39 Clues : Cahills vs. Vespers [01] The Medusa Plot

by Gordon Korman

  “If Dan recognizes that guy, then it’s the real thing.” Amy picked up the discards. “Let’s find him.”

  About halfway through the stack, the second file emerged. Despite the blotchy fax quality, all four searchers had to admit that the faces matched.

  The first was an entry on a watch list from the Arma dei Carabinieri — the Italian national police force. It contained information on one Alberto Sudem, who was suspected of being a buyer of stolen works of art. According to the notes, Sudem had dropped out of sight in the 1980s and was presumed dead. The other was one of the Janus secret files on the Mud Angels — Gregor Tobin, born 1937, a fabulously wealthy art collector currently living in a large palazzo on the shores of Lake Como.

  Amy’s eyes were alight with excitement. “It has to be him! He was a Mud Angel, so he had access to the ‘Medusa.’ And the Italian police have him on an art theft watch list.”

  “It also says they think he’s dead,” Hamilton pointed out.

  “Who are you going to believe, yo?” Jonah challenged. “The Janus or a bunch of cops? It’s the same face, the same guy. It’s Gregor Tobin! Alberto Sudem must be an alias or something.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Dan. He flipped over a file and began to scribble on the back.

  He looked at the other three. “That’s ‘Medusa’ spelled backwards.”

  Amy nodded slowly. “He created his alias based on his favorite stolen piece — or maybe his first. Where’s Lake Como?”

  “Up by Milan,” Jonah supplied. “Did an outdoor concert there once, back in the day. The views are off the chain — mountains, water, real tourist brochure stuff.”

  Dan spoke up. “Aren’t you forgetting something? We can’t just knock on this guy’s door and accuse him of boosting the ‘Medusa.’ Even if he admits it, he’s not going to hand it over.”

  Amy set her jaw. “If we stole from one of the most secure museums in Europe, we can steal from Gregor Tobin. We just need a way inside.”

  “Not another window-washing job!” groaned Hamilton.

  “This time,” Amy promised, “we’re going to be invited.”

  CHAPTER 15

  “Three thousand years old and still looking good.”

  Dan hunched over the laptop in the Cahills’ Lake Como hotel suite, watching the images download from the comm. center in Attleboro. One by one, hi-res pictures of the gold Sakhet statue appeared on the screen. He and Amy had acquired the ancient sculpture two years before, when the Clue hunt had taken them on a wild ride through Egypt.

  Amy was on the phone with Ian, who was acting as official photographer. “Take it from all angles,” she advised him. “We want to give Tobin a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view.”

  “Check,” came Ian’s voice from four thousand miles away. “What if he’s not interested?”

  “He’ll be interested. The Janus file says he’s gaga over Egyptian art.”

  Ian sighed wanly. “I once had the means to be gaga over art — before I found myself in a country where the standard of beauty is toaster waffles shaped like cartoon characters.”

  Dan flashed Amy a sign. All twelve photographs had been received.

  “Thanks, Ian. We’ll be in touch.” She broke the connection and joined her brother at the computer. “Here’s Tobin’s e-mail address.”

  Dan opened a blank message and attached the photographs. “What are we going to tell the guy? We found this ancient Egyptian sculpture in the garbage? So we threw a dart at a map and flew halfway around the world on the off chance there’d be somebody there who would want to buy it?”

  “Let me.” Amy began to type on the keypad:

  Mr. Tobin,

  My young brother and I have acquired the ancient Egyptian statue that you see in these pictures. We believe it is an exceptionally well-preserved example of New Kingdom sculpture dated approximately to 1400 B.C. We would be most grateful for your expert opinion. We will be in Lake Como for one more day. Amy Cahill

  She looked up at Dan. “What do you think?”

  “It’s stupid,” was his judgment. “What do we want with his expert opinion? We already know it’s a Sakhet.”

  Amy shook her head in exasperation. “The statue isn’t important. What we need is a ticket into the house so we can find the ‘Medusa.’” She hit SEND. “Now all we have to do is wait for an invitation.”

