by Roland Smith
Mr. Tajamul threw his brush down and ran out of the stall.
Dan was right behind him. Casper was up on his hands and knees now, with a bloody nose as red as the turban on his head. He looked like an enraged lion ready to pounce.
Dan fought his way up the stairs against the flow. When he finally reached the roof he found Atticus standing at the edge. Alone.
“Where’s the Mouse?”
Atticus pointed. The Mouse was standing on the roof of the building next to the Grand Marché, frantically motioning them to join him. Between the buildings was a ten-foot gap and a two-story drop.
“I can’t jump that!” Atticus said, turning terrified eyes toward Dan.
Dan wasn’t sure if he could, either. He looked behind and saw to his horror that Casper had regained his feet and was limping toward them. Cheyenne, dressed exactly like her brother, was not limping. She was sprinting toward them at a dead run with her twin dagger glinting in the setting sun’s light.
Dan grabbed Atticus, pulled him fifteen feet back from the edge, and shouted, “Run!”
Atticus looked behind him, saw Cheyenne, and took off as if he were on fire. He cleared the gap with feet to spare. Dan had a second to marvel at what pure fear could do before it was his turn to jump. He barely made it. At the very last moment Cheyenne’s dagger split his shirt down the back.
Dan got shakily to his feet, worried that his adrenaline-saturated heart was going to pound out of his chest.
“She’s going to jump!” Atticus shouted.
Cheyenne had backed away from the edge and was making her run. Just as she reached the edge of the Grand Marché, her foot got tangled in her robe. She dropped into the gap like a skydiver with a collapsed chute.
Dan, Atticus, and the Mouse peered over the edge. They were only slightly disappointed. Cheyenne was alive, but she had landed in an enormous mound of camel dung. She was clutching her arm and grimacing in pain.
“See you later,” Dan jeered.
The words were only just out of his mouth when Casper’s dagger came whistling past Dan’s ear. It missed him by inches and stuck in a wooden beam with a loud twang.
Casper looked at him and smiled. “Better run, little boys. You only have a few more hours.”
“Luna doesn’t seem too paranoid about being followed,” Jonah said.
She was a half a block ahead of them, walking at a leisurely pace as if she were taking a stroll through a well-lit mall.
“I hear you,” Hamilton said. “She hasn’t even looked back to see if anyone is behind her.”
“It’s probably because she’s packin’ heat.” Jonah looked at his giant cousin. “That means carrying a gun.”
“I know what packing heat is!” Hamilton said. “Like you know anything about guns.”
“Dude! Didn’t you see me in my number-one-grossing box-office hit, Gangsta Kronikles?”
“No,” Hamilton lied.
“Well, you’re probably the only dude on the planet who hasn’t seen it. I was the bomb in that movie and it was no act. Some things you just can’t fake. If the bad guys I wasted in the movie had been real we wouldn’t have an overpopulation problem on Planet E.”
“Whatever.”
Luna led them past the massive stone walls of Mahim Fort, then turned left toward the bay and entered what smelled and looked like a fishing village. They lost sight of her among the dilapidated shacks. Unlike on the street, there were a lot of people hanging around outside their homes, making it difficult for Hamilton and Jonah to remain inconspicuous.
“Where’d she go?” Jonah asked.
“Jonah Wizard!” a girl yelled from behind them.
Jonah took off at a sprint without even bothering to turn and look back. He and Hamilton dashed through the maze of shacks, ending up on a muddy bank near the bay where a group of fishermen was standing around a fire, laughing uproariously. The uproar turned to menace when the men saw the out-of-breath boys appear out of nowhere. One of the fishermen was dressed like Luna Amato.
“It was a ruse!” Hamilton said.
The men started moving toward them. Their laughter had been replaced by a terrifying silence. Behind them an army of young fans started pouring out of the fishing village, brandishing camera phones and shouting, “Jonah! Jonah! Jonah!”
Jonah looked around frantically, his eyes zeroing in on the only possible escape. “Boat!” The rap star had a lot of experience getting away from rushing crowds.
