Artemis Fowl_ The Arctic Incident - Eoin Colfer [22]
Once Opal had destroyed her father’s business, she proceeded to buy shares in it at rock-bottom prices, and then incorporated her businesses under the banner of Koboi Laboratories. Within five years, Koboi Laboratories held more defence contracts than any other company. Within ten years, Opal Koboi had personally registered more patents than any fairy alive. Except the centaur Foaly.
But it wasn’t enough. Opal Koboi yearned for the kind of power that hadn’t been held by any single fairy since the days of the monarchy. Luckily, she knew someone who might be able to assist her with that particular ambition. A disillusioned officer in the LEP, and a classmate from her college days. A certain Briar Cudgeon…
Briar had good reason to despise the LEP; after all, they had allowed his public humiliation at the hands of Julius Root to go unpunished. Not only that, but he had been stripped of his commander’s acorns after his disastrous involvement in the Artemis Fowl Affair…
It had been a simple matter for Opal to slip a truth pill into Cudgeon’s drink in one of Haven’s swankier eateries. To her glee, she found that the delightfully twisted Cudgeon was already formulating a plan to topple the LEP. Quite an ingenious plan as it happened. All he needed was a partner. One with large reserves of gold and a secure facility at her disposal. Opal was happy to supply both.
Opal was curled, catlike, in her hoverchair, eavesdropping on the goings-on in Police Plaza when Cudgeon entered the facility. She had installed mole cameras in the LEP network when her engineers were upgrading their system. The units operated on precisely the same frequency as Police Plaza’s own surveillance cameras, plus they drew power from the heat leaking from the LEP’s fibre optics. Completely undetectable.
‘Well?’ demanded Cudgeon, with customary bluntness.
Koboi didn’t bother to turn around. It had to be Briar. Only he had the necessary access chip to the inner sanctum, implanted in his knuckle.
‘We lost the last shipment of power cells. A routine LEP stakeout. Bad luck.’
‘D’ Arvit!’ swore Cudgeon. ‘Still, no matter. We have enough stored. And to the LEP, they are simply batteries after all.’
Opal took a breath. ‘The goblins were armed…’
‘Don’t tell me.’
‘With Softnoses.’
Cudgeon pounded a worktop. ‘Those idiots! I warned them not to use those weapons. Now Julius will know something is afoot.’
‘He may know,’ said Opal placatingly. ‘But he is powerless to stop us. By the time they figure it out, it will already be too late.’
Cudgeon did not smile. He hadn’t in over a year. Instead his scowl grew more pronounced.
‘Good. My time is at hand… Perhaps we should have simply manufactured the batteries ourselves,’ he mused.
‘No. Just to build a factory would have set us back two years, and there’s no guarantee that Foaly wouldn’t have discovered it. We had no choice.’
Koboi swivelled to face her partner. ‘You look terrible. Have you been using that ointment I gave you?’
Cudgeon rubbed his head tenderly. It was bubbled with horrific lumps. ‘It doesn’t work. There’s cortisone in it. I’m allergic.’
Cudgeon’s condition was unusual, perhaps unique. The previous year he had been sedated by Commander Root during the Fowl Manor siege. Unfortunately, the tranquillizer had reacted badly with some banned mind-accelerating substances the former acting-commander had been experimenting with. Cudgeon was left with a forehead like melted tar, plus a droopy eye. Ugly and demoted, not a great combination.
‘You should get those boils lanced. I can barely stand the sight of you.’
Sometimes Opal Koboi forgot who she was talking to. Briar Cudgeon was not the usual corporate lackey. He calmly drew a customized Redboy blaster, firing two