The Sword Thief

by Peter Lerangis

  "Uh, yeah," Dan said. "And I don't read a note of music. But let's see, who was the one who

  memorized a whole Mozart song and found our last clue? Wait, wait, let me try to remember. Oh. I know -- me!"

  "Dan, are you sure there were characters missing?" Alistair said. "Because the message, as is, is fairly innocuous -- an incantation to luck, honor, triumph, and such."

  "Definitely. At the beginning of each line, there was some weird-looking letter. Like from another language. You know, Sanscript maybe."

  "It's Sanskrit, tattoo-brain," Amy said, sitting at her laptop. "Guess you don't remember

  Everything perfectly."

  She turned to her uncle, who was furiously tapping on his keyboard. "What do you

  know about these yakuza people, Uncle Alistair?"

  She thought she could feel him shudder. "They are very nasty and very deadly," he said softly. "Trust me, we do not want to cross their paths." "You know some of them personally?" Dan said.

  "They know me and despise me," Alistair said. "I am an Ekat. The Tomas and the Ekats have been bitter enemies for centuries. The yakuza have long been suspected to possess a map to a secret underground crypt. And if I am to understand this recent message, we may have found a copy."

  He hit the PRINT button. From the library's printer, a map slowly made its way into the paper tray, an ancient image showing a complicated ribbon of tunnels. "Cool!" Dan exclaimed.

  "You knew about this all along?" Amy asked.

  Alistair shook his head. Once again, his face became pale and drawn. "I have long been searching for certain ... stolen Ekat documents not related to this. One of my colleagues has managed to find a hidden cache. I received a message from him on webmail while we were in Salzburg, with several attachments -- including this map."

  He showed them the printout, which had the heading OF UNKNOWN SIGNIFICANCE.

  "Wait -- Ekat documents? Colleagues?

  What else are you keeping from us? How can you --?"

  Amy's words stopped in her throat. The cursor on Dan's monitor was moving from the middle of the screen up to the left corner. "Dan?" Amy said. "Stop that, okay?" "Stop what?" Dan replied.

  "We know libraries bore you, but can't you take anything seriously?" Amy replied. "You're playing a trick, right? You have something in your pocket and it's sending a signal to the computer. Otherwise, why would the cursor be moving?"

  Now the cursor was on the BACK button, clicking rapidly through every page Dan had visited -- tattoos, information about Hideyoshi and the Sword Hunt, the Facebook pages of three sixth-grade girls --

  "Hey!" Dan shouted.

  "It's a keylogger," Alistair said, swiftly picking up the laptop. "Someone has hacked into the computer remotely and is spying on everything you've looked at today."

  With a solid yank, he pulled the electric plug from the back, and the screen went dead. A steady beeping noise began, and an LCD panel by the light switch flashed red Japanese characters that looked suspiciously like some form of EMERGENCY.

  "How did they do it?" Amy asked.

  Dan took the laptop, examining the PC card. "It's an 802.llg wireless," he said. "So they have to be pretty close. I don't know, maybe like thirty yards -- or fifty if they have a booster or something?"

  Alistair headed for the window. "Which means either they're in the building or in one of those cars outside."

  One of those hundreds of cars, he could have said -- if you considered the cars at the curb, in the nearby parking lot, and bumper-to-bumper on the road.

  Tap-tap-tap-tap!

  The rapping on the door made them all jump. "Is everything all right in there?" a tiny, timid voice called in.

  It sounded like Ms. Nakamura, but there was something about her tone ... Alistair went to the door. "She may know how to run a trace." "No!" Amy blurted out.

  "Ms. Nakamura," Alistair said, yanking the doorknob, "your library has been compromised -- "

  The door flew open -- and Alistair was staring into the massive chest of a gray XXXL

  T-shirt.

  "No kidding, Sherwood," said Eisenhower Holt, with a grin so wide it nearly touched the edges of his stiff military brush cut. "Now, fall in line, all of you – and march!"

  CHAPTER 6

  Dzzzzz

  Amy's phone was vibrating.

  She glanced around the van. In the passenger seat, Eisenhower Holt was arguing with his wife, Mary-Todd, who was driving. In the next row, eleven-year-olds Madison and Reagan Holt were having a contest to see who could fling boogers into the hair of their older brother, Hamilton. Their pit bull, Arnold, barked greedily, snatching the small projectiles in mid flight with his massive jaws.