  They left the hotel and took a stroll along the paved promenade at the lakeshore. Even Dan, who never noticed scenery, had to admit the place was stunning in its beauty — the water a flat blue calm surrounded by soaring mountains, rocky cliffs, and the historic buildings of Como itself.

  Amy pointed to a modern chrome-and-glass villa set atop a high bluff. “That’s Tobin’s place,” she told her brother.

  “Pretty sweet.” Dan followed the line of the rock down to a boat mooring on the lake below the house. “That must be his private dock. I’ll bet there’s an elevator. Rich guys aren’t into stairs.”

  “That’ll be our way out once we’ve got the ‘Medusa,’” Amy decided. “Jonah and Hamilton can rent a boat and pick us up there.”

  As they followed the rail along the lakeshore, they came upon a retaining wall with a small alcove. In it was the carved frieze of a seated figure in Roman garb. A bronze plaque read: GAIUS PLINIUS CAECILIUS SECUNDUS

  Dan made a face. “Get a load of the guy with the funny name.”

  “I think that’s Pliny the Younger, the famous Roman writer,” Amy supplied. She bent down to read the English portion of the information tablet. “Right. In A.D. 79, Pliny chronicled the destruction of Pompeii by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. It’s one of the earliest eyewitness accounts of a major disaster.”

  Dan yawned. “Doesn’t this remind you of the clue hunt? You know—you telling me a bunch of boring stuff, and me not listening?” When she didn’t snap back at him, he turned to look at her. She was very still, her expression thoughtful and distant. “What?”

  From the pocket of her jeans, Amy produced the tiny charred notebook that had been salvaged from the fire at Grace’s house two years before. She took it out of the Ziploc and riffled carefully through the brittle pages to the entry that had caught their attention before:

  VSP 79 PUNY DESCRIBED FIRST TEST

  “Dan — that’s not ‘puny’! It only looks like a ‘U’ because the ‘L’ and the ‘I’ are smudged together! It’s ‘PLINY’! 79 was the year Vesuvius erupted, and ‘VSP’ means it has something to do with the Vespers!”

  Dan whistled. “Burying an entire city in lava and hot ash — sounds like a pretty Vesper thing to do.” He shook his head. “But no one can ‘test’ a volcano. They erupt when they erupt.”

  Amy nodded in agreement. “Besides, there were no Vespers in A.D. 79. They started when the Cahills did.”

  Her brother frowned. “Grace had to know that. Why would she jump to a conclusion that makes no sense?”

  Amy tried to be logical. “The Vespers didn’t commit seven kidnappings to get a free painting. They have big plans. But so far we’ve made zero progress figuring out what those plans might be.”

  “If you’re trying to cheer me up,” Dan informed her, “then telling me what a crummy job we’re doing isn’t the best way to make it happen.”

  “Don’t you see?” Amy gestured toward the alcove monument. “This is the missing piece in what we know about the Vespers!”

  “Some guy who wrote about a volcano?”

  “The connection between an ancient disaster and a secret organization that wouldn’t start for another millennium and a half.” She held up the notebook. “That’s what Grace understood, and we have to find out.”

  “There’s another possibility,” Dan suggested. “What if Grace was just plain wrong? She was pretty sick near the end. Maybe she wasn’t thinking straight.”

  Amy wasn’t convinced. During the Clue hunt, their grandmother had planted hints in their minds years before Amy and Dan had ever learned of their family’s place in history. I
n a few instances, she’d laid the groundwork for them decades prior to their births.

  When it came to Cahill business, Grace was never wrong.

  CHAPTER 16

  The letter had been slipped under the door of their hotel suite sometime during the night.

  Dan was suspicious. “How did he find out where we were staying?”

  Amy frowned. “I think that’s the message inside the message. He wants us to know that he has a long reach — that he’s rich and powerful.”

  “Like we’ll see his giant mansion and assume he works at Burger King,” scoffed Dan.

  They spent the morning packing up their belongings so that everything could be loaded onto Jonah’s plane in advance. The ideal getaway would be to grab the “Medusa” and take it directly from boat to car to jet, with no delays.

  The man they were about to rob was not someone to be trifled with.

