Mac Undercover Read online

  To my mom, who wasn’t happy that the last dedication she got had

  only two words. This one has 22!

  Love,

  Mac

  To my favorite humans: Katrin, Allister, and Oskar

  —ML

  Contents

  Cover

  Epigraph

  Dedication

  Chapter One: The Call

  Chapter Two: Spy Plane

  Chapter Three: The Tower

  Chapter Four: Queenly Power

  Chapter Five: Her Majesty

  Chapter Six: King and Queen Stuff

  Chapter Seven: A Threat

  Chapter Eight: Oh and Also

  Chapter Nine: My Secret Plan

  Chapter Ten: Art Heist

  Chapter Eleven: To Rob a Thief

  Chapter Twelve: Captured

  Chapter Thirteen: Rendezvous

  Chapter Fourteen: Rain in the Dark

  Chapter Fifteen: KGB HQ

  Chapter Sixteen: Jean Crime

  Copyright

  This is the house I grew up in.

  It is on the top of a hill in a little town called Castro Valley. That’s a real place. You can look it up.

  This is really what my house looked like.

  My mom and I lived there.

  Since it was just the two of us, I had a lot of responsibilities: I did the dishes, packed my lunches, cooked our dinners, washed the laundry, dusted, vacuumed, and cleaned out our rabbits’ litter boxes.

  (I wanted a dog. We had rabbits instead.)

  It was also my responsibility to answer the phone. I liked answering the phone, even though it was never for me.

  One afternoon the phone rang, and it was for me.

  It was the Queen of England.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Hullo,” she said. “Can I speak to Mac?”

  “Speaking,” I said.

  “Mac, this is the Queen of England,” she said. “I would like to ask you for a favor.”

  “OK,” I said.

  Whenever somebody asks you for a favor, it is a good idea to ask them what the favor is before you say OK.

  But I had never talked to a queen before.

  So I said OK.

  “Wonderful,” said the Queen. “I will tell you a secret. Last night, somebody stole the Crown Jewels!”

  “No!” I said.

  “Yes!” said the Queen. “This is the favor: You shall find the missing treasure and bring it back to me.”

  “Wow!” I said.

  “Yes!” said the Queen.

  This was very exciting.

  But I had a question.

  “I have a question,” I said.

  “I hope it is a quick question,” said the Queen.

  “Why me?”

  The Queen of England sighed. “That is a stupid question.”

  “My teacher says there is no such thing as stupid questions.”

  The Queen of England frowned. (I could tell she was frowning, even over the phone.)

  “That is just something teachers say in America. But I am not a teacher from America. I am a queen, from England.”

  “Oh,” I said. “OK. But still. Why me? I am just a kid, and I don’t even live in England.”

  Castro Valley is in California. You’d know that if you looked it up.

  “Mac,” said the Queen. “You are the smartest kid in your class. You have straight As in every subject, except handwriting.”

  “I’m working on that,” I said.

  Then it’s settled. You shall take the next flight to London.”

  “But tomorrow is a school day.”

  “I shall write a note,” said the Queen.

  “But my mom will be worried about me,” I said.

  “I shall write another note,” said the Queen.

  “Good-bye.”

  She hung up.

  There was a knock at the front door.

  When I opened it, nobody was there.

  But an envelope lay on our welcome mat.

  I opened it, because I was Mac Barnett.

  (I still am.)

  Inside the envelope was a plane ticket and a stack of colorful British money.

  It seemed like a lot of money. I couldn’t tell for sure, because I wasn’t British.

  (I’m still not.)

  I went upstairs and packed.

  Like a good spy, I packed light.

  I laid out some things on my bed.

  My Game Boy.

  Three books.

  A toothbrush.

  A hat.

  A shirt.

  A jacket.

  And:

  Really, they were my only blue jeans.

  My mom bought me one pair at the beginning of every school year. Most kids in my school had many pairs of jeans, but my mom didn’t like it when I told her that.

  “Just be glad you have any jeans,” she would say. “In Russia, jeans are banned.”

  “Banned?”

  “Against the law.”

  “Is that true?” I would say. “That doesn’t seem true.”

  But my mom insisted that it was true. And she only bought me one pair of jeans.

  I put on my jeans, picked up my suitcase, and went downstairs.

  When I was walking out the door, the phone rang.

  Again.

  It was the Queen of England.

  Again.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Hullo,” she said.

  “Can I speak to Mac?” she asked.

  “Speaking,” I said.

  “I forgot to tell you one thing,” said the Queen. “Be careful. This mission is extremely dangerous. Good-bye.”

  And that is how it happens.

  One minute you are just a kid.

  The next minute you are a secret agent for the Queen of England.

  One night you are doing a math worksheet.

  The next night you are flying on a plane to London, and you didn’t even pack any math worksheets.

