About the Book

  TOP SECRET

  What happens when family comes first but there are others in need of help? When danger lurks around every corner?

  After a tumultuous few months, a family holiday in Portugal is just what Kensy and Max need. And Granny Cordelia is adamant: there are to be no investigations while on vacation. But when strange incidents start piling up, the twins have no choice but to intervene.

  All leads point to the annual E-Prix championship, and Kensy and Max soon find that high-powered sports cars are not the only dangers on the streets of Sintra. Someone wants Wolf Motors to go up in smoke, and they won’t let anything – or anyone – get in their way.

  DEVICE FILE

  GADGET: remote-controlled spy drone disguised as a European honey bee

  CODE NAME: Ferdinand

  SIZE: 1.5cm long

  FEATURES: capable of flight, head contains a camera and microphone, body hosts a serum reservoir and functioning stinger

  USED BY: Kensington Spencer (trainee agent PA A2713)

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Cast of Characters

  Glossary of Portuguese Terms

  Map of Sintra

  Dedication

  Case Note 22

  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

  A note on The Rosicrucian Cipher

  About the Author

  Jacqueline Supports

  Books by Jacqueline Harvey

  Imprint

  Read More at Penguin Books Australia

  The Spencer holiday party

  Kensington Méribel Spencer

  Agent-in-training, 12-year-old twin to Max

  Maxim Val d’Isère Spencer

  Agent-in-training, 12-year-old twin to Kensy

  Anna Spencer

  Dormant agent PA S2694, Kensy and Max’s mother

  Edward Spencer

  PA X2658, Kensy and Max’s father, son of Dame Spencer

  Fitzgerald Williams

  PA X2660, Kensy and Max’s manny, Edward’s first cousin

  Dame Cordelia Spencer

  Head of Pharos, PA Z001, Edward’s mother

  Song Li

  PA U2613, butler

  Sidney Li

  PA U2614, butler

  Mim

  PA U2590, head gardener at Alexandria and Fitz’s mother

  Curtis Pepper

  Kensy and Max’s friend and fellow agent-in-training

  Autumn Lee

  Kensy and Max’s friend and fellow agent-in-training

  Irene Lee

  PA W2670, Autumn’s mother

  Fletcher Lee

  PA W2667, Autumn’s father

  Marisol Clement

  Anna’s mother

  Hector Clement

  Anna’s father

  Wolf Motors

  James Wolf

  Former F1 World Champion and dormant Pharos agent

  Aurelia Wolf

  James’s daughter and Wolf Racing driver

  Tom Hansen

  Chief technician and Aurelia’s husband

  Claudia Montez

  Head of production

  Felix Staffel

  Wolf Racing driver

  Other

  Magoo MacGregor

  Headmaster of Central London Free School

  Tippie MacGregor

  Head of Inventions Team, Magoo MacGregor’s wife

  Ella Spurling

  CEO of Spurling Oil

  Riley Moreton

  Ella’s husband

  bacalhau à brás

  cod and potato dish

  bifana

  pork sandwich

  caracóis

  snails

  Enforcar dez vovó!

  Hang ten, grandma!

  Isso não pode ser verdade.

  This can’t be true.

  Lamentamos muito!

  We are very sorry!

  Não

  No

  O que você está fazendo?

  What are you doing?

  obrigado

  thanks

  para você

  for you

  pastéis de nata

  custard tarts (aka Portuguese tarts)

  sim, senhora

  yes, ma’am

  For Ian, who shares my love of Sintra

  Case Note 22

  Author: Fitzgerald Williams,

  Pharos Agent PA X2660

  Subjects: Kensington Grey, PA

  A2713; Maxim Grey, PA A2714

  Kensington and Maxim Grey were admitted as Pharos agents-in-training at the age of eleven years and one month.

  FIELDWORK

  Kensington and Maxim recently travelled to Singapore as part of a team of Central London Free School students participating in the World STEM Championships, which they won. While there, they uncovered a smuggling ring and took down the mastermind, Honesto Huang, who had also recently poisoned their grandmother: the Head of Pharos, Dame Cordelia Spencer.

  Huang had escaped from a Taiwanese prison where he was serving a life sentence for extortion, money laundering and murder, among other things. While on the run, he obtained the deadly Soviet nerve agent Novichok and poisoned Cordelia – his long-time enemy and former friend – as well as kidnapping her city butler and trusted Pharos agent, Sydney Li. The source of the Novichok is still under investigation.

