“Yo, kids. The line starts outside. Unless you’re members. Then youse can check in at the membership desk.”
I hesitated. “Well, um—”
The three surfer dudes slammed through the glass doors.
I stopped hesitating. “We’d like to buy a family membership!”
The guard jabbed his thumb over his shoulder. “See the lady at the desk.” He moved away to deal with the three new intruders. “Yo. Hawaii Five-O. This is a museum here. There’s no running in museums.”
While the guard kept the surfers busy, I handed the membership lady five one-hundred-dollar bills.
“Will that cover us?”
“Are you four a family?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“A family membership is $175.”
“Then give us a few of them. We’re in a hurry.”
We cut across the sculpture garden, dashed down a couple of halls lined with weird paint splotches and portraits of soup cans, and headed out an exit on the far side of the building.
For good measure, we ran across the street, raced around the corner, and headed over to the Hilton Hotel, where there was a long line of yellow taxicabs.
“May I help you, children?” asked a uniformed doorman.
“Yes, sir,” I said, pulling another one-hundred-dollar bill out of my pocket. “Our father said you might be able to help us find a taxi if I gave you a tip.”
The doorman immediately blew his whistle, and a cab screeched up the covered driveway.
The driver behind the wheel looked like a maniac. (I’m told that most taxi drivers in New York are maniacs.)
“Um, Bick?” said Beck when she saw the bug-eyed loon. “Maybe we should just walk to Columbia.”
“No,” said Storm, crawling into the cab. “I’m tired of running and walking.”
Beck and I slid into the backseat with Storm. Tommy sat up front with the driver. Before he had even closed the door, we were zooming away from the hotel, horn blaring, our driver squeezing his cab between lanes and mumbling under his breath. We skated through yellow lights, flew around Columbus Circle, and were off like a shot up Broadway toward Columbia.
No way were those surfer dudes going to catch up to this wild ride!
CHAPTER 54
We made it up to Columbia University. Alive.
“There’s Schermerhorn Hall,” said Beck, pointing to a redbrick building with a roof the same green as the Statue of Liberty.
“It was built in 1896,” said Storm. I guess she had memorized a college brochure. “The inscription over the doorway says ‘Speak to the earth and it shall teach thee.’ ”
“Really?” said Tommy. “College kids talk to dirt?”
“Come on,” I said. “We need to find the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art and Archaeology.”
We entered the building and took an elevator up to the eighth floor. Tommy was still lugging the Grecian urn in his gigantic gym bag.
When we stepped into the hallway, we heard a student say, “Thank you, Professor Lewis!”
“You are most welcome, Kathryn. Most welcome, indeed.”
His voice sounded sort of familiar. Kind of wet and slobbery around the vowels.
Beck rapped her knuckles on his office door.
“Professor Lewis?”
“Come in, come in.”
The four of us stepped into a little office crammed with books and papers stacked to the ceiling. It was also crammed with Dr. Lewis, who probably weighed three hundred and fifty pounds and looked like he might burst through the arms of his creaky wooden chair. He had chubby cheeks and slicked-down curly hair parted in the middle. He wore a rumpled tweed sport coat, a wrinkled button-down shirt, a hula girl necktie, and blue jeans.
“Are you four in my lecture series?” he asked, peering over the top of his glasses.
“No,” I said. “We’re Dr. Kidd’s children.”
“Indeed? Ah, yes. My brother suggested that you might be coming to see me.”
“Your brother?”
“My twin brother. A very interesting, shall we say, ‘antiquities dealer’ down in the Cayman Islands.”
Beck shot me a look. Was it possible?
“Are you talking about Louie Louie?” I said.
“Indeed. He spells his last name differently than I, but for that eccentricity we must blame our parents, who thought twins should share everything, including both their names. To appease the officials at the birth registry, however, they spelled our two names slightly differently. He is Louis with an ou, and I am Lewis with an ew.”