They sprinted into the water and jumped into the first boat they reached.
“I’ll pull up the anchor,” Jonah shouted. “You start the motor.”
“There is no motor!” Hamilton yelled.
“Hoist the sail!”
The wind caught the sail just as the fake Luna Amato reached the gunwale and started to pull himself up. Hamilton grabbed an oar and knocked him back into the water.
Jonah took the rudder and swung the bow around as Hamilton peeled two more people off the side and they splashed down into the water. The boat started to move out into Mahim Bay, leaving the fans and the angry fishermen shouting from the shallows.
Hamilton pulled his cell phone out and turned it on. “That was a trap! We have to warn Erasmus.” He listened, then shook his head. “Voice mail.”
“We have to get back there!” Jonah swung the boat south. “Could you recognize the warehouse from here?”
Hamilton shook his head. “Not in the dark. But Erasmus said Mahim Fort was a couple miles from the warehouse. All we have to do is figure out where two miles is and ground this thing.” He narrowed his eyes at Jonah. “Where’d you learn to sail?”
“Video game.”
Hamilton rolled his eyes. “Let me take the rudder.”
“Word.”
They switched places. “One more question,” Hamilton said.
“Give it to me.”
“What does word mean?”
“Literal translation?”
“Yeah.”
“It means, ‘Okay, I agree, hey.’ ”
“All three of those things?”
“Word.”
Casper Wyoming limped into the alley. He found his sister picking camel dung off her green-streaked robe with her good hand.
“I think my arm is broken,” she said. “What’s the matter with you?”
“I twisted my ankle.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it! Vesper One told us to leave the Cahills alone.”
“He told us to keep an eye on them and not to impede them in any way. I grabbed the rodent boy, not the Cahill brats. It looked to me like you were trying to impede them with that dagger.”
“I wasn’t trying to impede them,” Cheyenne said. “I was trying to impale them.”
They glared at each other for a moment, then Casper started chuckling.
“You better hope Vesper One doesn’t get wind of what happened,” Cheyenne said, her eyes narrowing.
“He won’t.” Casper glanced over his shoulder. “This place has one thing going for it.” He smiled. “It’s great for making people disappear.”
“There!”
Amy pointed at the three boys jogging down the street.
Atticus and Dan piled into the backseat. The Mouse squeezed in next to Amy in the front.
Bart reached around Amy and ruffled his son’s hair. “What kind of trouble have you been in?”
The Mouse only grinned.
“Where have you been?” Amy demanded. “We were worried sick.”
“Fighting off the evil twins,” Dan said.
“The Wyomings!” Amy paled. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, but Tweedledumb and Tweedledemented are a little worse for wear. Cheyenne did a header into a pile of camel poop.”
“We never should have let them go off on their own,” Jake said, staring daggers at Amy.
Amy glared right back. “If you hadn’t —”
“If we hadn’t gone off on our own,” Dan interrupted, “we wouldn’t
have figured out where the ‘Apology’ is.”
“You know where it is?” Amy asked, turning to her brother with a gasp of astonishment.
“The de Virga compass rose hasn’t let us down yet.” He told her about the Roman ruins. “You and Jake can continue with the manuscripts. Atticus and I will head out to the ruins and see where it leads us.”
“Forget it,” Jake said. “Every time we leave you two on your own it leads to disaster.”
“I agree with Dan,” Atticus said. “If Koldewey was right about it being a Roman settlement, it’s the only place in the Sahara Desert that has a chance of having something written in Latin.”
“There’s only one problem with your theory. The ancient town you’re talking about is half-buried underneath the Sahara Desert,” Jake pointed out.
“Everyone in Timbuktu is searching here for the manuscripts,” Amy said. She told them about her deal with Mr. Tannous. “We should cover all possible angles.” She looked at her watch. “And we only have a few hours.”
“Perfect,” Dan said. “Let’s head out to the ruins.” He tapped Bart on the shoulder. “Do you have a shovel in the trunk?”
“I cannot drive you to the ruins in my taxi,” Bart said. “The only way to get there is on foot or on ships of the desert.”
