Secret of the Forbidden City

by James Patterson

  Beck found more courage than the rest of us and launched into a solo tirade against Streckting, Uncle Timothy, and everybody else who ever tried to make money off the misery of others.

  I don’t think I’ve ever been prouder to be a twin. I was all choked up. Storm and Tommy, too. And Storm doesn’t choke up easily.

  But Streckting?

  He was laughing hysterically.

  “You Americans are so wonderfully naive. Especially you children. So innocent and pure. It disgusts me. Now move out of the way or, I swear, I will order my men to—”

  That’s when the unthinkable happened.

  Petra turned around, reared back her arm, and punched her fist straight through the center of a Picasso.

  CHAPTER 76

  Okay. My mistake. It wasn’t a Picasso.

  It was a terrible portrait of Ludwig and Helga Schupfnudel holding their pet schnauzer that was probably painted by a local artist. A local artist who might be color-blind (unless schnauzers in Germany are really green).

  What can I say? All ripping canvas sounds the same to me.

  “Stand back,” warned Petra, “or I will punch a hole in this Picasso pigeon painting next.”

  “You foolish little girl!” screamed Streckting. “Do you know how much money such a teenaged temper tantrum would cost me?”

  “Over one hundred and fifty-five million dollars,” said Uncle Timothy. “According to my preliminary intel, that’s how much a billionaire spent for a single Picasso painting back in 2013.”

  “The Chinese will give me more!” sputtered Streckting.

  “Roger that,” said Uncle Timothy. “The high cultural minister has a very generous budget for his new museum. Of course, my sales commission would’ve been—”

  “Silence!” Streckting screamed, spewing wet gobs of spittle across the room.

  “We don’t care about the money,” said Tommy.

  “And you’re not selling this art to anybody,” added Beck.

  “That’s where you are wrong, little girl,” said Streckting. “There are, what, four of you?”

  “Five,” said Petra.

  “Five. Five children. Unarmed infants.”

  “Actually,” said Tommy with an ear wiggle, “Petra and I are kind of like young adults.”

  “I don’t care! Do you seriously think you are any match for me, Dionysus Streckting? I am the most fascinating and dangerous man in the entire world. Interpol has me at the top of its most wanted list and it doesn’t even know that I was the one who embezzled all that money in Switzerland last winter. But can it stop me? Ha! No! Can it even find me, even though it spent millions of dollars and thousands of hours in its foolish manhunt? No! Ha! I laugh at those Interpol idiots. Ha-ha-ha! I spit on their shiny Interpol badges… ptooey! So, if I am not afraid of the big bad international police, why should I be afraid of you inconsequential children when I can simply shoot you, one by one, and take what is rightfully mine?”

  “You know,” said Tommy, “you raise some pretty good questions. Can we have a few minutes and get back to you with our answers?”

  Streckting doubled over with laughter.

  “Tommy, Tommy, Tommy. The ‘brains’ of the family. Ha-ha-ha. You kill me. No wait. Strike that. I kill you. Yes. You will be the first Kidd to have his imbecilic brains blown out of his skull! It will be a very entertaining, very amusing spectacle. One that I, Dionysus Streckting, will enjoy watching.”

  Now Streckting turned to Uncle Timothy with a sinister grin. “Timothy?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I trust your gun is loaded?”

  “Affirmative. Standard operating procedure.”

  “Good. Will you kindly do the honors of killing Tailspin Tommy? One bullet between the eyes should do the job nicely.”

  Uncle Timothy hesitated. For, like, half a second.

  “Is this a mission-crucial command?” he asked.

  “Yes!”

  “Very well.”

  Uncle Timothy raised his pistol.

  Beck, Storm, and I rushed to help our big brother, but were held back by Streckting’s goons. We begged Uncle Timothy to put his gun down, but he just ignored our desperate pleas.

  I closed my eyes. I couldn’t bear to watch.

  CHAPTER 77

  But just as Uncle Timothy was about to pull the trigger…

  “Halt,” said Petra, very calmly, especially considering the fact that Uncle Timothy still had his pistol pointed at Tommy’s skull. “I have a better idea.”

