Peril at the Top of the World

by James Patterson

  Her blathering gave us the cover we needed for Mom to tell us what was up with her fancy spy-watch/communicator bit.

  “I’m sure none of you think your father would steal the art and then leave us here,” said Mom, looking at each of us in turn.

  I didn’t say anything, even though I had been wondering that.

  “But in case you do, Dad was nowhere near the museum last night,” whispered Mom as we all stared at the screen of her superwatch. “His tracking app just updated his status. He departed Russian airspace thirty minutes after he left our hotel room. He is now in Washington, DC.”

  “So why would Inspector Gorky and that billionaire kid Zolin say Dad stole all that stuff?” I asked, feeling guilty that I’d doubted him, even for a second.

  “So the real thieves could get away,” said Mom with a determined look in her eye.

  “The Enlightened Ones!” blurted out Storm.

  “Shh!” said everybody else, because we didn’t want Larissa to stop her pet lecture at the far end of the cell block.

  “We know the E-Ones have minions here in Saint Petersburg,” whispered Mom.

  “The little dudes from the movies?” asked Tommy. “I love them!”

  Storm rolled her eyes. “Minions means ‘henchmen.’”

  “Chya, I knew that.”

  “Guys, remember who picked the clue up off the floor?” said Beck.

  “Yes,” said Storm, because, like I said, she remembers everything. “Viktor Zolin’s bodyguard.”

  “Zolin is an Enlightened One!” I exclaimed as quietly as I could.

  “But why would he pick up his own gang’s clue?” asked Tommy.

  Mom looked thoughtful. “Maybe he is trying to earn membership in their private club by helping to orchestrate the theft of four priceless paintings that they can add to their already impressive collection.”

  “Wait a second,” said Beck. “He’d steal paintings from a museum he donates a ton of money to?”

  “He might,” said Mom. “Especially if he wanted access to the most exclusive art museum in the world: the secret society’s treasure trove!”

  “So why point the finger at us?” asked Tommy, who looked more confused than usual.

  “We’re the red herring,” said Storm.

  “We’re smoked fish?” said Tommy. “Because I tasted that salty pink stuff at breakfast this morning and it was seriously disgusting.”

  “A red herring,” said Mom patiently, “is something that’s intended to be misleading or distracting. By hiding the clue and framing us for the theft, Zolin successfully threw the police off the trail of the real thieves.”

  “Plus,” I added, “he gave the crooks a head start!”

  Beck slumped to the floor. “And the stolen art is getting farther and farther away.”

  “But where are they taking it?” asked Tommy.

  I snapped my fingers. “The volcano!”

  “Whuh?”

  “Sorry. That’s where I think the Enlightened Ones have their top secret treasure lair.”

  “Seriously?” said Beck. “That’s the dumbest idea you’ve ever come up with. What if the volcano erupts?”

  I might’ve defended myself but Mom’s watch started beeping and dinging.

  That Dad-tracker app?

  It was flashing with a red alert.

  She swiped it sideways to reveal a very familiar face.

  CHAPTER 19

  “Just what we don’t need,” muttered Mom.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “The correct question,” said Mom, “is, Who is it?”

  “Okay,” said Tommy. “I’ve got this one, guys. Who is it, Mom?”

  “Your uncle Timothy.”

  Quick background: Uncle Timothy (who isn’t really our uncle) was Dad’s handler when he was in the CIA. Uncle Timothy pretended to be our legal guardian when Mom was kidnapped and Dad disappeared over the side of the Lost, our family’s treasure-hunting boat. Then Uncle Timmy totally tortured us—he made us go to school for the first time ever! After that, he basically stole the treasure we needed to ransom Mom. Then Uncle T went complete double agent on everybody and tried to kill us, first in China and then Germany.

  You can probably tell he’s not our favorite person.

