Priceless: Crime Travelers Spy School Mystery Series Book 3

by Paul Aertker

  Astrid added, “One of Pablo Picasso’s greatest works, but also a symbol of peace.”

  “And,” Alister said, “perfect irony for a guy like Ching Ching who makes money from guns and war.”

  A girl with red pigtails sitting in Tier Two raised her hand. “I’ve got something else.”

  “Lily Hill,” Robbie said. “Welcome to White Bird One. What’s up?”

  “I’m sure it’s no coincidence that this is in today’s SpanArt Newspaper,” Lily said. She tapped a button on her computer, and an image of a tabloid paper appeared on the big screen.

  The headlines were written in Spanish.

  “Here’s the English translation,” she said, typing.

  For a second, the robo-translator blurred the words, and then the title and text appeared in English. It read:

  GALLERY THAT HOUSES GUERNICA AT THE REINA SOFÍA TO GET COMPLETE OVERHAUL. PAINTING IS BEING MOVED TODAY.

  “The irony,” Sophia said. “People who make money from war stealing an antiwar painting.”

  Robbie said, “Sounds like we’ve caught up with the Good Company.”

  The captain’s voice came over the PA system. “Initial descent into Madrid. Please buckle up.”

  MADRID

  The main cabin door opened, and Rufus Chapman peered out, the tails of his tuxedo flapping in the wind. He waved to the ground crew below, and a stair car puttered up to the plane.

  The line of New Resistance kids followed Coach Creed, Rufus Chapman, and John Benes as they clomped down the steps and into an air-conditioned bus.

  The Eurolines tour bus powered down the E-90 highway heading into the Spanish capital. Lucas stared out the window, his reflection and the landscape outside blurring in the glare.

  Lucas dozed in and out.

  As the traffic thickened, the bus slowed. The adults began strolling the aisle, checking in with the kids.

  Mr. Benes tapped Lucas. “What’s up with you?”

  “A little nervous,” Lucas said. “I guess.”

  Astrid leaned across the aisle and cut in. “I understand what he’s saying,” she said. “We’re all anxious.”

  From the very center of the bus Coach Creed raised his voice and spoke to everyone. “Yeah,” he said, “everybody’s a little afraid. I got one thing to say to you all: Welcome to life, people.”

  “Well you know,” Nalini said. “This is not exactly our life here.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Coach Creed asked. He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead he stayed in “coach” mode. “This is your life, Nalini.” He looked around as if to speak to the whole bus. “All of you. For the most part your lives right now consist of working to make the world a better place. Sure, what you do is dangerous and pretty scary stuff, but I would bet a lot of kids around the world would like to have the adventures you’re having.”

  “I think Nalini’s point,” Astrid said, “is that someone else could be doing this for us, finding Ms. Günerro and her people.”

  “It’s true,” Nalini said. “We always have to go it alone.”

  “May I?” Rufus asked.

  “Go ahead,” Mr. Benes said.

  “Speaking as a butler, as a person who has been in service his entire life, I say to you this,” he said, his words deliberate. “If not you, then who?” He paused. “If not now, when?”

  Everyone was quiet for a second.

  A voice from the back of the bus called out. “Why not grown-ups?”

  “The strength of the New Resistance,” Mr. Benes said, “is that most people think kids are weak, so the perception of your abilities as children is underestimated. This perception is actually a strength that you can use to your advantage.”

  Astrid folded her arms and argued with her dad. “Being nervous is also a disadvantage. Maybe we need a break.”

  Coach Creed stepped between Lucas’s and Astrid’s seats. He didn’t acknowledge Astrid’s comment. He paused and looked at the group like a coach in a locker room at halftime.

  “The other half of nervous is excited,” Coach Creed said. “It’s all a matter of how you look at things. You kids are much more capable than you think. Sure your brains are telling you that you can’t, but you have to fight off this critic in your mind. You can always do more. You can always do more homework; you can always play another half, another quarter, another set. You can study harder, run for longer, and you can always leave things better than you found them.”

  Lucas knew Coach was right. He and the other kids could do more.