  "Stop it, he'll kill me!" Ham cried. "That's the point," Madison replied, clapping her hands.

  "Sherwood is the forest, dear," Mary-Todd was insisting to her husband. "The detective was

  Sherlock."

  "We'll look it up!" Eisenhower declared. "May I remind you, Mary-Todd, at West Point my IQ was measured at nearly a perfect one hundred. Well, okay, eighty-nine -- but I hadn't even practiced!"

  "One hundred is considered normal, sugar maple," Mary-Todd replied.

  "Normal is the enemy of creativity," Eisenhower crowed. "A Holt is never normal -- as evidenced by our ingenious capture of the Cahills!"

  Dzzzzz...

  Amy moved her hand into her left pants pocket and pulled out her phone, making sure to keep it out of sight. On the right, she was jammed up against Alistair, who was seething with rage. He in turn was jammed up against Dan -- who seemed oblivious, reading a handful of tourist pamphlets the Holts had left on the van floor.

  Quickly she glanced at the call screen:

  GOMEZ, NELLIE

  She stifled a scream and stared sharply at Alistair and Dan, flashing the screen at them at waist level. Nellie was alive! "YESSSS - WOO-HOO!" Dan blurted.

  "The Cahill boy agrees with me!" Eisenhower said with a grin, turning around toward the back of the van. "Smart boy. You're going places. Like, with us -- as a captive!

  Har-har!"

  The entire Holt family cracked up, except for Arnold, who seemed confused by the sudden absence of flying minitreats.

  “Too bad you weren't smart enough to detect us following you every step of the way," Eisenhower continued, "with our patented Holt hackment technology. First we hacked into the tracking device on your cat -- until we found that your cat was your uncle!"

  Madison and Reagan looked at him in total bewilderment.

  "Then we tailed him to the airport, where I ordered that we attempt the greatest technicological feat of all," Eisenhower went on, "breaking into the airline ticketing mainframe!"

  "But then I reminded him that all he needed to do was follow your limo," Mary-Todd spoke up.

  Madison chimed in: "Once we were at the other airport? And we saw you get into the jet? We just asked this really hot flight guy Fabio? Where you were going?" She grinned. "And he told us."

  "Rawf! ' said Arnold.

  "Thusly," Eisenhower said, "we were able to commandeer our own flight to Japan, where we beat you to the airport and waited until you arrived, following your every move until our ultimate coup -- keyloggering your very laptop to filch all your information! And now that I have you three, I can realize my life's goal. Not just reaching the thirty-nine clues first. But placing the Holt name where it belongs -- at the very crest of the Tomas family ... crest. No longer will history look upon the Holts as dolts. No longer will we be the black sheep, the stain on the family underpants, the smelly footnote to the Tomas legend. And you will help us achieve our destiny by leading us to the very thing your research revealed -- the next clue, which is in the tunnels of Tokyo!"

  "You figured that out all by yourself?" Amy asked, barely containing the relief she felt at knowing her au pair was okay. "About fifty-three percent of it," said Eisenhower. "More like forty-seven," Mary-Todd said. "I knew that sounded wrong," Eisenhower said.

  "Uh, Dad?
I was the one who did all that tech stuff," Reagan whined.

  "Dad what?"

  Eisenhower commanded. "Dad, sir," Reagan said.

  "Your argument is as inane as your conversation," Alistair spoke up, his voice a barely controlled rasp. "You got nothing from hacking the system. You stole my map, you windbag."

  "Uncle Alistair?" Amy said. She had never seen him like this.

  "Is someone meowing back there?" Eisenhower said. "Do I hear an E-kat?’

  "Rawf?" said Arnold, suddenly drooling.

  Alistair laughed defiantly. "What makes you miscreants think you can actually read that map correctly? It's written in Japanese."

  "Ha! No grass grows over the head of a Holt!" Eisenhower thundered. "I overheard you through the library door, talking about an ancient underground crypt. So we will start at ... the underground crypt district.

  Harch!"

  The van lurched to the left.

  Dan looked up from a map of the Tokyo subway system. His face was all lit up, the way it was whenever he'd broken a code or discovered a cheat in World of Warcraft.

  "Crypt? I think we're better off checking out the subway system."

  The van lurched to the right.

  "I have to pee," Madison announced.