“Wow,” said Beck. “Now that you mention it, you do sort of look like Louie Louie.”
(That was very PC of Beck. Because she could’ve said, “Wow. You both look like blimps who escaped from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.”)
“The fact that Louis and I are twins,” the professor continued, “is why you children ended up with the bee amulet. My brother tells me he was sorely tempted to renege on his deal with your father and sell the Minoan bauble to Nathan Collier. But he gave your father his word. And he has a soft spot for twins.”
“Don’t we all?” said Storm (somewhat sarcastically, if you ask me).
“Now, then,” said Professor Lewis, “how may I be of assistance?”
“Well, sir,” I said, “as you may know, our mom sort of disappeared—”
Dr. Lewis clucked his tongue. “Oh, yes. Pity she got caught up in this mess. One of the finest archaeological minds I have ever known. An expert’s expert at authenticating ancient artifacts.”
“That’s why we need you,” said Beck.
Tommy hoisted the gym bag up onto the professor’s desk.
“Oh, my. What’s in the bag?”
“An object we picked up in Charleston, South Carolina,” I explained.
“From Ms. Portia Macy-Hudson?”
“Yeah,” said Beck. “The wackaloon with bees in her brain.”
“Indeed?” Professor Lewis rubbed his chubby hands together, raccoon-style. “Might I examine your treasure?”
“Please do,” I said. “We’re hoping, since Mom’s not around, you can authenticate it for us.”
“I will do my best, children.” He carefully unzipped the gym bag.
“It’s inside my wadded-up sweatshirt,” said Tommy. “Sorry about the BO.”
The professor carefully unwrapped the bundle.
“Oh my!” He gasped. “Could it be?”
He extracted the provenance papers from inside the antique jug and read what was written on them. Then he gasped again. “Oh, my!”
“What is it?” I asked.
“The Grecian urn.”
“Um, we knew that,” said Beck.
“I’m sorry. I should be more precise. It is the Attic shape overwrought with marble men and maidens.”
“Huh?” He’d totally lost me.
“Children, this is the Grecian urn. The very one the great English poet John Keats wrote about in 1819. Surely you are familiar with his ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’?”
“The final lines,” said Storm, “declare that ‘beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’ ”
“Matey,” I mumbled, because that was what Dad had scrawled in the margins of his Grecian urn cartoon in The Room—“That is all ye need to know, matey.”
His scribble had been another clue!
“This priceless treasure,” said Professor Lewis, staring at the clay pot in awe, “this humble but beautiful urn is the very reason your mother is missing.”
“What?” we all yelled together.
“It will also, I am quite certain, set her free!”
CHAPTER 55
“Mom’s alive?” “Are you sure?”
“How, exactly, do we save her?”
“So, like, how’s this Greek water jug gonna set her free, doc?”
Yes, we more or less bombarded Dr. Lewis with questions. He did his best to quickly explain.
“Several months
ago,” he said, “multibillionaire art collector Athos Aramis—a notorious international arms dealer known as the Pirate King because he has outfitted so many ne’er-do-wells and scallywags with weaponry—was about to complete a top secret antiquities-for-arms deal in Cyprus.”
“Cyprus is where the thugs kidnapped Mom!” I said.
“Indeed. Mr. Aramis—who, by the by, lives here in New York City—sent your mother, whom he trusted and often used in transactions of this sort, to analyze the art and antiquities the Cypriot scoundrels were using to pay him for their weaponry. When it came time to authenticate the Grecian urn, which the Cypriots claimed was the very Sosibios vase that the poet Keats had drawn upon as the inspiration for his famous ode, your mother declared the urn to be a fake.”
“Why?” I asked. “I thought you said this was the one!”
“It most certainly is. But this urn was stolen off a cargo vessel bound for Cyprus by another band of marauding pirates and eventually found its way to Ms. Portia Macy-Hudson down in South Carolina. The urn the Cypriots were paying Mr. Aramis with was a fake, as your mother declared. Your father and I had been diligently tracking the true urn’s whereabouts and finally learned that it was on its way to Charleston.”
