Artemis Fowl_ The Opal Deception - Eoin Colfer [76]
“If I give myself up to Internal Affairs, I will be taken into custody. As an LEP officer, I can be held for seventy-two hours without counsel. As a murder suspect I can be held for up to a week. Even if someone did believe that I was completely innocent, and that Opal Koboi was behind all this, it would still take at least eight hours to get clearance for an operation. But in all likelihood, my claims would be dismissed as the standard protests of the guilty. Especially with you three backing up my story. No offense.”
“None taken,” said Mulch.
Holly sat down, cradling her head in her hands. “My world is utterly gone. I keep thinking there will be a way back, but things just keep spinning farther and farther out of control.”
Artemis placed a hand on her shoulder. “Courage, Captain. Ask yourself, what would the commander do?”
Holly took three deep breaths, then sprang from her seat, back stiff with determination. “Don’t you try to manipulate me, Artemis Fowl. I make my own decisions. Even so, Julius would take care of Opal Koboi himself. So that’s what we’re going to do.”
“Excellent,” said Artemis. “In that case, we will need a strategy.”
“Right. I’ll fly the shuttle; you put that brain of yours to work and come up with a plan.”
“Each to his own,” said the boy. He sat in one of the shuttle’s chairs, gently massaged his temples with his fingertips, and began to think.
CHAPTER 9
DADDY’S GIRL
The Zito Earth Farm; The Messina Province, Sicily
Opal’s plan to bring the human and fairy worlds together was one of simplicity in its execution, but genius in its conception. She simply had made it easier for a human to do what he was already thinking of doing. Almost every major energy company in the world had a core probe file, but their ideas were all hypothetical, considering the amount of explosives needed to blast through the crust, and the iron necessary to get the probe through the mantle.
Opal picked Giovanni Zito from her list of prospective puppets because of two things: Zito had a large fortune, and land directly above a huge high-grade hematite orebody.
Giovanni Zito was a Sicilian engineer and a pioneer in the field of alternative power sources. A committed environmentalist, Zito developed ways of generating electricity without stripping the land or destroying the environment. The invention that had made his fortune was the Zito solar-mill. A windmill with solar panels for blades, making it many times more efficient than conventional mills.
Six weeks earlier, Zito had returned from an environmental summit in Geneva, where he had delivered the keynote address to ministers of the European Union. By the time he reached his villa on the shores of the Strait of Messina, the sunset was dropping orange blobs in the water, and Giovanni was exhausted. Talking to politicians was difficult. Even the ones who were genuinely interested in the environment were hamstrung by the ones in the pockets of big business. The polluticians, as the media had nicknamed them.
Giovanni ran himself a bath. The water was heated by solar panels on his roof. In fact, the entire villa was self-sufficient when it came to power. There was enough juice in the solar batteries to keep the house hot and lit for six months. All with zero emissions.
After his bath, Zito wrapped himself in a dressing gown and poured a glass of Bordeaux, settling into his favorite armchair.
Giovanni took a long draft of wine, willing the day’s tension to evaporate. He cast his eyes over the familiar row of framed photographs on his wall. Most were magazine covers celebrating his technological innovations, but his favorite one, the one that made him famous, was the Time magazine cover that showed a younger Giovanni Zito astride a humpback whale, with a whaling ship looming over them both. The unfortunate creature had strayed into shallow waters and could not dive. So Zito had leaped from a conservationists’ dinghy onto the creature’s back,