  Gregor Tobin could have played Dracula in any Hollywood movie. The fangs would have to be added, but everything else was there — shiny black-dyed hair, gaunt features, sunken cheeks, pale skin.

  “Welcome, new friends.” The voice was deep and dead flat. “I’ve had my chef prepare a light luncheon. Please join me.”

  Amy and Dan murmured a polite acceptance and followed him into a sun-drenched breakfast room, where a small table was set for three.

  Dan picked up a toast point topped with a mysterious spread. He took a cautious sniff—liver—and slipped it back onto the tray.

  “May I ask what brought you to my door?” Tobin inquired, applying himself to a dainty sandwich. “There are many other art experts. This is Italy.”

  Amy looked shy. “We wanted to meet you. We heard you were one of the Mud Angels back in the sixties.”

  Tobin seemed pleased. “Why, yes. I didn’t know anyone remembered that. A terrible time. So many masterpieces lost.”

  I’ll bet, Amy thought cynically. Some to water damage, and at least one stuck to your greasy fingers.

  “You guys were, like, heroes!” Dan exclaimed.

  “Every citizen of Florence was heroic,” Tobin said distractedly. His eyes never left Amy’s oversize backpack, which leaned against her chair. “Please excuse my boldness. I must confess I’m anxious to see what you have brought me. It puzzles me that I have not heard of this object before. How did two such young people come into possession of it?”

  “You’re asking if it’s stolen,” Amy said. “Would that make it less attractive to you, or more?”

  He looked at her sharply. “What an interesting young lady. But you still haven’t answered my question. Where did you get it?”

  “It’s not stolen.” Amy told him. “We inherited it from our grandmother, Grace Cahill.”

  “Grace Cahill!” Tobin’s thick single brow leaped. “That name is well known in the art world!” His eyes narrowed. “As her heirs, you must know the quality and value of her collection. What is the real purpose of this visit?”

  Amy launched into the explanation she and Dan had cooked up together. “According to the will, we can’t touch one penny of the estate until we are both twenty-five.”

  Tobin smiled. “So the piece is stolen.”

  Dan bristled. “She just told you that it isn’t.”

  “But it is. You have stolen it from your future selves. Tea?”

  Amy held out her cup for a refill. “Mr. Tobin, our grandmother’s lawyer keeps us penniless when we’re worth millions. We don’t want to sell off our inheritance. We have no choice.”

  “Very well. Show me the statue, and we shall see if we can do business.”

  Amy reached for the zipper of her bag.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t sell,” Dan put in nervously. “If McIntyre sees it’s missing, he could have us arrested.”

  Amy looked as if she were about to cry. “Could we take some time to think about it?”

  “Of course. Perhaps you’d like to tour my gallery — see the fine company your piece will be keeping.”

  Amy re-shouldered her pack, and the Cahills followed Tobin up a broad cantilever staircase to the top floor of the villa, a vast room with a magnificent floor-to-ceiling window overlooking Lake Como.

  “Cool house,” approved Dan.

  “Thank you.” Tobin smiled. “Traditional architecture has its grandeur, but there is nothing like a modern design that admits light. It makes art come alive.”

  Tobin’s collection may not have been as large as the Uffizi’s, but it was every bit as impressive. There were works from all time periods and from every corner of the world. There were prehistoric drawings cut from caves, and Jackson Pollock canvases that covered entire walls. There were medieval tapestries, Grecian urns, Roman busts on pedestals, African and Eskimo indigenous art, and Mesopotamian cuneiforms. There were even famous historical artifacts — a genuine Roman chariot, all gilt carving and completely intact, and a coat of arms that had hung in the court of King Richard the Lionheart.

  What was not there was Caravaggio’s “Medusa.”

  When the collector went over to speak to a burly security man stationed by a Giotto altarpiece, Dan sidled up to his sister. “Where’s old double-ugly?”

  “There must be a secret room,” Amy whispered back, “a covert gallery for the stolen stuff. Keep an eye out for hidden doors or panels, anything suspicious.”

  Dan did a quick 360. “You mean like one room with two thermostats?”

