Samantha caught up with Nipper and approached the man. He was wearing jeans, a black T-shirt, and a yellow apron. Stenciled on the sides of the cart and on his apron were large letters: PAIN DU JOUR.
Nipper waved at him, then sniffed the air dramatically and shook his head from side to side. Then he did it five more times. It reminded Samantha of Dennis.
As soon as Nipper had the man’s attention, he called out cheerfully, “Sir. We don’t want any pain, but could you give us some of that great bread?”
The man stared at him for a moment. Then he smiled.
“Not ‘pain.’ It’s pronounced ‘pan.’ That is the French word for bread,” he explained in English, with a hint of a French accent.
Samantha glared at Nipper but didn’t say anything. She wasn’t sure if goofball kid brothers were as common in France as they were in the USA.
Nipper kept going. “Mr. Pan—or may I call you Peter? I’d like your freshest jumbo breadstick.” He gestured toward Samantha. “My personal assistant will handle the finances.”
“It is a baguette,” said the vendor patiently. He grabbed one of the vertical loaves and slid it into a paper sleeve. Then he turned and held it out to Samantha. “Please pay two euros for your boss, young personal assistant lady.”
There were so many things wrong with this exchange between her brother and the vendor that Samantha was speechless. And, unfortunately, euro-less.
She shrugged and held out both hands, palms up, to indicate that she had no money. Then she remembered that she did have some of the loose change from her desk. She quickly fished around in her pockets and came up with two quarters. Sheepishly, she presented them to the vendor.
Uncle Paul had taught her to say three things in eleven languages. The first thing was “please.”
“S’il vous plaît,” she said carefully.
A look of disappointment washed over the man’s face. He pulled the baguette away and put it back on display. Then he turned and opened a side door of the cart. He fumbled around inside for a moment and produced a different loaf of bread. It was already wrapped in paper.
“My half-dollar special for two special customers,” he said. He handed the baguette to Samantha with one hand while taking the two quarters with the other.
Samantha eyed the delicious-smelling baguette on the shelf as she accepted the special bread. She unwrapped and examined it quickly. It felt a little hard and it didn’t smell very fresh.
“When did you bake this?” she asked.
“Why…it was baked in the morning,” said the man, sounding insulted.
“Which morning?” Samantha pressed.
Meanwhile, Nipper noticed a new scent. It was quite different from the aroma of freshly baked bread and it was absolutely not delicious. It smelled like old banana peels, melted crayons, and sweaty sneakers left in a backpack for a month.
“This is definitely not a freshly baked baguette,” Samantha continued, arguing with the street vendor. As she spoke, she waved the bread in the air.
Nipper, nose twitching, was watching his sister when something flashed through the air and—thwack!—hit the baguette. It sliced into the bread, coming to a stop halfway through the narrow loaf.
If it had actually been a freshly baked baguette, the sharp object would have sliced all the way through a light and flaky crust and out the other side. It would have continued in a straight line until it hit Samantha right between the eyes…and that would have been the end of this story.
Fortunately, it had been fifty-seven hours since the baker removed the special baguette from his oven and left it to cool. For that reason, the flying object remained lodged in the stale French bread.
“What’s this?” asked Samantha, pulling the metal object from the bread and holding it up. It flashed silver in the light.
“It’s a shuriken!” gasped Nipper. “A ninja throwing star!”
The flat, shiny object was indeed shaped like a star, about three inches across. It had eight needle-sharp points. The outline of a crown and two crossed swords was engraved in the center.
Samantha puzzled over the weapon and its engraving for a second. Then she slid it carefully into the front pocket of her pants.
Thwack! Bang!
A second flying blade whizzed at her and hit the bread. And a third sailed past Samantha’s neck and slammed into the side of the bakery cart.
Alarmed, the vendor hopped onto his bicycle and began to pedal away.
Nipper grabbed a thick, round loaf off the back of the cart as the man departed, and he whirled around, holding the loaf in front of his face for protection.
Thunk! Thunk!
The round loaves were heavier and thicker than baguettes. Just in time, Nipper’s bread stopped two metal stars from hitting his face.
“Sam! We’re under attack!” he shouted to his sister.
The food cart was gone and they had walked too far from the Louvre plaza to call for help. They were alone on the sidewalk, with nowhere to hide.
Halfway down the block, a hooded figure clad all in black tiptoed toward them. He may have thought that he was being sneaky, but his horrible smell gave him away.
With nothing but bread to defend themselves, the Spinners stood and faced the approaching menace.
Samantha and Nipper had no formal martial arts training, but they had almost ten thousand hours of pillow-fighting experience between them. They had no idea why they were under attack, but they were not going down without a fight.
As the man drew close, they could see that he was indeed some kind of ninja. At least, he was dressed like one. He wore a black hood that covered his entire face, except for the narrowest slit where his eyes peeked through. He had on a long black coat and baggy black pants that drew tight around his shins, revealing black socks and black split-toe ninja slippers.
