Description
Product Description
In the fifth book in the New York Times bestselling Spy School series, Ben goes undercover in the White House to take on a SPYDER operative determined to assassinate the president.
Thirteen-year-old Ben Ripley has had a lot of field success despite only just beginning his second year at Spy School, something even graduates rarely experience. But he’d never have survived without the help from experienced agents and his friends. Now he’s been called in on a solo mission—and the fate of the United States of America is on his shoulders alone.
The mission: Prevent a presidential assassination by infiltrating the White House and locating the enemy operative.
And when everything goes wrong, Ben must rely on his spy school friends to save his reputation…but even friends can double-cross or be swayed to the enemy’s side.
Review
"This is espionage well worth uncovering." ―
Kirkus Reviews
About the Author
Stuart Gibbs is the N
ew York Times bestselling author of
Charlie Thorne and the Last Equation,
Charlie Thorne and the Lost City, the FunJungle and Moon Base Alpha series, and the Spy School series. He has written screenplays, worked on a whole bunch of animated films, developed TV shows, been a newspaper columnist, and researched capybaras (the world’s largest rodents). Stuart lives with his family in Los Angeles. You can learn more about what he’s up to at StuartGibbs.com.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Spy School Secret Service
RESURGENCE
Vandenberg Library
Nathan Hale Building
CIA Academy of Espionage
February 10
1500 hours
“SPYDER is back!”
Zoe Zibbell’s exclamation rang out through the spy school library. In her excitement, Zoe had spoken a bit too loudly—and since we were in the library, it was quieter than any other place on campus. The cavernous room was four stories tall, ringed by three mezzanines on which thousands of books were shelved. Zoe’s words seemed to echo off every last one of them: “SPYDER is back . . . SPYDER is back . . . SPYDER is back. . . .”
Zoe winced, realizing her announcement had been a lot more public than she’d intended. Then she quickly sat down at the table where she had just interrupted my homework.
The library was far more crowded than usual. On most afternoons, my fellow students and I would have probably been studying in the school dormitory, but on that day the freshmen had their first homework assignment in Introduction to Explosives: Each was assigned to defuse a small bomb. The bombs weren’t supposed to be strong enough to level a building, but where explosives were concerned, things could always go wrong, so it made sense to play it safe and steer clear of the dorm. More than a hundred students, ranging from second to seventh years, were hunched over tables throughout the library. They all tried to act like they weren’t interested in Zoe, as we’d learned in Intermediate Clandestine Observation: Seeing Without Being Seen, but I could tell they were desperate to hear more.
Until recently, SPYDER’s existence had been extremely classified: Only a few highly ranked people at the CIA had known about the evil organization. But in the past year, SPYDER had caused some major trouble, like trying to blow up the very building I sat in, attacking a busload of students near the school’s wilderness training facility, and attempting to destroy a large portion of Manhattan. After that there was no hope of keeping SPYDER confidential at the Academy of Espionage. Everyone there was training to be a spy; it was their job to know things. Almost all of them had sussed out the truth by now.
I made no attempt to hide my own interest in Zoe’s news. SPYDER had attempted to recruit me twice—and then tried to kill me when I’d refused—so I had a vested interest in knowing what they were up to. I looked up from my cryptography homework and asked, “How do you know?”
Zoe slid into a seat across the table from me and whispered, “Chameleon and I ov