Take Your Last Breath. Lauren Child

thirteen-year-old schoolgirl not even five feet in flippers, sleek dark hair parted to one side, neatly secured with a barrette above her right eye, it was hard to ignore her. Aside from anything else she was the only dive student here still attending junior high – everyone else had long since graduated school; everyone else was in full-time Spectrum employment. Ruby hadn’t even heard of Spectrum six weeks ago.

      This, in itself, wasn’t surprising. Not many people had heard of Spectrum. It was an organisation so secret that access to its headquarters could change from day to day, hour to hour. Once you exited, you could never be quite sure you would ever find your way back: which was just the way Spectrum liked it.

      Spectrum – a spy agency set up to foil the plots and plans of evil geniuses capable of grand theft, extortion, fraud and murder – did not employ agents who were less than a hundred per cent smart and a hundred per cent discreet. As far as LB was concerned, ‘You mess up, you leave forever.’

      LB – the big cheese, the top dog, the head honcho in charge of Spectrum 8 – was not big on second chances, so the odds of getting kicked out were high and Ruby would have lost her agent status almost before she’d begun if it hadn’t been for one thing: she was brilliant.

      Actually, brilliant was an understatement. Ruby Redfort was a genius: her speciality lay in puzzles and codes. In fact she had won the Junior Code-Cracker Championships when she was just seven, and the following year was offered a place at Harvard University though she had turned it down flat. She didn’t want to be regarded as some kind of geek freak.

      It was because of this phenomenal skill at cracking codes that LB had recruited Ruby. The Spectrum 8 boss had no desire to employ a kid – kids could be trouble, LB knew that – but what choice did she have? Her ace code breaker, Lopez, had been murdered at the hand of Count von Viscount, a villain so dread that one shivered to speak his name.

      When one dared to speak his name at all.

      Ruby had first encountered LB about a month ago, on her first visit to the Spectrum offices. The spy boss had been dressed entirely in white and sitting behind a huge desk that dominated an entirely white office; the red polish on her toenails being the only flash of colour in the room. At fifty-something she looked both beautiful and intimidating: one tough cookie. Ruby was a confident, somewhat fearless kid, but she instinctively knew that in LB she had met her match: an intelligent woman who did not suffer fools gladly. In fact did not suffer them at all.

      It was fair to say Ruby hadn’t exactly followed orders during the weeks spent working on her first Spectrum assignment, but she had foiled the Fool’s Gold Gang and prevented Count von Viscount from stealing the priceless Jade Buddha of Khotan.

      It was for this reason that LB had granted Ruby Redfort a second chance, and for this reason that she was now being trained up at the Spectrum dive camp.

      ‘If you do come face to face with one of our ocean friends,’ continued the dive instructor, ‘then just stay where you are, don’t back away. If it comes toward you, then swim toward it. He’ll probably get the message.’

      ‘Oh yeah,’ said Ruby. ‘And what message is that?’

      ‘That you aren’t lunch – lunch usually swims in the other direction,’ said the dive instructor with a wink.

      ‘And what if this shark ain’t so smart?’ asked Ruby. ‘What then?’

      ‘Then,’ said the dive master, ‘it will probably try to explore you with its teeth – that’s how they check things out, only you don’t really want them to do so as it could mean waving bye-bye to an arm or a leg.’

      ‘Well, I kinda need my arms for waving – my legs sorta tend to come in handy too,’ said Ruby.

      ‘So that’s why I suggest you swim with this stick.’ The instructor picked up a retractable aluminium pole. ‘If said shark gets too near, just prod him and he’ll most likely back off.’

      ‘And if he doesn’t?’ asked one of the other divers – a guy called Bosco. He was trying to sound casual, but you could tell the whole mentioning of sharks thing had him worried.

      The dive master smiled. ‘Then try to look unappetising.’

      Ruby rolled her eyes.

      ‘Don’t you worry Redfort,’ said the instructor, chuckling. ‘It’s highly unlikely they’ll want to snack on you – far too small.’

      ‘On the other hand,’ said Kip Holbrook, another of Ruby’s fellow trainees, ‘maybe the kid’s the perfect bite-size portion.’

      ‘Funny, really funny,’ said Ruby. She pulled down her mask and fell backwards off the boat.

      Ruby Redfort was not scared of sharks – not yet anyway.

      NOW, THERE ARE A FEW LOGISTICAL PROBLEMS involved in being a school kid secret agent, the most obvious one being: how to get enough time off class to carry out your secret agenting missions.

      Not easy. But Ruby Redfort was a good persuader: she could convince most people of most things. She avoided ‘complete’ untruths if at all possible, preferring to steer clear of certain topics. Her tactic was to leave out various details, keep the picture blurry; this wasn’t so much lying as being economical with the facts. As far as this particular trip went, Ruby’s friends believed her to be on spring break family vacation. She hadn’t told them that she was with her family; she hadn’t told them she was on vacation; they had just put two and two together and come to this conclusion.

      As far as Ruby’s parents were concerned, Ruby was on a school dive trip: ‘An opportunity not to be missed,’ this was how Ruby had sold it to them. She had not actually told them that it was a school dive trip, but they had naturally made this assumption.

      RULE 65: PEOPLE BELIEVE WHAT THEY WANNA BELIEVE.

      In other words if they expect you to be on a school dive trip then they’ll assume that that’s where you are.

      Ruby’s personal dive instructor was called Agent Kekoa. Ruby had never seen Kekoa in anything but swim gear or dive suits, and her hair – black, long and sleek – was always tied neatly back from her face in a practical way.

      Kekoa was the strong, silent type, not what you would on the whole call blabby; she only spoke if there was something she really needed to say. Perhaps this was a habit developed in the ocean where talking was not an option. Or perhaps she had found the career that perfectly suited a person who didn’t particularly need to ‘share’.

      Ruby on the other hand was indeed a talker – she often found it hard to keep her mouth shut and so to her, Agent Kekoa was a conundrum.

      ‘But what if I need to tell you something – urgently I mean?’ said Ruby.

      ‘Signal,’ replied Kekoa.

      ‘Yeah, but I mean how many signals are there?’

      ‘Enough,’ said Kekoa.

      ‘But I mean what if I need to say something that there isn’t a signal for?’

      ‘Then keep it for later.’

      ‘So you’re saying there’s no gadget for underwater talking?’

      ‘There is,’ replied Kekoa, ‘but I don’t use it. Much better to listen with your ears, your eyes, your hands; use all your senses and keep your mouth shut. Just…’ Kekoa drew her fingers across her lips. Her meaning couldn’t have been clearer: keep it to yourself, zip it, or shut your cake hole, depending on how polite you thought she was being.

      Ruby shrugged, put her breathing tube in her mouth and sank beneath the waves. Of course, Kekoa was right. Signals did the job fine – there was no need for words down here and Ruby, despite her talkative nature, enjoyed this watery universe full of sounds rather than voices.

      As