ARTEMIS FOWL:
A PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT
EXTRACT FROM THE TEENAGE YEARS
By the age of thirteen, our subject, Artemis Fowl, was showing signs of an intellect greater than that of any human since Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Artemis had beaten European chess champion Evan Kashoggi in an on-line tournament, patented over twenty-seven inventions and won the architectural competition to design Dublin’s new opera house. He had also written a computer program that diverted millions of dollars from Swiss bank accounts to his own, forged over a dozen Impressionist paintings and cheated the Fairy People out of a substantial amount of gold.
The question is, why? What drove Artemis to get involved in criminal enterprises? The answer lies with his father.
Artemis Fowl Senior was the head of a criminal empire that stretched from Dublin’s docklands to the backstreets of Tokyo, but he had ambitions to establish himself as a legitimate businessman. He bought a cargo ship, stocked it with 250,000 cans of cola and set course for Murmansk, in northern Russia, where he had set up a business deal that could have proved profitable for decades to come.
Unfortunately, the Russian Mafiya decided they did not want an Irish tycoon cutting himself a slice of their market, and sank the Fowl Star in the Bay of Kola. Artemis Fowl the First was declared missing, presumed dead.
Artemis Junior was now the head of an empire with limited funds. In order to restore the family fortune, he embarked on a criminal career that would earn him over fifteen million pounds in two short years.
This vast fortune was mainly spent financing rescue expeditions to Russia. Artemis refused to believe that his father was dead, even though every passing day made it seem more likely.
Artemis avoided other teenagers and resented being sent to school, preferring to spend his time plotting his next crime.
So even though his involvement with the goblin uprising
during his fourteenth year was to be traumatic, terrifying and dangerous, it was probably the best thing that could have happened. At least he spent some time outdoors and got to meet some new people.
It’s a pity most of them were trying to kill him.
Report compiled by: Doctor J. Argon, B. Psych, for the LEP Academy files.
PROLOGUE
MURMANSK, NORTHERN RUSSIA, TWO YEARS AGO
THE two Russians huddled around a flaming barrel in a futile attempt to ward off the Arctic chill. The Bay of Kola was not a place you wanted to be after September, especially not Murmansk. In Murmansk even the polar bears wore scarves. Nowhere was colder, except perhaps Noril’sk.
The men were Mafiya enforcers and were more used to spending their evenings inside stolen BMWs. The larger of the two, Mikhael Vassikin, checked the fake Rolex beneath the sleeve of his fur coat.
‘This thing could freeze up,’ he said, tapping the diving bezel. ‘What am I going to do with it then?’
‘Stop your complaining,’ said the one called Kamar. ‘It’s your fault we’re stuck outside in the first place.’
Vassikin paused. ‘Pardon me?’
‘Our orders were simple: sink the Fowl Star. All you had to do was blow the cargo bay. It was a big enough ship, heaven knows. Blow the cargo bay and down she goes. But no, the great Vassikin hits the stern. Not even a back-up rocket to finish the job. So now we have to search for survivors.’
‘She sank, didn’t she?’
Kamar shrugged. ‘So what? She sank slowly, plenty of time for the passengers to grab on to something. Vassikin, the famous sharpshooter! My grandmother could shoot better.’
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