by Rick Riordan
Fame is something you gotta keep building, baby. Am I right, dad?"
"You're right, son!"
"I already got albums and TV and fashion and books ... so where do I go for up? I'll tell you where. I need to win this contest. It's a smart career move! If we work together, I'll cut you in for a percentage."
"Uncle Alistair offered to help us, too," Amy grumbled. "That didn't work out." Jonah snorted. "Alistair Oh? That old fool probably told you how he invented microwave burritos, huh? Bet he didn't tell you he lost his fortune on bad investments. He's nearly broke, girl. He should've taken the million bucks and walked, but he's got some crazy idea the thirty-nine clues are gonna restore his reputation. Don't listen to him. You join me, we can beat everybody. We can even show those backstabbers, Ian and Natalie. You gotta be careful around here, Amy. Paris is a Lucian stronghold, you know. Has been for centuries."
"Jonah," his dad said, "you should not be dealing with these people. They have no star power and they're going to drag down your ratings."
"Chamber pots, Dad. I'll handle this." He gave Amy his most dazzling smile. "Come on, girl. We both know the next clue is about Ben Franklin. We could help each other." What bothered her wasn't that Jonah was an arrogant jerk. What bothered her was that she was tempted by his offer, anyway. The idea of showing up Natalie and Ian was hard to resist. And she couldn't help feeling flattered that somebody like Jonah Wizard was paying attention to her. Still... she remembered the way he'd talked to Nellie, and how nice he'd been to them at the airport, but it had all been an act, like they were just stage props for the cameras.
"Why ... why do you want a deal with us?" she asked hesitantly. "What makes us so special?"
"Nothing!" Jonah laughed. "Isn't that awesome? You're part of the Cahill clan, but you have no talent at all! Me, if I try to sneak into someplace to check out a clue, I'll have the media following me, people shooting my picture and asking me for interviews.
I can't do anything in secret. You -- you're so unimportant, you can go places I can't.
Nobody cares about you." "Thanks a lot," Dan grumbled.
"What'd I say?" Jonah looked baffled. "Hey, if it's money, I got plenty of that. I can even throw in a day on the set of Who Wants to Be a Gangsta? You can't do better than that."
"No thanks," Amy and Dan said together.
"Aw, c'mon. Just think about it, will you? Where's your hotel? I'll drop you off."
Amy was about to make something up when she glanced out the window. What she saw made her blood turn to ice. It was impossible. What was she doing here? And was she really carrying ...
"Right here!" she said. "Pull over, please!" The driver did.
Jonah looked out the window and frowned. They were parked next to a seedy-looking hotel called the Maison des Gordons. The awning was tattered and the doorman looked like a wino.
"Here, huh?" Jonah said. "Man, you guys like to rough it. Me, I'm staying at the Ritz. If you change your mind, you know where to find me."
Amy dragged Nellie and Dan out of the car. The driver tossed out their bags, and the Wizards' limo glided away.
"What a creep!" Nellie said."He isn't like that on TV!"
Dan looked up at the Maison des Gordons. "Don't tell me we're actually staying here." "I had to get him to stop the car," Amy said. "Nellie, get us rooms for the night."
"Here?" she protested. "But -- "
"It says 'gardens' in the title. How bad can it be?"
"Urn, that doesn't say -- "
"Just do it, please!" Amy felt weird acting so bossy, but she didn't have time to argue.
"We'll meet you back here in ... I don't know, two hours."
"Why?" Dan said. "Where are we going?"
"I just saw an old friend," Amy said. "Come on!"
She dragged him across the street, hoping they weren't too late. With relief, she spotted her target. "There!" She pointed. "In the red!"
Half a block down, a woman in a red shawl was walking briskly. Something was tucked under her arm -- something thin, square, red, and white. Dan's eyes widened. "Isn't that -- "
"Irina Spasky," Amy said. "And she's got our Poor Richard's Almanack.
Follow that Russian!"
