Amy smiled. Sister. She liked the sound of that. Sinead’s expression warmed her. It was the only glimmer of happiness she’d had all day.
“Um, Ames?” Evan said, his voice a little unsteady. “That was brilliant. Really. I, uh, I just wanted to weigh in on how . . . brilliant you are. ’Cause, yeah. I’ve been thinking about that. And, um, you.”
“Thanks, Evan,” Amy said. “And Sinead. Oh, and thank Ian, too!”
Sinead and Evan shot each other a glance. Their smiles vanished.
“Um, that was the other thing we need to tell you,” Sinead said softly. “Ian is gone. He left a note saying he was going to New York. He didn’t say why, but we know Isabel is there.”
“Isabel?” The name was like a sharp slap. Amy’s exhilaration drained instantly. “But why?”
“We don’t know, and his phone is not working,” Sinead said. “I’d like to say he misses his mom. But I don’t think Isabel is missable.”
“He should have contacted us by now,” Evan said.
“Do you think he’s been kidnapped?”
“Don’t know.” Sinead shrugged sadly. “We’ll find out.”
Amy exhaled hard.
Don’t think about Ian.
There had to be an explanation for his absence. Ian had changed. He’d proven that. Attleboro would take care of this misunderstanding. Right now there were way more important things on hand.
Uncle Alistair’s words seemed to jump out of the image — One and a half days left. It wasn’t much time to solve a mystery locked up for six hundred years. And she had only a thin pile of papers from an egghead museum guide to unlock it.
Or they would all have blood on their hands.
“Gooooood afternoon, this is meteorologist Sandy ‘the Breeze’ Bancroft, with Disaster Watch! We’re reporting live from the ultimate death-doom-and-destruction destination — that’s right . . . Pompeii!”
With a frown of deep concern, a bronze-faced weather forecaster gestured to Mount Vesuvius behind him. His hair flew straight backward, courtesy of a gigantic offscreen fan.
Hamilton Holt stopped and turned to look, stepping on Jonah Wizard’s shoes. “Whoa — it’s the Breeze! The Disaster Forecaster, the Sultan of Storms! I can’t believe this!”
“I can’t believe you just scuffed my custom four-hundred-fifty-dollar Nikes,” Jonah said. But already Hamilton was charging the set, like a running back on fourth and goal.
Erasmus checked his watch. “The museum will close soon. We’ll be late.”
“We gotta extract Ham from Mr. Tan-from-a-Can.” Jonah pulled his hood tight to obscure the Face That Launched a Million Downloads. “Keep with me, be cool, go with the flow. Anyone asks, my name is Clarence, yo. I just happen to resemble the international artist Jonah Wizard. Got that?”
Erasmus nodded. “Clarence Yo.”
“What kind of crew are you guys?” Jonah muttered, heading into the crowd.
Bancroft dropped his head portentously at the camera. “We’ll be back after a commercial break, with more —”
“Daily doom in your living room!” Hamilton recited aloud.
The camera light went out, and Bancroft narrowed his eyes at Hamilton. “An American fan. Sweet! Hey, fella, how’d you like a coupon for one dollar off a box of Sandy’s Volcano-Hot Bancroft Breezcuits?”
As Jonah pushed through the crowd, he felt the love all around. Crowds were like oxygen to him. Only a thin piece of fabric separated his peeps from the gangsta di tutti gangstas. He could remove the hood and give them what they hungered for. The face.
But he wasn’t going to do that. He was all about the plan. And the plan was Pompeii. Getting the 411 on Astrid Rosenbloom’s list. Rescuing Phoenix.
But first, the extraction of Hamilton.
The Breeze was signing Ham’s coupon. “Write ‘To my biggest — and I mean biggest — fan,’” Hamilton said.
Jonah pulled on his arm. “Yo, Human Action Figure. We gotta keep the focus.”
Sandy Bancroft looked up. “Why does that sound familiar?”
I gotta stop dropping lyrics from real songs! Jonah scolded himself. “Uh, just sayin’.”
Bancroft cocked his head. “‘Just Sayin’ — my kids love that song!”
Jonah cringed at his own carelessness. “Yo, you talk to him, Erasmus,” he whispered over his shoulder.