  It takes a long time to get to London from California.

  We flew through the night.

  The sky outside my window was black. Out on the wing, a big jet engine roared.

  I wondered how long this mission would take. It was Wednesday, and on Saturday, Derek Lafoy was having a karate birthday party. It would be nice to make it back in time for the party.

  Of course, I hadn’t been invited to Derek Lafoy’s karate birthday party.

  At least not yet. Probably because I was the only boy in my class who did not do karate for an after-school activity. Half the girls did karate too. It was the 1980s. Karate was a big deal. You can look that up.

  My mom worked late, so my after-school activity was Extended Adventure After-School Day Care. There wasn’t much adventure. I was the oldest one in day care by two grades. I did my homework, then played chess against little kids until my mom came to pick me up.

  But! Now that I was a secret agent for the Queen of England, I figured Derek Lafoy would definitely invite me to his party.

  Still, I hoped my mission didn’t involve any karate.

  I studied my fellow passengers.

  Maybe I was being followed.

  (Good spies are always aware of the people around them.)

  Why was the man behind me wearing sunglasses on an airplane? Was it so I couldn’t see he was watching me while he pretended to read the newspaper?

  What about that woman putting on perfume? Was her bottle really full of perfume? Or did it contain knockout gas?

  And what about that baby? That baby had been staring at me for the past ten minutes. Was that a regular baby, or a spy baby working for the KGB?

  The KGB doesn’t exist anymore.

  But when I was a kid, the KGB definitely
existed.

  The KGB was a spy agency from the Soviet Union.

  The Soviet Union also doesn’t exist anymore.

  But back when there was a Soviet Union, the KGB meant

  That’s Russian.

  (They used a different alphabet in the Soviet Union. It’s called the Cyrillic alphabet. You can look that up.)

  In English, KGB means the “Committee for State Security,” but really it means “Soviet Spies.”

  Stealing the Crown Jewels seemed like exactly the kind of thing the KGB would do.

  Which meant that I could be flying straight into a face-off with the KGB. I was playing a dangerous game of chess against a Soviet spy. And I was much better at chess than karate.

  This could be very exciting.

  The man in the sunglasses snored, but it sounded like fake snoring.

  The woman sprayed some more perfume, which smelled gross, like knockout gas probably does.

  The baby giggled. It was a cute giggle, but also sort of menacing.

  I was too excited to sleep.

  So I did what I always did when I needed to quiet my brain. I took out my Game Boy, plugged in my headphones, and played SPY MASTER.

  SPY MASTER was my favorite video game.

  This is what the box looked like:

  This is what the game looked like:

  I know. I wish the graphics were better, but remember, this story takes place during my actual childhood, in the 1980s. I can’t just make something easier because I wish things were different.

  Still, the box gives you a pretty good idea of how fun the game was. To beat a level, you had to sneak into KGB HQ, steal some secret plans from the top floor, then parachute off the roof down into your convertible. The whole time you had to avoid getting smashed by elevators or blown up by KGB Men, who threw sticks of dynamite. It was great. I had all ten high scores.

  (The best part of having a name that is three letters long is that the whole thing fits on the high-score lists of old video games.)

  I was about to beat my high score when somebody tapped me on the shoulder.

  It was a flight attendant.

  She was pushing a big metal cart.

  She smiled and said something. I couldn’t hear her, because the theme song to SPY MASTER was still playing loudly in my ears.

  I took off my headphones.

  “Something to drink, sir?” said the flight attendant.

  “A glass of milk, please,” I said.

  She handed me a plastic cup.

  The plane hit a bump.

  “Ooh!” said the flight attendant. She unlatched a tray in the seat in front of me and put the milk in a cup holder. “Be careful. You don’t want to spill milk all over your jeans.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “They’re my only pair.”

  “Well, they’re very nice,” she said. “Perfectly faded.”

  I smiled. They were perfectly faded.

  She set a plastic tray down next to my milk. “Here’s your dinner.”

  I lifted a piece of tinfoil from the tray and found three raviolis, six green beans, and a cup of chocolate pudding.

  I poked a ravioli.

  “Does this have cheese in it?” I asked.

  But the flight attendant was already moving down the aisle.

  I ate the pudding first.

  Then the ravioli.

  I didn’t touch the green beans.

  There must have been sleeping powder in my pudding because my vision swirled and then everything went black.

  There must have been cheese in the ravioli because I had really weird dreams.

  There must have been a thief on the plane because when I woke up, somebody had stolen my Game Boy.

  This is the Tower of London. As you can see, there is more than one tower.

  “The Tower of London” is not a great name.

  The Tower of London is a fortress.

  The oldest tower in the Tower of London is a tall white tower, which is called the White Tower. (Good name.)

  The fortress was built in 1066 by a king who conquered England, who was called William the Conqueror. (Also a good name.)

