The 39 Clues: Cahills vs. Vespers Book 2: A King's Ransom

by Jude Watson

  Despite the creep factor, there was something so beautiful about this place, Amy thought. The fluttery edges of the hip bones looked like enormous flowers. The lineup of finger bones was a delicate necklace. A carved, painted cherub blew into a golden horn while casually balancing half a skull on its knee.

  Dan wandered over to an alcove. Behind a wire screen was a mound of bones stacked in perfect rows. Alternating rows of skulls sat on the arranged bones. Their hollow eyes stared out. Some almost seemed to have expressions. One leaned over, resting on the next one, and Amy found herself drawn into those black, black eyes.

  Somehow the creepy feeling left her. Death surrounded her, but here she and Dan were standing, living and breathing, and all these bones were just evidence of many lives lived before hers.

  Dan gripped the wire grating. He moved closer to the skulls, staring, staring. His lighthearted mood was suddenly gone. Amy felt a flutter of alarm. What was he seeing?

  “We’re breathing in death,” he murmured. “Every day.” He half turned to Amy. “Everybody dies. Why do we run away so hard and so fast, when it’s always there?”

  “We run away hard and fast because we don’t want to die,” Amy said.

  Dan seemed mesmerized by the black holes in the skull. Amy was afraid of his expression.

  Dan shook his head. “It all seems so … futile.”

  “Futile?” Amy had never heard Dan use that word before. “You mean, pointless?”

  “Yeah. I know the meaning of the word, Amy. I’m not quite as dumb as everybody thinks I am. I know, I’ve got the photographic memory, but you’ve got the brains, right?”

  Dan’s tone was sarcastic. Not teasing, but flat and almost mean.

  “Not right,” Amy said, shocked. Was that what Dan really thought? “Nobody thinks that.”

  Dan turned his back on her to gaze at the bones. “Futile. Stupid and pointless.”

  Amy took a breath. She felt the hurtful sting of Dan’s tone, but she had no urge to stamp off. There was something heading for Dan, something that cast a huge shadow, and her first instinct was to grab his arm and pull him away from the darkness she saw. But that would just make the darkness grow.

  “It doesn’t seem that way to me,” she said. She kept her voice quiet. “It seems to me that we’re doing what all these people did. Just … trying to live in the best way we can. Protecting the people we love. We give it everything we have. Just like these people probably did.”

  Dan didn’t say anything. It was like he hadn’t even heard her.

  “And I don’t think you’re stupid,” she added fiercely.

  She felt her cell phone buzz in her pocket. She checked the ID. Sinead.

  “Are you in?” Sinead asked.

  “We’re in. Nothing to see. Nothing but old bones.”

  “Listen, I have another lead. We’re certain now that the text that Cheyenne got was not from a mobile device.”

  “Meaning it was from a computer? In the church?”

  “Exactly. And we figured out the altitude of the computer. It’s about six feet down from where you’re standing.”

  Amy looked around. The church and chapel were up a slight rise and looked down on the cemetery. She walked a few feet away so that no one could overhear.

  “So there must be a room below us,” she whispered.

  “Exactly. Look around. And keep the line open, okay?”

  “Okay, we’re moving.” Amy slipped on her earpiece and motioned to Dan. She saw with relief that he seemed to have shaken off his mood.

  They walked around the perimeter of the church, under the fantastic ropes of bones. They cruised down the opposite side. A door had a sign in Czech, and they hesitated.

  “It could say welcome, or it could say keep out,” Amy said.

  “Maybe we should do a spell-Czech,” Dan said, opening the door.

  The door led to a narrow flight of stairs made of large pieces of stone. They were worn in the middle from the thousands of feet that had traveled down and up over the centuries. Dan closed the door behind them, and immediately they were plunged into darkness. Amy got out her penlight and shined it on the stairs. They crept down. The place smelled ancient and damp. The roof was low above their heads. It dripped.

  When they reached the bottom, she swung the penlight along a narrow passageway. Even here, bones hung in garlands and were arranged in displays. Skulls lined a shelf that ran the length of the passage.

