It took me only ten minutes to ride the Metro to the closest station to the Big Office and then walk to the Entrance Building.
It took me another whole hour to get through security.
This wasn't because of any trouble with my alias. The agents on duty simply confirmed I was on the official "playdate" list for Jason and checked my fake school ID. The problem was that lots of other people were trying to gain access to the Big Office as well. There was a large crowd of agents, scientists, multiversal diplomats, directors, tube operators, and other assorted muckety-mucks, all of whom had at least one aide, if not two or three, and every single one of them insisted that they ought to have higher priority than everyone else going in. As the only person supposedly not involved with the Odd Squad, I kept getting pushed to the side.
Given the long wait, I had plenty of time to scope out everyone in the crowd, trying to determine if any of them might be working for THE ORGANIZATION. No one seemed particularly evil—although most appeared quite irate about the security lines. Two of the aides to a giant pistachio diplomat seemed extremely uneasy, however. And there was one scientist who seemed downright shifty: he kept glancing at me suspiciously, as though trying to figure out what I was doing there. Under the guise of pretending to check my e-mail, I took some pictures of him—and everyone else in the waiting area—with my real phone.
Eventually, the crowd dissipated and it was finally my turn to enter the receptionist building. I was given another ID card, this one much fancier, with all sorts of holograms and built-in sensors, to wear on a lanyard around my neck. Then I passed through a magnetometer, like they had in airport security, and was followed by a pair of bomb-sniffing agents from the Odd Squad canine division. The dogs looked a lot like German shepherds, but I knew they were actually a breed known as the Belgian Malinois, which were famed throughout law enforcement for their incredible noses. Both had tiny Odd Squad uniforms on that would have made them look cute if they hadn't gone all psycho on me.
The dogs got one whiff of me and went berserk. Both started barking as loud as they could, straining at their leashes, going after me like I was a stray cat who had rolled around in raw meat. Every security agent instantly went on alert, snapping their gadgets from behind their backs and aiming them my way. I raised my hands over my head, desperate to show my innocence, and yelped, "Don't shoot! I'm only here for a playdate!"
This did not put the security agents at ease. They kept their gadgets trained on me while one of the agents—a wall of muscle with a crew cut and a permanent scowl—came closer, allowing his snarling dog to home in on whatever had set it off. The dog seemed particularly focused on my winter jacket.
"Take the jacket off," the agent ordered.
"Okay," I said, quickly shrugging it off and handing it over. It was freezing outside without it, but given the circumstances, it didn't seem like a good idea to make any trouble.
"Hey! Hey! Hey!" someone yelled. The voice was sweet and high-pitched, like that of a princess. A young girl with her hair pulled back in a ponytail slipped through the crowd of agents aiming gadgets at me. "At ease, guys. This kid isn't a villain. He's here to see Jason."
"Orwin and Opus say otherwise," the agent informed her, nodding to the dogs. "And if they're suspicious, we need to be suspicious." He passed the jacket on to another, equally imposing agent, who began searching through it. "For all we know, this kid's a sleeper agent set on blowing up the Big Office."
"He's a kid set on playing Ping-Pong with Jason," the young girl informed them. Then she turned to me and said, "You can put your arms down, AJ. I'm Oranda one of the Big Office aides. Sorry about this." She glared at all the agents aiming their gadgets and said, "You guys want to lower your weapons and focus on looking for real villains?"
All the agents now looked kind of embarrassed, but they didn't holster their guns. Instead, they turned to the canine agents, wondering what to do.
I noticed the names inscribed on the bottom side of the agents' badges. Agent Oryx was the big kid holding the dogs at bay. Agent Oboe was the one going through my jacket. Oboe was now wiping my jacket with a white cloth, which he then scanned with a small gadget. It beeped a bit, then glowed green.
"No explosives residue reported," Oboe announced.
Oryx frowned, like this somehow made me more suspicious, rather than less. "The dogs wouldn't be acting like this unless they smelled something."
"Well, maybe they smell something that isn't explosives residue," Oranda suggested. "Like meat."
"Why would a kid have meat on his jacket?" Oryx demanded.
"Why would a kid have explosives on his jacket?" Oranda countered.
"Because he's a covert terrorist," Oryx said.
"Or maybe he's a normal kid who ate some meat while wearing that jacket at some point," Oranda told him. "He had a hot dog at a cart, or he went to Shmumburger, or he put a piece of beef jerky in his pocket."
"My father's a grocer," I said, which was the truth. "I've worn this jacket into his meat locker plenty of times."
