Addison Cooke and the Tomb of the Khan

by Jonathan W. Stokes

  “What did you do with the money?” I Don’t Know whispered to Addison.

  “What money?”

  “The money your parents gave you for singing lessons.”

  Addison frowned.

  I Don’t Know grinned.

  “Moment of truth,” said Raj. “We’ll find out if the door is alarmed.” He gave a thumbs-up to Nobody through the glass door.

  Nobody pushed open the security door, and nothing made a sound. Addison’s team piled into the dark second floor of the museum.

  • • • • • •

  The sounds of the party faded away behind them. The team crept silently down the long corridor, past galleries of medieval Mongol art, Buddhist frescos, and Chinese pottery. Unfolding a museum map, Addison led the way to Wang Khan’s Weapons Room. Raj, fearful of triggering security alarms, held out his arms to prevent anyone from setting foot in the gallery.

  A great medieval lance hung on the far wall of the exhibit, just as in the museum posters. Addison smiled. “That must be the lance of Sir Frederick. Mongols didn’t use lances like that—only Europeans.”

  Raj studied the way the great spear was mounted on the wall. “We’re definitely going to trip some kind of alarm when we take it. Motion sensors, at least.”

  Addison had anticipated this. “We’ll send two decoys to opposite sides of the museum. If we trip an alarm here, the decoys both trip alarms on the far sides of the museum. That will split the security guards into three groups and make it easier for us to escape.”

  Raj nodded. It seemed sensible enough.

  “Who can take the east wing?” asked Addison.

  “I Don’t Know.”

  “Perfect. And who can cover the west wing?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Excellent.” Addison knew he needed to cover his back trail. “Eddie, you guard the balcony door.”

  “Why me?”

  “The guards think you’re the prime minister’s son. If they find you, they’re not going to give you a hard time. Just yell at them in Chinese.”

  Eddie nodded nervously. “I can do that.”

  “Whatever you do, do not leave your post. If you see triads, vori, or security guards—anything—give us a signal.”

  “How about I whistle a bar of Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata?”

  “Okay, fine,” said Addison. “And if I hear a bar of any other sonata, I’ll know it’s some other eighth grader impersonating you.”

  Eddie, Nobody, and I Don’t Know trotted off to their positions. Addison’s group turned to the weapons room.

  Raj dropped to his knees, removed a can from his blazer pocket, and spritzed a thick cloud of hairspray a few inches above the floor. “This will show if there are hidden laser sensors.”

  Addison coughed, waited for the cloud to clear, and strolled right into the gallery.

  Molly followed.

  “Wait! There could be heat sensors! Or infrared!” Raj whispered.

  “It’s an archaeology museum, not a CIA bunker,” said Addison calmly. “Look, I’m counting on the chance that we might set off an alarm or two. We just need to do this quickly and have a good escape planned.”

  “Did you plan a good escape?” asked Molly.

  “I do my best planning at the last second.”

  Molly frowned at this.

  “I could find a utility closet and shut off all the circuit breakers in the museum,” Raj volunteered. “When the power goes out, we’ll have an easier time making our escape.”

  Addison thought this sounded like overkill, and possibly dangerous. But Raj was quivering with excitement. Addison nodded his assent, and Raj somersaulted out of the gallery.

  Addison took a deep breath and smoothed his hair, settling his nerves. It was now down to him and Molly to pull off this heist. They crossed the marble tiles of the gallery and stood beneath the giant lance. Ten feet long, tapered to a hard point, and scarred by a dozen battles. Two metal brackets cradled it to the wall.

  He leaned close to the lance and examined the wall brackets. “Pressure sensors,” he declared. The devices were very simple. Once the lance was lifted from each cradle, a spring would lift and sound an alarm.

  Molly’s fingers were smaller than Addison’s. She plucked the black hair tie from her ponytail and pinched down one bracket cradle with a thumb and forefinger. A single drop of sweat beaded on her forehead and rolled down her face, but she ignored it. Addison carefully took her hair tie and double-looped it to clamp down the spring action of the bracket.

