Oz heard them before he saw them. A soft rustling filled the air at first, like leaves snatched up in a puff of wind. He opened his eyes and leaned forward on the wall that encircled the balcony. The stone was cold beneath his hands.
The sound drew closer, and louder: the whispery flapping of many wings. Hope soared in Oz, and he craned his neck, smiling in anticipation as he tried to spot the rescue birds. The SAS had heard his call! The Summoner still worked after all these years!
He squinted at the flock of dark forms that suddenly materialized, silhouetted against the full moon. As they drew close enough for him to make them out more clearly, his smile faded. Oz drew back against the cathedral wall with a gasp.
The Summoner had worked, all right. But Squeak was wrong about one thing. The SAS wasn’t a squadron of swallows. The Summoner had not brought birds. It had brought bats. Thousands and thousands of bats.
Oz swallowed hard. He was shaking uncontrollably. ‘The name is Levinson. Oz Levinson,’ he whispered aloud, trying not to hear the soft, leathery flapping of their wings. He had to go through with this if he wanted to save Glory. He held the Summoner aloft and managed to croak out the code signal, just as Squeak had taught him: ‘Lux tenebras exstinguit!’
The wind snatched away his words, and for a moment there was no response. Then he felt something brush against his face. He choked back a scream.
‘What issssss it?’ he heard, or thought he heard. The voice was soft and sibilant, nearly as soft as the bats’ own silent wings. ‘Issssss not moussssse.’
‘Issssss human,’ came another voice, soft as a sigh. ‘Not to be trusssssted.’
Oz squeezed his eyes tightly shut. He couldn’t look. He just couldn’t. James Bond would look, he told himself. Agent 007 laughed in the face of danger. Oz cracked one eye open. He found himself face-to-furry-face with an upside-down bat. He quickly shut the eye again. Laugh? He felt more like crying. Every nerve in his body was screaming, run! But Oz thought again of Glory, and the orphans, and all the other mice in London who were depending on him. He stood his ground.
‘He knowsssss the sssssignal,’ whispered a third voice.
‘No,’ said the second voice. ‘Imposssster. Not to be trussssted.’
‘Wait!’ called Oz in desperation, as he heard the bats begin to fly away. Mustering every ounce of courage he possessed, he opened both eyes and took a step forward. The bats hesitated, dipping and fluttering before him like dark moths against the moonlit sky. ‘The name is Levinson,’ Oz announced firmly. ‘Oz Levinson. Friend of mice and fellow soldier against evil. Against rats.’ And sharks, he almost added. He paused, unsure of what else he should say.
A single bat detached itself from the flock and circled closer. He stared at Oz with fathomless, unblinking eyes. ‘Fellow sssssoldier against ratsssssss?’ he whispered, his voice a low hiss.
Oz nodded.
‘Batsssss hate ratsssss.’
Oz nodded encouragingly. ‘That’s right. And the mice are in trouble tonight. Just as they were a very long time ago. During the Blitz. The rats are holding some of them prisoner right now. Mouselings. They’re planning to kill them, and to exterminate the rest of London. We need your help.’
‘Mousssssselings?’
Oz nodded.
‘Exxxxxxterminate?’
‘Yes,’ said Oz soberly.
‘We haven’t heard the sssssssummons in a very long time,’ sighed the bat.
‘No,’ agreed Oz. ‘Not since Sir Peregrine Inkwell.’
‘You knew Ssssssssir Peregrine?’
Oz shook his head. ‘I’m here under orders from his great-grandson, Sir Edmund Hazelnut-Cadbury. He’s the head of MICE-6 now.’
The bat flitted away again and rejoined the others. Oz could hear them consulting among themselves as they flickered in the air above him, their words like the whisper of dried leaves.
The three who had spoken detached themselves from the others and darted towards him again with such speed that he drew back in alarm. They swooped to a stop at eye level and clung by their claws, upside down, to the stone parapet overhead. The bats’ small, eerie faces were hideous and wild, their mouths bristling with sharp, evil-looking fangs. Oz gulped. How do I get myself into these things? he wondered.
‘What are our ordersssssss?’ whispered the leader.
‘It’s a r-r-r-escue mission,’ stuttered Oz. ‘Glory’s been captured.’
‘Who issssss Glory?’ the bat asked.
‘Glory Goldenleaf. She’s a spy mouse,’ Oz explained. ‘A very brave spy mouse, and one of my best friends in the whole world. She’s been captured with one of her colleagues, Bubble Westminster, and a whole bunch of orphan mouselings. They need to be airlifted to safety.’
He reached into his pocket for the slip of paper with the coordinates to the Savoy Hotel and read them off. Then he held up the paper, trying not to flinch as a leathery wing brushed the back of his hand when one of the bats snatched it from him.
The three bats studied the note, then looked back at him and nodded their fierce little heads. ‘Yesssssss,’ they whispered in unison. And without another word they rose into the air above St Paul’s Cathedral and disappeared into the night.
