Darkhad warriors thundered toward the tiny plane, firing their weapons.
Dax aimed for the lip of the field. Just beyond it lay a thousand-foot drop. “One hundred yards of runway,” he muttered. He kissed his finger and tapped a brand-new plastic frog on his dashboard.
Addison’s team touched it for good luck.
Dax opened the engines up. The kick of speed flattened Addison’s group against the back of their seats. The edge of the world rushed up to meet them.
The little plane plummeted right over the side of the cliff before catching wind. The engines revved higher, and the plane soared skyward.
Addison looked back through his window at the Black Darkhad screaming across the field, swords high over their heads, descending on the remaining Russians. He never saw what became of Boris. He didn’t need to.
Dax packed on elevation, drawing the plane far out of the reach of Darkhad arrows.
Molly clutched Dax’s arm. “We have to go back for Aunt Delia and Uncle Nigel. Maybe they survived the fall! Maybe they’re down there!”
Dax surveyed the thousand-foot gorge. He grimaced and shook his head. “I can’t get a plane in there—it’s too dangerous. And the Darkhad will kill you if they find you.”
Molly turned to Addison. “Nobody and I Don’t Know—they trusted us. We have to retrieve the golden whip!”
“We will, Molly.”
“How?”
Addison could only shake his head.
The mountains faded away into the distance.
They flew for a long time in silence. Raj, in the front seat, eventually explained to Dax everything that had happened.
Addison stared numbly out of his window, watching the earth roll away below. He did not speak for hundreds of miles.
They passed over the soot-stained skies of Ulaanbaatar and roared high above the blank canvas of the Gobi. Addison took off his uncle’s medallion. He could not bear to wear it—he felt as if he did not deserve the honor. He shoved the chain into his blazer pocket.
Sunlight died in the west. Streaks of gold and orange light glimmered across the steppe. At last, Addison turned to Molly. “That was him,” he said simply. “The man in the helicopter. That was Malazar.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Goodbyes
DAX HAD NEVER HEARD Addison so silent. He put as many miles as he could between Addison and Mongolia, and finally glided the Cessna into Xilin Gol airport in the remote northern reaches of China.
Mr. Jacobsen loped alongside the group as they strode into the dusty terminal. Dax scanned the flights etched on a chalkboard. “If you catch the connection to Beijing, there’s a direct flight to London. You should be okay from there.”
Addison nodded. “What about you, Dax? Where are you heading?”
“Me?” Dax pulled the toothpick from his mouth and flicked it into the nearest trash bin. He checked the wind direction and squinted to the west. “I’m going to fuel up the Cessna and work my way back to Tanzania. See if I can work my way back into poacher poaching.” He looked at Addison and squeezed his shoulder. “Take care, kid. And thanks.”
“For what?”
“For reminding me that I don’t always have to look forward. Sometimes you can find your way by looking back.” Dax gave Molly’s shoulder a squeeze as well.
She shook his hand. “Thanks, Dax. You saved our lives.”
Raj, unable to help himself, hugged Dax around his waist. “Can I visit you in Africa sometime?”
Dax nodded and patted Raj on the back. “Anytime.” He gave Eddie a thumbs-up, whistled to Mr. Jacobsen, and strode out of the terminal.
Addison pulled out Tony Chin’s last credit card and turned it over in his hands. The lettering caught his eye. “You know, I never noticed it. But these are Feng Casino business credit cards. Madame Feng must pay Tony’s account.”
Eddie stared at Addison, mystified. “So?”
“So,” said Addison, “business or first class?”
• • • • • •
With thunderstorm delays, Addison’s team didn’t land in London’s Heathrow Airport until the following evening. Despite the first-class service, they were exhausted from travel and all the events of the previous weeks. They huddled together under the fluorescent airport lights, staring up at the departures with empty eyes.
“There’s the 8:08 to New York,” said Addison. “Gate forty-seven. You better hop, it’s boarding soon.”
“Aren’t you coming?” asked Eddie.
“Molly and I aren’t going back to New York.”