  Amy tried not to stare. Her brother was right. There was a unit by the door. That would set the temperature in the gallery. So what was the purpose of the other one, the one on the east wall? It had to control the climate somewhere else.

  And then she knew. Right beside the second thermostat hung a large Renoir, a luminous café scene on a canvas at least six feet high and three feet wide. The frame was ornate and massive.

  Almost imperceptibly, she inclined her head in the direction of the huge work. “Dan — what does this remind you of? Not the picture — the size and shape?”

  Dan nodded slowly. “A door. The secret gallery is behind the painting.”

  The conversation ended abruptly with the return of Gregor Tobin. “And what has you two so absorbed and excited?”

  “We’ve made our decision,” Amy told him. “We’re going to sell you the statue.” She shrugged out of her backpack and reached inside.

  The collector’s anticipation turned to bewilderment when she came up with what looked like a lollipop. “Is this a joke?”

  Amy broke the stick detonator off Sinead’s smoke bomb and threw both pieces to the floor. The fog was dense and instantaneous.

  Tobin cried out in shock. Amy grabbed Dan’s shoulders and dragged the two of them down to the cool marble. The Cahills pulled the breathing filters from their pockets and covered their noses. Tobin took one whiff of the knockout gas and collapsed beside them. A thump from across the room indicated that the security guard was also unconscious.

  “Stay low!” Amy hissed. “I don’t know how much we can trust these masks!”

  The two crawled to the large Renoir painting and began to haul on the heavy frame. It wouldn’t budge. Amy felt a stab of fear. What if they were wrong?

  Dan produced a pocketknife and held it to the canvas.

  Amy grabbed it out of his hand. “Don’t you dare! It’s a Renoir!”

  “Let Tobin restore it if he’s such a big-shot Mud Angel!”

  Desperately, Amy reached behind the picture to get a better grip on the frame. Her finger brushed against a small hard lump. A button? She pressed it. There was an electronic click, and the Renoir swung away from the wall. Inside, dimly lit, was a second art gallery.

  It was smaller than the main collection, but the pieces seemed to be of equal quality. She had a fleeting wish that Jonah was with them — a Janus would have a better sense of what they were looking at.

  Then something familiar caught her eye. It was a picture of three people seated around a grand piano.

  “Dan — that’s ‘The Concert’
by Vermeer! It was taken in a robbery from the Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990! It’s considered the most valuable stolen painting in the world!”

  “Amy, stop sightseeing!” he snapped. “There’s only one stolen painting I care about!”

  They searched the room, passing mummies smuggled out of Egypt, Grecian marbles illegally removed from the pediment of the Parthenon, and stolen paintings by Gainsborough, Van Eyck, and Monet.

  Dan spotted it first, Caravaggio’s “Medusa” recessed in an alcove with a lone spotlight on the horror-stricken features.

  “There it is. I don’t know why I expected this one to be better-looking.”

  The two wasted precious seconds taking in the hideous details of Caravaggio’s masterpiece. After creating three Janus fakes in order to get their hands on the Uffizi piece that itself turned out to be a fake, surely this had to be the real thing—the one that would satisfy Vesper One enough to release the hostages.

  Dan snatched the shield off the wall, and the two managed to cram it into Amy’s large knapsack. The rounded edges pressed the vinyl material to the limit.

  “Looks like we boosted a manhole cover,” he commented as she shrugged into the straps.

  In the main gallery, somebody groaned.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Dan exclaimed. “Where’s that elevator to the boat dock?”

  “Definitely not up here,” Amy replied. “It must be downstairs.”

  Holding the filters to their faces, they slipped through the Renoir door to the main gallery. The smoke was dissipating. The guard was still out, but Tobin was beginning to stir.

  The collector blinked away his dizziness enough to take in the sight of Amy and Dan emerging from the secret gallery.

  “Thieves!” he accused.

  “Call the cops!” Dan tossed over his shoulder as they headed for the stairs. “They’ll have a field day in this place!”

  Amy set her foot down on the top cantilever step and froze. Vibrations were coming from below. Running feet. More than one set. Looking down, she caught a glimpse of two more security guards rushing to investigate their employer’s cry.