Spy School

“‘Wait!’ I said. In all the excitement I’d forgotten something. ‘We’re not alone here. I came with Alexander Hale.’ I’d expected her to be relieved, maybe even thrilled. But to my surprise, she seemed irritated instead. ‘Where is he?’ ‘Outside. Fighting those snipers. I think he saved my life earlier.’ ‘I’m sure he’ll think that too,’ she said.”

This early interaction between Erica and Ben foreshadows the reveal of Alexander’s true nature and self-aggrandizing tendencies. Ben is entering the situation full of admiration for the man, but Erica’s response indicates she is disgusted and irritated by his involvement. Erica knows that Ben’s life is not actually in danger, so by suggesting that Alexander will also perceive himself as having saved Ben’s life, she is hinting at the man’s tendency to take credit for things he has not actually accomplished.

“I was also slightly confused by something the principal had said. I’d never known I had extraordinary cryptographic ability. In fact, despite my gift for math, I’d always found cryptography rather difficult. Math and logic will get you only so far with many codes; you also need to be good at wordplay. Which is why I could calculate exactly how many seconds I’d been at spy school so far (1,319) but still be stumped by the newspaper’s daily jumble on a regular basis.”

This passage provides an early clue to Ben’s role as the patsy in Operation Creeping Badger. Gibbs has included small passages like these throughout the novel that suggest something isn’t quite right at the academy. This quote is a clue that Ben’s file is not accurate and that the circumstances of his admission are not as straightforward as Alexander claimed.

“Moving from home to a boarding school where I didn’t know anyone would have been difficult under normal circumstances. After my frightening and humiliating initiation, however, it was traumatic. I was tempted to head right for the phone to call my parents and ask them to come pick me up, but then I realized a few things. […]Things couldn’t possibly get worse. Therefore, they had to get better. So I decided to stick it out at spy school for at least a little longer.”

Ben’s reaction to his poor performance on the SACSA initiation exam reveals the perseverance that is integral to his characterization. When faced with an incredibly difficult situation, Ben has the resilience and determination to move forward and keep trying.

“‘But you just said cheating was okay—' ‘If you do it cleverly enough. Hacking’s idiocy.’ ‘But Chip coerced me into it.’ ‘And thus would have kept his hands clean. Doing something stupid isn’t so stupid if you can get someone else to do it for you.’ I shook my head, dumbstruck by all of this. ‘That’s insanity.’ ‘They don’t call this place an institution for nothing. You gonna eat that?’”

In this debriefing on Chip’s initial attempt to bully Ben into hacking the mainframe, Murray communicates the academy’s skewed values. He reveals that the emphasis is on the outcome rather than on the methods or intentions; the penalty would fall on Ben for failing, getting caught, and being foolish enough to agree to assist. This passage also reveals Murray’s disdain and lack of respect for the intelligence and governmental institutions involved in the academy.

“Hollywood’s sold you a false bill of goods, that spying is all tuxedos and nifty gadgets and car chases in awesome places like Monte Carlo and Gstaad. When, really, it’s mostly grunt work in third world hellholes like Mogadishu and Newark.”

Murray’s ‘reality check’ for Ben about the nature of spying further establishes his worldview and motivations for joining SPYDER and, ultimately, attempting to assassinate many government and agency higher-ups later in the novel. Just before this quote, he accuses Ben of being a “Fleming,” which establishes that Murray is cynical and disgruntled.

“My body was exhausted, but my mind was wired after the night’s excitement. Every time I heard a noise, I imagined another assassin was slipping in to kill me. But beyond that, dozens of questions gnawed at me. What was Pinwheel? How could I have cryptography skills without knowing about them? Why was the principal behaving so strangely? Something mysterious was going on at spy school, and no one was telling me the truth.”

At this point in the novel, Ben is on the verge of quitting spy school after “a long day of being threatened and humiliated.” Even in his discouraged and anxious state, Ben’s intelligence and critical thought are evident. Rather than wallowing, he notices discrepancies in what he’s seen and been told. He also notes that no one is telling him the truth moments before Erica breaks into his room and becomes the first person at the school who is honest with him. Her honesty comes at a vulnerable and pivotal moment for Ben and helps solidify his trust and loyalty.

“The school covered it up, of course. Claimed Josh had a virulent allergic reaction to a bee sting. Which made him unfit to serve, so they rotated him out and placed him and his family in the Witness Protection Program. They might as well have just told us that they sent him to a farm upstate where there’s lots of room for him to run.”

This passage sets up the mystery of Joshua Hallal, which Gibbs does not resolve during the novel. The reader may expect the subject to come up again in future books in the series, but it is interesting that Erica is confident that this story means that Josh is dead. As the reader discovers through the course of this first novel, there is a great deal of deception involved in the operation of the academy, and early assumptions often turn out to be false.