Molly stared at Addison in surprise.
Addison had barely spoken in the past day. He’d been dreading this moment. “There’s nothing for us in New York, Eddie. Not the museum, not the apartment. It’s not safe for us.”
As soon as Addison spoke, Molly saw the truth in his words. She still couldn’t accept that Aunt Delia and Uncle Nigel were really gone. But without them, there would be no one to pay their apartment rent, no one to feed them, no one to protect them from whoever was after them.
“What will you do?” Raj asked quietly.
Addison took a deep breath. He felt hollow inside, but he didn’t want his friends to know how helpless he felt at this moment. “We’re going to find our other uncle. Uncle Jasper. He’s here in England.”
“But you barely know him!” said Eddie.
“We know him a little. We just haven’t seen him in a few years.”
“He’s not crazy or anything?”
Addison answered diplomatically. “He’s eccentric. But so are we. And Uncle Nigel told me Uncle Jasper will know how to keep us safe.” Addison felt for the medallion in his pocket and added, “He’ll have answers we need.”
“You could stay with us on 86th Street,” said Eddie.
Raj nodded. “You could stay with me if you don’t mind sharing the apartment with my three sisters.”
Addison shook his head. “I don’t know what this prophecy is. I don’t know who these people are or what they want. But I know I can’t put you in danger.”
Raj’s brow creased with worry lines. “What about junior high? What about our adventures?”
Addison shook his head again. He didn’t know. “Goodbye, Raj. Goodbye, Eddie.” He meant to shake their hands. But he found he was hugging them.
Raj gripped him tightly. “That river. It was white water. Your aunt and uncle have a chance, Addison.”
“Thanks, Raj.”
Raj turned and hugged Molly as well. “If there’s ever anything you need . . .”
“I’ll call a Code Blue,” said Molly.
Unable to speak more, Addison turned and left. Molly followed at his side. It took them an hour to pass through customs and get their passports stamped. When they finally stepped out of the arrivals terminal and onto the wet sidewalk, Addison found his uncle Jasper’s address in his notebook. He turned up the collar of his blazer and hailed a cab in the London rain.
• • • • • •
The black hackney cab left the hustle-bustle of the big city. Addison pulled out Uncle Nigel’s medallion. Streetlights flickered on the metal and played on the ornate Latin inscriptions. He noticed a date engraved on the back and ran his thumb over it: 1307.
The tires hissed on wet pavement through the quiet suburbs. Soon they reached the countryside, dark and soundless but for the howling wind and tapping rain. They were far from the lights of civilization.
Molly peered out of her rain-streaked window. “Addison, where are we?”
“I have no idea.”
At last the hackney turned off the main road, passed a wrought iron gate, and drove down a long driveway lined with towering pillars of Italian cypress. The driveway circled around a lake, through an orchard, and past a stable. It reached a sprawling lawn the size of a football field, the grass s
omewhat weedy and forlorn. An old gazebo, cracked and overgrown with vines, leaned beside a broken fountain.
The cab continued around a stand of apple trees, and a massive stone building loomed out of the darkness. It featured gothic spires and flying buttresses, and crenulations crowning the bastions of the towers.
“That is not a small house,” said Molly, in wonder.
“That’s no house,” said Addison.
It was a castle.
Chapter Forty-Four
Runnymede
THE DRIVER BRAKED SMARTLY at the wide front steps of the manor and cocked an arm over the seat. “Two hundred quid.”
Addison was aghast. “Two hundred British pounds? I can get a camel across the Gobi Desert for half that.”
“Well, we ain’t in the blooming Gobi Desert, are we, mate?”
“Seems a bit stiff.”
The driver raised his voice over the rain pelting the roof of the hackney. “Drove forty-seven kilometers out of London for you, I did. Got to drive all the way back in this grotty, bleeding mess. I ought to charge you four hundred for this pleasure.”
Addison realized he did not have any British money, or any money at all. Just as he was wondering what to do, his door was opened by a butler carrying an umbrella. Addison stared in amazement: an honest-to-God butler. Tuxedo tails and everything.