  Despite their grandmother’s ill health, the twins were encouraged to undertake their planned trip to Singapore. Together with their friends and fellow Pharos agents-in-training, Autumn Lee and Curtis Pepper, Kensington and Maxim stumbled upon an exotic animal smuggling ring. Via keen observations and astute reasoning, the children investigated the involvement of renowned philanthropist Sedgewick Koh before it was revealed that Sedgewick’s maid, Vera, was the guilty party. The woman, who had been in the employ of his family for almost forty years, was facilitating the animal thefts to cover her boss’s gambling debts.

  After hatching a plan to intercept what they believed would be another animal theft at the Singapore Car Expo, the children found themselves in the company of Huang and his sidekick, Cameron Lu. The pair had been hiding in plain sight on Sentosa Island in Singapore since Huang’s prison break. Kensington was taken hostage by the pair during this interaction, but was saved in their final showdown thanks mostly to Maxim’s courageous actions. The children’s assistance in uncovering Huang and Lu’s hideout also facilitated the rescue of Sidney Li.

  Though Huang and Lu were temporarily in the custody of Pharos, trapped in a helicopter remotely controlled by Song Li, the chopper soon disappeared and all efforts to locate and retrieve the aircraft, and its occupants, have so far been in vain. It is speculated that Huang and Li somehow managed to regain control of the machine and have once again disappeared into the ether.

  SKILLS, STRENGTHS AND VULNERABILITIES During their trip to Singapore, Kensington and Maxim demonstrated bravery and initiative far beyond expectations. Autumn Lee and Curtis Pepper are also to be commended on their exceptional skills and capacity to put their training into practice in a real-world life-and-death situation.

  Kensington and Maxim’s quick thinking, their strength and their fortitude in the face of danger is impressive and they are proving themselves highly capable trainee agents.

  TRAINING

  The twins are both dedicated to their training regimes and have achieved superior levels of physical fitness. This served them well in their high-stakes activities during their time in Singapore. In particular, Maxim demonstrated enormous courage rescuing his sister from an airborne helicopter – a feat which involved hanging from the skids and then climbing aboard the machine to take on Cameron Lu – a woman renowned for her combat skills.

  EMOTIONAL STATE

  Both children have displayed stoicism beyond their years and a capacity to detach themselves emotionally from situations – an important skill in this business, and something they will continue to work on for many years to come.

  While both Maxim and Kensington were deeply upset by the attempt on their grandmother’s life, their reactions couldn’t have been more different. Maxim believed they should abandon their World STEM Championships team and stay in London with the family, while Kensington’s response was loyalty to her peers and the conviction to finish what they had started. She was of the opinion that ultimately this is what their grandmother would have wanted too.

  While Maxim wasn’t happy about the situation when his parents sided with his sister, he did acknowledge their reasoning and accepted their decision. Had the children not gone to Singapore, things would hav
e turned out very differently.

  OTHER INFORMATION

  Autumn Lee had not heard from her parents, Irene and Fletcher Lee, who together lead the Asian bureau of Pharos, for almost six months – a fact that came as a shock to Kensington and Maxim, who until this point hadn’t given a lot of thought to the other roles agents take on around the world. Autumn found this time particularly challenging and was relieved to see her mother and father, who were working undercover on the smuggling ring case – Irene as a second maid to Sedgewick Koh, and Fletcher in the position of Managing Director of the Jurong Bird Park. Both were disguised and working under the assumed identities of Mae-Lyn Garcia and Heston Fong.

  Dame Spencer has decided they should take an extended holiday and spend time with their daughter over the European summer.

  Curtis Pepper continues to prove his worth as a trainee agent, taking on new challenges and developing his skills with a determination and proficiency that is highly commendable.

  Max looked at his watch for the umpteenth time since they’d left home. ‘Do you really think this is a good idea?’ the boy asked, glancing at his father, who was sitting beside him dressed in jeans, a T-shirt and cap – all in black. ‘And is this car stolen?’

  Ed turned and grinned at his son. ‘You really think we’d do that sort of thing?’

  Max raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I’ll ignore that. Do you want your notebook back or don’t you?’ Ed asked. Father and son were seated in a grey, late-model Mercedes-Benz that Max had never seen before, parked down the road from Magoo MacGregor’s townhouse.

  Kensy and Fitz were parked the next street over in a Volvo SUV – another car of mystery origin. They would move on Ed’s instructions once the Headmaster of Central London Free School and his wife, Tippie, had left the house.