  “Have any more of those?” he whispered, hardly daring to breath.

  Molly plucked a spare hair tie from the collection she kept on her wrist.

  Addison repeated the procedure on the second wall clamp. Satisfied, he nodded to Molly and took a deep breath. “Here goes.”

  Together, very gently, they lifted the great lance off the wall mount. It was like lifting a baby from its crib without trying to wake it. No alarms sounded.

  “This might actually work,” Addison whispered.

  They carefully set the old, battered lance on the floor. Addison found French words scratched into the iron shaft. “We did it, Mo. This is the lance of Sir Frederick!”

  Before he could celebrate, a Russian voice spoke up behind him.

  “Well done. Now hand it over.”

  Addison turned and saw the gloating face of Boris Ragar. As was his habit, Boris was blocking any possible retreat. Addison checked his memory bank and was pretty sure he hadn’t heard any whistled refrains from the Appassionata Sonata, or any other Beethoven sonata, for that matter. He glared at Boris. “What did you do to Eddie?”

  “Who?”

  “Our lookout.”

  “I didn’t see any lookout.”

  “Did you come up the main staircase from the atrium?”

  “I did.”

  “And you didn’t see a tall, skinny kid with black hair and a raging metabolism?”

  “Nope.”

  “Huh.”

  “Can we return to the issue at hand?”

  “Well, actually I’m a bit concerned about Eddie.”

  “Hand over the lance, Cooke!”

  “Right. About that,” said Addison, who had no interest in turning over the lance. His plan was to keep stalling until he could think up a good diversion. “The thing is . . .”

  At that moment, an earsplitting blast rocked the museum.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The Lance of Sir Frederick

  ALARMS BLARED THROUGHOUT THE museum. Screams erupted from the gala on the first floor. Boris Ragar, perhaps suspecting an air raid, dove to the ground and covered his head.

  There are times, Addison reflected, when life wildly surpasses all expectations. And times when the opposite is true. This was one of the former. Addison had no idea what caused the deafening blast that rattled the teeth in his gums. He didn’t much care.

  Addison and Molly, both clutching the lance like firemen with a tall ladder, legged it for the exit. They nearly collided with Raj in the hallway. His hair looked a little darker than usual, and his eyes a little wilder. His clothes looked a bit singed, and he smelled like an egg that’d been forgotten on the fryer. He was trailing smoke.

  “Raj, what happened?”

  “It wasn’t my fault!” Raj said defensively. “I couldn’t find the utility closet to shut off the power, so I thought I would just cause a short circuit.”

  Addison, to his horror, saw flames licking from the balcony. He shouted over the din of fire alarms. “Raj, what did you do!”

  “I tore out all the electrical wires in the radiator. I destroyed the heating system. Sure, it seems like a bad idea now, but at the time—”

  “Never mind,” said Molly, checking nervously over her shoulder. She pulled her half of the lance towar
d the nearest exit sign. “We’ve got to run!”

  “No,” said Addison, jerking his half of the lance and stopping Molly in her tracks. “We can’t have a fire in a museum. We have to stop it!”

  Nobody and I Don’t Know dashed in from an opposite hallway. “We heard your alarm and set off our own alarms,” said the Mongolian girl.

  Addison realized that if firefighters arrived, they wouldn’t know which direction to find the fire. He began to wonder if perhaps he should have spent more time formulating an actual plan. His thoughts were interrupted by the unwelcome sight of Boris Ragar bounding toward them like a bull in a cape shop. “Molly, Nobody, and I Don’t Know—you guys know how to fight. Can you slow down Boris?”

  The Black Darkhad were all business. They leapt into Boris’s path and assumed fighting stances. Boris smiled. It was Molly who sailed in from the side and scored a punishing kick to Boris’s shin.

  Addison spotted Eddie rushing toward them, his cheeks bulging with chicken kebab. “Eddie, you’re okay!” Addison did not wait for any explanation. He struggled awkwardly with the heavy lance. “Help me with this thing!”