“I shall settle the charges, sir,” said the butler with a voice as smooth as butter melting on a griddle.
“Two hundred quid.” The cabbie sized up the butler’s tuxedo and adjusted his price accordingly. “Plus a twenty-pound tip on account of driving in the blinkin’ rain.”
“You drive a hard bargain, sir.” The butler produced the required banknotes and opened the door for Molly. “May I take your bag, madam?”
“I . . . I guess,” said Molly uncertainly. She handed over her father’s survival satchel, unsure if she should tip.
The butler helped Molly from the cab, closed her door, and shouldered her satchel, all while holding the giant umbrella perfectly still over Molly and Addison so that they did not get a drop of rain on them.
Addison admired this. “Addison Cooke,” he said, smiling. “And my sister, Molly.”
The butler studied their faces intently in the taillights of the hackney. Addison read a novel’s worth of emotions passing behind the butler’s eyes.
“As I live and breathe,” said the butler at last. “It is a true pleasure to finally meet you. Jennings is my name.” He shook both their hands. “Come inside, then. We’ll warm up something for your dinner.”
The cabbie, having counted his money, sped off in a hail of gravel.
Jennings guided them up the colonnaded front steps of the portico, through the wide double doors, and into the main entrance hall. Addison gaped up at the curved grand staircase, the marble pillars, and the magnificent crystal chandelier.
“You may set your bags there, Master and Lady Cooke. I shall take them upstairs for you.” He shuffled out the umbrella. “You must be exhausted from your trip. I shall show you to your rooms in the east wing so you may change.”
Molly was still wrapping her mind around the idea of having “rooms” in something called the “east wing.” “We don’t have anything to change into. We lost our clothes in a plane crash in Mongolia.”
“My best suit,” said Addison bitterly.
“I see,” said Jennings. “In time I’m sure we will find a spare dinner jacket among your father’s old things, Master Cooke. And perhaps something for Lady Cooke as well.”
Addison pondered the idea of eating dinner in a formal dinner jacket and found it suited him right down to his wingtips. He realized his mouth was dangling open, so he shut it. It gave him something to do.
Jennings glided up the winding stairs. To Addison’s delight, the butler lifted a candelabrum from a wall sconce. “No electricity in this wing, I’m afraid.”
“Why not?”
“Lord Cooke does not favor it.”
“Lord Cooke,” said Molly, perplexed. “You don’t mean Uncle Jasper?”
“I mean your uncle, Lord Cooke. That was my reason for saying Lord Cooke.”
“We’re talking about Uncle Jasper, the man who can’t drive a car and is banned from Monte Carlo for card counting?” Addison clarified.
“Yes. And we are also talking about Lord Jasper Cooke, the Seventeenth Earl of Runnymede.”
Addison and Molly shared a look of confusion and bewilderment. They were quickly catching up to the fact that there were a few small details about their family that Uncle Nigel had failed to mention. “How old is this house?” asked Addison.
“The estate is one thousand years old, sir. This manor house was built atop the ruins of a Saxon castle.” Jennings indicated a row of portraits along the upstairs hallway. The early portraits were Victorian, the later ones were Edwardian, and the last portrait displayed Uncle Jasper himself.
“Here we are. Your rooms.”
Molly and Addison explored their adjoining rooms. If Addison’s room had been any bigger, he could have hosted a soccer match. Molly was astonished to discover she had a four-poster bed. “You could sleep a Girl Scout troop on this thing!” she called. She and Addison had always shared a room and bunk bed, and she had never minded. Now she began to see there were other options in life.
“Are the accommodations to your satisfaction?” asked Jennings.
Addison settled into an armchair by his fireplace and called back across the room. “It will do, Mr. Jennings.”
“Excellent. Lord Cooke will be most eager to meet you.”
“Where is he?” asked Molly.
“In what room would you expect to find a Cooke?”
“The library,” said Addison.
“Precisely,” said Jennings. “It is in the western wing.”
“Can you draw us a map?”