  William the Conqueror built the fortress and the tower to scare English people. Since that time, the kings and queens of England have used it as a place to keep stuff:

  Henry VIII kept many of his wives, friends, and relatives at the Tower of London, before he chopped off their heads.

  And for the last few centuries, the kings and queens of England have kept the Crown Jewels there too.

  And so, as soon as I landed in London, I took a taxi straight to the Tower of London to search for clues.

  The place was packed. Beefeaters in blue-and-red uniforms told tourists stories of treachery, violence, and love. An old man held a giant camera up to his face. Two people with purple liberty spikes kissed against an ancient wall. There were kids everywhere, kids standing near their moms and dads, kids bunched up in school groups, kids looking bored listening to music on their Walkmen. I did my best to blend in. (Good spies are invisible.)

  I checked a map and made my way to a building marked “Jewel House.” The Jewel House’s two huge doors were closed and blocked by two huge beefeaters holding two huge battle-axes.

  My mouth was dry, but I swallowed hard anyway.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Hullo,” said the guard on the right.

  “Jewel House is closed today, sonny,” said the guard on the left. “The Crown Jewels is being dusted.”

  I knew the guard was lying to me. And I said so.

  “No,” I said. “There’s been a robbery. I know because the Queen sent me.”

  The guard on the right frowned. “Clever one, isn’t he?”

  “Too clever,” said the one on the left. “You must be the secret agent.”

  “I am,” I said.

  Never been too fond of secret agents myself,” said the guard on the right.

  “I don’t really like children,” said the guard on the left.

  The guard on the right grimaced. “And don’t get me started on Americans.”

  I’d met plenty of people who said they didn’t like children. For instance, my mom’s boyfriend, Craig, said it all the time. But who didn’t like secret agents?

  “Wait,” I said. “Secret agents are great. Why don’t you like secret agents?”

  “All that sneaking around, telling stories, playing tricks. Soldiering’s an honest job.”

  “But you just lied to me right now, about the dusting,” I said.

  “Look at him,” said the one on the left. “Clever, clever.”

  They uncrossed their axes and opened the doors. I stepped through the entrance and into the dark.

  Even though the fortress was full of towers, the Crown Jewels were kept deep below the ground. Down forty-nine steps, along a dim hallway, I walked toward the scene of the crime. It was cool and quiet underground. The only sound was the squeak of my sneakers on the stones. The hallway ended in a doorway and a sign.

  I passed into a room.

  There was a great glass case in the center of the floor.

  The case was lined in red velvet and lit from above.

  On pillows and pedestals shone treasure after treasure: scepters; crowns; diadems, which are a type of crown; daggers; tiaras (also crowns); and orbs. Everything was gold or silver and studded with gemstones that sparkled in the light. I stepped forward and gently laid a hand on the glass.

  I was entranced.

  I was dazzled.

  But I was also confused.

  “I thought she said the Crown Jewels had been stolen,” I said to myself. I was alone in the room.

  “Hullo,” someone said, directly behind me

  I turned around.

  It was the Queen of England.

  I recognized her face right away, from the money.

  The Queen of England was surrounded by twelve corgis, who nipped at one another’s tails. She was wearing a purple dress and a hat of the s
ame color. Feathers from several exotic birds poked up from the brim.

  I bowed, because that seemed like something you should do when you come face-to-face with a queen.

  She frowned.

  I knelt, because it seemed like my bow had not been enough.

  She smiled.

  “Please rise,” said the Queen. She held out a tin. “Would you like a biscuit?”

  “A biscuit?” I said.

  She shook the tin and smiled. I reached out and tried one.

  The biscuit tasted like paper and dried out my mouth.

  “Delicious, isn’t it?” said the Queen. “Here is a fun fact: What you in America call cookies, we English call biscuits!”

  “This isn’t a cookie,” I said. “Cookies are sweet. They have stuff that tastes good, like chocolate chips.”

  The Queen frowned. “Then what do you call biscuits?”

  “We call them biscuits, and we feed them to dogs.”

  “I see,” said the Queen. She put the lid on the tin and put the tin in her handbag. “How was your flight?”

  “It was awful!” I said. “Somebody stole my Game Boy!”

  “I don’t know what that is,” said the Queen.

  “Oh!” I said. “It’s a handheld video game console. Nintendo makes them.”

  “I am of the general belief that video games are rubbish,” said the Queen.

  “Actually, they’re pretty fun!” I said. “And a lot of them really are little stories. Like Mario, he’s a plumber who one day—”

  “Let me give you some advice,” said the Queen. “When people ask you how your flight was, they are looking for a short answer like ‘good’ or ‘long.’ They are certainly not asking to hear stories about plumbers, or misplaced Game Boys.”

  “It wasn’t misplaced! It was stolen! Don’t you think it might be related to the theft of the Crown