The 39 Clues: Cahills vs. Vespers Book 2: A King's Ransom

by Jude Watson

  Amy began to cough. She bent over.

  “Amy? Are you okay?”

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” she said.

  “Driver!” Dan called. “Pull over!”

  The driver pulled over. Amy tumbled out, followed by Dan. She bent over, but her eyes swept the roadway.

  “The dark blue car …”

  “I know.”

  Amy wheeled and ran, Dan close behind her. He heard honking horns, and he looked behind them. The dark blue car squealed to a stop at the curb.

  “They’re coming!” he told Amy.

  They turned down a side street, then another. Dan could see that Amy was struggling. His sister could barely walk in high heels, let alone run.

  The road curved, and suddenly they were at the river again. It was a crisp fall day, and people were strolling along the walkway. Dan and Amy weaved through the crowd, trying to put distance between themselves and whoever had been in the dark blue car.

  “Dan,” Amy called, “I twisted my ankle!”

  She limped behind him. Dan saw something ahead, a crowd of tourists listening to a guide in front of a wooden covered bridge that spanned the river.

  “Just a few feet more,” he said. “Hurry.”

  They melted into the crowd.

  “One of the most famous landmarks in Lucerne, the Chapel Bridge, or Kapellbrücke, is the oldest wooden bridge in Europe… .”

  Dan nudged Amy. They skirted the tourists and began to walk across the bridge. Clomp, clomp … their footsteps echoed underneath the wooden roof.

  “Are you okay?” he whispered to Amy.

  “I can make it. I just need to sit down soon.”

  “Okay. When we cross the river, we’ll stop.”

  Clomp, clomp … their footsteps mingled with the sound of the tourists entering the bridge behind them.

  One pair of footsteps was walking faster than the others.

  Dan stiffened. He pressed Amy’s arm, and they moved a bit faster.

  Clompclomp. Clompclomp.

  And the footsteps behind them moved faster.

  Clompclompclomp.

  Faster yet. And the footsteps behind them echoed their hurry.

  “Dan …” Amy was close to sobbing.

  He pressed her forward.

  Clompclompclompclomp.

  The footsteps were running now. The person was immediately behind them.

  Dan suddenly broke off from Amy, turned, and barreled into the figure following them, straight into a stomach. He heard the surprised oof and he kept going, slamming the person into the wooden railing of the bridge, lifting him at the same time in a move that would get a halfback thrown out of the Super Bowl.

  He just had enough time to see William McIntyre’s surprised expression as their family lawyer flipped backward over the railing and into the Reuss River.

  Mr. McIntyre sat in the back of the dark blue sedan, wrapped in blankets. His teeth were still chattering. Dan refilled Mr. McIntyre’s mug with more hot chocolate from a thermos.

  “I’m getting too old for this,” he said.

  “I’m really sorry,” Dan said. “I just thought …”

  “You could have called out,” Amy said.

  “I didn’t want to use your names,” Mr. McIntyre said. “And I couldn’t remember which alias you were using. They know you’re in Lucerne. I needed to get you out of the city as soon as possible.”

  “So where are we going?” Amy held out her cup and Dan poured her more hot chocolate.

  “Basel. Third largest city in Switzerland. You can hide there for a bit. There’s a place I know where you’ll be safe. Get a good night’s sleep. You look like you could use it.” He looked at both of them. “This is different from the thirty-nine clues. You’re not on your own. You have a solid team behind you. So reach out.” He smiled. “Just don’t reach out and push me into a freezing river next time.”

  “I’ll try to remember that.” Dan grinned.

  Outside the windows, the soft rain made the air look like silver mesh. The wet streets gleamed. Amy snuggled under the soft wool throw. Mr. McIntyre always made her feel safe, with his kind gaze and gentle, deep voice. Only he would think to pack a thermos and blankets in case of trouble.

