THE PLAN: DAY ONE

My mission, should I choose to accept it—and I had choosed—was to get into the Shark’s Bay Surf Club, covertly take measurements, and get out, all while staying alive, if possible.

I braced myself against the edge of the skylight, hooked the titanium wire onto my belt, and adjusted my night-vision goggles. Below me, the raging torrent of the waterfall rushed past before falling almost six thousand miles to the boiling pool set into the floor of the lobby far, far below.

“Careful, Khatchadorian,” Ivan Awfilitch, my mission controller, snarled into my earpiece. “You’ve only got one shot at this! If you mess up, HQ is going to bury you so deep they’ll need a team of miners to find you.”

“Check,” I said.

I had my analog-level measuring device (a tape measure) in one hand and a state-of-the-art measurement-recording platform (a notebook) in the other. My image-retention device (a camera) was hanging around my neck.

I gave Ivan a final salute and dropped into the abyss, quickly lowering into the lobby at the end of the wire. One slip and I could get seriously splashed.

Down, down, down I slid until I reached a point just above the surface of the pool and stopped dead, perfectly balanced only inches from the water. The night-vision goggles identified the tracks of the surf club’s security-system lasers and…

Well, that’s what I would have done if I’d had to sneak into the club, anyway. In the end, I just walked up and went inside. (See why I had to spice it up a little?)

The lobby of the club was deserted, apart from a woman who looked like she might be the manager.

“Take your time, honey,” she said. She pointed at a poster on the wall. “Have you sorted out your costume yet?”

“Costume?” I said.

The poster was advertising the grand opening. My name was up there and I experienced a little thrill seeing my name in print.