles away.

  “Hey, kid, are you okay? Kid?”

  Andy lifted his head from the hot, greasy pavement. “Unh.”

  “He’s alive!” shouted the man.

  A woman asked, “Are you hurt?”

  “I don’t think so. Maybe. I can’t tell.”

  “Can you move?”

  He wiggled his toes, then clenched his hands into fists as he became aware of sirens blaring all around him. “Yeah. Everything works.”

  “Good. We’re going to get you out of there, but we have to be careful because there’s broken glass everywhere,” the woman said. “You’re going to be all right.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Andy said. He admitted later that he had no idea why he said that; at that moment, he didn’t know anything. “What happened?”

  “There was an explosion in the bank. The whole front of the building is gone.”

  Just then someone came with a push broom and swept all the broken glass aside, clearing a path for his escape. He commando-crawled in reverse, then, once his head was clear of the truck, stood and turned to face those who had helped him.

  Two sets of hands immediately pushed him back down onto the ground. “The way they looked at me, I knew something was wrong with my face, and when the blood started getting into my eyes, I got a little worried. But it was just a cut from some flying glass. I guess I was lucky—if it had been an inch lower, I would have lost an eye.”

  Five minutes later, after wrapping his head almost completely in gauze, the paramedics loaded him into the back of an ambulance. They were just about to shut the door when the woman who had assured him that he would be all right shouted at them, “Wait! I have his backpack! It was under the truck.”

  Maybe it was the loss of blood, or maybe he bumped his head and was suffering from a slight concussion, but Andy swears that right then he absolutely believed it was his backpack: same black-and-silver color scheme, same brand.

  “Thanks,” he said, never pausing to ask the obvious question: Why would he have been carrying his schoolbag on a Friday in August?

  The rest of that afternoon was a blur of X-rays, doctors shining lights into his eyes, tetanus shots, and his mother’s tears. By the time the nurse brought her into the treatment room, he was sitting up on the edge of the bed, drinking a ginger ale (they didn’t have root beer, his favorite), and munching on saltines.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  Abbey Llewellyn immediately broke down in a flurry of hugging and sobbing.

  “I’m okay, Mom. Really. It’s just a cut. Eight stitches. D’you want to see the piece of glass they took out? It’s, like, two inches long.”

  Like most twelve-year-olds, Andy has a habit of saying exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time, at least where his mother is concerned.

  The police investigation revealed that a (still-unidentified) man had wrapped himself in dynamite and walked into the bank to rob it. The teller handed over the money, and the robber turned to leave, but just as he reached for the front door, something went horribly wrong. Because the bank’s employees were all on the floor, they had only some cuts and scratches, but the robber and the homeless man pushing the shopping cart weren’t so lucky.

  The phone was ringing when Andy and his mother walked in the door to their apartment, and it didn’t stop until she finally unplugged it an hour later. Everybody wanted to talk to Andy—the NYPD (super nice), the FBI (a little scary), and every reporter in the city. Andy’s father let him talk to the cops and the FBI but told all the reporters to…Well, let’s just say that he told them that they really needed to stop calling.

  His father had some typically blunt advice for Andy, who had told him his theory about the pickle saving his life. “You ought to keep that little bit of information to yourself, unless you want to be known as Pickle Boy for the rest of your life. Because that’s what the newspapers and the TV reporters will call you.”

  Howard Llewellyn was right. The editors at the Daily Torch, New York’s most notorious tabloid, lived for “pickle boy” opportunities. Not that Howard was above a little name-calling himself. As the host of the nightly radio show Tellin’ It Like It Is (where he went by the name Howard Twopenny), he spent his fair share of time in the gutter on his never-ending search for what he called the LHD—the lowest human denominator.