  She was so glad he hadn’t been kidnapped, too. If they lost all three of them — Fiske, Nellie, and Mr. McIntyre … it was unimaginable. Amy pushed the thought away. She was here, and warm, and cozy, and she breathed in the comfort Mr. McIntyre always brought her.

  Amy sighed. “I don’t know if I can sleep until I figure this out.”

  “Attleboro has already begun to research,” McIntyre reassured them. “And I brought a treat.” He reached down to the floor of the car and plopped a black nylon bag on the seat. He removed what looked like a large stainless-steel watch. He flipped up the face of it and they saw a digital map with a green dot on it. “This is a wrist GPS device. And it has an audio component if you need it — so that it can talk you through a route. Comes with an earpiece, too.”

  “Awesome,” Dan declared, reaching for it.

  “It’s already configured to our Gideon satellite. You can load your info onto it using this flash drive,” McIntyre said. “After you load it, destroy the drive.”

  Amy felt the next few days open like a dark hole she was about to fall into. She shook off the feeling and concentrated on the object in Mr. McIntyre’s palm.

  “This is all so cool, Mr. McIntyre,” Dan said. “I feel like a superspy.”

  McIntyre hesitated, and for a moment the tall, gray-haired man looked almost boyish. “After all this time … don’t you think you could call me William?”

  Amy and Dan exchanged glances. As fond as they were of him, they couldn’t imagine calling their lawyer by his first name.

  He saw the hesitation on their faces. “Will?”

  Amy cleared her throat. Dan fiddled with the new GPS.

  “How about ‘Mac’?”

  “Mac,” Dan said, trying out the name.

  Mr. McIntyre looked wistful. “I always wanted to be a Mac.”

  “It’s perfect, Mr. McIntyre.” Amy said. “I mean … Mac.”

  “I just have to say one more thing.” Mr. McIntyre loaded the devices into Amy’s backpack. Then he looked at each of them in turn.

  “I am very proud of you two. Grace would be, too.”

  Amy’s eyes misted. She leaned forward and hugged Mr. McIntyre. That didn’t feel awkward at all.

  Attleboro, Massachusetts

  Evan sat in front of the computer in the command center attic, his head resting in his hand. It was midnight. The house was quiet. Even Saladin was asleep on a stack of papers.

  Sinead slipped through the doorway and came to sit in the chair next to him. “You should get some sleep.”

  “I want to be here when she wakes up.”

  “Don’t your parents wonder where you are?”

  “They think I’m in a sleepover study group. As long as I say the words Harvard and extracurricular, they’re on board.”

  Sinead snorted. “Look, they didn’t get to Basel until midnight. When she contacts us, I’ll wake you up. There’s a six-hour difference — it’s only six A.M. there.”

  Evan shook his head. “I’ll crash on the floor if I need to. She’s going to want all this information as soon as she wakes up. And there’s stuff I can do while I wait.”

  “There’s always stuff we can do,” Sinead said. “But if we work ourselves to exhaustion, we can make mistakes. And that doesn’t help anyone.”

  He knew she was right. Around him the blue screens of the computers glowed. The monitors from locations around the world were temporarily dark. Tacked to the walls were printouts from their research. Sinead had put up six bull
etin boards, one for each Vesper in the Council of Six.

  They had run out of space on the wall, so Evan had strung a wire from one end of the room to the other. They’d begun to clothespin random pieces of information from Cahill texts around the world.

  One after the other, the pages fluttered like flags in the slight breeze from the heating ducts. Impossible to tell which should be investigated, and in what order.

  Evan rubbed his forehead. “That note that Amy and Dan found from their grandmother. VSP 79 – Pliny described first test. How could all this circle back to some volcanic eruption back in Italy in A.D. 79?”

  “We don’t know. But we’ll find out.”

  Her tone was confident. It reminded him of Amy’s. Evan had been plunged into the Cahill world like a deepwater pool, and he was still trying to stay afloat. He still couldn’t quite get over the fact that his girlfriend, whom he thought of as shy and reserved, actually had the skills of an international spymaster.