“The general idea behind Intro to Self-Preservation turned out to be that the best way to stay alive was to not get into situations where you could be killed in the first place. This made sense in theory, but it wasn’t particularly helpful when you had assassins threatening to drop by your room on a regular basis. This morning’s lecture was on how to avoid ninjas, which might have been interesting if step one hadn’t been ‘Stay out of Japan.’”

Though Crandall turns out to be far savvier and more competent than his public persona lets on, this class meeting is a good demonstration of how the incompetence of the adults involved in the school leaves the students vulnerable and responsible for confronting risk on their own. Ben describes most of the classes as generally tiresome or useless, and this early example establishes for the reader the ways that the school is failing to prepare him for the threats he will soon confront.

“In my whole life I’d never had a girl introduce herself to me, let alone say that anything I had done was incredible. It felt good. So did having so many people impressed by me, whether I deserved it or not. Only a few hours before, I’d been mortified, embarrassed, frightened, and depressed by everything that had transpired at spy school. But for the time being, I’d gone from being a nobody to someone of interest.”

One of the most dramatic changes in Ben’s life is that he is no longer able to blend into the crowd—he stands out at the academy whether he wants to or not. Ben also cannot correct the misconceptions Zoe and the other students have without undermining the mission to find the mole, so he must play along. Ben blossoms at this chance, but he also does not take advantage of it to exploit the other students.

“So far, everything I’d encountered at the academy had been cold and hard: industrial shades of gray and Cold War décor. But the room I lay in was warm and cozy. The walls were hung with hunting prints and lined with shelves full of leather-bound books. A fire crackled in a large stone fireplace. I was sprawled on a couch that was wonderfully soft and smelled like a pine forest.”

Gibbs establishes the academy as one that is cold, hard, and uninviting to keep Ben in constant discomfort throughout the narrative. In this passage, however, Gibbs uses sensory language to create a contrast between the accommodations Ben is used to and the ones he awakens to find himself in. Phrases like “a fire crackled,” “wonderfully soft,” and “smelled like a pine forest” provide some relief from the “cold,” “hard,” and “industrial shades of gray” that saturate the rest of the school. This description serves to highlight and reinforce the oppressive setting of most of the campus.

“For a little bump? This was nothing. Once, in Afghanistan, I was unconscious for eight days. […] I once had to urinate so badly during a gunfight in Venice that I lost focus and almost took a bullet to the brain.”

In this passage, Alexander Hale boasts of two dangerous situations he found himself in during his duty. As with other occasions, these falsified tales serve to disregard the accomplishments of others and return the focus of attention and admiration to himself. Ben, a 12-year-old child, has been unconscious for an entire day, but Alexander dismisses this by claiming to have experienced far worse. It demonstrates a lack of empathy or concern for others.

“Erica’s assessment of Chip from the night before came back to me. ‘But Chip isn’t really known for being clever, is he?’ ‘No, but that could all be a ruse. He could be so clever, he’s extremely good at appearing not clever at all. After all, he was smart enough to get into the academy, wasn’t he?’”

This assessment from Alexander is particularly noteworthy, as it both reveals his own methods of disinformation and foreshadows Murray’s way of hiding in plain sight as the mole. It is an early and direct articulation of one of the themes of the novel, which is that people are not always who they appear to be on the surface.

“I considered telling the truth: I’d had no idea Zoe was hiding behind the rocks. She’d saved my bacon. But I didn’t. Without Zoe, I might have been the lamest kid on campus. Instead, thanks to her, I was Smokescreen. Zoe was big into nicknames. And despite all the evidence to the contrary, she thought I was cool. After witnessing my quick defeat by the ninjas, she’d proclaimed to anyone who’d listen that I’d merely faked the loss. It was a smoke screen: a ruse to convince my enemies that I had no skills, when, in reality, I was a lean, mean killing machine.”

Ben’s manufactured reputation as an undercover superspy demonstrates the power of reputation and perception. Through Zoe’s spin of the events, Ben, like Alexander, is perceived to be impressive and capable, despite lacking in the areas he’s being lauded for. Despite the success of the Smokescreen façade, Ben does not have the skills to back it up.

“But I was still determined to prove I belonged there. As tedious as the classes were, I’d thrown myself into my studies, tearing through my textbooks, trying to learn everything I could. […] I put in extra time at the gym and the shooting range. And then something like the war game would come along, proving that I still had light-years to go to catch up with my fellow students.”

This passage shows Ben’s resilience and determination, as well in his investment in the academy and sincere attempts to better himself. Ben’s efforts support both his characterization in the novel as a dedicated student and the theme of perseverance.

“I was wary of going after them myself, given that both of them were significantly bigger than me and had several years more training in how to cause serious pain in other people. But there wasn’t much choice. […] It would take several minutes for me to go back and convince anyone to come help me, minutes I didn’t have if I wanted to stay close to Chip and Hauser.”

These lines develop Ben’s characterization as a courageous and committed person who will put himself in harm’s way for the greater good. Though Ben genuinely suspects Chip of being involved with the mole’s plot, he chooses to follow and further the investigation rather than retreating and getting help from more experienced and better-trained students.

