CHAPTER 2
THE JADE PRINCESS
AND CRAZY BEAR
Cancún, Mexico; The Night Before
The man in the rental Fiat 500 swore loudly as his broad foot mashed the tiny
brake and accelerator pedals, stalling the tiny car for the umpteenth time. It
might be a little easier to drive this miniature vehicle if I could sit in the backseat
so my knees were not jammed under my chin, the man reasoned. And with that
thought he pulled over sharply onto the verge bordering Cancún’s spectacular
lagoon. In the reflected light of a million twinkling luxury-suite balcony lamps, he
performed an act of vandalism on the Fiat that would definitely cost him his
deposit and possibly send him rocketing to number one on the Hertz blacklist.
“Better,” grunted the man, and tossed the driver’s seat down the verge.
Hertz only has itself to blame, he thought, on a reasoning roll. This is what
happens when you insist on giving a toy car to a man of my proportions. It’s like
trying to load fifty-caliber rounds into a Derringer boot gun. Ridiculous.
He crammed himself into the vehicle and, navigating from the backseat, pulled
into the flow of cars, which even at close to midnight were packed together
tighter than train carriages.
I’m coming, Juliet, he thought, squeezing the steering wheel as though it were
a threat to his little sister somehow. I’m on my way.
The driver of this carelessly remodeled Fiat was of course Butler, Artemis
Fowl’s bodyguard, though he had not always been known by that name. In the
course of his career as a soldier of fortune, Butler had adopted many a nom de
guerre to protect his family from recriminations. A band of Somali pirates knew
him as Gentleman George, he had for a time hired himself out in Saudi Arabia
under the name Captain Steele (Artemis had later accused him of having a touch
of the screeching melodramas), and for two years a Peruvian tribe, the
Isconahua, knew the mysterious giant who protected their village from an
aggressive logging corporation only as El Fantasma de la Selva, the ghost of the
jungle. Of course, since becoming Artemis Fowl’s bodyguard, there was no more
time for side projects.
Butler had traveled to Mexico at Artemis’s insistence, though insistence had
hardly been necessary once Butler had read the message on his principal’s
smartphone. They had been in the middle of a mixed martial-arts session earlier
in the day when the phone rang. A polyphonic version of Morricone’s “Miserere,”
which signified the arrival of a message.
“No phones in the dojo, Artemis,” Butler had rumbled. “You know the rules.”
Artemis had delivered one more blow to the hand pad, a left jab that had little
power and less accuracy, but at least his shots were landing on the pad now.
Until recently, Artemis’s punches were so wide of the mark that in the event of
actual combat a passerby would be in more danger than any assailant.
“I know the rules, Butler,” said Artemis, taking several breaths to get the
sentence out. “The phone is definitely off. I checked it five times.”
Butler pulled off a pad, which in theory protected the wearer’s hand from
punches, but in this case protected Artemis’s knuckles from Butler’s spadelike
palm. “The phone is off, and yet it rings.”
Artemis trapped a glove between his knees and tugged his hand free. “It’s set
to emergency breakthrough. It would be irresponsible of me not to check it.”
“Your speech seems strange,” noted Butler. “Stilted somehow . . . Are you
counting your words?”
“That is patently ridiculous . . . actually,” said Artemis, coloring. “I am simply
choosing carefully.” He hurried to the phone, which was one of his own design
with a dedicated operating platform based on an amalgamation of human and
fairy technology. “The message is from Juliet,” he said, consulting the three-inch
touch screen.
Butler’s pique immediately evaporated. “Juliet sending an emergency
message? What does it say?”
Artemis wordlessly handed over the phone, which seemed to shrink as Butler’s
massive hand enfolded it.
The message was short and urgent. Five words only.
In trouble, Domovoi. Come alone.
Butler’s fingers squeezed the phone until its casing cracked. The first names of
all Blue Diamond bodyguards were closely guarded secrets, and the mere fact
that Juliet had invoked his name to summon him was an indicator of how much
trouble she was in.
“Naturally I’m coming with you,” said Artemis briskly. “My phone can trace
that call to the nearest square centimeter and we can be anywhere in the world in
just less than a day.”
Butler’s features belied the struggle between big brother and detached
professional that raged inside him.