CHAPTER 12
Dan was tempted to stop about twenty times as they trailed Irina Spasky down the Rue de Rivoli. (He wondered if that meant "the Street of Ravioli," but he decided Amy would laugh at him if he asked.) A few times he wanted to check stuff out -- like the cool glass pyramid at the Louvre and the street performers who were juggling fire outside the Tuileries garden. There was also a vendor selling creme glacee, and Dan was pretty sure that meant ice cream. Mostly, though, he wanted to stop because his feet hurt.
"Is she ever going to take a break?" he complained.
Amy didn't seem to be getting tired at all. "Does it seem odd to you that we happened
to find Irina Spasky out of ten million people in Paris?"
"Maybe the other 9.99 million aren't wearing bright red scarves!"
"She was walking down a major street, like she wanted to be spotted."
"You think it's a trap?" Dan asked. "How could she know we'd find her? And she hasn't
Looked back once. She doesn't know we're here."
But as he said that, Dan remembered television shows he'd seen about spies -- how they could tail somebody without ever being seen, or appear "accidentally" in a victim's line of sight and lure them into a trap. Could Irina have been waiting for them at the airport? Could she have seen them get in the limo with Jonah and somehow gotten ahead of them?
"Look," Amy said, "she's turning!"
Irina crossed the avenue and disappeared down a flight of steps. "The Metro," Amy said. "She's taking the subway."
They lost time figuring out how to use euro coins in the machines to get tickets, but when they got down the steps Irina was still there -- standing on one of the platforms with the tattered almanac tucked under her arm. The train was just arriving. Dan was sure Irina was going to try one of those last-minute switches, so they waited until the train's doors were closing, but Irina stayed on board. Amy and Dan jumped on, too, and the train pulled away from the station.
They changed trains twice in a really short time. Even with Irina in a bright red shawl, it was hard to keep up with her.
"I don't get it," Amy said. "Now she's moving faster, like she's trying to lose us."
Dan was daydreaming about creme glacee. The lasagna he'd had on the plane was
long gone, and his stomach felt like it was trying to chew through his shirt.
Finally, after the third train, Irina exited onto the platform. Amy gripped Dan's arm and pointed to a sign on the station wall. "Passy," she said. "So?"
"This is the neighborhood where Benjamin Franklin lived." "Well, come on!" Dan said. "Red Riding Hood's getting away." Passy didn't seem as crowded as Tuileries. The streets were lined with four-story buildings. There were flower shops everywhere, like a Mother's Day explosion -- tulips, carnations, roses, everything that could possibly make Dan sneeze. In the distance, the Eiffel Tower rose against the gray clouds, but Dan was more interested in the smell of food. The whole city seemed to be made up of outdoor cafes. He could smell chocolate, fresh-baked bread, melting cheese -- but Dan didn't have time to get any of it.
Irina walked like her dress was on fire. They had to jog to keep up. Amy tripped over a bucket of flowers and a Parisian cursed at her. "Sorry!" Amy called back.
They turned onto a tree-lined street with ancient-looking mansions. Halfway up the block, a purple van was parked crookedly. It was painted with pictures of balloons and clown faces, and the sign read Creme Glacee. Dan's spirits lifted. Maybe he could just grab a quick
triple-scoop of cherry vanilla to go. But as they got closer, he saw that the van was
shut. The windshield was covered from the inside with a silver screen. It was a
conspiracy, Dan decided. The entire city of Paris was trying to starve him.
A
t the end of the block, Irina crossed the street and ducked inside a wrought-iron
gate. She walked up to a large marble building that looked like an embassy or
something. Dan hid behind a gatepost and watched as Irina punched a security code
and went inside.
"Look at the gate," Amy said.
In the center was a gold-lettered sign that read:
INSTITUT DE DIPLOMATIE INTERNATIONALE
INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMACY
[proofreader's note: the left side of the sign shows a sword with two snakes curled around it]
"The Lucian crest!" Dan said. "But what's an institute for, um, whatever that means?" "I guess it's like a school for ambassadors," Amy said. "But don't you get it? That's just a cover. You remember what Jonah said? Paris is a Lucian stronghold." Dan's eyes lit up. "This must be their secret base!" Amy nodded. "The question is what do we do?"