“I shall await you by the main staircase.” Jennings turned and padded silently down the hall.
Addison and Molly did their best to spruce up their torn and dirt-streaked clothes.
• • • • • •
The siblings retraced their steps to the main staircase and called out Jennings’s name. The butler appeared beside them as if summoned from a genie’s lamp. He guided them across the vacant, drafty rooms of the castle until they reached the sumptuous library.
Addison took a few tentative steps across the plush Turkish carpet before he drifted to a stop, one hand on his chest. He felt he was having a religious experience, like a pilgrim entering a cathedral. The library was immense. Rolling ladders reached to the tops of the two-story bookcases. Spiraling staircases accessed hidden reading lofts tucked amid the rows. A grand staircase led to a balcony level, filled with still more shelves and cushioned window seats connected by zigzagging catwalks. The walls were hung with painted shields and decorated flags of coats of arms. Suits of armor with plumed helmets guarded the central aisle. A library globe, fully five feet in diameter, rested in its mobile cradle.
Jennings coughed discreetly, lifting Addison from his trance. As they padded across Anatolian rugs, passing taxidermy bears from the Hindu Kush mountains and stuffed Bengal tigers from the Indian subcontinent, Addison glimpsed shelves racked with herbs, potions, tribal masks, and ancient relics. Each aisle contained maps and corked specimens from dark and distant corners of the world: six-foot mahogany blow dart guns from Java, feathered spears from the Maasai warriors of Tanzania, bottled poisons from the ninja of the Iga Province in Japan, and strange herbal remedies from the Blackfoot American Indians of rural Montana.
Jennings arrived at a large rotunda, clasped his white-gloved hands behind his tailcoat, and announced their presence. “Lord Cooke, may I present Addison and Molly Cooke, from the United States, by way of Mongolia.”
In a button-tufted leather chair by the fire sat a man with twinkling b
lue eyes. He had the tanned and salted look of a man who’d lived many years on the sea. He sprang spryly to his feet and clasped Addison and Molly’s hands, his face exuding warmth and sadness. “Has it finally happened, then? My brother Nigel and his dear wife, Delia. They’ve been taken! I am so sorry.”
Addison admired his uncle’s crisp and elegant British accent. “How did you know?”
“My sources in Asia. And I believe you’ve met Eustace at the Hong Kong museum. It’s this bloody prophecy, you see. May I say ‘bloody’ around you? Forgive me, I’m not quite sure how to talk to young people. I’m not entirely sure how to talk to adults, for that matter. If it’s all the same, I shall just speak to you as if you’re adults. I have somewhat more practice with that.”
“What is this prophecy?” asked Molly.
“Who is the Shadow?” asked Addison.
“Did he kill our parents?”
“And why were we never told about any of this?”
“Also, are we rich?” asked Molly.
“Rich?” asked Uncle Jasper. “In knowledge, perhaps. In history, certainly.”
“Yes, but are we rich, rich?
“Heavens no,” Uncle Jasper said, chuckling. “Not even a little bit.”
“But this castle, the grounds . . .”
“Been in the family for ages. Costs a bally fortune to maintain. But we are academics, not bankers.”
“But you have a butler!” said Molly.
“Jennings has a salary. He makes more than I do.” Uncle Jasper gestured them to armchairs by the fireplace. He began filling a pipe. Addison was pleased to see it was the same sort of calabash pipe his uncle Nigel favored. “No, no. If you want to be rich, it’s best not to become an archaeologist.”
“You’re an archaeologist like my father?” asked Addison.
“Your father was an archaeologist like me,” Uncle Jasper corrected. He lit his pipe with a few meditative puffs. Molly rattled off three sneezes in quick succession. “Gesundheit, my dear. Forgive me, but it seems you both know almost nothing about our family. Your parents fled to New York to escape this blinking prophecy. Felt it was safer to keep you from me or from any ties to who you really are. But destiny has a way of unraveling the most well-intentioned plans, doesn’t it?”
Addison Cooke and the Tomb of the Khan Page 29