  After his stunts in China and Germany, Uncle T was locked up in the most secure federal penitentiary in America: ADX Florence, the Alcatraz of the Rockies, in Colorado. It’s a super-max prison. The cell furniture is just a desk, a stool, and a bed—all of them made out of poured concrete. The pillows are probably filled with pebbles. There are fourteen hundred remote-controlled steel doors, twelve-foot-high razor-wire fences, all sorts of laser-beam motion detectors, and an army of attack dogs.

  ADX Florence made our Russian jail look like the Ritz.

  But the most important thing about it is that no prisoner has ever escaped from the super-maximum-security facility in Colorado.

  Except, somehow, Uncle Timothy did.

  That’s what the red alert on Mom’s watch was all about.

  “The wolf is on the prowl,” whispered Mom when she finished reading the coded intel on her wrist.

  My guess? Uncle Timothy was on his way to Russia so he could steal the stolen art ten seconds after we Kidds recovered it. He probably planned to swoop in like a vulture and snatch it away.

  Vulture action is what this particular wolf does best.

  CHAPTER 20

  Surprise, surprise.

  Two minutes after Mom received the bulletin about Uncle Timothy’s daring escape (apparently—and no one’s exactly sure how he pulled this off—he’d found a way to flush himself down the toilet), Inspector Gorky paid us a visit in our jail cell.

  “Greetings, American Kidd family,” he said.

  “Hello, Inspector,” said Mom politely. “What brings you down here to our dungeon?”

  “Most likely the Saint Petersburg Metro,” said Larissa, because some tour guides never shut up. “It is the deepest subway system in the world, and the fare for a single journey to anywhere in the city, including this jail, is about one American dollar.”

  “They still use tokens, or zhetons, the size of large coins,” added Storm, because she was still in that nerd-off with Larissa.

  Inspector Gorky rolled his eyes.

  “Guards?” he called out. “Kindly escort Miss Bukova to a different cell. One that is far from here.”

  “B-b-but—”

  “It will give you more to talk about on your next guided tour!”

  A pair of prison guards came and hauled Larissa away.

  “You’re not going to hurt her, are you?” demanded Mom after Larissa was gone.

  “No,” said Gorky. “I simply wish to prevent her from hurting my ears. Now then, you are, I am given to understand, treasure hunters?”

  “Chya,” said Tommy. “Only like the best in the world.”

  “Ah. So you can shoe a flea.”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s another Russian expression, Tommy,” explained Storm. “It means we’re talented.”

  “Oh. Okay. That’s cool. Thought he was saying we had fleas.”

  “I need your help,” said Gorky. “I do not trust billionaires. They will hang noodles on your ears.”

  We all looked to Storm.

  “That means they’ll lie to you.”

  “Just so,” said Inspector Gorky. “Now then, from what my colleagues at the SVR, our Russian intelligence agency, tell me, you Kidd Family Treasure Hunters are used to deciphering clues? You can find a needle when one is sewing in a haystack, da?”

  “What’ve you got?” asked Mom, trying to cut to the chase.

  “Something I did not want Miss Bukova to see or hear.”

  The inspector explained that he’d seen Viktor Zolin’s flunky snatch the clue envelope off the floor in the museum.

  “Later,” Gorky went on, “when the bodyguard was scooping up a pile of dog poop from the museum’s marble floor, the envelope
slipped out of his coat pocket. I picked it up before he realized he had dropped it. Being an inspector, I decided to inspect it. I broke the seal, memorized the message, and dropped the envelope back on the floor.”

  “Did the guard pick up the envelope again?” asked Mom.

  “Yes.”

  “Um, didn’t he think it was kind of suspicious that the wax seal was broken?” asked Beck.

  “No,” said Gorky. “He assumed it cracked open when it hit the hard marble floor.”

  “Seriously?”

  Gorky shrugged. “He is a muscle-head, da?”

  “The wax seal,” I asked, “was there an E and a one stamped into it?”

  “Da. How did you know this, youngest male Kidd?”

  I puffed up my chest a little. “Like you said, Mr. Gorky. We’re treasure hunters. We know stuff.”

  “What did the message say?” asked Beck.