  And she showed Streckting her cell phone.

  The call screen was glowing.

  “Those ‘idiots’ at Interpol would like to speak to you.” Petra was looking grim as she held up her phone.

  Streckting? He was foaming at the mouth. And the ears.

  “Killing those children would be a very bad idea, Dionysus,” said a tinny voice coming out of Petra’s speakerphone.

  “What? Who are you?”

  “Senior Superintendent Aiden Buchholz, Interpol Wiesbaden. Thank you for alerting us to your current position as well as adding ‘mastermind of global art smuggling league’ and ‘embezzler of Swiss funds’ to your arrest warrant. At this point, I would strongly advise against adding the grave charges of harming the Kidds or Frau Pichelsteiner to that list.”

  Outside, I could hear the sound of approaching sirens.

  “Our friends at the Munich Police Department have been very cooperative and are currently on their way to your location, which Frau Pichelsteiner’s cell phone GPS chip has identified quite nicely for us. We always suspected that the ‘miniatures museum’ in Neubiberg was somewhat sketchy.”

  Now I heard the thump-thump-thump of rotors hovering over the museum.

  Streckting was glaring up at the filthy attic rafters. He heard it, too.

  “The Munich police are even letting us borrow their Hubschrauber,” said the Interpol officer on Petra’s phone.

  “That’s German for helicopter,” said the ever-helpful Storm.

  Streckting’s henchmen started fidgeting and eyeballing their escape hatch—the narrow opening in the floor for the attic ladder.

  “And thank you, Herr Streckting,” Senior Superintendent Buchholz continued. “We were able to quite clearly record your entire confession. Your monologue has made the prosecutor’s job much easier. By the way, is Mr. Quinn with you? Mr. Timothy Quinn? Our American friends at the Central Intelligence Agency would like to have a few words with him as well. Preferably in a top secret location…”

  “No,” Streckting snarled, his sudsy mouth foaming like a washing machine with way too much detergent. “I will not let those idiots at Interpol lock me away for three hundred years!”

  He shoved Uncle Timothy and Franz Hans out of the way and scampered down the rickety attic ladder first.

  “Jeder für sich!” shouted Franz Hans.

  This time, Petra handled the translation: “That means every man for himself.”

  “That’s been your motto all along,” I said to Uncle Timothy. “Hasn’t it?”

  “Putting us in that horrible New York City prep school,” fumed Storm.

  “Selling off our only home, The Lost,” added Tommy.

  “Making us give both of our Ming vases to the Chinese instead of sending one to Cyprus to rescue Mom,” said Beck.

  I shook my head. “And we thought you were Dad’s friend.”

  Uncle Timothy whipped off his mirrored sunglasses. His eyes were filled with panic.

  “Your father turned me in.”

  “Well, duh,” said Tommy. “That’s what the good guys usually do.”

  “Ja,” said Petra. “They rat on the rats.”

  The helicopter and sirens sounded like they were right outside.

  Uncle Timothy’s eyeballs shot back and forth a few times.

  Then he tapped his stupid Bluetooth earpiece. “Initiate the extraction package.”

  He dashed over to the ladder and scurried down.

  “Bee
n fun, Kidds. Gotta go.”

  And Uncle Timothy disappeared.

  CHAPTER 78

  The Munich police lost Dionysus Streckting in all the confusion but nabbed several of his henchmen and turned them over to Interpol.

  Uncle Timothy, Franz Hans Keplernicht, and one other goon also slipped through the police dragnet.

  “Don’t worry,” said Interpol Senior Superintendent Buchholz, “the four still at large won’t get very far. Every law enforcement agency in the world is searching for them.”

  Later that morning, when they arrived to open up their sham museum, Ludwig and Helga Schupfnudel were also promptly arrested.

  Apparently, in the years since the end of the Second World War, the cranky old couple had, from time to time, sold off some of the priceless paintings to unscrupulous buyers around the world in order to raise the money they needed to keep their bogus museum front operational.