  And Sinead — he had met her plenty of times. She was Amy’s best friend, but he had found her distant and chilly. He’d often felt that he kept failing to pass a test she hadn’t explained to him. But now that they were working together, he realized that she just had a hard time letting people in. And no wonder — Amy had told him that Sinead’s two brothers had been severely injured in a freak explosion in Philadelphia more than two years ago. Now he knew that the explosion was certainly Cahill-related, but he couldn’t find the courage to ask Sinead about it. Her brother Ted was one of the hostages. No doubt that was what gave her such incredible drive.

  Sinead came over and put her hands on his arms. She gave him a shove. “C’mon. Go sack out. I’m going to run a few programs. I promise to get you if Amy checks in.”

  He stumbled to his feet. He felt like his eyes were full of sand. “Okay. I’ll catch a few hours.”

  Sinead’s green eyes were steady on his. “I never knew how much you cared about her until now.”

  He nodded. “Me, neither. I’ll do anything for her.”

  Sinead nodded. “Me, too,” she said softly.

  Basel, Switzerland

  Dan woke in a panic, forgetting where he was. He lay for a long moment taking in the room, the flowered duvet on the twin bed, the flowered wallpaper, the flower painting on the wall, the vase of roses… .

  Gartenhaus. The small inn on a side street in downtown Basel. Mr. McIntyre — Mac — had left them here last night, urging them to get some sleep. He had to head off to see a client in Rome.

  Dan glanced at his sister, curled up like a comma in the other bed. A perfect time to grab a shower before Amy monopolized the bathroom.

  He stood under the spray. Despite its warmth, he still felt chilled. Every time he closed his eyes he saw Nellie’s face, white with pain.

  No more deaths, he thought. If I have to live through one more death, I’ll fall apart.

  He knew what he had to do. Change the odds.

  When he emerged, he gave the smell test to a T-shirt in his pack and pulled it on, along with his jeans.

  He heard a groan from the other room and stuck his head out the door.

  “I’m so hungry,” Amy said sleepily.

  “Hey, you stole my line,” Dan said.

  There was a soft knock at the door. They both tensed.

  “Breakfast,” the landlady called softly.

  Amy opened the door and Frau Stein bustled in, carrying a tray laden with rolls, cheese, sausages, eggs, jam, a pot of coffee, and a pitcher of hot chocolate.

  “I heard the stirring. I don’t know what you like, so I brought everything,” she said.

  Dan took the tray. It smelled like paradise on a plate. “Thank you a bazillion times.”

  “I don’t know this bazillion, but you are welcome.” She smiled and walked out.

  Amy and Dan attacked the food. In mere minutes, the plates were clean and they were sitting, stuffed, with cups of hot chocolate. The food and sleep had helped. They were raring to go. But where?

  “We’ve only got three days left,” Amy said.

  “And counting.”

  Amy spread out the paper she’d taken from the auction house. She ran her fingers over the names. “A professor, a socialite, an art dealer, a guy with a private library. Just what you’d expect. And they all have money. So why would one of them steal it?”

  “And why would it stay hidden?” Dan asked. “It’s been eighty years. Why hasn’t someone found it? Why hasn’t someone tried to sell it? It doesn’t make sense.”

  Amy frowned. “Attleboro has probably researched these names already.” She reached for the computer. In a moment they saw Evan’s concerned face. Sinead was right at his shoulder.

  “McIntyre told us that he brought you to a safe house,” Evan said. “I’m glad you got to crash. We have some background information. Are you ready?”

  “Ready,” Amy said.

  “Let’s see … Marcel Maubert and Reginald Tawnley both died during the war. But this is interesting — the German professor with all the dough? He became a big guy in the Nazi party. He killed himself — or maybe someone killed him — after the Allies took Berlin in 1945. And Jane Sperling — she was a socialite — her father was Max Sperling, who had a chain of department stores in the Midwest. She was also a medieval scholar — studied at the University of Chicago and then went to Germany. We’re betting that she knew Hummel, because she studied in Heidelberg at the university there.”