Erasmus yanked Hamilton by the arm. “Got to run. Thanks, Mr. Breeze.”
As they turned to go, Jonah nearly rammed into a girl wearing an I WENT TO POMPEII AND MET THE LAVA MY LIFE T-shirt. “Yo, don’t touch the merch,” he said.
The girl’s jaw dropped open.
Oops.
“Let’s roll!” Jonah shouted, breaking into a sprint. “We got about three seconds! Where to?”
“The Antiquarium!” Erasmus said, struggling to keep pace. “Pompeii’s museum. The biggest resource about the explosion. Why are we running?”
“Just do it!” Jonah said.
Clutching his coupon, Hamilton grinned. “You have no idea how much this means to me.”
“It’s about to mean a whole lot more!” said Jonah, as a gust of wind blew the hood off his face.
A bloodcurdling shriek rang out behind him. “JO-O-O-O-NAH!”
Jonah could feel the pavement shaking under his feet.
He wasn’t sure if it was the mob or the volcano.
Sometimes, Ian Kabra thought, it paid to be devastatingly handsome.
With a big smile, he strode up to the United Nations security guard. She looked exactly like her photo in the Cahill database.
Reina Mendez. Age 37. 144-36 Steinway Place, Astoria. Daughter, Pilar. Fifth grade, PS 151Q, gifted in math and chemistry, scheduled for accelerated math on New York State standardized test.
“Good morning, Reina,” he said, holding out his fake ID to the guard. He had created it in a hurry and the resolution was off. “How did your daughter’s math exam go?”
The guard looked momentarily bewildered.
Ian boosted his smile to level five: irresistible. Reina glanced briefly at the faked ID card. “Ninety-seven out of a hundred,” she said with pride. “Thank you for asking, Mr. . . . um, Kabra.”
“Bravo, a budding genius,” Ian said. “Education begins in the home, I always say. As does personal attractiveness.”
“You should know, sir,” the guard replied.
I know more than you imagine, Ian thought as he breezed into the main lobby. Access to the Cahill database had its advantages. Like private surveillance records of every UN employee. Ian could have told Reina the date of her appendix operation, every item in her last grocery purchase, and the fact that she had a medical history of intense foot odor.
But achieving entry into the building was enough.
He rode to the second floor. From there, the crowd noise guided him. It was an unmistakable din of excitement, an electricity he could feel even before leaving the elevator. To his right, a throng spilled out the door of a vast auditorium. People of all ages and nationalities jockeyed for position, straining to see the lecture inside.
“Pardon me . . . clear, please. . . .” Ian said, sliding through the crowd.
Although her face loomed overhead on two enormous screens, Ian almost didn’t recognize his own mother.
It was the smile.
It dazzled. It beamed. It bathed the room in warmth. And it shocked Ian to the core. She had only rarely displayed that much brightness to her children. Usually after a successful poisoning or international art theft.
She was standing behind a lectern, center stage, before a bank of press microphones. Behind her, an image flashed onto another screen, drawing gasps and applause. Ian recognized it from the home page of the website of Mother’s organization. The lush South American jungle outpost. A happy, banana-eating child surrounded by young workers of many ethnicities.
“Meet dear, precious Carlos,” Isabel said, her voice sweet and melodious. “He weighed a mere thirty pounds when he came to our station in Sierra de
Córdoba, Argentina. Dressed in rags, mewling softly. He appeared more animal than human. But look at him now! In a few short months, a thriving young man. A boy who can read Dr. Seuss in two languages and navigate the web. Whose final words before going to sleep at night are . . .”
Her voice faded away, and a video faded in — there was Carlos in pajamas, with a gap-toothed smile, holding Isabel’s hand. “. . . THANK YOU, AY DOUBLE-U DOUBLE-U!” he shouted.
A woman sitting next to Ian burst into tears. The audience rose to its feet, exploding with applause. Someone began shouting “Ka-BRA . . . Ka-BRA!” and soon the entire audience had joined him.
“Please . . . please, no, the credit does not belong to me. . . .” Isabel shook her head modestly, as if embarrassed beyond her wildest dreams. “It is the work, not I. It is the mission of a hundred souls . . . to help a million!”
The few remaining sitters stood, pounding their palms together. If the UN could adopt a resolution of sainthood, Isabel Kabra would be top of the list.