  Andy slept on the top bunk of a set of bunk beds; the lower one had long ago been replaced by a desk and a small bookcase. After all the day’s excitement, however, sleep was impossible. For a long time, he lay there while a steady stream of pictures of a shopping cart tumbling through the air, followed by a million cans and bottles and an innocent bystander, played in an endless loop on the ceiling above him. It was the image of that man pushing the cart that haunted him, and the more he thought about him, the clearer the man’s face became. He had seen him before around the neighborhood, going through trash cans on Tuesdays, which was the trash pickup day on his street. He was angry with himself for never paying attention to him or being even the slightest bit curious about his life. What had happened, he wondered, to lead the man to a life on the streets of New York—certainly not a conscious choice anyone would make. He had been a teenager once, just like Andy, with friends and dreams, going off to school with his backpack, and—

  A backpack! Andy sat up in bed so quickly that he slammed his head on the ceiling—luckily, not the spot where his stitches were. Rubbing his forehead, he jumped to the floor and turned on the light. Hanging from his chair was his backpack, but his eyes soon landed on another identical pack parked in its usual spot next to the door.

  “A lot of things went through my mind at that moment,” he explained later. “Mostly, I was imagining how many pieces I was going to be blown into if it was another bomb. I didn’t know what to do, so I just got back in bed and stared at that backpack. My mom must have heard my head hit the ceiling, because in a few minutes she came in to check on me. I think she was feeling a little guilty about leaving. She’s a scientist and works for Concern Worldwide, this big international organization—you know, like the Red Cross—and she was flying to Tanzania first thing in the morning. I know I should have just told her about the pack right then, but she started talking about her trip to Africa, telling me that she would call me every day, and how everything was going to be all right, and to listen to my dad while she was gone, even if he was acting like, well, the guy I call Radio Dad. Sometimes, when he’s talking to me, it’s like he’s still on the air, saying the craziest things you ever heard. And Mom will always remind me, ‘Take your father with a grain of salt, Andover.’ Sometimes, I think I need a whole saltshaker. Anyway, when she left my room, I hopped down from the bed and stared at that backpack, pacing back and forth and trying to work up the nerve to open it up. I finally kneeled down next to it, took a deep breath, slid the zipper a few inches, and peeked inside. And then…wow.”

  Wow, indeed. Two hundred and ten thousand, seven hundred and forty dollars’ worth of wow, to be exact, in crisp new twenty- and fifty-dollar bills.

  I knew the two hundred grand would get your attention. Before you read any further, stop a moment and consider this question: What would you do if you were in Andy’s position? Two hundred and ten thousand, seven hundred and forty dollars. In a backpack. In your bedroom. And only you know. If you’re still interested, keep reading.

  “Two hundred grand?” bellowed Howard Llewellyn, spilling coffee down the front of his custom-made shirt in the process. “And you’re going to do what? Whoa! Slow down. Let’s talk about this. A bag full of money lands in your lap, and you want to give it back—even though you nearly got blown to smithereens?”

  “Easy, Dad. That’s a coffee cup, not a microphone. It wasn’t that bad.” Andy touched his bandaged
forehead. “Just a cut.”

  “Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little, but face it, you were damned lucky. Are you sure that’s what you want to do? I mean, that’s your college education right there.” He paused, grinning. “Or a nice car for your old man.”

  “I’m sure. It’s not my money.”

  “Does your mom know about this?”

  “No.”

  “Really? Huh. I would have bet…Well, you do what you think is right. But do me a favor, okay? This is for real. I have a reputation in this town. People have certain, um, expectations of…well…of Howard Twopenny, anyway, and I don’t want them to think I’ve gone soft or something. So if there’s a way to keep my name out of it, I know my boss would appreciate it.”

  “I’ll try,” said Andy as he threw the backpack over one shoulder and started for the door.

  “Whoa! Hold on. I’m coming with you. I don’t care how safe people say this city is; you can’t go walking around New York with two hundred grand in your backpack.”

  Andy returned the money.

  His dad patted him on the back outside the door to the Nineteenth Precinct. “You’re a good kid. A little crazy, maybe, but…Call me if you need me.”

  “Thanks, Dad. I’ve got it.”

  A minute later, he set the backpack on the desk of Detective Greg Cunningham. He had been the first policeman to talk to Andy in the hospital and had given him his card.