“For the last three weeks I’d assumed the buildings I saw aboveground made up the entire campus. Now I realized that, as with so many other things at spy school, there was far more going on beneath the surface.”

Ben’s discovery of the underground tunnels reveals more information about the novel’s setting, but it also uses the metaphor of “more going on beneath the surface” to develop the story’s theme about appearances versus reality. These lines articulate the importance of considering what might be “beneath the surface” in other situations and relationships.

“‘But…I’m already sleeping in the Box,’ I said. The principal’s face went blank. ‘You are? Since when?’ ‘Uh… since I got here,’ I replied. ‘Why?’ he demanded. ‘What idiot put you in the Box?’ I winced, knowing he wasn’t going to like the answer. ‘You did.’”

The principal’s confusion and forgetfulness work to support the novel’s motif of incompetent adults. It is especially alarming that the principal is so unaware of Ben’s situation, considering that they are using Ben as bait to lure out the mole. The lack of attention being paid to Ben’s whereabouts and safety underscores the risk to his life, as well as the need for the young characters to solve the problem on their own.

“After a minute it occurred to me that I didn’t have the slightest idea how to fix a clock. So I did the only thing I could think of. I pounded my fist on the top. It worked. The clock started ticking again. Just out of interest, I pounded on it once more. It stopped. I pounded on it a third time. It started again.”

This inconsequential moment proves to be crucial in the final chapters of the book, when Ben is confronted with a bomb that he does not know how to defuse. This moment of curiosity and experimentation ultimately provide Ben with the means to stop the bomb’s timer from proceeding. Once again, though Ben does not have the level of skills the others do, he is able to call upon his life experience and situational awareness to accomplish important things.

“Erica’s ploy had worked amazingly well. Everyone at the CIA she’d e-mailed about Jackhammer had bought it hook, line, and sinker, which was a little disturbing given that many of them were the top spies in the country.”

The ease with which these adults and officials are deceived by Erica’s e-mail reinforces the motif of incompetent adults in the novel. Several of these agents and instructors were involved in creating Ben’s falsified file—they know he does not have the cryptography skills that they claimed he did, and yet they readily believe that he has invented the most advanced code-breaking software anyone has ever seen. This general incompetence further places the burden of solving the mystery on the younger characters, as the adults in the situation are clearly not equipped to provide meaningful assistance or analysis.

“It was the perfect indication of how complicated my life had become: that telling the truth about myself would now be considered a disinformation campaign. And that no one would buy it anyhow.”

This is an example of literary irony: Murray is advising Ben to “lie,” though the lie would be the truth. Ben cannot tell the truth about himself because everyone has already accepted the false reputation the administration sparked with their falsified file. The layers of deception have produced a tangled web of truths, half-truths, and lies that Ben is inescapably caught in. The truth would not set him free because, in the environment of the academy of espionage, the truth is often very difficult to recognize.

“It was recommended that students at spy school carry weapons at all times, even when they didn’t have an active threat against their lives—and many did. But even though I’d been putting in a lot of time on the shooting range lately, I’d somehow managed to get less accurate. The head instructor, Justin ‘Deadeye’ Pratchett, had even suggested it was safer for me to not have a loaded weapon—although he had given me a realistic looking toy gun so I could bluff my way out of trouble without shooting myself in the foot.”

The novel’s attitude towards guns is reflected in this passage, where Ben and his shooting instructor acknowledge the inherent risk that guns pose, and particularly in the hands of those without adequate training and skills. Ben’s lack of gun skills also supports the theme of individuality. Due to his lack of a firearm, Ben must explicitly seek alternate pathways to handle situations where others may simply shoot. The suggestion that he “bluff” highlights Ben’s intellectual and social aptitudes.

“‘Mike Brezinski is not one of the enemy,’ I said. ‘I’ve known him since kindergarten.’ ‘You can’t trust anyone,’ Erica replied.”

Though Erica claims no one is trustworthy, she herself trusts Ben—she confides in him about her mission, listens to his ideas, and ultimately relies on him to follow the tracker and save her life once she encounters Murray in the furnace room under the school. Erica limits who she trusts, but she does trust a small number of people, and this trust proves essential for her success and survival.

“The best way to stay in the loop is to let everyone believe you’re totally out of it. You have no idea how much information people spill right in front of you when they think you’re a drooling idiot. Plus, it throws off your enemies too, and I’ve racked up my share of those over the years. They tend to underestimate you when they think you’re not playing with a full deck.”

These sentences explicitly articulate the motivation behind the deception and disinformation undertaken by several important characters in the book, including Murray, Alexander, and Ben himself. Professor Crandall points out that if people have an impression of others as harmless, then they are more likely to make themselves vulnerable. The important theme of appearances versus reality is demonstrated here in one of several facets of exploration. Though Ben and Alexander’s disinformation campaigns are aimed at having them thought more highly of than they rightfully “deserve,” both Crandall and Murray’s methods lead to them being overlooked and underestimated.