"The dogs aren't supposed to get this excited about meat," Oryx said. "They're only supposed to respond like this to explosives."
"But there are no explosives," Oboe said.
"I know there are no explosives!" Oryx exclaimed. "I'm just saying that our response here was justifiable, given our duty to protect the Little O."
"Oh yeah," Oranda agreed sarcastically. "The Little O is much safer now that you've intimidated a sixth-grader. Could you give him back his jacket before he freezes to death?"
Oboe quickly handed me my jacket. "Sorry."
All the other security agents finally lowered their gadgets, looking a bit ashamed.
I quickly slipped my jacket back on. The dogs kept barking at it, though. "Maybe there's still a tiny piece of jerky that got stuck in my pocket," I suggested.
Oboe glowered at me, as though I had somehow ruined his day, then spoke to the dogs. "Orwin,Opus, Geluidsarm!"
I figured that was Dutch for "be quiet." The Belgian Malinois were all trained using Dutch, as it was the native language of Belgium. Also, most villains didn't speak it, so there was less of a chance they'd know the commands to back down.
The dogs obediently stopped snarling at me and sat.
Oranda quickly escorted me beyond security and into the blessed warmth of the main building. "I am soooo sorry about that," she said. "I know those agents are only doing their job, and that the Little O is the prime target of villains all over the world, but sometimes I think they get a little too paranoid. Anyhow, it's nice to meet you." Now that the incident with the dogs was behind us, Oranda was exceptionally cheerful. She didn't seem the slightest bit disappointed to be saddled with a friend of the Little O's cousin while her fellow aides got to shepherd far more important people around. "Have you ever had a chance to visit the Big Office before?"
"No," I said. Despite the importance of the building to the Odd Squad tours were still given out.
"Oh!" Oranda said, sounding thrilled that she had someone new to share Big Office facts with. She instantly went into tour-guide mode. "Well, this is a very fascinating place. The building you're in right now, the Big Office Building—or 'BOB'—was originally built in 1871 and is mostly used for important Odd Squad paperwork."
We passed directly through the BOB and right back outside again, onto what had once been the street that ran along the western side of the Big Office property. Several important people were popping out of tube entrances. There was also a herd of reporters gathered under a canopy nearby: video camerapeople and photographers and a few reporters I recognized from shmumber news. They were all milling around, stomping their feet in the cold, apparently waiting for something exciting to happen.
"Are all those people here for something important?" I asked Oranda, trying to sound like your standard inquisitive kid and not a covert agent doing reconnaissance.
Oranda looked their way, surprised, as though she had taken their presence for granted for so long that she had forgotten they were all actual people, rather than something more permanent, like landscaping. "Not really," she said. "They're pretty much here all day long. There's always something going on at the Big Office."
"Even if the Little O isn't here?"
"Oh, sure. There's lots of important people with offices here besides the Little O." Oranda leaned in and whispered, "In fact, there's quite a few who think they're even more important than the Little O."
I couldn't tell if she was joking or not. "Like who?"
Oranda suddenly seemed to realize that this might not be the best thing to discuss on Big Office grounds, so she blatantly changed the subject. "The basketball court is over that way," she said, pointing toward a clump of trees on the South Lawn. "Jason likes to play down there sometimes. Do you like basketball, OJ?"
"Not really."
"Oh. Well, there are lots of other fun things to do here as well. Did you know the Big Office even has its own bowling alley?"
"Really?"
"Yes!" Oranda exclaimed excitedly. She seemed quite pleased to have distracted me from the political issue she'd brought up before. Well, here we go. The Big Office itself!" She pulled open the doors with a triumphant "Bum da da bum!"
I entered the most important building in the entire Odd Squad.
It was a complete letdown. I had expected a grand entry foyer, with marble pillars and fancy carpets and portraits of famous Agents. Instead, we were in what appeared to be a regular office building, and an outdated one at that. Every available space was crammed with desks, and all of those were overflowing. The walls were lined with extremely small offices, from which kids were constantly coming and going. There were far too many people for the space, so it was loud and crowded. It felt like being inside an anthill. An anthill that had been furnished at a discount office store.
Oranda instantly picked up on my disappointment. "This isn't the real Big Office," she assured me. "This is only sections 1-4. The cool stuff is in the center dome."
"Is the Little O there right now?" It seemed to be something a normal person who hadn't recently been secretly talking to the Little O would ask. Plus, I wondered if the Little O had actually made it back through traffic yet.