“So these creeps in Cyprus,” said Beck. “They kidnapped Mom because she told the truth?”
“Oh, yes. You see, the truth squelched their deal with the Pirate King. Once your mother declared the urn to be a counterfeit, Mr. Aramis refused to give those Cypriot rascals their weapons. The Cypriots, in turn, swore they would not release your mother, Mr. Aramis’s personal envoy, until they received all the weapons they had been promised in the art-for-arms swap. As you might imagine, negotiations between the two parties have been at something of a standstill because neither side is in possession of the authentic Keats urn.”
“But now we have it,” I said.
“Indeed,” said Dr. Lewis.
“This was Dad’s mission,” said Beck. “To find the real urn and then use it to rescue Mom.”
I nodded. “And now it’s up to us to finish the job for him!”
CHAPTER 56
Talk about being stunned. Mom, whom we’d just learned was a CIA agent, was also acting as a go-between for a notorious arms dealer known as the Pirate King? Meanwhile, she was also helping Dad run the treasure-hunting business, homeschooling the four of us, and making the best fish tacos on the planet.
Our mother was one serious multitasker.
“Wait a second,” Beck said to Professor Lewis. “Dad had all sorts of photographs of French paintings plastered on the walls of his, er, office. What’s up with those?”
“I imagine most of those would be the paintings your father had personally procured for Mr. Aramis on an earlier job. The rest were the artworks to be provided by the Cypriot bandits in exchange for the weaponry. In fact, your father helped Mr. Aramis put together the list of, shall we say, ‘missing’ artworks he wanted the terrorists to bring to the deal.”
I almost gave myself whiplash when I heard that. “Terrorists?”
“Well,” said Professor Lewis, “I use the term loosely. Let’s just say the gentlemen in Cyprus are not very nice. Thieves and smugglers and riffraff.”
“But Mr. Aramis is a bad guy, too, right?”
“Oh, yes. Indeed. In fact, I would daresay that Athos Aramis is one of the worst bad guys currently residing on the FBI’s most-wanted list. He’s sold weapons to many of America’s mortal enemies. He’s ruthless, extremely violent, and liable to lash out if backed into a corner. I’ve also heard that he’s extremely cruel to children and small animals.”
“And Mom and Dad work for this guy?” I was aghast. Astonished. Horrified. All of the above. “Mom authenticates his Grecian urns and Dad hunts down art treasures for him?”
“Indeed, but this art-for-arms deal was just one small part of a much bigger operation involving Aramis and his shady dealings.”
“You’re lying,” said Tailspin Tommy. “No way would Mom and Dad work for a skeevoid like Aramis. Storm? You got any more of that truth juice?”
“Back on the boat.”
“Good. We need to give this troll a shot in the butt and make him stop lying about Mom and Dad.”
“I am not lying, children. But—”
“No,” I said. “Don’t you dare tell us that Mom and Dad were frauds. That they were only pretending to work for the CIA so they could make a ton of money working for this Aramis creep instead.”
“Fine,” said Professor Lewis with a mysterious twinkle in his eye. “I won’t tell you that. Because in your hearts, you already know the real truth.”
CHAPTER 57
Before we left his office, Professor Lewis insisted that we take one of his business cards.
“Call me anytime. Day or night. If I can be of assistance in any way—”
“You’ve done enough,” said Tommy, who was giving the professor the stink eye as he repacked the Grecian urn inside his grimy sweatshirt so he could stuff it back into the gym bag.
Beck grabbed the provenance papers and jammed them inside her back pocket. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I assure you, children, I meant no disrespect. Your parents were my close, personal friends. I urge you to step back and look at the bigger picture—”
“No, thanks,” I said. “We’re done looking at pictures. Especially ones you say Dad stole for a cutthroat criminal creep.”