Ian jammed his hands in his pockets. He bit his tongue to keep from screaming.
As the presentation wound down, people lined the aisle to see Isabel. Several mothers had brought children. Almost everyone was carrying a copy of her recent book, Listening to the Banana Leaf: Saving the World, One Soul at a Time.
Ian took a place in line. He waited for what seemed like hours, and then there they were. Eye to eye for the first time since the gauntlet.
“Ian, darling,” she said, “I was expecting you.”
Ian sputtered. In his head, anger and shock and longing all collided, canceling one another out and leaving him nearly speechless. “Expecting me?”
“It was only a matter of time before you left those . . . people,” Isabel said, avoiding the word Cahills as if pronouncing it would be like sipping a beaker of smallpox. “So, Ian, do you have a question? Or are you here to volunteer and do something useful with your life for a change?”
“I want to chat, Mother,” Ian said with forced cheer. “About your vacation plans. Just an FYI, in case you were considering another jaunt to that delightful little backwater in upstate New York. You won’t be able to tour the DeOssie factory anymore. Although the crater that remains is bound to attract a lively crowd.”
“Ian, dear, you speak in riddles,” Isabel replied.
“Riddle me this, Mother,” Ian said. “What does Aid Works Wonders have to do with the Vespers?”
Ian watched her carefully. Mother was the master of the impassive expression. She often bragged that she had total control over each of her facial muscles. But he knew better than that. Even after not seeing her for two years, he could detect a tiny tightening of the left side of her lip.
Ian reached out and brushed his finger against his mother’s forehead. “Odd — you’re sweating, Mother. Yet the room is awfully well air-conditioned. Oh, by the way, your daughter is still alive for now, thanks for asking. Although she appears to be starving. Since you care so much about little Carlos, surely you want to know about your own blood —”
“Carlos is my blood,” Isabel snapped, lowering her voice to a focused whisper. “When my children left me, my world ended. I was thrown in prison, no different from your sister. I learned there. I discovered the meaning of compassion for others. Giving of oneself. Loyalty.”
“Loyalty to what, Mother?” Ian asked. “What do you believe in?”
Isabel cupped Ian’s face gently in her hand. “Ask yourself that question, my handsome son. Why are you here? Why did you leave your new family?”
“I didn’t leave them!” Ian retorted.
“Do they see that? Face it, Ian, they tolerate you, that’s all. In their minds, you’ll always be an outsider. And now you’re gone. Snap — there goes that fragile bond. Do you believe they’ll let you back?” Isabel threw her head back in mocking laughter. “People trust me, Ian. Who trusts you?”
“I — I —” Ian stammered.
“Next, please?” Isabel was already gesturing to the person behind him.
Ian turned. He elbowed his way through the adoring mass. No one seemed to pay him the slightest attention.
Outside the auditorium, a table with Aid Works Wonders merchandise was six deep. People were buying buttons and bumper stickers for fifteen dollars. “Each purchase will feed an entire family for a month!” a worker chirped loudly, displaying a sticker that said: MAKE A FAMILY HAPPY — CHANGE THE WORLD!
An entire family.
The notion was staggering. Fifteen dollars was the dry-cleaning bill for Ian’s hand-painted Italian silk tie. Since his fall from Kabra wealth, he knew the prices of things. For that to be the price of a family’s happiness? Unimaginable. In fact, he couldn’t imagine a happy family at all.
Waiting for the elevator, Ian gazed out the window. He watched an airliner swoop low overhead on its way to LaGuardia Airport. From here, the airport was a short cab ride away.
He contemplated texting Attleboro with an update. But he changed his mind.
You’ll always be an outsider. . . .
Some things just had to be done solo.
Flipping open his phone, he navigated to his browser window, which showed a confirmation of his flight to Boston.
In the upper right corner, he clicked on a link: CHANGE FLIGHT DESTINATION.
“Maybe stale orb means something in Persian,” Dan said as he brushed his teeth. “Some special saying from Ulugh Beg’s time. Like that Greek dude shouting ‘Eureka’ when he invented souvlaki or whatever. You know, like . . . ‘Look, Abdul. Star number one thousand! Woo-hoo! Stale orb!’”
