Wade and the Scorpion's Claw

by Tony Abbott

  “Who’s calling the room?” Darrell whispered as if the person on the other end could hear. “Dad would call our phones.”

  There was a long silence as we waited for a second ring. It didn’t come. Becca let out a long breath. “Maybe it just was a wrong—”

  Zzzt! Zzzt! The phone somehow sounded more urgent than before.

  “It could be the front desk, asking if we have enough shampoo,” Lily said. “If we don’t answer, they’ll send someone up. . . .”

  It buzzed again. No one went for it.

  “Really?” Lily rolled her eyes and picked it up. “Hello?”

  You could hear someone’s voice on the other end. It was soft, low. Lily’s eyes widened. She pulled the phone away from her face, searched the keypad, and pressed a button. “He wants it on speaker.”

  “Who does?” asked Darrell.

  “Can the four of you hear me?” asked a deep voice.

  “It’s him!” I said, putting my palm over the microphone. “The German! Leathercoat!” I removed my hand. “What do you want?”

  “You will please go to the window.”

  “Omigod, now what?” Lily whispered.

  We lifted the narrow blinds. On the opposite sidewalk, in front of a doorway with an awning over it, stood the tall man with white hair. He was gazing up at our window as he spoke into his cell phone.

  “First, I must compliment you on your ability to appear at the right place and at the right time. Copernicus himself would have approved. Now look down the street to my left.”

  We did. The sidewalks were crowded, though the cars were few. Darrell pointed. “Dad’s down there. I see him coming.”

  Two blocks away, my father was carrying two paper shopping bags—the food he had promised to bring back to the room.

  “You see now what easy prey you and your family are.”

  My dad was ambling up the street toward a killer he didn’t know was there. It was sickening. I wanted to pound on the window to warn him. “Someone call him—”

  “Call him if you like, but I will be gone.”

  “So you’re just going to keep haunting us? Like some creepy ghost?” said Lily as she tapped on her phone. “It’s ringing.”

  We saw Dad pause, shift his food bags, and fumble for his phone.

  “Soon I will ask you for Vela,” Leathercoat said casually, “as well as the item you received from Mr. Chen. I will pursue you without end to obtain what I want. Cooperate, or your father will be connected to Mr. Chen’s demise. Vela will be seized from you. You will have nothing. Darrell will tell you that one person dear to you has already been taken. You do not wish to make it a pair.”

  “Why you—” Darrell screamed.

  “Uncle Roald!” Lily yelled into the phone. “Leathercoat is outside the hotel!”

  Dad started running up the street.

  Click.

  The call ended.

  Leathercoat stepped back under the awning, and I swear the shadows enveloped him. I wasn’t sure whether he actually slipped through the building’s open door or just dematerialized. I’d have believed either. Dad ran past the spot and charged over to the hotel. Seconds later, he rushed into the room, and we leaped on him.

  “Leathercoat was right down there!” I cried. “He saw you and threatened to do something to you if we didn’t hand over Vela and the jade tile. He said he would find us.”

  Dad double-locked the door. “But are you all right?”

  “We’re fine,” Lily said. “Just . . . scared.”

  “I think we should call the police,” Becca said. “He said we shouldn’t, but he’s threatening you, and all of us. We have to.”

  Dad shook his head sharply. “Hold on. Back up. You said something about a jade tile? What tile?”

  I handed it to him. “Mr. Chen passed it to me before he died. Leathercoat said so.”

  Dad studied the tile in silence, and then went to the window. “This Leathercoat man is using us—using you. Twice now he’s talked to you kids instead of me. I’m sorry he’s doing this to you, but he’s relying on our fear about Sara to keep his actions secret.” He looked in our eyes one after the other. “It’s smart of him. He’s right that broadcasting what he’s doing would hinder us, too. So, fine. We’ll be quiet. For now.

  “But we won’t play into his hands, either.”

  Dad’s words made me remember a theme we had studied in Language Arts, the struggle between good and evil. Leathercoat was like an evil demon, a devil, luring us into doing his work for him. It made me feel guilty and a little sick to my stomach.