And he was smeared with garbage. Or that was what it looked like. Brown and green splotches covered his shirt and coat. A yellowish stripe ran down his left thigh. It looked like a bird had recently pooped on his right shoulder.
He moved swiftly and silently, but his smell screamed out loudly. In seconds, he was within a few feet of the kids. Then he stopped.
“How did you get that umbrella?” he demanded. “There are twenty ninjas in the United States right now, looking for—”
Nipper sprang forward. He moved quickly and maneuvered himself directly behind the shrouded man. Then, holding tight to his loaf of bread, he swung at the ninja’s back with all his might.
There was a loud thwack. The bread struck something flat and hard beneath the ninja’s shirt. It felt to Nipper almost like he’d hit a plank of wood.
In a flash, the ninja turned, drawing a long silver sword from a sheath at his side. Even faster than Nipper had launched himself, the ninja diced the bread into tiny cubes that dropped to the sidewalk. Before Nipper could react, the ninja raised one of his smelly feet and kicked him in the center of his chest, knocking him backward onto the bread cube–sprinkled pavement.
Samantha stepped between Nipper and their attacker. Defiantly, she held up the throwing star–studded baguette in one hand. In the other, she grasped the metal tip of the umbrella and pointed the wooden handle at him.
“I’ve heard that Parisians aren’t friendly to visitors,” she said. “But this is ridiculous.”
“Yeah,” said Nipper, scrambling back to his feet. “France isn’t making a good first impression.”
“I don’t care about France,” the ninja muttered. His accent might have been British. It was hard to tell, as it was coming through the filthy face mask. It clearly wasn’t a French accent. He shifted his body, adjusting whatever it was that he was concealing inside his shirt. Then he lifted his sword and waved it at Samantha. “Hand it over,” he told her.
“You don’t want this bread,” said Sa
mantha. “It’s stale. And it’s full of metal blades.”
“No!” said the man in black, much louder. “The umbrella.”
“You forgot to say s’il vous plaît,” said Samantha.
“I don’t speak French,” said the ninja. “Now let me have it.”
Samantha was happy to let him have it. She gathered her strength and brought the umbrella down on his head as hard as she could.
Wham! The man let go of his sword and fell face-first onto the pavement, knocked out cold.
Nipper bent down and rapped his knuckles on the center of the unconscious ninja’s back. It was like knocking on a door. He started to reach for the ninja’s sword, but Samantha grabbed his shoulder.
“Leave it,” she said. “The handle’s gross and sticky, and we’ve got to get out of here now.”
Nipper looked back at the grimy man and his grimy weapon and nodded in agreement. Then he and his sister ran.
They retraced their path along the sidewalk and through the break in the stone wall and headed into the crowded Louvre plaza. They pushed their way through the tourists, searching for the spot on the ground where they’d emerged. Just as they were about to reach the huge glass pyramid, they stopped short. Two ninjas stood, side by side, in their path, and it looked like they were on the very tile that had lifted Samantha and her brother from the magtrain chamber. The two black-clad figures didn’t notice the kids. They were busy studying the tile beneath their feet. They knew it wasn’t just an ordinary part of the plaza. They were clearly trying to figure out how to make it do something.
“They found the square,” said Nipper. “But I don’t think they know about the secret stomp.”
Samantha glanced sideways to make sure that she still had the umbrella on her shoulder. Then she grabbed her brother’s hand and they ran through the crowd and away from the Louvre. They turned to their right and ran to the closest point of the low stone wall that surrounded the plaza. They hopped over it and sat down on the grass, out of sight.
“I think I saw another way out of here,” Samantha said, catching her breath.
She popped open the umbrella and Nipper handed her the magnifying glass.
“Right here,” she said, pointing at the drawing of the Eiffel Tower centered in the lens. “I think there’s some kind of connection from here to Italy.”
There was a tiny arrow beside the lowest landing of the Eiffel Tower, just above the arch that forms the legs. Above the arrow, tiny dots were arranged in a cluster that looked like the letter R. A line started there and ran halfway across the umbrella. Unlike the dotted magtrain line that ran from Seattle to France, this line was a chain of little spirals. It looked to Samantha like a gust of wind.
The line ended at a picture that was definitely the boot-shaped country, Italy.
“There must be a lot of ways to get around using the Plans,” Samantha said. “Now let’s go find that boot—I mean, those dots,” she said. “Or that letter R. Or an arrow, or, um—”
“I get it, Sam,” Nipper cut her off. “Let’s go check out the tower.”
They hopped back over the wall and quickly headed away from the plaza. They ran down a narrow street lined with restaurants and small hotels and didn’t stop until they came to a gloomy-looking woman standing next to a table and chairs outside a café.
Samantha had remembered that the Eiffel Tower was Paris’s tallest building, so she was ready with the second thing Uncle Paul had taught her to say in French: “Where is the tallest building in Paris?”