  “I can’t see anything on the video feed,” Sinead said. “What is it?”

  “It must be the passage to the cemetery,” Amy said. “I can’t imagine keeping a computer down here.”

  “Amy? Look at this.” Dan stood in front of a metal grate. Behind it was a small room. He pushed open the grate and walked in. It was like a mini-amphitheater, only with dead people as patrons. Skulls were arranged in piles around the room, stacked atop leg bones and hip bones. Flat, narrow ledges ran around the room, serving as seats. There was a clear, flat, raised space along the far wall. Over it was an arrangement of bones in the shape of a giant letter.

  “Maybe the original guy who did the chapel — maybe he was a Vesper,” Amy whispered. Somehow, whispers seemed appropriate here.

  Dan moved around the space. “Look at this candle.” He held out a candle with wax dripped down into the holder. “It’s been used recently — there’s no grime or dust in the wax.”

  “But there’s no computer here,” Amy said. “Please don’t tell me we have to dig through the bones.”

  “No, look how they’re arranged — it would be impossible to move them and stack them again so perfectly. I think you’re right — it must have been a laptop.”

  “But there had to be a power source,” Sinead insisted in Amy’s ear. “Can you find an outlet anywhere?”

  Dan and Amy shined their penlights on the walls close to the floor. Suddenly, Dan caught sight of something. He knelt on the floor. “Whoa. This would be so easy to miss. Did they have USB ports in the Middle Ages?”

  “Try it!” Sinead said quickly.

  Dan fished in his pack for a cable and hooked up his computer to the USB port. He scanned the drive. Nothing came up. “It’s been wiped.”

  “I’m going to hand the phone to Evan — he’ll talk you through it. You might be able to scrape something off it.”

  Dan settled with his back against the wall, computer in his lap. As Evan read out a list of codes, he typed them into his computer. The USB icon flashed.

  “I think something’s coming through … it’s a file.” Dan clicked on it. “Some kind of report. But it’s only a few sentences.”

  “Save it to your hard drive and then e-mail it here.”

  Dan read the document as he pressed SAVE. “It won’t save,” he said. “Or send. It’s encrypted somehow. And parts of it are blacked out.”

  V-1 report

  infiltrated family w/two children. Left MA w/mission complete. Information successfully destroyed. No suspicion from G. Coverup successful. Mother deceased. Children are

  “It’s disappearing,” Dan said. “The words are disappearing!”

  “It’s an automatic wipe!” Sinead cried. “There could be an alert attached to it. You’d better get out of there.”

  Dan flipped over onto his knees to quickly stuff the computer in his backpack. He held his penlight in his mouth. As he zipped the pack, the light wavered on the old stones. He stopped. Someone had carved their initials into the wall.

  Amy stood at the door. “Come on, Dan!”

  He ran his fingers over the carving.

  “Let’s go!”

  Dan wrenched himself away.

  As he followed Amy’s wavering shadow down the passageway, it seemed to flicker and then fade. And the shadow behind him seemed to grow.
/>
  infiltrated family

  two children

  MA

  information successfully destroyed

  Mother deceased

  no suspicion from G

  And the initials seemed to flame and burn inside his brain.

  A.J.T.

  At the end of a passageway was another door, small with a pointed arch. There was only a sliding iron lock. Amy pushed it back and opened the door. Gray light flooded the passageway. They stepped out into a soft rain and picked their way through the graves.

  “Amy,” Dan said, stopping. The smell released by the rain was of dead leaves and cold stone, and he could taste it in his mouth. “Amy …”

  His sister turned impatiently. “We have to make the bus… .”

  “Amy.” He spoke her name for the third time. Wasn’t that the charm in every fable? Say a name three times? And the parent turns into a witch, a wolf, a beast.

  “I saw initials carved there… . A.J.T… . and the report … it proves it.”

  “Proves what?

  Dan wheeled to face her, anguish twisting his features. “That our father was a Vesper.”

