Peril at the Top of the World

by James Patterson

  “They didn’t chase you,” said Uncle Timothy. “They executed a flanking security maneuver known as the flying hex box to set up an impenetrable perimeter of protection.”

  “Nah,” said Beck. “They chased us.”

  “And,” I added, “three of them wouldn’t take off their masks. It was almost as if they were afraid to show their faces.”

  “Do they have bad zits?” Tommy asked Uncle Timothy. “Because, I remember when I broke out, I didn’t want anybody to see me. I even covered up all the mirrors and shiny surfaces on our ship—”

  “Stay here, you guys,” said Mom. “I’ll go talk to the nice lady.”

  Uncle Timothy touched his earpiece. “I’ve got a call to make.”

  “Um,” said Tommy, “I thought we were supposed to do foolish stuff together from now on?”

  Mom smiled. “You’re right. Let’s all go.”

  So all of us, including Uncle T, shuffled across the room in a bunch and surrounded the burly security guard.

  “Excuse me, madame,” said Mom, super-politely.

  “Da?”

  “Can you tell us, when were the cat, clown, dog, and Elvis paintings added to this gallery?”

  “Recently.”

  “They don’t really seem to fit with the other paintings on display.”

  The guard shrugged. “I do not understand art. I like to watch TV. Love Masha and the Bear. Is cute.”

  “I see,” said Mom.

  “But do you know who contributed these four new works to the museum?” asked Beck.

  “Da. Anonymous. He donates many pieces. Paintings, statues, ancient artifacts. When Anonymous heard we had lost four paintings, he gave us four more.” She shrugged again. “For me, a painting is a painting.”

  “But the substitute paintings are horrible!” shrieked Beck. “Why would the Hermitage, one of the greatest art museums in the whole world, agree to hang such ugly eyesores on its walls?”

  The security guard grinned and rubbed two fingers back and forth across her thumb, giving us the universal sign for Money! Money! Money!

  “Mr. Anonymous?” she said, checking to make sure no one was eavesdropping on our conversation. “He is very, very rich. One of our most eccentric and generous Russian billionaires. If he wants to donate pictures of Elvis, cats, dogs, and sad clowns, they will let him. They also say he does not really like art. In fact…” She looked around one more time to make absolutely certain her superiors couldn’t hear. “I have heard that Anonymous hates art and hopes to one day see all of these other masterpieces disappear!”

  As soon as she said that, a museum official came into the room. She abruptly left us and went back to standing by the doorway looking bored.

  Sensing we wouldn’t get any more information from the guard, we left the museum and headed back to the hotel.

  “So,” said Mom when we were all gathered in the living room of her suite, “how do we find an art hater?”

  “Easy for me,” joked Uncle Timothy. “I just look in a mirror.”

  Beck glared at him.

  “Sorry, Rebecca. I like action movies. Football. Drawing pictures and painting them in? That’s for kindergartners.”

  After Uncle Timothy said that, Beck whipped out her sketchbook and drew this:

  CHAPTER 56

  We spent the next week camped out in the living room of Mom’s hotel suite researching the art thefts around the world.

  Don’t forget, the Hermitage hadn’t been the only museum hit by art thieves in the past several months. Priceless paintings were also stolen out of the Louvre in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and the Saatchi Gallery in London.

  We gathered all the information we could find, hoping to uncover some sort of link connecting all the heists.

  We were at it 24/7—making connections, making mistakes, making our stomachs ache by eating horrible Russian pizza. Instead of four cheeses, our Russian pie had four fishes—sardines, tuna, mackerel, and salmon. To make it grosser, it was topped off with onions, herbs, and little red fish eggs.

  Did I mention it’s also served cold? Bleh.

  On day seven, Mom sent Uncle Timothy away on what she called a “ghost-surveillance” detail. Was Uncle T looking for ghosts? I mean, they would make pretty good spies. While he was out, we heard from Dad.

  Guess what?

  HE’D FOUND THE ENLIGHTENED ONES’ SECRET TREASURE TROVE!

  Woo-hoo!

  We were all practically dancing for joy. Except Tommy. Dancing, like running, messes up his hair.