  One of those buyers was Ms. Portia Macy-Hudson from Charleston, South Carolina—a kooky black-market art dealer whom we worked with a few months ago. It was through her that Dad had learned where the artwork was hidden. I guess he didn’t have time to find the stash himself before he realized Uncle Timothy had gone rogue.

  The Schupfnudels—who fell in love when they both were stationed at that Luftwaffe air base—had twisted dreams of a new Hitler coming to power and wanted to share in the new “Führer’s” glory by becoming his degenerate-art custodians. Now the cranky curators would be spending the rest of their lives in jail cells, where the only art they’d see would be sculptures carved out of soap.

  Buchholz and his team from Interpol took custody of the stolen Nazi art.

  “We will work with the appropriate international agencies to ensure that the art is carefully restored and then returned to the original owners or their heirs.”

  The news of our amazing discovery in that German attic was splashed all across the globe. Kidd Family Treasure Hunters Inc. had its sterling reputation boosted even higher. We were back in business, big-time!

  Of course, we still hadn’t completed our primary treasure-hunting goal.

  We still hadn’t found Mom or Dad.

  And we hadn’t even heard from either one of them in days.

  CHAPTER 79

  Then guess what happened?

  To celebrate the Kidd family’s awesome treasure-hunting skills, the city of Munich—just like the city of Beijing—threw us a parade.

  And, of course, Petra Pichelsteiner was on our horse-drawn float with us.

  The Bürgermeister (or mayor) of Munich was riding with us, so Tommy kept asking him if his fries were as good as the ones at Mickey D’s. The mayor just smiled and let Tommy borrow his binoculars so he could check out all the pretty girls screaming at him along the parade route.

  The rest of us spent our time waving at the cheering crowds. It seemed everybody in Germany was happy to see the degenerate art being returned to its rightful owners.

  The stories we heard of families being reunited with their treasures made Beck and Petra cry.

  Okay, I might have sniffled a little, too.

  As we neared a bridge crossing the choppy Isar River, which runs through Munich, Tommy turned to Petra and cranked up his charm to full blast.

  “Now that it’s all done,” he said suavely, “I think you’ll agree—treasure hunting sure brings people closer together.”

  “Thomas?”

  “Yes?”

  “You sound like a bad greeting card.”

  “I’m just saying that, maybe, you and me—we should do this again.”

  “What? Almost get killed by a psychopathic criminal mastermind like Herr Streckting?”

  “Chyah.”

  “Let’s not and say we did.”

  “Cool. Works for me.”

  Our horse-drawn wagon was clomping across the bridge when Beck and I both saw something absolutely, unbelievably incredible sailing downstream.

  We both gasped and shouted, “The Lost!”

  CHAPTER 80

  Someone had chopped down our beloved sailing ship’s masts, but it was definitely The Lost.

  Even though that would be impossible, because we had lost The Lost months ago when Uncle Timothy made us auction it off in New York.

  “Who was at the helm?” cried Beck as the ship disappeared under the bridge.

  “I couldn’t see!”

  “Me neither.”

  I elbowed Storm, then Tommy.

  “Not now, Bick,” said Tommy. He was giving Petra another one of his looks.

  “You guys?” shouted Beck. “Downstream!”

  The boat had come out the other side.

  It was definitely The Lost—its name was even painted across the stern.

  Suddenly, all four of our iPhones started buzzing again.

  It was a text message. From Dad!

  Sorry I missed all the fun.

  I was busy.

  In Cyprus.

  Boo-yah! I was right again. Dad hadn’t simply abandoned us to Dionysus Streckting and his German goon squad. He hadn’t been helping us in Germany because he’d been dealing with those other goons—the ones down in Cyprus who kidnapped Mom!

  “Uh-oh,” said Storm, who’d been looking upriver. “He’s baaaack.”

  The rest of us whipped around and saw what Storm had just seen.