  “You have it in you,” Coach continued. “All of you. The next time you think about quitting or needing a break, know this fact: Your tank is still more than half full.”

  No one said anything. In a short while the traffic came to a standstill and the bus stopped. Nothing was moving. Mr. Benes talked to the driver.

  A second later he came back and spoke to the kids. “There’s construction blocking the road up ahead. We’re as close as we can get.”

  “Let’s go, people,” Coach Creed said.

  Terry Hines asked, “Are you coming with us to the museum, Coach?”

  “I am,” he said.

  “Tier One is going with Chapman,” Mr. Benes said. “And Coach Creed and I will each be taking a group.”

  “Yay!” said someone up front. “A field trip!”

  “Yes,” Rufus said, “we’ll be your tour guides.”

  Everyone got off the bus and huddled together near the entrance to El Retiro Park.

  As they prepared to leave, Mr. Benes said, “Everything’s going to be just fine. Okay?”

  “Oh sure,” Jackknife said. “We’re all going to the Reina Sofía Museum to see Ms. Günerro and her Good Company steal some art. What could possibly go wrong?”

  FIELD TRIP

  Madrid’s famous El Retiro Park was supposed to be a quiet retreat. For Lucas and the New Resistance it was unfortunately the calm before the storm.

  The kids split into groups, and they took off down a tree-lined gravel pathway leading into the park. They passed the statues of kings and queens and Montezuma, and an odd white statue of real kids.

  Sitting on a pedestal, completely still, were three live children. Two were Flamenco dancers, and one was a boy playing an air guitar. The kids changed positions and then froze again.

  The park was packed. Everywhere pigeons and pedestrians, horses and cats, bikes and strollers, competed for space.

  A band rattling on snare drums circled a pond. There were rowboats, sunbathers, and some girls fishing.

  On the walkway in front of the water, skaters weaved in and out of a row of African men and women playing bongo drums. There were mimes screaming silently, a puppet show of Don Quixote on his horse, and a man moonwalking to Michael Jackson music blaring from a boom box.

  Coach Creed moved fast and everyone kept pace. They walked past the Crystal Palace, an iron-and-glass house whose prism windows cast rainbows on the surrounding pond.

  Coach didn’t let up. They circled through a rose garden in full bloom where the air smelled like perfume.

  The three groups of New Resistance kids and their grown-up tour guides exited the park.

  Tables and booths crammed the sidewalk. There were shoppers looking at books, magazines, and comics. There was a section of CDs and old record albums stacked against the trees. Two classical guitarists played an Andrés Segovia song.

  The New Resistance didn’t stop. They were on a mission. Lucas fell back from the group to look over a wall and down into the railway yard. A maze of electrical wires over a series of train tracks merged into the covered station. Some of the trains were moving. Others sat idle on the tracks.

  Something caught Lucas’s attention.

  From behind a grassy knoll nearly hidden on the other side of this network of tracks, workers in bright yellow Day-Glo vests were painting what appeared to be abandoned shipping containers on train cars.

  The freshly stenciled sign on the exterior read in English: WE
MAKE THE GOOD THINGS IN LIFE ... BETTER.

  Lucas knew that only one company in the world would say something like that.

  They were close.

  GUERNICA

  Coach Creed, Mr. Benes, and Rufus Chapman led the three groups past the Atocha train station. In the sky above the surrounding buildings, huge construction cranes groaned, and the air smelled of fried chicken.

  “Hey look,” Jackknife said. “There’s Kentucky Fried Chicken right there across the street. Let’s eat!”

  Nalini looked at him. “I told you you had worms.”

  “After the museum tour,” Astrid said in her mom voice.

  The group crossed a busy street and tunneled under a tower of scaffolding that surrounded the museum. The tourist crowds grew thicker. Lucas could pick out a dozen different languages around him as they moved closer to the Reina Sofía.

  Like watchful eyes, two modern glass elevators rose on the exterior of the grand museum. Near the entrance, men sold T-shirts and scarves printed with artwork. In the plaza, workers in Day-Glo-yellow jackets were sweeping and picking up trash.

  Lucas remarked. “I just saw some guys dressed like that at the train station.”

