Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women is a school for geniuses—not spies—and we're free to pursue any careerthat befits our exceptional educations. But when a school tells you that, andthen teaches you things like advanced encryption and fourteen differentlanguages, it's kind of like big tobacco telling kids not to smoke; so all ofus Gallagher Girls know lip service when we hear it. Even my mom rolls her eyesbut doesn't correct me when I call it spy school, and she's theheadmistress. Of course, she's also a retired CIA operative, and it was heridea for me to write this, my first Covert Operations Report, to summarize whathappened last semester. She's always telling us that the worst partof the spy life isn't the danger—it's thepaperwork. After all, when you're on a plane home from Istanbul with a nuclearwarhead in a hatbox, the last thing you want to do is write a report about it.So that's why I'm writing this—for the practice.

If you've got a Level Fourclearance or higher, you probably know all about us Gallagher Girls, sincewe've been around for more than a hundred years (the school, not me— I'll turn sixteen next month!). But if you don'thave that kind of clearance, then you probably think we're just an urban spymyth—like jet packs and invisibility suits—and you drive by our ivy-coveredwalls, look at our gorgeous mansion and manicured grounds, and assume, likeeveryone else, that the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women is just asnooty boarding school for bored heiresses with no place else to go.

Well, to tell you the truth,we're totally fine with that— it's one ofthe reasons no one in the town of Roseville, Virginia, thought twice about thelong line of limousines that brought my classmates back to campus last September.I watched from a window seat on the third floor of the mansion as the carsmaterialized out of the blankets of green foliage and turned through thetowering wrought-iron gates. The half-mile-long driveway curved through thehills, looking as harmless as Dorothy's yellow brick road, not giving a cluethat it's equipped with laser beams that read tire treads and sensors thatcheck for explosives, and one entire section that can open up and swallow atruck whole. (If you think that's dangerous, don't even get me started about thepond!)