Finally the professional got the upper hand. “No, Artemis. I cannot put you in
harm’s way.”
“But . . .”
“No. I must go, but you will return to school. If Juliet is in trouble, I need to
move quickly, and caring for you will simply double my responsibility. Juliet
knows how seriously I take my job, and she would never ask me to come alone
unless the situation was dangerous.”
Artemis coughed. “It’s probably not too dangerous. Perhaps Juliet is more
inconvenienced than in any actual peril. But in any case you should go as soon as
. . .”
He plucked the phone from Butler’s grasp and tapped the screen.
“Cancún, Mexico, that’s your destination.”
Butler nodded. It made sense. Juliet was currently with a Mexican wrestling
troupe, building a rep for her character, the Jade Princess, and praying for that
magic call from the World Wrestling Entertainment group.
“Cancún,” he repeated. “I’ve never been. There’s not much call for people like
me there. Too safe.”
“The jet is at your disposal, naturally,” said Artemis, who then frowned,
unhappy with the sentence. “Hopefully this entire thing is nothing but a . . .
goose chase.”
Butler glanced sharply at his young charge. Something was wrong with the
boy, he felt sure of it, but at the moment there was only room for Juliet in the
concern for others corner of his brain.
“This is no goose chase,” he said softly, then with considerably more force:
“And whoever caused this message to be sent will regret it.” To drive this point
home, Butler allowed his big-brother side to surface for a moment and punched a
training mannequin so hard that its wooden head flew off and spun on the
practice mat like a top.
Artemis picked up the head and tapped the crown half a dozen times, or
thereabouts.
“I imagine they already do,” he said, his voice the rustle of dry leaves.
So now Butler was making agonizingly slow progress through the late-night
Cancún traffic, head and shoulders squashed flat against the Fiat’s roof. He had
neglected to reserve a car, and so had been forced to accept whatever the Hertz
lady had left in the lot. A Fiat 500. Très cool if you were a single teen on the way
to the spa, but not so suitable for a two-hundred-twenty-pound hulk.
An unarmed two-hundred-twenty-pound hulk, Butler realized. Generally the
bodyguard managed to bring a few weapons with him to whatever party he was
about to break up, but in this case public transport was actually quicker than the
Fowl jet, so Butler had been forced to leave his arsenal at home, even his beloved
Sig Sauer, which had almost drawn a tear. He had connected through Atlanta,
and the marines at customs would not have taken kindly to anyone smuggling
hardware into the U.S., especially someone who looked like he could probably
breach the White House with a few belts of ammunition.
Butler had been at something of a loose end since leaving Artemis’s side. For
more than fifteen years he had spent the vast bulk of his time engaged in
Artemis-related activities. Finding himself virtually alone in business class on a
transatlantic flight with several hours of enforced downtime, he could not sleep
for worrying about his sister, and so his mind naturally drifted to Artemis.
His charge had changed recently—there was no doubt about it. Since his
return from saving endangered species in Morocco last year, there had been a
definite mood swing. Artemis seemed less open than usual, and usually he was
about as open as a Swiss vault at night. Also, Butler had noticed that Artemis
seemed obsessed with the placement of objects, something Butler himself was
very alert to, as he was trained to see everything in a building as a potential
weapon or shrapnel fragment. Often Artemis would enter a room that his
bodyguard had already swept and cleared and start moving things back to where
they had been. And Artemis’s speech seemed off somehow. Artemis generally
spoke in sentences that were almost poetic, but lately he seemed to care less
about what he said than how many words it took to say it.
As the Boeing began its descent into Atlanta, Butler decided that he would go
to Artemis Senior as soon as he made it back to Fowl Manor and make a clean
breast of his concerns. While it was undeniably his job to protect Artemis from
danger, it was difficult to do that when the danger came from Artemis himself.
I have protected Artemis from trolls, goblins, demons, dwarf gas, and even
humans, but I cannot guarantee that my skill set will save him from his own
mind. Which makes it imperative that I find Juliet and bring her home as soon as
possible.
Butler eventually grew tired of the traffic’s crawl down Cancún’s main strip and
decided that he would make better time on foot. He pulled over sharply into a
taxi lane and, ignoring the indignant cries of the drivers, set off past the rows of
five-star hotels at a brisk jog.