The four of us trooped out of the office and stomped down the stairs. We were too steamed to wait for the elevator. We came out of Schermerhorn Hall and hiked across the college campus. Nobody said a word.
“We should go back to the boat,” I finally suggested. “We need to figure out how to get in contact with this Athos Aramis. Maybe if we give him the real urn, he can persuade the bad guys in Cyprus to let Mom go.”
“He’s in Dad’s address book on the computer,” said Storm, no doubt summoning up the A listings in her photographic memory.
“Cool. We’ll take the—”
Suddenly, a Frisbee bopped Tommy in the head.
“Whoops! Sorry!” said these four giggling college girls who came scampering over to retrieve their flying disc.
“Are you hurt?” cooed the blond.
“Nah,” said Tommy, letting the girls check out his grin and dimples. He rapped his forehead with his knuckles. “I’m thick as a brick up here.”
More giggles.
“Let me take a look,” said the short redhead. “I’m pre-med.”
“Really?” said Tommy, using his cheesiest suave-dude voice. “Maybe we could study some anatomy together.”
The rest of us rolled our eyes. This is how Tommy deals with stress and bad news: He flirts with girls.
“Give me a boost so I can check out the injury site,” said the short doctor-to-be.
“Cool,” said Tommy. “I’ll do anything to help advance medical science.” He set his gym bag down on the ground so he could grab the giggly redhead with both hands and hoist her up.
But the redhead never gave him that chance.
Instead, she kicked him—right where every doctor in the world knows it will hurt a guy the worst.
Tommy buckled in agony.
The second blond grabbed the gym bag and started running. Fast.
I made a move to chase after her, but the brunette flashed a nasty-looking knife in my face.
“Back off, butt crumb, or you’re doggie meat!”
“Surfer chicks,” groaned Tommy, still doubled over in pain. “They’re surfer chicks.”
“Chyah,” said the redhead. “Stay off our concrete beach, hotdoggers, or Nathan Collier will go totally kamikaze on you dudes. You four need to leave New York. Leave today!”
Then she ran off after the rest of her friends.
Meanwhile, the girl with the gym bag had made it all the way over to Broadway, where she hopped into a waiting convertible and sped off. The guy behind the wheel was short and had a ponytail.
; “Collier’s pirates took the urn,” said Storm, stating the painfully obvious. “We can’t use it to rescue Mom.”
The four of us stood there staring blankly as the three other surfer chicks disappeared into the crowds of college kids changing classes.
We were devastated.
No, we were destroyed.
We were also probably the dumbest kids to ever set foot on the Columbia University campus.
CHAPTER 58
Of all the horrible stuff to happen to us since Mom disappeared, this was probably the worst.
Because we’d lost the key to getting her back.
The Grecian urn was gone. So were our dreams of being reunited with our mother on the sunny beaches of Cyprus. Overwhelmed by exhaustion and serious sadness, we headed back to the West Seventy-Ninth Street Boat Basin and The Lost.
“It’s all my fault,” moped Tommy. “First Daphne. Then Miss Pre-Med. Girls are nothing but trouble. I may never flirt again.”
While Tommy went up to the wheelhouse to sulk and Storm hit the galley to find some Ben & Jerry’s that we could drown our sorrows in, Beck and I started cranking on Dad’s computer down in The Room. We wanted to dig up everything we could find on Mr. Athos Aramis because we both knew that was where Nathan Collier would soon be peddling his stolen goods. If we could be there when the deal went down, maybe we’d still have a shot at rescuing Mom.
Most of the intel on Aramis was pretty ugly stuff.
It seemed as if the government had been chasing the slick and extremely well-connected weasel for years, but they could never prove he had done anything illegal.
“He lives at Nine Eighty-Three Fifth Avenue, right off Central Park,” Beck reported. “Extremely swanky address. And, of course, he owns the penthouse apartment.”
“What’s the security situation?”
“Tight.”
“We need to go after Aramis,” Storm announced, coming into The Room.
Treasure Hunters Page 13