"No," Oranda replied. "The Little O is in one of the ceremonial rooms in the Big Office. I believe she's hosting the Jackies. Or maybe the premier of Canada. It's so hard to keep track of her schedule. Come to think of it, I wonder where Jason is. He usually comes down to meet his friends here when they arrive."
"Oh." I wasn't quite sure what else to say. I was also distracted by all the people around me. When O'Cyrus had told me to keep an eye out for possible assassins, it hadn't occurred to me that the Big Office would be so crowded. There were more than fifty people swarming about the warren of desks around me, and those were merely the people I could see. I could also hear the murmur of conversations from behind the doors of several offices, and even more people were rushing in and out at every moment. If any one of them could have been an assassin, it would take me weeks to investigate them all.
I instantly felt extremely overwhelmed. On my previous missions, I'd had Orica backing me up. We'd kept in contact via radio, so she could offer advice, suggest what I should do next—and, on more than one occasion, question my competence. Still, even that had given me a sense of security. Now I was completely on my own.
Meanwhile, despite O'Cyrus's assurance that as a kid I wouldn't stick out, I couldn't help feeling that I did. I was the only one without an Odd Squad uniform, and though everyone was carrying on like the fate of the world was at stake—which might have truly been the case for some of them—most of them stopped to watch me, as though surprised I was there. They probably assumed I was a friend of Jason's, but if anyone was a covert ORGANIZATION agent, my presence was so obvious, I might as well have been banging cymbals together.
Suddenly, O'Cyrus's plan seemed far less thought out than I'd hoped. "Do you know where Jason might be?" I urged Oranda, wanting to get out as quickly as possible. "It took longer than I expected to get through security. I have less time with him than I'd hoped."
"He's probably up in his room, playing video games," Oranda said. "That's where he usually is. C'mon. That's in the real Big Office. I think you'll be far more impressed by that." She led me through the cramped maze of cubicles.
A group of kids in white uniforms exited through a door marked INTELLIGENCE MANAGEMENT CENTER in front of us. Given the large number of medals arrayed on their chests, I figured they were all of high rank. I caught a glimpse of the INTELLIGENCE MANAGEMENT CENTER itself as we wove through them. To my surprise, it was smaller than my living room at home, and crammed full of electronic equipment that all looked to be at least ten years out of date.
We passed into a wide hall, but it was crammed full of filing cabinets and other storage units that had spilled out of the other rooms, giving the feel of passing through the most securely protected attic in the world.
Two more Security agents waited at the end of it, guarding a more formal set of doors than any we had passed through so far.
"Hi, guys!" Oranda said with a cheerful wave. "This is AJ. He's here for a playdate with Jason."
The agents snickered at this.
I held up the badge I'd been given and smiled nicely for them. "It's not really a 'playdate.' We're gonna hang out and chill. . . ."
"Whatever," one said, then checked a list on a clipboard and grunted approval. "He's on here," he informed the second agent.
With that, they held open the doors, revealing the true Big Office beyond.
It still wasn't that impressive.
We entered what seemed to be the basement level. A long central corridor ran the length of the building, flanked by rooms on both sides. The hall was lined with portraits of Big O's, although since this was a less visited area, they were the portraits of lousy ones most people had forgotten.
Oranda went back into full-on tour-guide mode, pointing out items of interest. Or items that she thought were of interest. "We are currently passing the Big Office kitchen," she said, indicating a set of doors, from behind which we could hear the clanging of pots and pans. "There are thirty-five full-time chefs here, meaning that the kitchen is capable of making a five-course dinner for up to one hundred and forty guests—or hors d'oeuvres for one thousand people. Frankly, they make a five-headed shrimp puff to die for."
Farther down the hallway, yet another pair of Security agents flanked yet another set of double doors. Given their presence and the muffled sounds emanating from the room behind, I got the impression that something important was going on there.
Before we reached it, though, Oranda ducked left and led me up a staircase. "This is one of eight staircases in the Big Office. There are also three elevators, one hundred and thirty-two rooms, and four hundred and twelve doors."
"Why are there so many more doors than rooms?" I asked.
"Er . . . ," Oranda said, thrown. "I have no idea. But I do know that it takes five hundred and seventy cans of paint to cover the entire exterior!"
We reached the first level, which seemed to be the main level of the Big Office, where all the formal events occurred. We spent exactly three seconds on it, heading right up the next flight. All I got to see was a small marble-lined foyer with a window that looked out across the front lawn toward L'Enfant Plaza. As usual, a crowd of tourists was gathered at the Big Office fence. A few were protesting, waving signs, and chanting for us to release creatures into the wild, though most were taking selfies with the Big Office in the background.
Orica stood among them.