“Ships of the desert?” Amy asked.
Atticus gave a fist pump. “He means camels!”
Yes.
Amy’s answer hadn’t really mattered. Erasmus was going to break into the Vesper safe house no matter what she said. But he’d checked it with her anyway out of consideration for Grace Cahill. Grace had picked Amy to lead the Cahills for a reason and so far, the girl was doing a fine job. She deserved a little respect.
Erasmus knew the person leaving the warehouse was not Luna Amato. He’d sent Jonah and Hamilton after the imposter, hoping to convince Luna that her ruse had worked. Now he slipped on a pair of enhanced night-vision goggles and scanned the building’s windows. There was no movement, no flash of light behind the dark panes, but he did discover something useful. On the second floor, to the right of the entrance, was a window that wasn’t latched. It made no difference to him whether Luna still was inside or not, but he didn’t want her to know that he was. He would search the warehouse undetected.
He checked his pockets to make sure everything was in place. He had spent many years in Japan when he was young and had been thoroughly trained in ninjutsu. His black leather getup was not to protect him from a motorcycle accident, nor was it a fashion statement. It was designed to protect, to defend — and to make him invisible.
He glided across the street and scaled the drainage pipe to the second floor as quietly and efficiently as a vine snake. Before opening the window, he sprayed each hinge with a special brew of lubricants and graphite. The window opened without a whisper. He was through in an instant. The first thing he noticed was the air-conditioning. Not only was it cool, there wasn’t a speck of dust floating past the lenses of his goggles.
Sixty-five degrees. Filtered air. Environmentally sealed.
The second floor was made up of a single room two hundred feet wide by three hundred feet deep, with enclosed cubicles scattered around the perimeter. In the center of the room was a huge freight elevator with a forklift parked next to it. Next to the elevator was a set of stairs.
The outside may be five hundred years old, but the guts are five years old. Maximum.
He started checking out the cubicles. The first one had a jeweler’s bench and all the equipment needed to cut precious stones. Above the wall were detailed photo-graphs and drawings of the Golden Jubilee Diamond.
The next cubicle smelled of oil paint and ink. A partially completed masterpiece in the style of Vincent van Gogh sat on an easel. It was a work Erasmus didn’t recognize. He could see the headline now: “Undiscovered Van Gogh sells for millions at auction.”
Across from the easel was a workbench with stacks of etched currency plates, euros, dollars, yen . . . denominations from almost every country. In the next cubicle were a state-of-the-art printing press and crates of bundled cash.
Vespers make their money by making their own money, Erasmus noted.
In the third cubicle he found what looked like the model Antikythera Mechanism, stolen from the American Computer Museum. It was difficult to tell because it had been disassembled, with the pieces spread out on a long stainless-steel table. Above the pieces was a photo of the original Antikythera fragment. Again it looked familiar to Erasmus, but he still couldn’t place it. He walked over to a stack of schematics. The top plan was for a gigantic electromagnet, bigger than the one stolen in France. Are the Vespers using the stolen French electromagnet for parts? What does the Antikythera Mechanism have to do with all of this?
Erasmus had learned more about the Vespers in the last ten minutes than he had learned in the last ten years. His brain buzzed with information and plans. He decided that he would disturb nothing in the warehouse. Instead he would stay in Mumbai and watch it, find out who worked here, track the shipments in and out. No doubt Vesper One had several warehouses like this, probably in different countries, but it might take him years to find them.
A frightening question occurred to him.
Why had Luna sent a decoy out? She had to know that she was being followed.
He heard a door open on the first floor. Whoever opened it had done so quietly, but not nearly quietly enough. Were the footsteps Luna’s? Or someone else’s?
Erasmus glided out of the cubicle and took up a position behind the forklift with a clear view of the stairway. If Luna turned on the lights, it was all over for him. He was too far away from the window to use it as an exit. A flashlight beam danced up through the dark. The light bounced off a white wall and illuminated a man’s profile.
Milos Vanek!
The Interpol agent had a flashlight in one hand and a pistol in the other.