  “I’ll be rejoining you guys very soon,” he said, never giving us a hint as to where he was or where he had discovered the stolen loot, like any good spy. “I am working with a team of art historians and appraisers, putting together a complete inventory of the masterpieces stashed in the Enlightened Ones’ cleverly hidden warehouse.”

  “Did they have the four paintings stolen from the Hermitage?” asked Mom.

  “No,” said Dad. “But the Louvre, the Met, and the Saatchi Gallery are going to be extremely happy. The Enlightened Ones were the end buyers for their stolen masterpieces.”

  “So,” said Mom, “we can focus our treasure hunting on Leonardo da Vinci’s Madonna Litta, Caravaggio’s The Lute Player, Giorgione’s Judith, and Rembrandt’s Danaë?”

  “Exactly. Whoever stole the artwork in Saint Petersburg wasn’t collaborating with the Enlightened Ones. He was, most likely, a lone wolf.”

  “And an art hater,” added Beck.

  “And,” Dad added, “it’ll be harder to find a thief who’s working solo, since he’ll leave less of a trail.”

  “We’ve put together a preliminary psychological profile,” said Storm.

  “Good work,” said Dad. “And the ghost?”

  “Under control,” reported Mom.

  Seriously, what ghost?

  “You guys are the best,” Dad said.

  We all told him how proud we were of him. Then he told us how proud he was of us.

  When he hung up, I asked Mom what the ghost thing was about.

  Timothy, she mouthed silently. “He’s going to be helping us with our plans, even if he doesn’t know it.”

  I wanted to ask more, but I knew better than to talk about it in our hotel room, which was sure to be bugged.

  So we went back to work.

  More cold pizza, bad sandwiches, and Tarhun soda, which, believe it or not, is a carbonated drink flavored with tarragon herbs. Yes, it’s gross. Like drinking parsley.

  Around noon on day eight of pinning stuff on the walls, I was a little bored. Okay, I was a lot bored.

  So was Beck. It’s a twin thing.

  “We’re getting nowhere,” said Beck with an exasperated sigh.

  “And I can’t eat any more of that fish pizza.”

  We both flopped down on the sofa and started flipping through hotel magazines while Mom, Storm, and Tommy kept pinning junk to the wall. (The hotel maids were going to hate us when we checked out.) My magazine was a glossy travel guide called See Saint Petersburg! It was all about nearby attractions and upcoming events.

  And that’s where I found the big clue!

  The one that would (finally) lead us to the four missing masterpieces.

  CHAPTER 57

  It was an article (written in stilted English) called “Happy Winter-Wonderland Activities for the Whole Happy Family to Enjoy Happily.”

  Apparently, in February, when the weather got really cold, a team of “fourteen ice artists” would be building an ice palace in the center of Saint Petersburg. It would be modeled after the first one erected in the city in 1740 by Empress Anna Ivanovna to celebrate her tenth anniversary as ruler and Russia’s victory in the Turkish war. There were pictures and everything.

  That’s when something our chatty tutor and tour guide, Larissa Bukova, had told us weeks ago came flooding back into my head.

  Saint Petersburg had built one of these ice palaces before!

  Ten year
s ago, to be exact.

  And it turned out to be deadly for the teenage billionaire Viktor Zolin’s parents.

  It was a freak accident, Larissa had told us. The ice palace had crushed Viktor Zolin’s parents when it melted during an unexpected February heat wave.

  The palace that was, according to the magazine, also a “magnificent frozen work of art”!

  “Of course!” I blurted out. “He hates art because art killed his mother and father!”

  “Huh?” said Beck, who was flipping through a magazine that seemed to be all about shoes and purses. “Who hates art? I mean, besides Uncle Timothy?”

  “Viktor Zolin!” I said. “I’ll bet anything he’s our guy. The art hater who stole those four paintings.”

  That got Mom’s, Storm’s, and Tommy’s attention.

  Fortunately, Uncle Timothy wasn’t in the room. He had gone to the corner store to buy a meat pie and a bottle of glass cleaner for his mirrored shades.

  “But Zolin is a major contributor to the Hermitage,” said Mom.