"We go in," Dan said.
"Right. Without the security code?" "5910. I watched her punch it in."
Amy stared at him. "How did you -- never mind. Let's go. But be careful. They probably have cameras and guard dogs and stuff."
They squeezed inside the gate and ran up the front steps. Dan punched in the code. The door opened easily. No alarms went off. No guard dogs barked. "Weird," he muttered. But it was too late for second-guessing. They slipped inside the Lucian base.
The entry hall was bigger than their whole apartment. The floor was polished marble and a chandelier hung from the ceiling. A set of black doors stood in front of them. On the left, a spiral staircase led up to a balcony.
"Look." Dan pointed above the doors. A surveillance camera was sweeping the room.
It was angled away from them, but it wouldn't be for long.
Then he heard voices from behind the double doors -- someone coming in their
direction.
"Quick!" He ran for the stairs. Amy looked like she wanted to argue, but there was no time. She followed him up.
Dan's heart pounded. He'd always thought it would be cool to play burglar and sneak into someone's house, but now that he was doing it for real, his hands were sweating. He wondered if the French still threw burglars into rat-infested dungeons. He'd seen something like that once in a musical Grace took them to.
They sneaked along a second-floor hallway.
"I don't get it," Dan whispered. "Irina must be a Lucian. Benjamin Franklin was a Lucian. Does that mean Franklin was one of the bad guys?" "Maybe it's not that simple," Amy said. "Look."
Painted portraits hung along the walls -- Napoleon Bonaparte, Isaac Newton, Winston Churchill, a few others Dan didn't recognize.
"More famous Lucians," Amy guessed. "Not necessarily good or bad. But definitely a lot of powerful people."
"And we just invaded their house," Dan said.
They passed a row of heavy oak doors, all of them closed. One was labeled
LOGISTIQUE. Another read CARTOGRAPHIE. The last door on the right read ARSENAL. "Sweet!"
"Dan, no!" Amy whispered, but she was too late to intercept him. Dan opened the arsenal door and slipped inside.
A little late, he considered that it might not be a good idea to enter a room full of weapons if there was already someone in there. Fortunately, there wasn't. The arsenal was about thirty feet square and full of amazingly cool stuff: crates of cannonballs, racks of knives, swords, canes, shields, and umbrellas. Dan wasn't sure about the umbrellas, but he figured they did something besides just stop the rain.
"We shouldn't be here!" Amy hissed.
"Gee, you think?" Dan picked up a shoebox-size wooden crate full of glass tubes with copper wires twined around the tops. "Hey, it's one of those Franklin batteries, like in the museum."
Amy's eyebrows furrowed. "What's it doing in an arsenal?"
"Don't know, but I'm collecting it!" Despite Amy's protests, Dan stuffed the battery in his backpack. It fit because the pack was pretty much empty. The only other thing he had in there was the picture of his parents, wrapped in its plastic sleeve, which he'd decided to keep with him for good luck.
A Styrofoam egg carton caught his eye. He opened it and found a single silver orb with little blinking red lights. "This is cool, too!" He dropped it into his backpack.
"Dan, no!"
"What? They've got plenty of other stuff, and we need all the help we can get!" "It could be dangerous."
"I hope so." He was admiring the shurikens and thinking he might take some of those,
too, when a door slammed somewhere down the hall.
"Better know what she's doing," a man said in English. "If she's wrong -- "
A woman responded in French. Both voices faded down the corridor.
"Come on," Amy insisted. "Now."
They poked their heads out to make sure the hall was clear, then sneaked out of the arsenal and deeper into the building. At the end of the hallway was another balcony, this one looking down on a big circular room. What Dan saw below reminded him of a military command center. There were computers along the walls, and in the middle of the room was a conference table that seemed to be one huge flat screen TV. Irina Spasky was alone, leaning over the tabletop. Stacks of papers and folders sat next to her. She was punching commands on the tabletop, making images zoom or shrink. She was looking at a satellite map of the city. Dan didn't dare speak, but he locked eyes with Amy.
I want one of those, he told her.