“It was Archimedes,” Amy replied, looking up from her pile of papers. “And he discovered the principle of buoyancy. Oh, and, Dan? Ulugh Beg influenced generations, right up to Tycho Brahe. He estimated the length of a year and the angle of the earth’s tilt to unbelievable accuracy. But he didn’t say ‘Woo-hoo! Stale orb!’”
“Okay, okay, just trying to think outside the planetarium,” Dan said, spitting in the sink. “You know, chop open the mystery with my mental parall . . . ax? Get it?”
“If I read one more word about parallaxes, celestial declinations, astrolabes, sextants, quadrants, and gnomons,” Amy said, rubbing her eyes, “I’ll scream.” It was nearly two-thirty A.M. and she had pored over every word of Umarov’s material at least twice. There was no doubt about Ulugh Beg’s awesomeness. But awesomeness had its limits. For one thing, it wasn’t going to save Uncle Alistair.
“Wait,” Dan said. “Did you say parallaxes? Is that the plural? I thought it was, you know, one parallack, two parallacks.”
“There’s no such thing as a parallack, Dan!” Amy replied. “Now either come out and help or go to sleep.”
“Hey, sorry.” Suddenly, Amy heard Dan’s toothbrush clatter into the sink. “Hold on. You nailed it, big sister!”
“Nailed what?” Amy said.
“The word a,” Dan said. “Vespy is not asking us to find stale orb — he’s asking us to find a stale orb. What if the a is supposed to be in there? A, S, T, A, L, E, O, R, B.”
“So?” Amy asked.
“Remember when I said this thing was an anagram?” Dan asked. “Maybe I wasn’t wrong after all! Let’s try it with the a added in.”
Amy looked over Dan’s shoulder as he began writing:
Dan nearly leaped out of his chair. “That’s it! Arab stole! It was something stolen by a famous Arab. You know the history. Was anyone jealous of Ulugh Beg? Would some other astronomer want to take something of his?”
“People were mad at him,” Amy said. “His own son beheaded him. But that’s because Ulugh Beg became cruel as he got older. He sometimes murdered his own subjects.”
“Why?” Dan said. “Did any of them steal something important? Something that might still be hidden?”
But Dan’s words were fading as she rearranged the letters of ARAB STOLE in her mind. “Hold it, Sherlock,” she said, grabbing her pen back.
Carefully she wrote out o
ne word:
** ALERT **
Kabra, I. Canceled flight.
Sinead stared slack-jawed at the text message on her screen. So he’d gone to New York. And now he wasn’t coming back.
This was the wrong time for a crisis.
She sent a quick message to Ian —
Where r u?
A moment later she received her answer, the same as last time:
Out of Network
With a deep sigh, she lowered her head into her hands.
I should have expected this.
She’d worked with Ian. Tolerated him. Given him the benefit of the doubt. She always knew he had a lot of hidden qualities. The problem was, they were all bad ones.
“Mrrp?” said Saladin, who was sitting on the desk with an I-told-you-so look.
“There must be an explanation,” Sinead said.
“Braachh!” Saladin coughed up a hair ball and slunk away, nose in the air.
It was twenty minutes to seven. Evan would be arriving any minute. Sinead couldn’t afford to be sidetracked. By now she’d hoped to nail the problem at hand.
The identification of Nellie’s lizard.
The photo had been blurry and pixelated. But Attleboro’s state-of-the-art image-enhancing software could sharpen the blurriest blob into an accurate high-res depiction. Sinead had worked hard on the parameters so it would predict the type of lizard by comparing length, coloration, proportion, anatomy.
First, she needed to prep the image. On a magnification of eight hundred, she shifted a pixel here, a pixel there. To help things along. Then she pressed ENTER.
RENDERING . . .
Within a microsecond, the software produced three possibilities: lizards from New Zealand, North Africa, and Argentina.
She stared at them all carefully. Which one?
But before she could get to work, another message popped up. It was from an Ekaterina operative in the Cambridge University zoology department.
Thanks for the jpg . . . Working on it now — Agent BullCommando2
Sinead’s fingers paused in midair. I never sent any inquiries. . . .
No one was supposed to know about this. Nellie’s lizard was classified.
39 Clues _ Cahills vs. Vespers [03] The Dead of Night Page 10