  “It was very strange. And in English too. I wrote it down.”

  And Inspector Gorky handed us the second clue to the whereabouts of the Enlightened Ones’ secret treasure trove.

  Mom immediately tapped it into her smartwatch and sent it to Dad.

  And now, we’ll give it to you.

  CHAPTER 21

  “Does this message mean anything to you?” asked Inspector Gorky.

  “Yes,” said Mom. “Whoever wrote this is familiar with the phenomenon known as the northern lights or, more exactly, the aurora borealis—a natural light show high in the sky over the magnetic North Pole.”

  “What does that have to do with—” the inspector started.

  “Not to be confused with the aurora australis,” cut in Storm, “which takes place in the Southern Hemisphere.”

  “Because that’s where Australia is,” said Tommy. “We’re going to go there someday.”

  “I do not understand,” said Inspector Gorky.

  “Well,” said Tommy, “Mom and Dad promised that we’d sail around the world, and since Australia is on the globe—”

  “Nyet! The clue! What does it mean?”

  “Simple,” said Storm (probably because Larissa Bukova wasn’t there to answer first). “If you approach from the south in a high-latitude Arctic region, you will see, in the north, the brilliant dancing lights of the aurora borealis. The lights are actually collisions between electrically charged particles from the sun that enter the Earth’s atmosphere. The ‘aurora’ part of the name comes from the Roman goddess of dawn and—”

  “Perestan’!” cried Inspector Gorky, tugging at the hair on both sides of his head. “Vy svodite menya s uma!”

  “Well, I’m sorry,” said Storm. “We don’t mean to drive you mad—”

  “You Kidds are worse than that billionaire brat Viktor Zolin.”

  “No way,” said Tommy. “That dude’s totally weepy.”

  “And his wolfhounds need a bath,” added Beck. “They smell like wet fur.”

  “No,” I said, “I think that was Zolin’s coat—”

  “Grrr! I’ve had enough of you impossible Americans!”

  Inspector Gorky stomped away.

  Which was exactly what we wanted him to do.

  “Family meeting,” said Mom when we were (finally) alone. “We have two clues. What do you guys think they mean?”

  “Um, what were they again?” asked Tommy.

  Mom turned to Storm, who recited both clues from memory.

  “One: It used to be the top of the world, but time and a changing climate changed that. Two: Approach from the south and you will see northern lights high up in the sky.”

  “The North Pole!” blurted Beck.

  “Yeah,” I said eagerly, “if you approach the North Pole from the south, you’ll see the northern lights high up in the sky!”

  Beck and I looked to Mom.

  “You guys might be onto something,” she said.

  “Whoa,” said Tommy. “You think the Enlightened Ones have stashed all their stolen art up at the North Pole?”

  “Perhaps they put all their treasures into cold storage,” said Storm with a rare grin. (Lately, she’d been cracking puns and we’d been wishing she’d stop.)

  “Or,” I said, “it could be like Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. An ice castle located in a polar wasteland; an underground warehouse in the belly of a glacier!”

  Mom arched an eyebrow. “Did you read a lot of comic books while I was being held by the kidnappers, Bick?”

  “A few.”

  “What do you think, Mom?” asked Beck eagerly. “Did the bad guys take the stolen Russian art all the way to the North Pole?”

  “It’s a possibility,” answered Mom. “One I’m willing to explore.”

  “Too bad we can’t,” said Storm bluntly. She shook the bars of her jail cell. “We’re not exploring anywhere anytime soon.”

  That’s when a furious Larissa Bukova came marching down the hall, escorted by a whole troop of prison guards.

  “What did you fools say to Inspector Gorky?” she demanded.

  “Just that we were missing you,” said Tommy, wiggling his eyebrows.

  “Well, congratulations, Thomas. We are all to be together again. In a new prison. The notorious Lefortovo in Moscow!”

  I raised my hand. “Um, is that the one where the KGB used to torture people?”

  “Da!”

  I was afraid of that.

  CHAPTER 22

  And so we were moved.