  “They even let him bring his wolfhounds into the gallery so they can poop on the floor,” said Tommy.

  “Inspector Gorky told us Zolin is ‘one of our most eccentric and generous Russian billionaires,’” said Beck.

  “Which,” I reminded them, “is exactly how the security-guard lady described the anonymous donor of the four hideous pictures.”

  “If it was Zolin,” said Storm, “it would be easy for him to ‘generously’ and ‘anonymously’ donate those paintings and get them hung in such a prestigious gallery.”

  “It’s like you said, Storm!” I went on. “There has to be a reason for a hater to hate. Viktor Zolin hates art because art made him an orphan!”

  Mom jumped up and gave me a hug. “It’s the best lead we’ve got. Let’s see where it takes us!”

  CHAPTER 58

  We rushed downstairs and squeezed into a taxicab.

  We probably needed two cabs but Mom had said that we had to do our foolishness as a family from now on. So we all foolishly smooshed together in the backseat. It was like a rolling group hug. With arm cramps.

  “So, um, where exactly are we going?” asked Tommy.

  “Viktor Zolin’s home!” said Mom. “Timothy can get us the location.” Mom whipped out her satellite phone, poking Storm with its stubby antenna.

  “Ow!”

  “Sorry about that, hon,” said Mom.

  “No worries,” said Storm.

  Then Mom speed-dialed Uncle T and thumbed the speakerphone button.

  “This is Red Rooster,” answered Uncle Timothy from wherever he was (he wasn’t really getting into the whole togetherness thing, which was fine by us). “Go ahead, Mama Bear. Is the porridge in the pot too hot?”

  Mom rolled her eyes. Sometimes Uncle Tim’s spy lingo was complete gibberish, so twisted that even former professional spies like her couldn’t understand what the heck he was saying.

  “Timothy,” said Mom, dropping the whole barn-animal code-name stuff, “do you have any hard geographic intel on Viktor Zolin?”

  “Roger that,” said Uncle Timothy. “My protected sources and human assets have surveilled the Mutant Ninja Turtle and have his twenty.”

  “Huh?” said Tommy.

  “That must be his lame code name for Zolin,” suggested Storm. “Because the billionaire is teenage.”

  “And twenty is CB-radio code for location,” I added, which I knew because I like old movies.

  “Timothy?” said Mom, sounding exasperated. “What’s his address?”

  He gave it to us and Mom repeated it to the taxi driver.

  “It is two minutes away,” said the driver. “Why you no walk?” Then he mumbled something about “lazy Americans.”

  “Meet us there,” Mom told Uncle T.

  “Why?” he asked, totally dropping his secret spy gibberish.

  “We have reason to suspect Viktor Zolin is the art thief who grabbed the four masterpieces out of the Hermitage Museum.”

  There was a pretty long pause.

  “Understood,” said Uncle Timothy. “I will meet you on the sidewalk in front of his building.”

  We drove maybe six blocks.

  “Here we go,” said the cabbie.

  Mom gave him a huge tip because the ride had been so short.

  Then the five of us tumbled out of our cab in front of a super-swanky apartment building. It was ten stories tall and in the heart of a ritzy, high-rent district known as the Golden Triangle on the banks of the Neva River, not far from the Hermitage Museum.

  “This is the most expensive real estate in all of Saint Petersburg,” said Storm, who has been known to memorize apartment listings on the web in her spare time.

  Uncle Timothy was waiting for us on the sidewalk with his six friends, three of whom were still wearing those ridiculous rubber Putin masks. Maybe Tommy was right. Maybe the guys had really, really bad zits.

  “How’d you get here so quick?” I asked.

  “I’m a pro, Bickford. A pro.”

  “Do you know which apartment is Zolin’s?” asked Mom.

  Uncle Timothy nodded. “Yep. All of them!”

  CHAPTER 59

  “Zolin will meet us upstairs in the penthouse,” said Uncle Timothy.

  Mom arched an eyebrow. “Does he know we’re coming?”

  “Affirmative. I thought it best to let him know. We don’t want him siccing those wolfhounds on us, so I called ahead.”

