Jonah removed a rock-climbing harness from his bag and put it on, placing the straps around his body and checking to be sure that all the buckles were secure. Then he moved around to the side of the bush, holding a pair of night-vision binoculars to his eyes and surveying the grounds of the Pantheon.
Two guards were disappearing around the side of the former church. Jonah stood, planted his feet firmly in the ground, and aimed. The wind was gusting strongly now; the moment Jonah locked on to his target, the wind changed and he had to adjust to compensate. He couldn’t seem to get a good fix on the window. But the guards would be reappearing soon. It was now or never.
Jonah adjusted his aim once more, then fired the grappling hook into the night air. Just then, the two guards reappeared on the far side of the Pantheon. The grappling hook made a slight whistling as it arced toward the Pantheon’s window, and Jonah held his breath.
The hook went straight through the window and caught snugly inside with a soft thunk. Jonah clenched his teeth, waiting to see if either guard had noticed the sound. But they continued on their patrol without looking up. Jonah let the air out of his lungs.
He waited until they were out of sight again before pulling the grappling hook’s cable taut and securing it to a nearby tree. Jonah clipped the carabiner on his harness to the cable and slung the duffel bag across his body. He was ready.
He reached up and began pulling himself hand over hand up the cable. Soon, his feet left the ground and his body hung suspended in the air from the harness. He wore thick protective gloves with a grippy coating that allowed him to hold on to the cable without slipping, but even so, Jonah was having a hard time pulling himself backward. He hung upside down from the line like a sloth, and he moved about as fast.
His biceps and back muscles started to burn and he wished he’d spent more time in the gym. His climbing harness would keep him from dropping straight to the ground, but it wouldn’t stop him from sliding back down the length of cable. And the noise of the carabiner screeching against the metal cable would be enough to wake Bolívar from the dead.
Minutes passed. Below him, Jonah heard the sound of the guards making another pass in front of the Pantheon. He worried they’d see him, but he didn’t dare stop. Better to get inside as quickly as possible, rather than be discovered hanging in midair, completely helpless.
And then a voice rang out through the air, shattering the quiet of the night.
“¡Hay un hombre en el cielo! ¡Mira! ¡Sube en el Panteón!”
“Oh, no,” Jonah muttered. His Spanish wasn’t quite as good as his French, but he knew enough to understand that he’d been seen.
Adrenaline charged through Jonah’s veins as he yanked himself toward the window, higher and higher. The guards had guns, and he didn’t want to find out if they were willing to use them.
He was almost there. Almost inside. Just a few more feet left . . .
And then he heard the unmistakable crack of a gun going off, and then another, and another. Jonah winced, expecting to feel the bullets plunge into his skin at any moment, but he didn’t stop moving. His hand brushed the side of the Pantheon, and he grasped the window ledge, rolling himself over so that he was balanced on top of the cable. It dug painfully into his body, but more shots rang out, and a bullet buried itself in the side of the Pantheon, half an inch from Jonah’s face. He let go of the cable, making a wild grab for the window with his other hand, and tried to haul himself inside. He barely fit and the duffel bag slung across his back slowed him down, keeping Jonah stuck in the frame. But with the last of his strength, Jonah managed to shove himself through the window, and he landed with a hard thump on the floor of the tower.
He tried to get up, but found himself unable to move more than an inch forward. A surge of panic washed through him like ice water before he realized that he was still clipped to the grappling hook’s cable. He reached to unclip himself, but the cable jumped to the side, away from his grip. And then it jerked upward, causing the grappling hook to come loose. Still attached to the cable, Jonah was pulled inexorably toward the window.
Someone on the ground must have grabbed the cable and was trying to drag Jonah back outside. Without the grappling hook in place, he’d fall straight to the ground, fifteen stories below.
Jonah struggled to grab the carabiner, planting his heels against the wall of the Pantheon to keep himself steady. The thick gloves on his hands made it impossible to unfasten the clip, and another jerk on the cable nearly pulled him straight through the window. But the duffel bag on his back kept Jonah from being pulled outside and bought him the time he needed to detach himself from the cable.