  They put us in a train car. I think the previous passengers had been a herd of cows.

  No one told us exactly why we were being transported south to Moscow. Nobody gave us any explanations.

  “It is the Russian way,” Larissa said stoically, which is how a lot of Russians say stuff. They figure life’s ups and downs (mostly downs) are just part of your destiny and there’s nothing you can do to change it, so you just have to be tough and slog through it without complaining. Stoically.

  “This stinks,” said Tommy, and he didn’t mean the cattle car. “I refuse to, you know, just accept that if my life sucks there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  Being raised on the Lost, we were all taught that we were the masters of our own destinies. That we could do and be anything we wanted to do or be—as long as we worked at it hard enough. Plus we complain a lot. We Kidds would’ve made terrible Russians.

  So no way were we going to take our imprisonment lying down.

  Especially not in a smellerific cattle car.

  Surprisingly, when we arrived in Moscow, we weren’t immediately sent to the dungeons of Lefortovo Prison.

  Nope. We were sent someplace even worse: the Butyrka.

  But, much to our surprise, we weren’t tossed into another dark, dismal, and depressing dungeon.

  “We just wanted to make sure you saw all the prisons included in your tour package,” explained a very accommodating guard.

  “This really is a tour?” I blurted out. “With the shackles and everything?”

  “Da,” said Larissa. “One of our most popular tours. Right up there with the Red Army tour, where you get to visit Stalin’s secret bunker and the Leningrad siege museum!”

  “This way,” said the guard. “We have prepared some light Russian refreshments.”

  “Now, if you please to finish your tea and refreshments,” said the guard, “we will go see the Big Boss, who officially released you from the incarceration.”

  “The warden?” asked Mom.

  “No,” said the guard. “The Big Boss. The, how you say, head honcho. He is at the Kremlin.”

  “Whoa!” said Tommy. “We’re going to see Vladimir Putin?”

  “No. President Putin is busy wrestling a bear. You will see someone else. Please, eat your blintzes and blini quickly. We do not want to keep the big man waiting. He is easily angered.”

  Okay, this whole Russian adventure was becoming ridiculously scary—but also kind of scary-cool.

  And the cheese blintzes with jam and sour cream?

  Scary-delicious!<
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  CHAPTER 23

  We were whisked across town to the Kremlin in a luxurious ZiL limousine, the favorite ride of all Russian bigwigs.

  And, of course, while we rode, Larissa Bukova and Storm had a fact-fight, telling us everything about the Kremlin that we never wanted to know.

  During the ride, Mom told us all to be on our best behavior when we met the Big Boss, whoever he might be.

  “We really want him to give us the resources to head to the North Pole. It’s a dangerous journey and we’ll need a lot of supplies,” she said.

  “Do you think that’s really where the Enlightened Ones have hidden all the stolen artwork?” I asked, because, to be honest, I was starting to have my doubts. (I hope you guys have come up with some other answers.)

  “The clues sure seem to point that way,” said Tommy.

  “And Dad seemed to be dead when we were in that storm off the Cayman Islands,” I said. “You can see the northern lights in Alaska—you don’t have to go to the North Pole.”

  “But what about that top-of-the-world clue?” said Beck. “Where else could that be?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe there’s a revolving restaurant in Las Vegas called the Top of the World.” (Turns out I was right about that one.)

  “Enough, you guys,” said Mom. “Even if we are misreading the riddles, there is a lot of good we can do up in the Arctic Circle. Remember what Dad and I have always said: the greatest treasures in this world aren’t made of gold, precious stones, or even paint on canvas.”

  Beck the art lover gasped a little when Mom said that last part.

  (Come on, Beck. You know you did. You looked like you might have a heart attack.)

  Our limo driver escorted us into the Kremlin and a very ornate meeting room, where the Big Boss was waiting for us.

  “Please, sit down, Kidd Family Treasure Hunters,” said a burly man in a business suit as he gestured toward some very plush chairs. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Gage Szymanowicz, minister of emergency situations.”