  “Can we at least change hotels?” Lily asked. “Leathercoat is a ghoul. He scares me way more than Darrell when he talks about the go room. Plus, who knows if he has reinforcements coming? Leathercoat, I mean. He’ll attack us in our sleep.”

  “No, he won’t,” said Darrell. “I’ll kill him first!”

  “Darrell, never say that,” Dad said. “That’s what the Order wants.”

  “Well, we’re doing what they want,” Darrell said, a bit more calmly. “We should just go back to the airport and wait. Not play his stupid game. We have to find Mom—”

  “Except, wait . . . ,” I started. Darrell shot me a glare, but I went on. “Look, we can’t get to New York until tomorrow at the earliest. If there’s a relic here, yeah, we could let the Order just find it. Leathercoat would bring it to Galina. Or we could try for it ourselves.”

  Dad rubbed his forehead, then turned to me. “But, Wade . . .”

  “No, Dad, listen. If Leathercoat wants this tile, then it’s a clue to a new relic. Mr. Chen thought we could find the relic, or he wouldn’t have given this to me. I think he knew we were Guardians. And anyway, wouldn’t two relics be better than one to help us get Sara back?”

  Darrell held his breath during my rant. He breathed it out slowly, then looked up at Dad. “I think Wade’s right. And you know how hard that is for me to say.”

  Dad stood there, staring out the window, then at each of our faces. I was actually surprised, but Lily and Becca were both nodding, as if agreeing with what Darrell and I had said.

  “All right,” said Dad. “We are stuck here until morning. So, yes. We can follow this clue—if it is a clue—except that we stop at the slightest hint of more danger. Either way, relic or no relic, we are on our flight at ten tomorrow morning. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” said Lily.

  “Besides, we already have Vela and Copernicus’s magical diary and two priceless daggers,” said Becca. “After everything that’s happened, we must be doing something right. And no matter how scary it gets, we sort of have to keep on doing it. For Sara. And for Copernicus.”

  Which was not something Becca would have said before last week. She was becoming a little tougher, different. I noticed it in myself, too. The old Wade would never have had the nerve to pull a dagger on a man. The truth was that the search for the relics was changing us. Who we’d end up being, I couldn’t tell yet. But one thing was certain.

  We had just agreed to work outside the law.

  Dad scanned the street one last time and then lowered the blinds. “The first thing we do is to leave the hotel. The second thing is to get this tile examined by an expert—”

  “The Asian Art Museum,” said Lily, waving her cell phone at us. “They’re open till seven tonight. We can walk there in half an hour.”

  We wolfed down the food Dad had brought. The few minutes of eating helped to make us feel a little more normal, even if we weren’t.

  I stood up. “Let’s go. The more we know, the more we know.”

  “That’s deep, bro,” Darrell said. “Can I quote you?”

  “I’d let you, but I own all the rights to what I say.”

  We grabbed our gear and vacated the hotel, leaving our keys but nothing else in the rooms. We didn’t inform the ponytailed clerk that we were checking out. I guess you could say that this was our new way, being sneaky about what we did.

  We were playing the Or
der’s game now.

  Using a map Becca snatched from the front desk as we left, we headed down the next two blocks then turned onto Larkin Street. It was dry for the moment and warmer. I kept swiveling around, but naturally didn’t spot Leathercoat.

  “He doesn’t need to follow us,” Darrell said, guessing what I was thinking as only a stepbrother can. “He’ll wait for us to come to him.”

  “He knew right where we were,” said Becca. “Can you really trace a phone right to a single room in a city?”

  “It’s possible,” said my dad, “but not with another cell phone. He must be getting computing help somewhere.”

  “Leathercoat mentioned all the computers that the Order has,” I said. “They probably have their own satellites in orbit.”

  “I’d like to put him in orbit,” said Lily.

  Becca nodded. “After I do.”

  Twenty minutes later, we reached the Asian Art Museum. It was a large, imposing structure, a kind of Greek temple on one side of a large grassy square. Banners featuring its current exhibits flapped above the entrance as if to beckon us in.