  Amy stumbled against the cold stone. She sat down and rested her forehead against the cemetery marker. It was like Dan was hurling stones instead of words.

  “There were his initials, right there,” Dan said. “And the date — he was eighteen. In some sort of weird, spooky Vesper hideout!”

  “It’s three letters in a certain combination,” Amy said. “A.J.T. It could be Albert John Toboggan. It could be Adam Jeffrey Turquoise. It could be anything!”

  “What about the document? Infiltrating a family in Massachusetts? Two children? Information destroyed? What information?”

  Amy shook her head violently. “I don’t believe any of this. You shouldn’t, either. We’ve been through this before, Dan! We’ve already been afraid that our parents were the bad guys. We know they weren’t!”

  “And what about no suspicion from G? It’s Grace!”

  “There’s a G in Jane’s notebook, too.”

  “That could be Grace as well. What if Jane was a Vesper?”

  “She wasn’t a Vesper!” Amy barked this furiously. She had grown fond of Jane. She refused to believe she could have been part of such a despicable organization.

  And her father couldn’t have been, either.

  “What if he’s not dead?” Dan asked in a hushed tone. “What if he’s still a Vesper?”

  Amy shook her head as the enormous weight of Dan’s words hit her. She swallowed, feeling sick. “No.”

  “The fire … he was concealing the evidence!”

  “Isabel Kabra set that fire! We know that! And we buried him. They found his body, okay?” Amy was yelling now. “Don’t you think Grace would have checked?”

  “Checked what? Fingerprints? He died in a fire. Except maybe he didn’t. Somebody did. How are we supposed to know who it was?”

  “Dan, we were there that night. I remember parts of it. I know Dad was there. I saw him!”

  “Yes, he was there. But maybe he escaped. Do you remember the circus girl? She said that V-One had a burn.”

  Amy stood back up on shaky legs. “This is all circumstantial. You’re really jumping to conclusions.”

  “Are you the only one allowed to have instincts, Amy?”

  “Our father was not a Vesper!” She glared at Dan with all the fury that blazed inside her. “Since when are you so quick to denounce him?” she demanded. “He was your hero!”

  The lost look in Dan’s eyes frightened her. “Since I grew up.”

  Even through her anger, Amy felt something pierce her heart. Fear. She was so afraid for her brother. Had he really lost his childhood? Was that what the Clue hunt had done?

  The Vesper phone buzzed in her pocket. She felt revulsion rise in her throat. She hated Vesper One. She hated all of them. She accessed the text.

  Greetings, children. Time is running out.

  Amy scrolled down. It was a low-resolution photograph of the hostages. Clumped together, made to sit in a line in their jumpsuits. Staring at the camera.

  They returned to Prague in silence. Amy had sent a text to Attleboro, not trusting herself to speak.

  NEED TO CONTACT ERASMUS IMMEDIATELY. HAVE HIM CALL OR TEXT US WITH A TIME TO SPEAK.

  They sat in an outdoor café in Old Town Square, watching the darkness fall. Across the square, tourists gathered at the top of the hour to see the famous Astronomical Clock. Amy heard it bong six times. They ordered a dinner they didn’t want. To Amy, it felt like the end of the world. They would get into the library somehow tomorrow; she had enough faith to know that. But whether they would find the de Virga or not …

  A man moved along the buildings of the square, from shadow to shadow. He wore small, round blue-tinted glasses and had curly dark hair streaked with gray. In his black leather jacket and black jeans he looked like a shadow himself.

  Erasmus slid into a chair opposite them and lifted one finger to hail the waitress. “I hear you need to talk to me.” He spoke rapidly to the waitress in Czech.

  “We didn’t know you were in Prague,” Amy said. “Sinead said you were on the way to Rome.”

  “I leave for Rome tonight.”

  He paused as the waitress put down a steaming cup of coffee. He took a sip. Behind the tinted glasses Amy knew his gaze was constantly roving, picking out possible danger, routes of escape. What Erasmus did before devoting himself to the Madrigals, she didn’t know. But he had a Vesper database in his head, every scrap of information the Madrigals had been able to pick up over the centuries.