  Maybe a mile upstream, three sleek black Jet Skis were flying down the river, bouncing across one another’s wakes. The sun glinted off a pair of mirrored sunglasses behind the throttle of the Jet Ski in the middle.

  Even from a mile away, we knew who it was.

  Uncle Timothy.

  Beck grabbed the binoculars from Tommy and whirled around to check out the decks of The Lost.

  “It’s definitely Mom and Dad,” said Beck. “And Aunt Bela, too!”

  I couldn’t believe it. Had we gone through all this to find our parents and save their lives, only to lose them both to Uncle Timothy, the traitorous double-triple agent? Because, even as far away as they were, I could see that the three men on the Jet Skis were all armed with very heavy weaponry.

  “Uncle Timothy is going to kill Dad!” I hollered. “For turning him in to Interpol and the CIA!”

  “Not on my watch!” shouted Tommy.

  Tommy dashed up to the front of the horse-drawn cart and leaped into the driver’s seat to take the reins.

  Tommy snapped the leather leads. The humongous, Clydesdale-sized horses took off. So did our float. We all hung on to the nearest flower garlands so we wouldn’t fall off the wagon.

  “Where are we going?” Petra shouted at Tommy.

  “To save Mom and Dad!”

  CHAPTER 81

  Tommy cracked the reins again, and our two-horsepower family wagon flew across the bridge and down to the paved walkway lining the shores of the Isar River.

  Out in the water, I noticed The Lost was losing speed and turning about.

  “Why are they slowing down?” I hollered.

  “The hydroelectric plant!” shouted Storm, who, obviously, had memorized a river map of Munich, too. “There’s a big dam and a waterfall hidden behind the ship.”

  “Boats!” cried Beck, pointing to a boat-rental place on the riverbank near us.

  “Whoa!” Tommy pulled back on the reins.

  Beck, Tommy, Petra, and I jumped off the wagon and ran to grab a boat.

  We could hear the whine of Uncle Timothy’s churning Jet Ski coming closer.

  “Our sister will pay!” Beck shouted to the guy in the boat-rental kiosk as she raced past.

  Beck and I hopped into a rowboat while Tommy and Petra grabbed a paddleboat. Storm stayed on shore to pay our rental fees.

  “We’ll never be able to stop three Jet Skis with a stupid rowboat!” shouted Beck.

  “Never say never!” I shouted back.

  “I just did!”

  “I know. I heard you.”

  We shoved off and rowed out into the swiftly moving stream.

  Be
hind us, I heard grunting and groaning. Tommy and Petra had made a very bad decision. They were getting nowhere fast pumping the bicycle pedals in that paddleboat.

  It was up to me and Beck to—somehow—save Mom and Dad.

  “Stroke!” Beck hollered from the bow of the boat, because I was the one sitting backward in the stern and doing all the rowing. “Stroke!”

  I pulled with all my might.

  I heard the clink-clink-clink of a tumbling chain. The Lost must’ve just dropped anchor.

  “They’ve brought the ship to a full stop,” reported Beck. “It’s a sitting duck!”

  I saw the three Jet Skis thundering downstream.

  “And here come the duck hunters!”

  CHAPTER 82

  The screaming Jet Skis were heading straight for The Lost.

  Metal flashed in the sun.

  The bad guys were raising their weapons.

  “It’s Dad!” shouted Beck from her vantage point up in the bow. “I can see him. It’s really, really Dad! He’s waving at us.…”

  And he was about to become “dead Dad” unless we did something.

  Fast.

  I yanked my left oar hard and spun us sideways, creating a small wooden barricade between the rapidly approaching Jet Skis and the broadside of The Lost.

  As soon as I made my move, the trio of water-skimming motorcycles split up. Two went around our bow.

  One went around our stern.

  That’s the guy I whacked with my paddle. Hard.

  He went flying over the handlebars and into the river.

  The goon was wearing a helmet, but I’m pretty sure it was Franz Hans.

  One down, two to go.

  “Take them out!” I heard Uncle Timothy scream as he goosed the throttle on his revving engine and fishtailed around and around in a circle.