Spy School

Ben is woken up by someone shoving a gun against his face. He opens his eyes to find a man dressed in black. The man threatens to kill Ben if he does not cooperate. Ben isn’t sure how the man got into his room, considering that he wedged a chair beneath the knob to prevent it from opening. He looks at the clock and sees that it’s 1:30 a.m. The man tells Ben to tell him about Pinwheel. Ben asks what that is, and the man accuses him of playing stupid. Ben says the man has the wrong guy, but the man confirms that he’s looking for Benjamin Ripley, and that Ben’s file says that he’s involved with Pinwheel.

Ben tries to make up answers about Pinwheel to prevent the man from killing him—he says it has to do with cryptography. When the man says he knows that and asks what Pinwheel does, Ben improvises and says it helps to “circumvent a rotating sixteen-character daisy chain” (55). The man loses patience and prepares to shoot Ben, but Ben grabs the tennis racquet that Alexander Hale suggested he pack as a weapon. He hits the man with the racquet, and the man fires his gun through the window.