  Amy was wondering how to ask the question when Dan just blurted it out.

  “Was our father a Vesper?”

  Erasmus took a careful sip of coffee. He leaned back and blew out a sigh as he stared out at the square. Then he took off his sunglasses. His eyes looked tired. He leaned forward again, his big hands cradling the cup. With every move and gesture Amy felt her heart sink. She wanted to run as far and as fast as she could to escape what was coming next.

  “Yes,” Erasmus said.

  “The bro just orders,” Jonah said. “I’m not saying I don’t like him. I’m just saying.”

  “I hear you,” Hamilton said. He threw another T-shirt into his pack.

  “It’s my plane, bro. And he walks in, dressed so fine in his leather, and he says, ‘We’re going to Italy tonight,’ and it’s, like, say what?” Jonah zipped up his duffel. “I’d just like a vote. That’s all.”

  Still talking, they rode down in the elevator and walked out into the lobby. A gray-haired woman in a gray jacket and a shapeless hat was just getting up from a chair. Just as they passed her, Hamilton slung his big pack over his shoulder and caught her on the side of the head. She stumbled, and her purse went flying.

  “Oh, man, I’m so sorry.” Hamilton and Jonah dropped their packs and quickly stooped over to help gather the items that had spilled.

  “It is okay,” the woman said in an Italian accent. She shook her wallet at Jonah playfully. “I know you. Jonah Wizard.”

  “Busted!”

  “That is a funny choice of words. In American English, that can be slang for … arrested, no?” The woman’s brown eyes twinkled.

  “Word. I should be careful, right?”

  “You should be very careful.” The woman flipped her wallet open. Inside they saw an ID card. Luna Amato was the woman’s name. And then, in big black letters — INTERPOL. “Perhaps we can have a chat, no?”

  Jonah and Hamilton exchanged glances. They had a feeling that answering “no” was not an option.

  She directed them to a quiet corner of the lobby. She sat in an armchair, parking her purse on the floor. They sat on the edge of the sofa facin
g her.

  “Just a little chat,” she said in a friendly way. “You are here in Prague because … ?”

  “Just chilling with my homey, doing the tourist thing,” Jonah said.

  “And your cousins, Amy and Dan Cahill? Are they enjoying the city as well?”

  Jonah’s heart sank into his running shoes. “Whoa, are they here, too? You know, I’ve got a bunch of cousins. Can’t keep track of everybody.”

  “It seems to me,” Luna Amato said, “it would be easy to keep track of people who travel with you on your private plane.”

  “What do you want?” Hamilton asked.

  “Ah, let’s cut to the chase, as they say in American movies, no?” Luna Amato leaned forward. “I am hoping you will take a message to Amy and Dan Cahill. We know they have Il Milione.”

  Jonah kept his face expressionless. Hamilton stiffened.

  “Che macello! What a mess! The lost manuscript! And these two children steal it! Why? To sell it? But they have a fortune already. To keep it? But they are not known as art lovers. I have seen children manipulated and forced to do things they do not want to do. I say to myself, maybe this is the case with these two.”

  “So what is the message?” Jonah asked.

  Luna Amato sighed. “My partner, Milos Vanek — we are not alike. To him, if you steal something, you are a criminal. He does not believe in mercy. He believes in law. He will not listen to what they say. I will listen. Perhaps even I can help.” Her face was intent. “Do you understand? They will need a friend at Interpol. I am that friend.”

  She gave them her card. Then she picked up the purse and walked out without looking back.

  “Dude,” Hamilton said.

  “Dawg,” Jonah said. “I can’t tell if I’m scared of her, or I want her to bake me cookies.”

  The lights glowed around the square. The rain had cleared and freshened the air. But the evening was chilly, and most of the patrons now sat inside in the warm, lit café. Dan and Amy sat outside at the table, their dinners cold and untouched. Amy found she was hugging herself tightly, her fingers digging into her arms.