The guards on the ground gave one final yank, but Jonah was free. He launched himself forward, away from the window, and turned around just in time to see the grappling hook disappear over the sill.
Shouts could be heard from downstairs, and Jonah dropped his duffel bag onto the floor. He had only a few seconds before they found him.
Reaching into the bag, Jonah pulled out a pair of white slacks, a red jacket, and a black hat with a fluffy red feather sticking out of the top — the uniform of the Pantheon guards. Jonah pulled it on as fast as he could, not even stopping to remove the harness. Then he pulled the hat low over his face and descended from the tower at a run. He hoped the odd creases and bumps in his uniform wouldn’t be obvious.
He nearly barreled into a guard on the stairs. Jonah yelled in Spanish, “The man went downstairs! Come on!”
The guard didn’t even hesitate. He wheeled around, following Jonah’s instructions. Relieved, Jonah pelted after him. But as they went down, his thudding heart slowed, worry turning into dread as they entered the ground floor of the Pantheon and Jonah looked toward the old altar.
The side aisles of the Pantheon held the tombs of many famous Venezuelans, and great columns stretched overhead into arches. Several guards and at least twenty people in Venezuelan police uniforms stood throughout the vast space, and about half of those were crowded onto what used to be the altar, guarding Bolívar’s tomb. The vast marble floor stretched out before Jonah, leading up to the front of the Pantheon, where the bronze coffin of Simón Bolívar, the Liberator of Venezuela, was displayed on a white marble plinth, elevated several feet off the floor. Behind the sarcophagus, rising high above the floor, was a great white statue of Bolívar himself.
The lid of that tomb must weigh a ton, Jonah thought desperately. I’ll never be able to lift it by myself!
The idea came to him so fast that Jonah didn’t even think — he just yelled.
“¡Bomba, bomba! ¡Hay una bomba en el sarcófago del Libertador!” Jonah cried. He hoped his Spanish was correct. He’d attempted to tell the guards and police that there was a bomb in Bolívar’s tomb.
Chaos erupted in the Pantheon. The police spit out rapid-fire instructions so fast that Jonah couldn’t understand them. But he saw them forming up, preparing to lift the top of the heavy stone sarcophagus off.
Jonah pushed himself into a gap on the other side of the sarcophagus, jockeying for position as Pantheon guards and police continued removing the shroud over Bolívar’s remains.
And then, there he was. Jonah gasped involuntarily, staring down at the skeleton of the most important man in Venezuela’s history. It was mostly brittle, rotting bones, but some hair still clung to the famous leader’s head. As Jonah stared at the skull, he felt as though the empty black sockets of Bolívar’s eyes were staring right back at him.
Jonah Wizard wouldn’t let himself be scared off by a dead man.
“¿Dónde está?” he cried out, hoping to keep the police in a frenzy. “¿Dónde está la bomba?”
Flashlights were shone into the tomb, and Jonah stared into it, looking for anything that might be a Clue. He had to find it. He had to, or all this would be for nothing.
His eyes flashed over the remains. There were scraps of old leather that must have been boots, the remnants of red and blue fabrics, faded and dusty. But then his eyes l
anded on Bolívar’s hand — or rather, a carving on the coffin, just beneath the hand. Jonah couldn’t see exactly what the symbol was. He would have to move the bones to get to it.
Jonah reached into the coffin and grasped Bolívar’s skeletal wrist. A tingle shot up Jonah’s arm and straight down his spine as his fingers touched the bones. He tried to move the arm out of the way, but the stiff old bones wouldn’t budge. Gritting his teeth, Jonah grabbed one of the fingers and pulled. The bones were dry, almost like dusty, brittle paper against Jonah’s skin, and he shuddered in horror. Then, with a loud CRACK, one of the fingers snapped off in Jonah’s hand.