  “I don’t think that was our best play, Timothy.”

  “Relax, Sue. Calm down.”

  Mom’s ears turned pink. She hates it when somebody tells her to calm down. (Yep. Storm inherited most of her stormy temperament from Mom.)

  “Besides,” said Uncle Timothy, gesturing toward his six colleagues, “we have backup. Zolin’s just a kid. My men are all very heavily armed.”

  When Uncle Timothy said that, his six henchmen tapped their chests, bellies, butts, and shins—all the places they were concealing clinking weaponry.

  All we Kidds had brought with us were our quick wits, our keen minds, and our martial arts expertise. Luckily, Uncle Timothy and his army of musclemen were on our side.

  We stepped over some wolfhound poop in the lobby and rode a gold-plated elevator up to the tenth floor.

  The elevator doors opened directly into a lavish penthouse suite. Viktor Zolin, the teenage oil billionaire, was waiting for us in a giant living room where the ceiling looked like the topping on a lemon meringue pie.

  And, of course, he was weeping.

  “That horrible weeping clown painting you hung in the Hermitage,” said Beck. “Is that supposed to be a self-portrait?”

  “I d-d-don’t know w-w-what you’re talking about,” Zolin blubbered. Then he blew his nose in a very frilly pillow.

  “Cut the waterworks,” I said in my best tough-guy voice. “We know what you did.”

  “W-w-what? What did I do?”

  “You stole the four missing masterpieces from the Hermitage collection,” said Mom. “Then you pretended to be so upset about the missing paintings, you had us thrown in jail. You named my husband as the prime suspect. And you did all of that because you knew that the Kidd family always finds whatever treasure we’re hunting—no matter where that hunt leads or how long it takes.”

  “Chya,” said Tommy. “We’re good, bro.”

  “Admit it,” said Mom. “You were surprised to learn that Professor Thomas Kidd and his family were in Saint Petersburg on vacation. You didn’t want us investigating your crime so you tried to turn us into the criminals!”

  Zolin sneezed into his pillow and wept some more. “But w-w-why?” he sputtered. “W-w-why would I do such a thing? I love art!”

  “No, you don’t,” I said. “In fact, you hate it.”

  “That’s why you hung those hideous paintings in the gallery,” said Beck.

  “And,” I continued, “we know the reason you did all the nasty, evil, and despicable things you did. It
’s extremely psychological. Storm?”

  She stepped forward. “Would you like to hear your complete profile?”

  “It’s pretty gnarly, dude,” added Tommy.

  “No, thank you,” said Zolin, snapping his fingers. A servant hurried in with a gold-plated tissue box that was filled with silk scarves instead of Kleenex or Puffs. The young tycoon dabbed at his eyes and dried them.

  “Come on,” I said, eager to prove that the theory I’d cooked up after reading that travel guide was right. “Art killed your parents. So you hate art! Bada-bing, bada-boom. Case closed.”

  “Do you know what else I hate?” asked Zolin, totally composed.

  “That cold pizza with all the fish and little red eggs on top?” said Tommy.

  “No! I hate nosy treasure hunters. You are correct, Mrs. Kidd. When I learned that you and your meddlesome family were visiting Saint Petersburg, I pulled all the strings I could to have you detained. And, trust me, when you are a billionaire oil tycoon in Russia, you have plenty of strings to pull! All the strings money can buy.”

  “We’re going to report you to the authorities,” said Mom, totally unruffled.

  “Good luck with that,” sneered Zolin. “Half of the government officials in Russia are on my payroll. Half of the people in this room too.”

  “Actually,” said Uncle Timothy, “more than half. There are seven of us, only five of them.”

  Surprise, surprise. Uncle Timothy was still a no-good rotten traitor.

  The three goons in the rubber masks finally yanked them off.

  No wonder they’d been hiding their faces and not saying a word.

  They were the same Zolin thugs we’d met on the icebreaker on our way up to the North Pole!

  CHAPTER 60

  Viktor Zolin decided it would be a shame to imprison us before we could see the rest of his elaborate home, so he took us on a tour of his fifty-something-room apartment.