The Artemis Fowl Files - Eoin Colfer [31]
Mulch swallowed. “Listen, yes, good idea. Do continue, Mud Boy … uh, Artemis.”
“Thank you,” said Artemis. “Now. We have been observing the dwarf troupe for months, and in all that time they have never left their own tent unguarded, so we presume that this is where they keep their loot. Generally the entire group is there, except during a performance, when five of the six are needed for the acrobatic routine. Our only window of opportunity is during this period when all but one of the dwarfs are in the ring.”
“All but one?” enquired Mulch. “I can’t be seen by anybody. If they so much as catch a glimpse of me, they’ll hunt me down forever. Dwarfs really hold a grudge.”
“Let me finish,” said Artemis. “I have put some thought into this, you know. We managed to obtain some video one evening in Brussels from a pencil camera that Butler poked through the canvas.”
Butler turned on a flat-screen television and pressed PLAY on a video remote. The picture that appeared was gray and grainy, but perfectly recognizable. It showed a single dwarf in a round tent, lounging in a leather armchair. He was dressed in the Significants’ leotard and mask and was blowing bubbles through a small wand.
The earthen floor began to vibrate slightly in the center of the tent where the ground looked disturbed, as though a small earthquake were disrupting that spot only. Moments later a three-foot-diameter circle of earth collapsed entirely, and a masked Sergei emerged from the hole. He vented some gas, and gave his comrade the thumbs-up. The bubble-blowing dwarf immediately ran out of the tent.
“Sergei has just tunneled out of his box, and our bubble-blowing friend is needed in the ring,” explained Artemis. “Sergei takes over guard duty until the end of the act, when all the other dwarfs return and Sergei reappears in the new box. We have approximately seven minutes to find the tiara.”
Mulch decided to pick a few holes in the plan. “How do we know the tiara is even there?”
Artemis was ready for that question. “Because my sources tell me that there are five European jewelery fences coming to tonight’s show. They are hardly here to see the clowns.”
Mulch nodded slowly. He knew where the tiara would be. Sergei and his significant friends would hide everything a few yards below their tent, safely buried beyond the reach of humans. That still left hundreds of square yards to search.
“I’ll never find it,” he pronounced eventually. “Not in seven minutes.”
Artemis opened his laptop. “This is a computer simulation. You are the blue figure. Sergei is the red figure.”
On screen the two computer creatures burrowed through simulated earth.
Mulch watched the blue figure for over a minute.
“I have to admit it, Mud Boy,” said the dwarf. “It’s clever. But I need a tank of compressed air.”
Artemis was puzzled. “Air? I thought you could breathe underground.”
“I can.” The dwarf grinned hugely at Artemis. “It’s not for me.”
So now Mulch sat in his underground hole with a diver’s tank of air strapped to his back. He squatted absolutely silently. Once Sergei entered the earth, his beard hair would be sensitive to the slightest vibration, including radio transmissions, so Artemis had insisted on radio silence until they were in phase two of the plan.
To the west, one high-frequency vibration punched through the ambient noise. Sergei was making his move. Mulch could feel his brother dwarf scything through the earth, possibly toward his secret cache of stolen jewelery.
Mulch concentrated on Sergei’s progress. He was tunneling east, but on a downward tangent, obviously heading directly for something. The sonar in Mulch’s beard hair fed him constant speed and direction updates. The second dwarf proceeded at a steady pace and incline for almost a hundred yards, then stopped dead. He was checking something. He hoped it was the tiara.
Following half a minute of minimal movement, Sergei made for the surface, almost directly for Mulch. Mulch felt a sheen