An uproar of shouts echoed through the Pantheon. Jonah flung Bolívar’s finger bone away. Several police reached for him, but he pointed straight into the coffin and bellowed, “¡Está aquí! ¡La bomba, la bomba!” The officers hesitated, and that was all Jonah needed. For a split second, he had a perfect view of the symbol on the coffin — the symbol for lead. He’d found the next Clue! He could already imagine the excitement in his mother’s voice when he told her.
He leaped backward and vaulted over the altar’s railing, landing hard on the marble floor and crashing through the velvet ropes around it. Then he was running down the aisle, dodging the guards who tried to grab him and slamming through the doors into the night. His feet pounded against the pavement, legs burning, lungs gasping for air, until he reached a motorcycle parked just down the street, waiting for him. He jumped on, turned the key, and roared off into the night, the shouts of the Pantheon guards fading into the distance.
Even when he was undercover on a Cahill mission, Jonah Wizard traveled with style.
Jonah Wizard’s escape from the National Pantheon was most impressive. The watcher had to admit that her expectations had been far exceeded. Especially since she was the one who’d alerted the guards that an intruder was attempting to break into the Pantheon.
The young Wizard had surprised her by passing the test. This Janus had far more than money and an appreciation for the arts to offer the Vespers. He had outsmarted armed guards and officers of the Venezuelan police force, performing well under intense pressure.
Perhaps he would make an excellent Vesper after all.
Everywhere Hamilton Holt looked, there was nothing but white. The snow stretched across King William’s Island in every direction, endless. And he’d thought Beechey Island looked barren. That place was a paradise compared to where they were now — the middle of nowhere.
Ahead of him, his mother and father were making their way through the deep snow, their snowshoes scraping across the icy surface with every step. Ham’s own snowshoes were old, with several broken strings. Even though he was fifteen, several years older than his sisters, he was having a hard time keeping up with them. Every so often, one of them, he wasn’t sure if it was Madison or Reagan, yelled back that he was a slug, but their teasing had slowed as the day went on. Even suited up in their thick purple parkas, all of the Holts were freezing.
The cold didn’t bother Hamilton. What made the Arctic difficult to bear was how there was nothing to distract him from his thoughts. He kept seeing things flash across his mind — kids tied up in the back of a van, the blackened husk of a burned building, the murderous looks on the faces of fellow Cahills as they tried to steal Clues from one another.
The Clue hunt had changed everything. At least it had for Ham. His sisters still seemed content to follow their father, Eisenhower, around the globe, sabotaging the other Cahill teams and doing whatever was necessary to get the Clues. But Ham wasn’t so sure anymore.
“Team! Halt!” The command from his father took Hamilton by surprise. The Holts weren’t big on rest stops.
“What is it, sugar muffin?” Ham’s mother, Mary-Todd Holt, asked.
“Binoculars!” Eisenhower barked, extending his thick, gloved hand. His wife dutifully reached into her pack and produced a pair, which Eisenhower rammed against his eyes. But he’d forgotten to remove his ski glasses first, and there was a yelp of pain and a muffled curse from beneath his balaclava.
The family waited in silence as Eisenhower adjusted the binoculars and peered into the distance.
“There!” he yelled suddenly. “We’re not alone out here.”
“Who is it?” Madison demanded.
“They’ve got a tent,” said Eisenhower, “and a fire. We’ve been followed!”
Hamilton stomped forward on his snowshoes and took the binoculars from his father. Through them, he had a good view of three people, all sitting on tiny camp chairs around some sort of glowing orange device.
“It’s a heater,” he said, “not a fire.”
“They’re obviously after the Tomas clue!” Eisenhower yelled. “They followed us here so they could steal it from us.” He took the binoculars back from Ham, stared through them one more time, and then passed them back to Mary-Todd. “All right, team! Battle formation! We’re going in.”
“Going in, dear?” Mary-Todd asked.
“We must stop the enemy.” Eisenhower pulled his ski glasses back over his face.
“Dad, wait.” Hamilton was surprised that the words were coming out of his own mouth. Eisenhower was, too.