“Où se trouve le plus grand édifice de Paris?” she asked.
The woman’s expression brightened instantly. “La Tour Eiffel!” she exclaimed, and pointed down the street. She gestured with a curved hand to show that they should follow the bend in the road ahead.
Samantha said, “Merci.” That was the third and final thing she knew how to say in French.
She and Nipper ran down the street, and as they rounded the curve, they saw the banks of the river Seine. Off in the distance, the Eiffel Tower came into view.
Section 01, Detail IMIFRANCES
The Louvre
The Louvre is an immense, sprawling palace in Paris, France. It displays thirty-five thousand works of art and houses hundreds of thousands more. It is one of the world’s largest museums.
It was originally a fortress and then a royal palace. For more than two hundred years, it has been France’s great public art museum.
The Louvre has been expanded many times. Today, its most prominent feature is a giant glass pyramid surrounded on three sides by different wings of the building.
Each year, almost ten million visitors come to see Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and countless other works of art.
* * *
• • •
A secret transit station is located directly beneath the Louvre.
Look for a square tile about ten feet from the entrance to the giant glass pyramid. It is much larger than the thousands of other squares that pave the plaza, and big enough for up to four adults to stand on.
While you’re in the center of the tile, stomp your foot four times. The tile will descend quickly, coming to a stop in the entrance chamber to the Paris magtrain station. A new tile will slide into place above your head.
To return to the surface, stomp four times again. The tile will rise and slide back into place. Chances are, no one will notice as you emerge in the museum’s courtyard.
Samantha and Nipper jogged along the banks of the river Seine to the park with the Eiffel Tower standing near its northwestern end. As they made their way through the broad green expanse, Samantha took a moment to look around.
“I can’t believe we’re actually in Paris,” she said to Nipper.
“Yeah,” he replied. He looked back over his shoulder to see if any ninjas were behind them. “Let’s get out of Paris as soon as we can.”
Samantha felt a jab from the throwing star in her pocket. Nipper was right. They needed to get home safely and figure out what was going on.
“Are you eating something?” she asked him.
Nipper’s mouth was full. He held out a handful of ninja-cut bread cubes he’d picked up from the sidewalk.
“Oh, yuck,” she exclaimed.
“It’s actually quite delicious,” he mumbled as they continued running through the park.
Soon they reached the base of the tower. Visitors, tour guides, souvenir vendors, and street performers milled about the wide space between the four massive legs. A long line of people talked and snacked and snapped photos as they waited to ride the elevator to the top.
“Over there,” Samantha said, pointing. “We’re taking the stairs.”
Nipper stopped in his tracks. He tilted his head back and stared up at the tower. It was over a thousand feet high. His arms fell limp at his sides.
“Relax,” said Samantha. “We’re only going up to the first landing.”
Nipper counted the two platforms on the tower before it curved upward into the sky. Then he counted fourteen flights of stairs leading up to the first one.
“Okay,” he said. “I guess it’s better than being attacked by ninjas.”
Samantha had to agree. She skirted the people in line for the elevator and headed for the stairs. There didn’t seem to be anyone taking tickets just then, so they walked through the turnstile without stopping.
Side by side, they marched up the stairs.
Clang! Clang! Clang! The metal echoed under their feet as they climbed, zigging and zagging up the endless staircase. At each new landing, the many gaps between the rails and beams of the complex structure grew larger. Samantha and Nipper started to catch glimpses of the city below.
Flight after flight they rose, until they reached the first platform. As they stepped out onto it, the beautiful city of Paris un
folded beneath them. The river Seine surrounded them on three sides. To their right, they saw the distant spires of the grand cathedral, Notre-Dame de Paris, rising from an island in the middle of the Seine, and far off they could see the great avenue leading to the Arc de Triomphe, the giant stone victory arch.
They stood silent for a moment, taking in the glorious view and catching their breath from the long climb. As Samantha gazed down at the park below, she spotted a line of four black dots moving toward the base of the tower.
“Sightseeing tour’s over,” she told her brother. “Find the R.”
Nipper nodded and they began inspecting the platform, winding their way around tourists, who surveyed the scene below.
Samantha scanned the beams that made up the mighty tower. There were small round bumps on every surface—the rivets that held the structure together.
“Over here!” Nipper called. He stood beside one of the large, slanted girders that formed the tower’s northernmost leg. He was pointing to a group of rivets at knee height on the painted metal surface.
Samantha looked to her left and right to see if any of the tourists were paying attention to her or her brother. No one had noticed them at all. Then she crossed the platform to investigate.
“R marks the spot,” said Nipper.
All around the tower, rivets ran in straight lines and X-shaped patterns. In this one small area, however, about thirty rivets formed a large letter R. One rivet in the top corner of the cluster wasn’t painted. Instead, it was shiny and silver.
Samantha Spinner and the Super-Secret Plans Page 5