  Wondering what we might learn about the tile that, small as it was, had already claimed a life, we made our way up the wide steps to the front doors.

  We took one last look around, then entered the museum.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Even before we paid, Becca made a beeline for the information counter. It was a glass-topped desk staffed by two men in muted jackets with name tags pinned to them. She leafed through brochures and maps of the different collections. She’d already told me she collected brochures from places she visited.

  “You get a lot of information from them,” she’d said.

  Dad paid student prices for us, full for him, all in cash.

  I glanced out the door. Darrell did, too. The early-afternoon sun was emerging from behind the clouds and flashing off the puddles dotting the square.

  “Changeable weather, all right,” he said. “It almost looks nice.”

  “So do you,” I said. “Almost.” He shoved me.

  Becca glanced up from her museum map and pointed to the main staircase. “Third floor is where the Chinese galleries are.”

  We headed up.

  “If I remember, the dynasty of Ming emperors ruled from around the thirteenth century through the sixteenth, certainly during the time Copernicus lived,” Dad said.

  “Fourteenth to the sixteenth.” Becca squinted closely at the brochure’s tiny type. “From 1368 to 1644. The Ming court was said to be one of the most advanced in its arts and weapons.”

  “Did Copernicus ever make it to China?” Darrell said, hiking up two steps at a time. “Dad, do you know?”

  “I don’t think it’s in his biography,” he said, “but then neither are a lot of things we’re finding out. There were trade routes, though.”

  “I could look it up in three seconds,” said Lily. “But I don’t want to. Wasn’t there something called the Slick Road?”

  “No,” I said.

  “The Silk Road was what they called the trade route from China to Europe,” said Becca. She flipped the brochure over. “People in Italy, Portugal, and Spain traded silk and spices and goods with China from Marco Polo’s time on. It was a big business when Copernicus lived.”

  “Is all that in the brochure?” I asked.

  “Part of that was my very own, and I own all the rights.” She smiled, then lowered her voice. “I bet if I can figure out the key words, the diary will tell us exactly where Copernicus traveled.”

  And where we’d have to follow him and his Guardians.

  With each step we’d taken so far—to Berlin, Bologna, Rome, Guam, and every place in between—we’d discovered more and more about the great astronomer. The shadows of his life were clearing, mist by mist. It was no wonder he’d seemed so real in the dream.

  Lily spotted the Ming galleries first, and zipped ahead of us.

  The polished floorboards reflected the soothing overhead lights, and the quiet, nearly deserted rooms—featuring statues, pottery, scrolls, and carvings of wood, bone, and ivory—were strangely calming.

  Becca felt it. I could tell by the way she relaxed her wounded arm. She knew, as we all did, that the Order was out there waiting for us. How could we not? But for the moment, being in the museum comforted us. It was full of the aura of caring for the past as if it were—as we knew it actually was—a living thing. It seemed pretty obvious, as we walked into the galleries, that the relic quest was drawing us in again.

  “Let’s ask him,” Darrell said, nodding toward a young man with a badge on his blazer who strolled slowly through the gallery.

  Dad went right over to the guard. “Excuse me. Is it possible to talk to a curator? We have a couple of questions about Ming artifacts.”

  The guard looked at his watch. “I think Dr. Powell is around this afternoon. Hold on.” He went to a box on the wall, opened it, and pressed a few buttons on a keypad. He spoke into the receiver, listened for half a minute, then hung up. “She’ll be right up.”

  “Thank you,” said Dad. “That would be great.”

  But the moment I went for the tile in my pocket, Darrell snagged my sleeve. “Whoa, bro. We can’t let anyone see the original. It’s too valuable. Let’s trace it instead. In the notebook.”

  “Good thinking,” said Becca.

  “Oh, I know,” Darrell said, taking my notebook and a pencil from my bag and tracing the tile carefully on the page opposite my latest notes. He tore the page out.

  “You’re quite the artist,” Becca told him.