Locating Juliet would not be difficult: her face was splashed all over dozens of
downtown banners.
LUCHASLAM! FOR ONE WEEK ONLY AT THE GRAND THEATER.
Butler did not much care for Juliet’s picture on the banners. The artist had
twisted her pretty face to make his sister seem more aggressive, and her stance
was obviously just for show. It might look good on a poster, but it was all wrong,
and left her wide open for a hook to the kidneys.
Juliet would never approach an adversary in that way.
His sister was the best natural fighter he had ever seen, and too proud to ask
for help unless there was no other option available to her, which was why her
message was so worrying.
Butler jogged two miles without breaking a sweat, weaving through throngs of
revelers, until he arrived at the glass-and-stucco façade of the Grand Theater. A
dozen or so red-jacketed doormen clustered around the automatic doors, nodding
and smiling at the crowd hurrying in for the main event.
Around the back, he decided. The story of my life.
Butler skirted the building, thinking that it would be nice, just once, to go in
the front door. Maybe he would in another lifetime, when he got too old for this
business.
How old do I have to be? he wondered. Come to think of it, with all the time
travel and fairy healings, I’m not even sure how old I actually am anymore.
As soon as Butler reached the back door, he put all other thoughts from his
mind, apart from the job at hand. Get to Juliet, find out what trouble she was in,
and extricate her with minimal collateral damage. There were still ten minutes
before the show was scheduled to start, so with a little luck he could nab his
sister before the room got too crowded.
The only security on the back door was a single surveillance camera. Luckily,
the Grand was a straight theater and not the convention room of a resort hotel,
or there would have been a cluster of pools at the back door, along with crowds
of tourists, a salsa band, and possibly half a dozen undercover private cops. As it
was, Butler slid unnoticed into the theater and simply waved at the camera on
the way in, effectively covering his face.
Butler did not meet a shred of opposition on his way through the theater’s
backstage area. He passed a couple of costumed wrestlers sharing an electrolytic
drink, but they barely spared him a glance, probably assuming he was one of
them. Big and dumb, by the look of him—the bad guy.
Like most theaters, the Grand had miles of corridors and back passages that
had not shown up on the blueprints Butler had downloaded on his smartphone
from Artemis’s interpedia, which had a dedicated blueprint site containing any
plans that had ever been uploaded and quite a few that Artemis had stolen and
uploaded himself. After several wrong turns, even Butler’s excellent sense of
direction was failing him, and the big bodyguard was tempted to simply punch
through walls and create the shortest route to where he wanted to go: the
performers’ dressing room.
Butler finally arrived at the dressing room door just in time to see the tail end
of the wrestling squad winding their way through to the stage, looking like
sections of a Chinese dragon in all their Lycra and silk. After the last wrestler
slipped through, a barrier of meat and muscle in the shape of two enormous
bouncers closed across the backstage doors.
I could take them, thought Butler. That would not be a problem, but it would
only leave me seconds to find Juliet and get her out of here, and, knowing my
sister, she will want to conduct a complicated and ultimately meaningless
conversation before she’s ready to go. I need to think like Artemis, like the
Artemis of old, and play this calmly. Blundering in is likely to get both of us killed.
Butler heard the howls and whoops of the crowd as the wrestlers entered. The
noise was muffled through the double doors, but clearer from the dressing room.
He poked his head inside and saw a monitor bracketed to the wall, displaying the
action in the ring. Convenient.
Butler stepped close to the screen and searched for his sister. There she was,
at the corner of the ring, performing some ostentatious warm-ups that were more
for show than actual effect. If Butler could have seen his own normally taciturn
features at that moment, he would have been surprised by the fond, almost
sleepy, smile that lingered on his face.
It’s been too long since I’ve seen you, little sister.
Juliet did not seem to be in any immediate danger; in fact, she appeared to be
relishing the crowd’s attention, raising her arms for more applause and whipping
the jade ring on her ponytail around in figures of eight. The crowd loved her too.
Several young men waved banners bearing Juliet’s image, and a few were bold
enough to shower her with confetti hearts. Butler frowned. He would definitely be
keeping an eye on those particular young gentlemen
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