  “They’re street cleaners, Lucas,” Astrid said. “No big deal.”

  “I’m with you, Lucas,” Travis said. “There are a lot of bright yellow jackets here. Too many to be a coincidence.”

  As they funneled into the museum, Lucas looked back. The Day-Glo cleaners swept, pushed trash-can carts, and picked up dog poop. To Lucas they looked like electric bugs scrambling from spot to spot.

  Each New Resistance group queued up in a different line. Tier One crammed into a glass elevator and rode up to the second floor with Rufus Chapman. Lucas looked out the window onto the plaza below, where a group of Day-Glo cleaners were affixing bright yellow masks over their faces.

  Before he could get a closer look, the bell on the elevator dinged.

  Tourists moved in clumps and crowded the hallways. A docent with bleached-blond hair spoke to her group.

  “In addition to many of Picasso’s paintings,” she said, walking backward, “the Reina Sofía is home to Miró’s Woman and Bird at Night, Salvador Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory, and Solana’s Procession of Death.”

  The words gave Lucas a bad feeling. He spun around and looked for the other kids from the Globe Hotel. Aside from the Tier One kids, Lucas didn’t see any of the rest. They were nowhere to be found.

  “Should we wait on the others?” Kerala asked.

  “We’re all heading to the same spot,” said Rufus, “exactly where Ms. Günerro and Guernica are.”

  At the far end of a long corridor lined with statues, tourists clogged the entranceway to the famous Guernica room.

  They hadn’t been waiting ten seconds when they heard the voice.

  “Rufus!” a woman called out.

  Rufus and the Tier One kids in his group turned at the same time.

  Ms. Günerro stood on her tippy toes at the entrance to the Guernica room and waved her hand high in the air above the heads of the waiting crowd.

  Rufus looked at his group. “Boys and girls,” he said. “It’s showtime.”

  A guard in a green jacket came out, cutting a pathway. Rufus, along with Lucas, Astrid, Jackknife, Travis, Kerala, Nalini, and Alister, moved toward Ms. Günerro.

  The CEO of the Good Company was dressed like a queen in a long black dress with a white sash and a diamond tiara perched above her cat-eye glasses.

  “Rufus Chapman!” said Ms. Günerro with a devilish grin. “Are you leading a tour group today?”

  “Hello, Ms. Günerro,” Rufus said with clenched teeth. “How do you do?”

  “Ah, Rufus,” Ms. Günerro said. “I see you have the Benes Globe Hotel children with you. How wonderful!”

  “You know them?” Rufus asked.

  “We go way back,” Ms. Günerro said, aiming her eyes at Lucas and Astrid. “Yes, Lucy and Asterix and I are old friends.”

  No one corrected her, but Astrid asked Rufus, “How do you know Ms. Günerro?”

  Rufus said, “I used to work at the Good Hotel in London.”

  “Water under the bridge,” Ms. Günerro said. She looked back into the Guernica room. “Why don’t you all come with me? I have a special pass to see the exhibit today. We’ll be the last to see it before it’s moved to its new home.”

  Lucas looked around the hallway to see if there were any more Day-Glo cleaners. He knew they had to be part of this puzzle. But there were none around, which worried him even more.

  Kerala and Alister peered into the Guernica room. Another wave of museumgoers was just leaving through the doorway on the other side.

  “Why do you have a special pass?” Astrid asked.

  “Because,” Ms. Günerro said. “Guernica is named after my family. Many years ago an immigration official misspelled Guernica and wrote Günerro instead, so my father’s friend Pablo Picasso painted Guernica for the family.”

  Astrid’s eyes bulged, and her mouth dropped open. She seemed at a loss for words.

  “No he didn’t,” Travis said, snapping the silence. “Picasso painted it because Franco, the Spanish dictator, let Hitler bomb Franco’s enemies in the Basque region. Everyone was furious for the destruction it caused because the town of Guernica was a farming area and there were no soldiers, no army. Nothing military.”

  “That’s why,” Nalini said, adding to the argument, “there are farm animals and babies and mothers in the painting.”

  Kerala added. “It had nothing to do with you or your family.”