  Eddie jumped to his aid, and together they hobbled toward the balcony exit. Addison cradled his half of the lance in one arm while the other fished for his pocket notebook and pencil to trace Sir Frederick’s clue.

  “What do I do?” asked Raj, pivoting in a confused circle.

  “You’re going to put out that fire you started!” Addison reached the balcony and saw it in flames. Reaching the exit door without getting singed was going to be the pig’s whistle.

  Raj yanked a fire hose from the wall box in the hallway and cranked the spigot. The massive pressure of the hose jerked him off his feet. He clung to the hose like a bull rider, blasting jets of water in all directions except toward the fire.

  Black-tie guests in the gala below screamed as they were drenched under the sudden deluge. Raj’s fire hose knocked over trash cans and blew the exit signs off of walls.

  Addison realized Raj was causing far more damage than he was helping. “Raj, remind me to never allow you in a museum again!”

  “It’s not my fault!” Raj yelled, holding on to the flailing hose for dear life.

  Addison and Eddie dropped the lance as carefully as they could and dove to capture Raj’s hose. Russian vori were pounding up the main staircase. Addison directed the fire hose, blasting the Russians back down the stairs before turning the stream to douse the flames. Revelers in the gala below were showered by overhead sprinklers and occasional jets of freezing water from the fire hose.

  Molly and the Black Darkhad had their hands and feet full fighting Boris. He seemed incapable of experiencing pain; it was like picking a fight with a Viking berserker.

  Boris focused all his attention on Molly. “This is for what you did to my brother!” He swung hard at Molly, who barely rolled out of the way in time.

  I Don’t Know could kick only so high in her black dress and heels. But Nobody kicked and punched at Boris as hard as he could. He might as well have been swatting a rolled-up newspaper at a bull rhinoceros. Each time Boris bellowed and charged, they could only scramble out of the way.

  “Who is this guy?” Nobody asked.

  “Russian Mafia,” Molly gasped. “He is not fond of us.”

  “What did you do to his brother?”

  “We kind of locked him up in a room.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad. You did the same thing to us.”

  “Well, the room filled with sand and suffocated him.”

  “I see.”

  “To be fair,” said Molly, “he was trying to kill us.”

  Molly ducked a punch from Boris that shattered the drywall an inch above her head. As she wiped Sheetrock dust from her eyes, she realized two things. One: she was not going to win this fight. And two: she didn’t need to. All she needed was to lure Boris far from the lance, giving Addison a chance to escape. She decided to make like a wild goose and lead Boris on an epic chase.

  Molly called to the Darkhad, “It’s me he wants—he hates Cookes!” She fled across the balcony and downstairs into the center of the party. Boris barreled after her. To her annoyance, she realized she couldn’t maneuver in the panicked crowd. Ragar’s vori surrounded her, gripping her arms in their fists. Boris closed in, rolling up his sleeves.

  From the balcony, Raj saw Molly being dragged across the atrium. He cupped his hands to his mouth and hollered, “Hang on, Molly!” He estimated the length of the fire hose and the distance to the floor and figured the hose would stop him before the floor did. He leapt up onto the balcony railing and thundered his war cry: “Bhaaaaaandari!!!”

  Gripping the hose, pirate-style, Raj leapt before Addison and Eddie could intervene. The pressurized hose snaked over the balcony, and to Raj’s credit, it may have slowed his fall a tiny bit. It didn’t really matter. Raj was aiming for the great fountain, and he nailed it. Addison gave the jump a perfect ten. The splash drenched tuxedo-clad onlookers, the press, and the prime minister of Mongolia. The mayor, diving for cover, hit the corner of a buffet table, flipping it over. Koi from the fountain flopped around in a puddle of shrimp cocktail sauce, getting their first taste of freedom, and horseradish.

  Boris’s men were so astonished by Raj’s leap, they momentarily forgot about Molly. She slipped their grasp, ducked through the legs of a diplomat’s wife, and managed to fish Raj out of the fish fountain.