  “It’s a gift I share with the world—”

  “Hold on.” Dad tugged us sharply behind a display of tapestries. “I just saw—”

  “Leathercoat?” asked Lily.

  “No, that acrobatic fellow from the airport,” he whispered. “The man who was making the baby laugh. Why would he be here?”

  “At the same time we are?” whispered Becca. “Did he just see us?”

  “I don’t think so,” Dad said as a young woman in a trim blue suit walked across the gallery toward us. “I’m going to find out what he’s doing in the museum. Wait here with the curator. I’ll be right back to talk with her.” Dad slipped away from us and walked quickly to the end of the gallery, peeked around the opening, then slid into the next room and stepped slowly across the floorboards.

  “Just like a secret agent,” Darrell whispered. “Go, Dad.”

  I didn’t like it. “Is this just random? The guy from the airport is suddenly where we are? Because I have to say, I don’t think so.”

  “Your dad will figure it out,” said Lily.

  Becca raised her hand. “Here’s the curator.”

  The young curator came over to us. Her name tag read Tricia Powell. “Was that your father I just saw?”

  “He’ll be right back,” said Lily. “But we have some questions.”

  “Okay,” she said brightly. “How can I help you until he returns?”

  Everyone looked at me because I had the tracing in my hand.

  “Um . . .”

  “Yes?”

  It was so hard to come up with an outright lie.

  Not only hard to think up the words, but hard to say them to a stranger. I knew before the relic quest was over, I’d probably be much better at it than I ever wanted to be. But if a fib got us closer to a relic—and Sara—it was worth the risk.

  “We found this drawing in my uncle’s stuff when he died,” I said, handing the tracing to the curator. “We wondered what it means. It looks sort of Chinese maybe, but we don’t know for sure.”

  As she studied Darrell’s suddenly awful tracing, I felt like a first grader trying to pull one over on his teacher. What I didn’t expect was the look of total astonishment on her face.

  “How did you get this?” she asked me.

  “Um . . .”

  “Like Wade said, it was in our uncle’s stuff,” Lily said.

  “Uh, no,” the curator
said sharply. “And I didn’t ask where you got this, I asked how. This is obviously not a drawing. It’s a tracing. Did your uncle do this, or did you?”

  She was smart. Knowing it was a tracing meant that she guessed we had access to the original.

  “Uh . . .” I had nothing.

  “Well, tell me, then, who exactly was your uncle?” she asked.

  “A . . . collector,” Becca said. Given Uncle Henry’s antique-jammed Berlin apartment, that was not a lie at all. “He lived in Berlin, Germany. He died last week.” Also not a lie.

  “I’m sorry,” the curator said. “Very sorry for your loss. But . . .” She shot a look at the security guard and frowned. “Follow me.”

  I glanced around. Dad wasn’t anywhere in sight. I didn’t want to leave the spot where he’d left us, but the curator walked only into the next gallery, so we followed.

  She stood next to a tall display case housing four items on different levels. On the top sat a rectangular box about seven inches long by five inches wide and four or so inches deep. It was made of shiny ceramic. In the center of the lid were six round tiles and a gap where a seventh tile was missing.

  The tiles were nearly identical to the tile in my pocket.

  “You see?” Tricia Powell said. “Your tile appears very similar to the others in this piece—so similar, in fact, that I think I’ll need to speak with your father about how you really came by this tracing.”

  We gaped like idiots until Becca pulled herself together. “Can I ask you some questions first?” she said in her friendliest voice. “Then we’ll tell you everything. Promise.”

  Tricia Powell folded her arms. “You know, I really should . . . but okay. You can ask me one question.”

  “One question?”

  “One.”

  Becca swallowed. “Okay, here goes. What kind of box comes from where in China and was made when by whom to show designs that mean what . . . exactly?” She smiled hopefully at Dr. Powell.

  Ha! I hoped the curator thought Becca as adorable as I did just then.

  I guess she did, because she glared for a minute, then laughed despite herself. “Okay, that was one really long question! First, why don’t you read the label, and we’ll take it from there.” She stepped back from the display case.