Amy's expression said Shut up!
They crouched behind the balcony rail and watched as Irina commanded the map to zoom in on different locations. She checked the Poor Richard's Almanack book, then got out a pad of paper and jotted something down. She snatched up the book and the pad and hurried out of the room -- back toward the main entrance.
"Amy, come on!" Dan straddled the railing.
"You'll break your legs!"
"Hang from the edge and just drop. I've done it off the roof at school a million times.
It's easy."
He did. And it was. A second later, they were both at the conference table, staring at
the image still flickering on the screen: a white targeting icon hovering over one particular spot in Paris. The address glowed in red letters: 23 Rue des Jardins.
Dan pointed to a ribbon of blue surrounding the dot. "That's water. Which means that little blob she was targeting must be an island."
"The Ile St-Louis," Amy said. "It's on the Seine River right in the middle of Paris. Can you memorize that address?"
"Already done." Then Dan noticed something else -- a photograph sitting on top of Irina Spasky's files. He picked it up and felt sick to his stomach. "It's him." Dan showed Amy the photo an older man with gray hair and a black suit, crossing the street. The photo was fuzzy, but it must've been taken in Paris. Dan could tell from the yellow stone buildings and the French signs. "The man in black is here." Amy paled. "But why -- "
A voice came from somewhere down the hall: “j'entends des mouvements. Fouillez le batiment."
Dan didn't need to speak French to know that meant trouble. He and Amy ran the other direction, down another hallway.
"Arretez!"
a man yelled behind them. Immediately, alarms started blaring. "Oh, great!" Amy said.
"This way!" Dan turned a corner. He didn't dare look behind them. He could hear their pursuers getting closer -- boots pounding on the marble floor.
"Bars!" Amy warned.
The building's automatic defenses must have been activated. Right in front of them, a set of metal bars was descending from the ceiling, cutting off the hallway.
"Slide into third!" Dan yelled.
"What?" Amy demanded, glancing back at the security guards. Dan ran forward and hit
the ground like it was a waterslide, slipping under the bars. "Come on!"
Amy hesitated. The bars were getting lower -- three feet off the ground, two and a
half feet. Behind her, two burly guys in black security guard outfits were closing fast,
armed with nightsticks.
"Amy, now!"
She dropped and started crawling under the bars. Dan pulled her through just as the
bars clanged against the floor. The security guards grabbed at them through the bars,
but Dan and Amy were already running.
They found an open door and ducked into a parlor.
"The window!" Dan said.
A metal mesh curtain was closing over the glass. It was already halfway down. There was no time to think. Dan picked up a bust of Napoleon from the coffee table and threw it through the glass.
CRASH!
He could hear the guards in the hallway shouting over the wail of alarms.
Dan kicked the remaining glass shards away. "Go!" he told Amy. She crawled through and he followed, pulling his left foot out just before the metal curtain clamped against the windowsill. They ran through the garden, climbed the iron gates, and raced across the street. They ducked behind the purple ice cream van and slid to the ground, breathing hard. Dan looked back, but there were no signs of pursuit -- at least, not yet. "Let's not do that again," Amy said.
Dan's blood was racing. Now that he was out of danger, he realized how much fun he'd just had. "I want an arsenal! And one of those computer-screen tables. Amy, we need to make our own secret headquarters!"
"Oh, sure," Amy said, still breathing hard. She pulled some change and bills out of her pocket. "I've got about two hundred and fifty-three euros left. You think that'll buy a secret headquarters?"
Dan's heart sank. She didn't have to be so mean about it, but she was right. They were burning through their money fast. He didn't have much more than she did. They'd given most of it to Nellie for travel expenses, but it still wasn't much. If they had to fly somewhere else after Paris ... He decided not to think about it. One thing at a time.
"Let's get back to the Metro," he said.
"Yes," Amy said. "Back to Nellie. She'll be getting worried."
Dan shook his head. "No time, sis. 23 Rue de Jardins. We have to find out what's on that island, and we have to get there before Irina!"
CHAPTER 13
Meanwhile, inside the ice cream van, the Holts were strangling each other.