  ‘What if it’s nothing, Dad?’ Max said. ‘And we’ve gone to all this trouble, not to mention a fair amount of risk, for some silly note that means zippo?’

  The boy took a deep breath and tried to calm his racing heart.

  ‘And what if it’s something?’ Ed replied. ‘I’m glad you finally told me about it, Max. Coming on the back of that DNA Song discovered on the doorstep of number thirteen after Sidney was kidnapped, I have to say I’m more than a little concerned.’

  ‘Could Percy MacGregor have faked his own death?’ Max asked. ‘Is it possible he’s still alive?’

  Ed shrugged. ‘I’ve come to believe that anything’s possible – but the photographs of his bullet-riddled body seemed pretty conclusive. If he’s still with us then that corpse must have belonged to someone else.’

  ‘Does Granny know anything about this?’ Max said.

  Ed shook his head. ‘No, best we keep this between us at the moment. She’s fragile after being poisoned, and I don’t want her worrying. I think the Novichok has given her some lingering complications. Let’s just get your notebook back and try to decipher the rest of that code, then we’ll worry about the mysterious Percy.’

  Max nodded, then focused on the bottom left corner of his glasses, which had a built-in rear-vision mirror.

  ‘Dad,’ he said, and touched his father’s arm. Magoo and Tippie MacGregor had just walked out the front door of their terrace. Magoo was dressed in a dinner suit with a bow tie, and Tippie wore a long gold gown, a matching shawl around her shoulders.

  ‘Rabbits have left the building,’ Ed said aloud.

  ‘Roger that,’ Fitz replied. He, Ed, Kensy, Max and Song were all wired with miniscule earpieces, allowing them to communicate.

  ‘What’s the status, Song?’ Ed asked.

  The butler was in the process of disabling the MacGregors’ security system from the back of an innocuous grey van parked across the road. He would loop the cameras’ feeds and check for any other security the MacGregors might have installed themselves. Non-sanctioned devices weren’t allowed, but tonight’s intruders couldn’t be too careful.

  ‘Almost done,’ Song said. ‘No additional appliances detected, but I will do one more scan to be sure.’

  ‘Roger that,’ Ed said.

  Upon their return from the World STEM Championships in Singapore, Max had finally told his parents about the coded note he’d found in Magoo’s study at school – and then lost in the library at the headmaster’s home. Sharing the secret felt like a weight off his shoulders, though Anna and Ed had both been curious as to why he’d kept it quiet for so long when he hadn’t done anything wrong. The note had quite literally fallen into his hands by accident.

  The words he’d deciphered so far included his, Kensy and Song’s names, along with birthright and the rather concerning phrase Romilly must be stopped. The family needed to work out the rest – just in case it was more than the headmaster playing silly games and trying to outsmart himself with his cipher skills. Max knew that the original was gone, but his notebook – which he’d lost in the MacGregors’ mysterious library cellar – contained copies, and all of his decodings too.

  Anna and Ed had brought Fitz and Song into the fold and the six of them had discussed ways they might conduct the retrieval mission at length. Kensy had suggested they could invite the MacGregors for dinner and while they were away from home a team could break into their place – though given Magoo’s eagerness to get inside 13 Ponsonby Terrace at any opportunity, the idea was quickly dropped. Meanwhile Max’s thought that his parents could engineer an emergency trip away and ask the MacGregors to look after him and Kensy again seemed too contrived. While Magoo often gave the impression of a mad professor, it was common knowledge that his eccentricities disguised the fact that he was one of the smartest people in the entire organisation. Even brighter than his genius wife if the IQ tests had anything to say about it.

  In the end, it was decided to wait until Tippie and Magoo had something that would take them out together for at least a few hours. Fitz soon learned that Tippie had purchased tickets to La Traviata at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden as a surprise for Magoo’s birthday – an occasion which had now arrived.

  The MacGregors hopped into a taxi – secretly arranged by Song himself – which quickly disappeared around the corner.

  The butler tracked the vehicle as it sped away down The King’s Road, then: ‘Operation Notebook is live,’ Song said over the airwaves.

  Max and his father hopped out of the car and walked towards the MacGregors’ gate, hurrying through it and down the short path to the front door. Within seconds, Ed had picked the lock and they were inside. Max ran down the hallway and opened a window at the end of the passage to let Kensy and Fitz in. The pair had scaled the rear wall and had been hiding in the back garden for the past few minutes.

  ‘Hurry,’ Max urged. ‘I haven’t spotted Mr Pippin yet, but if he’s wandering around the house and we let him out we’ll be in all sorts of bother.’