On the way to lunch, Jack suddenly grabbed Alfie and pulled him to the side of the corridor.
“Look out!” he hissed.
Alfie struggled to see what was going on, but the corridor was empty—apart from the rest of his class pressed against the walls, and a harmless-looking lady with greying hair who was walking slowly towards them.
“It’s Miss Fortune,” Sam explained, keeping his wheelchair as close to the wall as it would go. Up close, Alfie could see there were buttons arranged along both arms. Sam pressed one, and the chair scrunched up so that it took up less room.
“Miss Fortune teaches Assassination Techniques,” Chloe said. “Why don’t you go and say hello to her?”
But before Chloe had finished speaking, the harmless-looking lady let out a highpitched wail: “Hai-char!” and leaped suddenly into the air. Her right foot lashed out and Alfie saw that there was a hollow tube extending from the point of her shoe. Smoke and flame erupted from the tube—a gun barrel—and a chunk of wall close to where Alice was standing exploded into dust and fragments.
Miss Fortune settled back on her feet, the gun barrel shrank out of sight and she walked slowly past the children of Class 3D.
“Good afternoon,” she said in a frailsounding voice. Then she spun round on her heel, smacking a fist out rapidly at Harry, who ducked just in time.
“It’s best to keep out of her way,” Beth said to Alfie. “Whatever Chloe says.”
“What are her lessons like?” Alfie wondered as Miss Fortune disappeared round a corner in the corridor.
Jack waited for the blood-curdling sound of a ninja attack cry to fade before he said: “No idea. We don’t do Assassination Techniques until the sixth form. But the Major once told me her classes always seem to be short of pupils.”
“She sent Felix Hamilton to get something from the stock cupboard and he never came back,” Alice said darkly. “And Sarah Middlesworth.”
“I heard it was Lester Bigmore,” Sam said.
“Yeah. Him too,” Alice said.
“Who’s the Major?” Alfie asked.
“You need to keep out of his way as well,” Jack said. “He teaches Sabotage. We have that on Wednesday afternoon. Just before Maths.”
Alfie met the Major at lunch. No one seemed to know what his name was—he was just “The Major”. He was a straight-backed, militarylooking man with a bushy white moustache that stuck out beyond his cheeks in a way that defied gravity. He also had his left arm in a sling and several plasters stuck on his cheek.
Jack pointed out the Major as he was getting a plate of stew to take to the table where the staff were having their lunch. Alfie watched each of the teachers sit down and take it in turns to introduce themselves to Mr Trenchard as if he’d never met them before.
But the Major didn’t get that far. As he turned from the serving area, his sling caught on one of the metal struts supporting the raised shelf where the plates were kept warm. The strut fell away and one end of the shelf dropped with a loud clang. But it was nothing like as loud as the plates as they slipped down the shelf and crashed to the floor.
“Sorry!” the Major said loudly to no one in particular as he knocked a small girl flying, then bumped into a table. Which collapsed,
sending dinners and drinks into the air.
“Uh-oh—me again!” the Major said, so loudly that a passing boy stumbled and clutched his ears, dropping the jug of water he was carrying.
“That wasn’t me,” the Major said, looking down at the puddle and the broken glass. “Er, was it?”
“Like I said,” Jack whispered to Alfie, “the Major teaches Sabotage.”
“I see,” Alfie replied, watching the Major set his dinner down carefully on the table. There was a crack as the plate broke. The Major sat down. His chair fell apart beneath him.
There was only one lesson in the afternoon before the class returned to Miss Jones. It was Surveillance. This was taught by Mrs Nuffink, and Alfie found it the hardest lesson of the day.
This was partly because Mrs Nuffink seemed to be able to tell if anyone whispered or wasn’t paying attention, or mucked about. Even when she was facing the other way, writing on the board, she called out: “Beth— don’t do that,” as an expertly designed paper plane glided across Alfie’s desk.
Alfie also found it hard because the subject was quite difficult. They spent a lot of time examining photographs and trying to spot where people could be hiding, or watching a video of the outside of a house where nothing seemed to be happening.
“There—did you see it?” Mrs Nuffink shrieked at one point. “Nobody? None of you saw anything? I despair, I really do. Class 3D, what were you doing?”
As far as Alfie could tell, nothing had happened.
But then Mrs Nuffink rewound the DVD. “I’ll play it forward very slowly,” she said with a sigh. “Look out for the boy delivering a secret letter.”
There was a slight blur on the picture for a moment, but otherwise nothing changed.
“I didn’t see anything,” Alfie said.
“You wouldn’t,” Chloe said. But the others all agreed they had seen nothing either.
Mrs Nuffink shook her head sadly. “You’ll never pass your SATS at this rate,” she said. “Special Agent Training Standards are very important, and you need to get Level 3 this year. Now—one frame at a time then.”
This time, they did see it. On one frame there was nothing, then on the next a boy was clearly in view. He was only in three frames. In the first, he approached the front of the house. In the second he threw a letter towards
the door. In the third, Alfie could see that the letter was attached to a tiny model helicopter that flew it straight into the open letterbox. He could also see that the boy was on a skateboard. Flames erupted from the rocket motors on the back of the board as the boy whizzed past.
By the fourth frame he was gone.
“You see?” Mrs Nuffink said. “You just have to pay attention. Now then—any questions about that?”
Beth’s hand shot up. “Yes, Miss. Where did he get that skateboard?”
“How was your first day, Alfie?” Miss Jones asked as she dismissed Class 3D at the end of the afternoon.
“I like the other children in Class 3D,” Alfie said, though he was sure that Chloe didn’t like him very much. “But some of the lessons are a bit strange.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Miss Jones said. “Probably. See you tomorrow. Oh, and you have PE in the afternoon, so don’t forget to bring in your towel, your trainers, and your bullet-proof vest.”