“Wait?” Eisenhower said. He leaned forward, glowering at his son. “You’re not afraid of these Cahills, are you?”
Hamilton rolled his eyes, knowing his father couldn’t see his face through the ski glasses. “They probably aren’t even Cahills, Dad. We should just keep going.”
Eisenhower drew himself up to his full height. Hamilton could see him flexing meaty fingers through his winter gloves. “No son of mine is going to act like a cowardly shrimp! Holts! Move out!”
Madison, Reagan, and Mary-Todd all fell into formation, but Hamilton’s legs refused to move. He stood there, staring down his father.
“They could be innocent backpackers,” he said. “Or scientists. Or — or explorers. You don’t know they’re Cahills.”
Eisenhower leaned forward and put his face very close to his son’s. “Of course they’re Cahills,” he snarled. “No one else would be out here! Now get moving!”
Something hot was boiling inside Hamilton, something that wouldn’t let him back down. He had done a lot of things he wasn’t proud of during the Clue hunt, most of them on his father’s orders. Grace Cahill’s mansion was burned to the ground because of him. One of the funeral attendees had been taken away in an ambulance. And that hadn’t been the last time one of Eisenhower’s strategies had landed people in the hospital.
“You want to attack those people, fine,” Hamilton snapped. “But I won’t help you.” He turned his back on his father and started to walk away.
Hamilton expected to hear his father’s enraged shouts as he left, but instead, the air was silent for several seconds. And then, so quietly he almost missed it, Hamilton heard Eisenhower say one word.
“Traitor.”
He almost stopped. His footsteps slowed, but something pushed him on. The word echoed in Hamilton’s ears for a long time as he trudged away through the snow. He forced himself to focus on getting as far away as he could.
It wasn’t until he started shivering, even underneath his huge parka, that Hamilton realized it was getting dark. He looked up at the sky and then scanned the horizon in all directions. Nothing but the bleak snowscape, a few icy-looking mountains rising in the far distance. Leaving his family had been stupid. If he’d stayed with them, he could have controlled the situation, maybe scared the backpackers off before Eisenhower could do them any real damage. And then a worse thought occurred to Hamilton. What if those backpackers really are Cahill agents? They could be dangerous. His family might have needed him, and instead, here he was, stomping around the Arctic by himself.
Hamilton immediately turned around. He started following his footprints back, but it was dark and the snowshoes didn’t leave very deep tracks. Wind was blowing the top layer of snow around in all directions, and soon Hamilton had lost his path entirely. All he could do was keep wa
lking and hope that he’d pick up the trail again. Hamilton’s stomach clenched. If he couldn’t find his way back to his family, he’d be in trouble. His mother had been the one navigating the snowy terrain. He had no compass or GPS of his own. The skin on the back of his neck prickled as he thought of all those past explorers who had come to the Arctic like him searching for a Clue, only to freeze to death before they could return.
Walking back through the snow at night seemed to take ten times as long as it had on the way out. The sky was almost pitch-black now, except for the stars clearly visible overhead. The temperature was dropping steadily, and the chill of the Arctic cut through Hamilton’s parka like icy knives. If only he knew more about navigating by the stars, he’d have a better chance of making it out of here alive. But astronavigation hadn’t exactly been a high priority on Eisenhower Holt’s training regimen. Hamilton could have been walking in circles for hours and he wouldn’t have even noticed.
He looked back down and was startled to see a light not too far ahead of him, bobbing up and down. A flashlight! Hamilton started for it, picking up speed as he went. Maybe his family was looking for him. But as he drew closer, he slowed down. The man in front of him wasn’t wearing a purple parka. Whoever it was, it wasn’t another Holt.
“Hello?” Hamilton called.
The flashlight beam swept over and landed directly on him. Hamilton shielded his eyes and squinted, trying to see the man’s face, but it was hidden behind a black ski mask. He couldn’t even be sure the person was male.
The 39 Clues: Rapid Fire #3: Hunted Page 2