  Addison and Eddie jogged down the balcony steps, cradling the colossal lance. It jostled in Addison’s arms as he frantically attempted to trace the French clue into his notebook. It was not his best work. He and Eddie galloped through the gala with the ungainly ten-foot object, smashing and knocking over flower vases and the occasional politician. Every time they turned to adjust course, high society guests were forced to duck or be walloped. The lance was knocking down more opponents in one night than in Sir Frederick’s entire jousting career.

  “Eddie,” said Addison, searching for a clear path to the front door. “You had one job: don’t leave your post.”

  “That’s true.”

  “And yet, what did you do?”

  “I left my post.”

  “The first moment you had the chance.”

  “Well, it’s like this,” said Eddie, lifting his end of the lance to avoid clotheslining a fleeing throat singer. “When I get nervous, I get hungry. I didn’t want to leave my post. I didn’t set out to leave my post.”

  “And yet?”

  “There I was, looking at the kebabs on the buffet table. And I thought, Eddie, don’t go to the buffet table for a kebab. And I said to myself, I know, I’ll go to the buffet table for a kebab. And here we are.”

  “Eddie, the next time we rob a museum, I will tell you to leave your post at all costs. Then you will almost certainly fail to leave your post.”

  “That is a good idea. So what you’re really saying is, it’s your fault.”

  “Yes,” sighed Addison, “I suppose it is.”

  They were almost at the door, excruciatingly close to their freedom, when Boris stepped in the way. He grabbed the heavy lance with one hand and Addison with the other. He gripped Addison by the tie and proceeded to shake him like a paint mixer.

  Addison was not too proud to ask for help when he needed it. He reverted to his French accent. “Help! Zis monster is attacking me!”

  A museum security guard clutched Boris’s arm. “Don’t hurt this boy! He’s the ambassador’s son!”

  Boris punched the security guard with the closed fist that held the lance. The security guard collapsed, knocking Eddie off his feet in a chain reaction.

  “Sacré bleu!” said Addison.

  A second security guard rushed to the scene, astonished. “Are you crazy? His father’s the prime minister of China!”

  Boris punched out that guard, too. Addison se
ized the opportunity to try one of the roundhouse kicks he’d seen Molly practice a hundred times. It was harder than he imagined and accomplished precious little besides upsetting Boris’s rather delicate sensibilities. Addison decided that violence was not always the answer. The Russian gripped him by the throat. “You must want to get hurt bad.”

  “You mean badly,” Addison corrected.

  Boris stared at him blankly.

  “It’s an adverb,” Addison added helpfully. “It modifies a verb or adjective.”

  The vor punched Addison squarely in the stomach. “You must be real stupid.”

  Addison groaned and doubled over. “Really stupid.”

  Boris wrapped one giant paw around the back of Addison’s neck and pulled him close. “Remember the prophecy.”

  “I don’t know the prophecy! Nobody’s bothered to tell it to me!” said Addison in frustration.

  Nobody overheard this, working his way through the crowd, and was momentarily confused.

  “The last Templar gets the prize,” said Boris. He hefted the lance in his paw and strode out of the gala, followed by his men. Addison, gasping for breath, watched him go. There was nothing he could do.

  • • • • • •

  The Ulaanbaatar fire brigade rushed into the gala carrying ladders. They were immediately followed by the Ulaanbaatar police, who arrived just in time to completely fail to stop Boris. The police assessed the chaos of the party with slack-jawed amazement. They had no experience with this sort of situation and had no idea whom to arrest. They had a rapid conversation in Mongolian with various gala guests.

  Addison couldn’t quite follow the thread, but one by one he noticed guests pointing at him, Eddie, Molly, and especially Raj. He also noticed Nobody and I Don’t Know slowly slinking out of the gala, turning tail, and running.

  Before Addison could do the same, police tackled him to the ground, yanking his arms behind his back. “Zis is an outrage,” said Addison in his questionable French accent. “Zis is an act of war against zee great nation of France!”