“Dude. We’ve gone two miles,” Jonah insisted.
Hamilton wasn’t so sure, but he swung the bow toward shore anyway, hoping they didn’t smash into a bunch of sharp rocks.
“Can you swim?” he asked.
“I’m a fish.”
The boat lurched to a sudden stop and Jonah was catapulted off the bow.
“You okay?” Hamilton yelled.
“Word!”
Hamilton made a perfect dive off the gunwale and started swimming. To his surprise, Jonah was right behind him when he reached the shore.
Agent Vanek paused on the second floor only long enough to give it a cursory sweep with his flashlight before continuing up.
He must have followed us to the warehouse.
Erasmus had to give the inspector his due. He had looked for a tail when they were following Luna and hadn’t spotted him. He wondered if Vanek had followed the fake Luna, or if he had just waited outside and watched Erasmus scale the downspout.
But it didn’t matter. Erasmus had no intention of letting Vanek spot him again.
There was a crash and dull thud from the third floor. Every muscle in Erasmus’s body tensed. He heard someone dragging something, or someone, across the floor. He hoped Vanek wasn’t the one being dragged.
I can’t get involved.
Erasmus was on a mission. Agent Vanek’s agenda was not his concern.
A light came on. A woman’s voice began to speak. Despite himself, Erasmus crept closer to the stairway to listen.
“Vanek, you are old, and slow, and not too smart. So sorry about your head, but that will not matter in a moment. Did you not think I noticed you and your friends following me? A motorcycle, a taxi, and a rickshaw? You have lost your edge.”
Erasmus heard a slap and a moan.
I can’t get involved.
“Interpol is on its way,” Vanek said.
“Really? Let me see your cell phone. Ah yes . . . here we go. It seems that your smartphone is smarter than you. It does not lie. You made a call to Interpol over two hours ago. Since then no incoming calls, no
texts, no outgoing e-mail. Interpol has no idea where you are. Perhaps you had plans for me you did not want them to know about, hmm?”
There was a pause, and Erasmus could picture Luna’s smug expression. “They will find you floating on your belly in Mahim Bay, or perhaps in two days in the Arabian Sea a little worse for wear from sharks. I am the judge, the jury, and the executioner. Does the convicted have anything to say before I carry out the sentence?”
I can’t get involved.
“You are a traitor, Luna Amato.”
“Is that the best you can do? A pathetic end to a pathetic life. Good-bye, Milos Va —”
As quick and quiet as a cat, Erasmus was at the top of the stairs with a throwing dart in hand. The iron bo shuriken struck Luna’s gun hand before she could finish Vanek’s last name. Erasmus swept her feet out from under her, kicking her gun down the stairs in one fluid motion. Then he picked up Vanek’s gun and aimed it at her with frozen eyes.
Luna held up a bloody hand to shield herself. “You don’t understand, Erasmus,” she pleaded. “Yours are not the only hostages the Vespers are keeping!”
Erasmus looked at Vanek. A bruise was forming on his cheek. Blood ran from his nose. Luna had handcuffed him to a chair. “You okay?”
“Yes,” a shaken Vanek answered.
Erasmus watched as Luna got unsteadily to her feet. He had never knocked an old woman down, but had absolutely no regrets about it. Luna Amato was as dangerous as a viper.
“The Vespers have my son,” she said. “They threatened to kill him if I didn’t help.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Vanek shouted. “Luna does not have a son!”
“And Vanek is a liar! He put Amy and Dan in a Turkish prison to rot. It was I who got them out! It is Vanek who is working for the Vespers.”
“I don’t even know what a Vesper is,” Vanek said.
Erasmus looked toward Vanek. It was only a split second, but it was enough.
The viper struck. Erasmus saw Luna’s hand move, but it was too late. The bo shuriken was streaking through the air like a bullet. It sliced through his leather vest as if it were soft cheese and buried itself in his heart. He clutched his chest with both hands. His knees buckled and he dropped to the wooden floor. He could not believe that the last thing he was going to see on Earth was the gloating face of an evil old woman.