first-class ticket, and in forty-five minutes he was on the Aer Lingus shuttle to Dublin Airport. He kept trying Artemis’s number until they started the engines, and switched his phone on again as soon as the wheels touched down.
It was dark by the time he left the Arrivals terminal. Less than half a day had passed since they had broken into the safety deposit box in Munich’s International
Bank. It was incredible that so much could happen in such a short time. Still, when you worked for Artemis Fowl II, the incredible was almost a daily occurrence. Butler had been with Artemis since the day of his birth, just over fourteen years ago, and in that time he had been dragged into more fantastic situations than the average presidential bodyguard.
The Fowl Bentley was parked in the prestige level of the short-stay car park.
Butler slotted his new phone into the car kit and tried Artemis again. No luck. But when he remote accessed the mailbox at Fowl Manor, there was one message. From Artemis.
Butler’s grip tightened on the leather steering wheel. Alive. The boy was alive at least.
The message started well enough, then took a decidedly strange turn. Artemis claimed to be unhurt, but perhaps was suffering from concussion or post-traumatic stress, because Butler’s young charge also claimed that fairies were responsible for the strange missile. A pixie, to be precise. And now he was in the company of an elf, which was apparently a completely different animal from a pixie. Not only that, but the elf was an old friend who they had forgotten. And the pixie was an old enemy who they couldn’t remember. It was all very strange. Butler could only conclude that Artemis was trying to tell him something, and that hidden inside these crazed meanderings was a message. He would have to analyse the tape as soon as he returned to Fowl Manor.
Then the recording became an unfolding drama. More players came within range of Artemis’s microphone. The alleged pixie, Opal, and her bodyguards joined the group.
Threats were exchanged and Artemis tried to talk his way out. It didn’t work. If Artemis had a fault, it was that he tended to be very patronizing, even in crisis situations. The pixie, Opal, or whoever it really was, certainly didn’t take kindly to being spoken down to. It appeared that she considered herself every bit Artemis’s equal, if not his superior.
She ordered Artemis silenced in mid-lecture, and her command was obeyed instantly.
Butler experienced a moment of dread, until the pixie stated that Artemis was not dead, merely stunned. Artemis’s new ally was similarly stunned, but not before she learned of their planned theatrical demise. Something to do with the Eleven Wonders, and trolls.
‘You cannot be serious,’ muttered Butler, pulling off the motorway at the exit for Fowl Manor.
To the average passer-by it would seem as though several rooms in the manor at the end of the avenue were occupied, but Butler knew that the bulbs in these rooms were all on timers and would switch on and off at irregular intervals. There was even a stereo system wired to each room that would pump talk radio into various areas of the house. All measures designed to put off a casual burglar. None of which, Butler knew,
would put off a professional thief.
The bodyguard opened the electronic gates and sped up the pebbled driveway.
He drew up directly in front of the main door, not bothering to park it in the shelter of the double garage. He pulled out his handgun and clip holster from a magnetic strip under the driver’s seat. It was possible that the kidnappers had sent a representative who could already be inside the manor.
Butler knew as soon as he opened the main door that something was wrong. The alarm’s thirty-second warning should have begun its countdown immediately, but it did not. This was because the entire box was covered in a case of some shiny, crackling,
fibreglass-like substance. Butler poked it gingerly. The stuff glowed and seemed almost organic.
Butler proceeded along the lobby, sticking to the walls. He glanced towards the ceilings. Green lights winked in the shadows. At least the CCTV cameras were still working. Even if the manor’s visitors had left, he should get a look at them on the security tapes.
The bodyguard’s foot brushed against something. He glanced down. A large crystal bowl lay on the rug, the remains of a sherry trifle slopping in its base. Beside it lay a wad of gravy-encrusted tinfoil. A hungry kidnapper? A little way on, he found an empty champagne bottle and a stripped chicken carcass. Just how many intruders had been here?
The remnants of food formed a trail that led towards the study. Butler followed it upstairs, stepping over a half-eaten T-bone steak, two chunks of fruit cake and a pavlova shell. A light shone from the study doorway, casting a small shadow into the hall. There was someone in the study. A not very tall someone. Artemis?
Butler’s spirits rose for a second when he heard his employer’s voice, but they sank just as quickly. He recognized those words: he had listened to them himself in the car. The intruder was playing the taped message on the answering machine.
Butler crept into the study, stepping so lightly that his footfalls would not have alerted a deer. Even from the back, this intruder was a strange fellow. He was barely a metre tall, with a stocky torso and thick, muscled limbs. His entire body appeared to be covered with wild wiry hair that seemed to move independently. His head was encased in a helmet of the same glowing substance that had incapacitated the alarm box. The intruder was wearing a blue jumpsuit with a flap in the seat. The flap was half unbuttoned, giving Butler a view of a hairy rear end that seemed unsettlingly familiar.
The taped message was coming to an end.
Artemis’s abductor was describing what lay in store for the Irish boy. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I had a nasty little scenario planned for Foaly, something theatrical involving the Eleven Wonders. But now I have decided that you are worthy of it.’
‘How nasty?’ asked Artemis’s new ally, Holly.
‘Troll nasty,’ responded Opal.
The Fowl Manor intruder made a loud sucking noise, then discarded the remains of an entire rack of lamb.
‘Not good,’ he said. ‘This is really bad.’
Butler cocked his weapon, aiming it squarely at the intruder.
‘It’s about to get worse,’ he said.
Butler sat the intruder in one of the study’s leather armchairs, then pulled a second chair round to face him. From the front, this little creature looked even stranger.
His face was basically a mass of wire-like hair surrounding eyes and teeth. The eyes occasionally glowed red like a fox’s, and the teeth looked like two rows of picket fencing. This was no hairy child, this was an adult creature of some sort.
‘Don’t tell me,’ sighed Butler. ‘You’re an elf.’
The creature sat up straight. ‘How dare you!’ he cried. ‘I am a dwarf, as you very well know.’
Butler thought back to Artemis’s confusing message.
‘Let me guess. I used to know you, but somehow I forgot. Oh yes, the fairy police wiped my mind.’
Mulch burped. ‘Correct. You’re not as slow as you look.’
Butler raised the gun. ‘This is still cocked, so less of the lip, little man.’
‘Pardon me, I didn’t realize we were enemies now.’
Butler leaned forward in his chair. ‘We were friends?’
Mulch thought about it. ‘Not at first, no. But I think you grew to love me for my charm and noble character.’
Butler sniffed. ‘And personal hygiene?’
‘That’s not fair,’ objected Mulch. ‘Do you have any idea what I had to do to get here? I escaped from a sub- shuttle and swam a couple of miles in freezing cold water.
Then I had to break into a blacksmith’s in the west of Ireland — about the only place they still have blacksmiths — and snip off my mouth ring. Don’t ask. Then I burrowed across the entire country to find out the truth about this entire affair. And when I get here, one of the few Mud Men that I don’t feel like taking a bite out of is pointing a gun at me.’
‘Hold on a minute,’ said Butler. ‘I need to get a tissue to wipe my eyes.’
‘You don’t believe any of this, do you?’
‘Do I believe in fairy police and pixie conspiracies and tunnelling dwarfs? No, I don’t.’