  The van skidded to a stop on the shoulder of the road. "Will someone make a decision?" Mary-Todd said.

  As the Holts ramped up their various arguments, Alistair whispered to Dan, "Subway system, my boy? Do tell."

  "First, I memorized your map," Dan began with a bit too much enthusiasm. "Ssshhh!" Amy hissed.

  "The secret tunnels and the subway," Dan barreled on. "They match -- almost exactly! I'm figuring maybe the subway was built into the already existing tunnels!" The Holts shut up at once.

  "Dan -- " Amy warned. "You're telling this to them!

  Dan looked up, bewildered. "I was telling Uncle Alistair." "But we-ee-ee heard you," Reagan sang in a taunt, and stuck out her tongue.

  "Besides, if you hadn't told us, you'd be dead meat."

  "Rawf ," said Arnold, baring his saliva-glistened incisors.

  Dan's face turned white. He cast a guilty look at Amy and at Alistair, whose face had become suddenly cloudy. "Um, well... the thing is? It's not really a match. So I was wrong. 'Cause, um, there's this big difference. In the center of the old map, there's an intersection with a large room. In the subway map, the tracks are parallel. So ... see? It must be the wrong place "

  "Where two maps diverge is precisely where the secret might be!" Eisenhower crowed. "Brilliant as always!" Mary-Todd said.

  Amy groaned. The stupider Dan became, the smarter it made Eisenhower Holt. "Sweet," said Hamilton with a sneer.

  Suddenly, Eisenhower spun on them with narrowed eyes. "Now, you're not trying to trap us, are you? We're not as dumb as we look. Or ... whatever."

  "Well ..." Dan looked helplessly from Amy to Alistair. "There are subway stops on either side. I'm figuring the one at the northern end, Yotsuya, is closer."

  "We'll take the one at the southern end," Eisenhower commanded.

  The van lurched into the road again.

  "Now I really have to pee," said Madison.

  They waited silently until the train left Nagatacho station. They were the only ones on the subway platform now. The train schedule, which Alistair had picked up from the attendant, said that the next train arrived at 5:40. He checked his watch.

  Then he looked down at the tracks -- the dark, narrow tracks that led into a pitch-black tunnel on either side.

  "It's five-seventeen," he said, his voice shaking. "We have exactly twenty-three minutes."

  Eisenhower stepped to the edge of the platform. "Fall in, troops!" he said. "I want to go first!" Madison said.

  "She kept us waiting when she was in the bathroom," Reagan complained. "Can I go? Please?"

  "It's almost Mom's birthday," Hamilton said.

  "Rawf," said Arnold, diving over the edge to chase a soot-blackened rat that skittered across the tracks.

  "Every Holt for himself!" Eisenhower cried, pulling green gardener's gloves from his pocket, snapping them on, and lowering himself over the edge. "Be sure not to touch the fourth rail!" "Third, hug-muffin," Mary-Todd said.

  As Madison and Reagan followed, Alistair took Dan's and Amy's arms and stepped slowly backward. He was trying to escape. But Mary-Todd and Hamilton stood in his path, arms folded. "Uh-uh-uh!" Hamilton tutted.

  "Nice try, Uncle," Dan whispered. It was 5:19. Twenty-one minutes left.

  With a sigh, Dan climbed onto the track, followed by Amy, Alistair, and the remaining Holts. A stream, inky black, ran between the rails. A gum wrapper floated by. Ahead of them, the tunnel plunged into blackness. Dan felt woozy. He and Amy hadn't had much luck in underground places. Images began floating in his brain. Running ... running ... from Jonah Wizard in a subterranean museum in Venice ... from the Kabras in the Catacombs under Paris ... from a train ... from a memory ... He could still feel Amy's hand yanking him away from the approaching subway car in Paris, his backpack disappearing underneath the tons of speeding steel, the scream ripping from his throat. To anyone else, the faded snapshot he'd kept in that pack -- the smiling couple -- would have seemed blurry and uninteresting. But to Dan, it was as important as life. He had looked at it every day, memorized every last pixel. It was the only memento, the only remaining image of the parents he barely remembered. And now it was gone, a continent away.

  "Hup-two-three-four ... " Eisenhower called out.

  Amy pulled Dan forward, shaking the memory from his brain.

  Splash-splash-splash-thwuck, went his footsteps.

  "Thwuck?" he squeaked.