  “Heidelberg,” Amy said. “Wasn’t that where the family who owned the de Virga was from?”

  “That’s right. Interesting coincidence, isn’t it?”

  “What happened to Jane Sperling?”

  “She moved to London. During the war she worked for the War Department as a secretary. Later, after the war, she married a GI in Maine. Led a quiet life.”

  “So there’s not much there,” Dan said.

  “We’ll turn up something,” Sinead said. “We just have to keep digging.”

  “Have we heard anything from Vesper One?” Dan asked.

  “Nothing,” Evan said. “As far as we know everyone is still okay.”

  They were silent for a moment. Remembering faces. Remembering how far Vesper One was willing to go.

  “Well,” Amy said. “Let’s get moving.”

  Dan hung up the phone. Amy bent over the paper, her finger moving back and forth over the names.

  She looked up at him. “We’re on the wrong track.”

  “I didn’t know we had a track.”

  “We keep focusing on the map itself. We should be thinking about the world around the map. What was going on in Europe at the time? What did all those names have in common?”

  “They were all rich,” Dan said.

  “The war,” Amy said. “It was 1932. World War Two was still years away. But the world was gearing up for it. The Nazis were coming to power in Germany.”

  She accessed a search engine on the computer. Dan looked over her shoulder. “What are you looking for?”

  “No idea,” she murmured. “But sometimes you have to go fishing.”

  He saw her type in Jane Sperling, then start to scroll through material. “Interesting,” she said. “Jane Sperling was Jewish. Did she know her teacher was a Nazi? Hang on.” She tapped a few more words into the computer and then turned back to Dan. “Just what I thought. The Nazis took over the government in 1933. Jewish students were pressured to leave universities as early as 1932. Eventually, the Nazis expelled Jewish students from every university in Germany.”

  “I didn’t know that part,” Dan said. “Those guys were nasty dudes.”

  Amy looked up. “Why was she at the same auction as her Nazi professor? Coincidence? I just don’t buy it.”

  He tried to follow Amy’s logic.
He’d learned about World War II and the Nazis in school, had read books about it. But to put himself in the heads of the people who actually lived the horror of it — that was harder. Amy had a gift for it.

  “She was a young girl alone — she was only nineteen,” Amy continued. “You can bet her parents wanted her to come home. Germany was turning into a scary place for Jews. But she stayed. She stayed, Dan!” Amy smacked the pillow next to her. “She had courage. So, maybe she knew that her Nazi professor was coming to bid on a famous historical document. The family who owned the de Virga was Jewish. Maybe she was trying to protect it!”

  “So why didn’t she just buy it? She was rich.”

  “Maybe she was planning to. That’s why she came to Lucerne — to outbid Hummel and the others. But somebody got to it first,” Amy said.

  “Hummel?”

  Amy’s fingers flew as she typed an e-mail. “I’m asking the Attleboro group to research Hummel. Then we’ll dig a little deeper into Jane Sperling. I just have a feeling these two are connected somehow.”

  Dan knew better than to argue with Amy’s feelings.

  “Look, research isn’t my strong suit,” he said. “How about I go out and gather some more supplies for us?”

  Amy waved a hand. She was already gone, lost in the 1930s and the lives of people she’d never meet.

  “Back in an hour,” Dan said.

  He had already done a quick search on the train, using his smartphone. He knew he didn’t have much time. He’d managed to gather seven ingredients in Italy. If he could find a few here in Basel — three, at least — he’d have one-quarter of the serum ingredients. And some ingredients he could save for last, things he could pick up easily at any grocery store: salt, mint, honey … those would be easy.

  He blended in like a tourist in his jeans and jacket and baseball cap. He stopped in a pharmacy and in five minutes flat had left with a small bottle of iodine.

  Amy would be furious — and concerned — if she knew he was assembling the serum. She was afraid of it. She would never allow him to take it. She would say it would change him — possibly kill him.