  “Well, well, well,” Ms. Günerro said. “You do know that art is subjective. I just so happen to have a different interpretation.”

  Lucas scanned the crowd again. Coach Creed, Mr. Benes, and the other New Resistance tour groups had still not caught up.

  A guard inside the Guernica room signaled Ms. Günerro, and Rufus and the Tier One kids followed.

  They caught their first glimpse of the famous painting. For Lucas it was amazing to be so close to one of the greatest paintings ever. To see it online was one thing, but to see it in person, to be so close to it you could touch it, was something else.

  The painting was colossal, taking up one entire side of the room.

  Ghosts floated across a black, white, and gray canvas crowded with moaning mothers and dead animals. A wounded man. A terrified horse. A burning house. Everywhere, death.

  A tour guide in a tan dress explained the painting to her group.

  “Guernica is . . .” she said, pausing while the line broke apart and circled around to hear the story. “Picasso’s Guernica is considered to be the art world’s greatest condemnation of war.”

  For Lucas, seeing the mural-sized painting and hearing the tour guide made the story all the more real. For a brief moment he forgot about Ms. Günerro and her Good Company. Lucas stared at the painting and listened to the docent.

  The woman cleared her throat and spoke in a monotonous tone. “The bombing was used to test newly invented bombs. So in effect, two dictators joined forces and killed innocent people and their farm animals for no reason.”

  There was a pause as the tourists leaned in to inspect the details in the painting.

  Ms. Günerro cocked her head and spoke to Rufus as if they were best friends.

  “Of course they tested the bombs,” she said. She chuckled indignantly. “This is the world of business. You have to test your products, and your products have to work. If your bombs don’t blow up, then no one will buy your bombs.”

  Lucas could feel that something wasn’t right, and it wasn’t just Ms. Günerro’s idiotic speech about bombs blowing up. He spun around 360 degrees to take in his surroundings.

  Picasso’s early sketches of the famous painting hung on the opposite walls. Two guards in the corner napped in odd-looking metal chairs. And Ms. Günerro was now digging in her purse.

  The New Resistance kids huddled.

  “She�
��s putting something in her ears,” Nalini said.

  “What is it?” Alister asked.

  “I don’t know,” Kerala said.

  “Earplugs,” Astrid said.

  Travis added. “That’s what it looks like to me.”

  “Earplugs? “Jackknife asked.

  Then it happened.

  Fast.

  A loud boom shook the building. Like an earthquake. No one knew what was going on.

  On the opposite side of the room, ten Curukian girls wearing Day-Glo-yellow jackets and masks stormed the room.

  A nightmare in the middle of the day had begun.

  HEIST

  In many high-stakes heists there’s often a computer guy who hacks into the security system to disable it. Then of course there are cat burglars who rappel down through the air-conditioning vents and hang upside down to steal paintings deep in the dark of night.

  Siba Günerro and the Good Company liked to do things their own way.

  Another boom shook the museum. People screamed. From the other side of the room a dozen more Curukian girls charged in, toting jackhammers over their shoulders.

  The two “napping” guards rose and somehow converted their chairs into stepladders. Then they mysteriously left the room.

  The girls with jackhammers locked arms and pushed the crowd against a wall.

  Bleach shouted in English, as if it were an Old West bank robbery, “On the floor!”

  With a collective gasp everyone dropped to the ground. Like the others Lucas lay on his stomach. His friends huddled around, and Lucas lifted his head and looked over Astrid’s back and watched.

  Rufus had gotten separated and now was crouched in a corner with a group of Curukian girls standing guard over him. On the opposite side of Guernica Ms. Günerro sat in a chair. One of the Curukian girls handed her a thick wool blanket.

  Lucas kept scanning the room, looking for a weak link. He hoped they would make a mistake and he could use it to his advantage. But he also knew that he had to be careful—these girls were deadly.

  Whimpers and prayers in different languages began to fill the room as it seemed everyone was getting nervous. A woman on the other side of the room knelt and then fainted. Several women clutched their purses and hid them under their bodies. Mothers and fathers covered their children with their arms to protect them.