  "Don't ask," said Amy. Even in the near-blackness, Dan could tell her face was bone-white.

  They trudged onward, keeping to the middle of the track to avoid the third rail, until the dimming light of the station behind them faded to nothing. "RePORT on proGRESS!" Eisenhower called out.

  Dan's hands shook as he shone his pocket flashlight on the subway map. Ahead of them, the light of the next station was barely visible. They had passed the halfway point. "According to this," Dan said, "we should be about there now. The intersection would have been to our left."

  "At ease!" Eisenhower said. "Fall in to examine hidden methods of egress!" Amy reached out to her left, feeling along the grime-covered surface. "Nothing there but a wall."

  "Keep trying," Eisenhower said.

  Dan frantically pushed and punched, but the wall was solid. Thick cement. He checked his watch, which was already beginning to lose its glow-in-the-dark properties.

  5:30.

  "Th-this was a dumb idea," he said, his voice echoing dully in the tunnel. "Look, we have ten minutes. We left the station eleven minutes ago. We have enough time to get back before -- "

  "Abort mission!" Eisenhower barked. "Dress left! And ... hut-two-three-four!

  Dan began to run, nearly tripping over his sister. "Ow!" Amy cried out.

  "Dan!"

  "Sorry!" Dan said. "See you at the platform "

  "Dan, my foot is stuck!"

  Dan whirled around and shone his flashlight on Amy's crouching silhouette. She was grimacing, her left foot jammed under one of the rails. "I'll rescue her!" Hamilton shouted. "No, me!" Reagan shrieked. "I never get to rescue first!"

  "Stand clear!" Eisenhower boomed. "Rawf," Arnold barked.

  Dan elbowed his way into the crowd, trying to reach his sister, who was screaming at

  the top of her lungs, "You're only making it worse!"

  Dan's hair began to rise in swirls lightly from the back of his head. A low but steady

  wind was gusting through the tunnel from the south. Dan could see Amy's face looking up to him, eyes wide. "Dan? How accurate are those train tables?" "I don't know!" Dan replied.

  "When a train is entering a t-tunnel, don't you f-feel the air being pushed --?" Ho-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-onk!

  Dan spun toward the sound. Two distant headlights, like reptilian e
yes piercing the darkness, were headed their way -- and growing fast.

  "Holts -bolt! " Eisenhower commanded.

  As one, the Holt family turned away from the approaching train and broke for the next station at a dead run.

  "Don't leave us!" Amy shouted.

  Dan pulled and pulled. Amy's foot was jammed. Tight. "OWWWW!"

  "I'll ... get... it," Dan said through gritted teeth. He knelt in the icy trickle of water running between the rails, now choppy with the vibrations.

  "Run, Dan!" "Wait... I know ... "

  The laces.

  Dan dug his fingers into her shoelaces and yanked hard.

  They were knotted. Wet and stuck. Her foot seemed glued to the shoe. If he could just slip it out, use the wetness to slide ...

  The screech of the brakes filled the tunnel. The wind whipped around him like a gale, throwing dust and debris into his eyes. His vision flashed white. His body was telling him to go. Now.

  "JUST RUN!"

  "Stop it, Amy, I can't leave you -- " She had saved him. He could save her. He had to do it.

  Pull!

  The wind was violent. The noise pressed into his ears like a solid thing. He pulled again, wiggled, jerked, pounded.

  She was resisting now, pushing him away -- trying to save him. Her breath felt cold on his neck, the veins in her throat bulging out.

  He realized she was shrieking, but he couldn't hear a word.

  HO-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-ONK!

  Dan's body froze solid as he turned into the glare of the oncoming headlights.

  CHAPTER 7

  "AHHHHHH!"

  Amy didn't feel much at all. The wind. The metallic shriek of the brakes, the horn blocking out all sound.

  She must have closed her eyes, because she didn't see anything, either. She felt. Her body wrenched upward and backward. She was flying.

  And then her shoulder hit solid, cold cement. When she opened her eyes, all was dark and silent.

  "I g-g-guess ... I'm dead?" she heard her own voice call out, strangely high-pitched and thin.

  For a long time, she heard nothing else. And then: "Hi, Dead. I'm Dan."

  The ssshhhhick

  of a lit match sounded, and a tremulous light outlined two faces. Amy sat up. Her left ankle ached, and her shoe was missing. "Uncle Alistair? Dan?"