“Even without having the Sweet Black Tears?” asked Mom.
“It’s obvious when you put the other ingredients together.” Felicity scowled, “But without the eggbeater, we have no way to find the Sweet Black Tears.”
Guster felt the glass vial pressed against his chest. It was his last secret. Felicity was their captor. She couldn’t prove that she hadn’t stolen the Arrivederci Chocolate, but innocent or guilty, she could help them get it. She’d made it possible to get this far. There was no other way. He would have to take a chance. They would have to trust her.
He took the vial from around his neck and tossed it to Mom. “Finding them may not be as difficult as you think,” he said.
Mom uncorked it and sniffed the contents. “Vanilla,” she said. “Guster, where did you get this?”
“Torbjorn gave it to me,” he said.
Mom’s face brightened. She scratched a final line in the dirt, then looked Guster in the eyes. “It’s soufflé,” she said.
Guster felt chills run up his spine.
“The very recipe to end all recipes,” whispered Felicity reverently.
So that was it. Out of all the dishes in the world, The Gastronomy of Peace — the one dish that would leave its taster never wanting again — was a chocolate soufflé. It was something Guster had never tried, in any form.
“Big deal,” said Zeke. “I’ve tasted soufflé before.” The Sugarback hooted in agreement.
“Not this soufflé,” said Felicity.
Mom wrung her hands. “You just did a show on this. It was right under our noses,” she said.
“And now it’s at our fingertips,” said Felicity. She pulled a tranquilizer gun from a holster on the Sergeant’s hip and fired it into the Sugarback. The dart whizzed past Zeke’s head and hit the gorilla in the chest. He slumped over, unconscious.
“What did you do that for?” yelled Zeke.
“He showed us his treasure, now we can’t have him interfering with our escape,” she said. “Sergeant, dynamite,” she snapped. The Sergeant took a red stick from his backpack and gave it to her. She lit a match and touched it to the fuse, then threw it into the tunnel that led to the sugar pillars. A second later, it blew up in a blinding red flash. The blast shook the cavern, spraying rock everywhere in a burst of dust and debris, and knocking Guster into the wall. The walls quaked, as if trying to decide whether to collapse, then settled back on themselves.
By the time the dust finally cleared, everyone had picked themselves up off the ground. The crawlspace was blocked with rubble.
“You’ve blocked the passage!” cried Guster. He was cut off from his precious sugar-diamonds.
“Exactly,” said Felicity. “Now no one else can get it — least of all the Gastronimatii.”
Guster wanted to kick himself, he was so angry. How could she do something like that?
“They’ll never give up the Arrivederci Chocolate, if they really do have it,” said Mom. She looked as angry as Guster felt.
“I have no doubt in my mind that they do. And they’ll have to share it if they want the rest of the ingredients. We’ve got four to one. They’ll bargain.”
“What do you propose?” said Mom.
“That we get to France. I have a castle there where we can stand our ground, lure the Gastronimatii to us, and then — once we have the chocolate — make the Gastronomy of Peace.”
Felicity’s plan was madness, but Guster knew there was no other way. They would have to come face to face with Palatus and the Gastronimatii once again.
Chapter 20 — Chateau de Dîner
Thirty-six hours later, the Lieutenant slowed the engines and brought Felicity’s private jet to a landing on a runway north of Paris. The few mercenaries who’d escaped the gorillas were waiting back at the jeeps, all too eager to take the dusty, bumpy roads from the sugar mines back to the airport at Kilimanjaro.
Once they were onboard, Guster asked Zeke what chocolate soufflé tasted like. “It’s like a brownie, but lighter,” Zeke said. “No wait, more like pudding, but firmer. Or chocolate soup that’s really a cake.”
Guster tried to picture it. It sounded good, but somehow, now that he knew what it was, the Gastronomy of Peace seemed further away than ever before.
Mom found some recordings of Felicity’s program in the jet’s video library. She turned on a television and watched the soufflé episode over and over, rewinding one part twenty times: “To make the perfect soufflé is to capture a cloud,” sounded Felicity’s smooth, recorded voice. “The complexity lies in the simplicity of it. You must remove it from the oven at the precise moment of perfection. If you bake it too long, it will deflate and be ruined. If you don’t bake it long enough, you will get the same result: disaster! It inspires fear in the inexperienced and awe in the master — the final challenge for any homemaker!” Mom cracked her knuckles nervously. It was a good thing Felicity was there to make it.
All things considered, Guster should have been ecstatic. They’d made it out of Africa without getting torn into bite-size bits by gorillas, and now they were headed to Felicity’s castle where — if everything went according to plan — he was finally going to get a taste of that soufflé. It should have been like waiting for Christmas morning.
Instead, Guster was filled with dread.
It wasn’t the cleavers and poisons and flame that worried him — he was used to that by now. This was more personal. It was the fact that maybe Palatus was right — maybe Guster did have the makings of the Gastronimatii. If all they wanted to do was share it with the world, maybe the Gastronimatii should have the soufflé.
The whine of the engines died and the Sergeant opened the hatch so they could descend the stairs onto the runway in Paris. The journey seemed like it was over before it started.
A long, sleek cream-colored limousine pulled to a stop beside the plane. Two little flags with the ‘FC’ logo stitched on them waved from each corner of the hood. Felicity stepped out of the back of the plane. She had changed into a fitted cream-colored business suit trimmed to precision, with lace at the cuffs and a red rose pinned to her lapel. A tiny wooden spoon hung from each ear.
“Welcome to Paris,” she said to Guster and Mom. “I radioed ahead to have most of the arrangements taken care of. All of you will be riding with me to the castle. My men are waiting outside the gates to provide an escort. We’ll discuss more of the details on the way.” She snapped her fingers and the limo driver pulled a silver ice chest from the trunk.
“Sergeant, the ingredients,” said Felicity.
“Mariah and I will get them,” said Guster before the Sergeant could move. This was his responsibility — besides, he still didn’t want anyone but his immediate family handling them — not after they’d fought so hard to get them. He ran up the steps and was back in a minute, the egg under his arm. Mariah brought the butter.
Felicity opened the lid to the ice chest and Guster and Mariah set the egg and butter inside. She closed the lid and moved to put the ingredients in the trunk. “I’d rather they ride up front with me,” said Guster.
Felicity looked like she was about to protest, then thought better of it. “Very well,” she said giving the ice chest to the limo driver. He put it on the back seat.
“And the vanilla,” said Felicity.
Mom patted the front pocket of her baby blue apron. “It’s taken care of,” she said.
A big white delivery truck came speeding across the runway toward the plane and screeched to a halt. A chef in a puffy white hat frantically jumped out of the driver’s seat and opened up a pair of doors at the back. He yanked out a tray of cupcakes, scrambled up to Felicity, and presented them to her.
There must have been at least fifty of them, all still warm. A fresh-from-the-oven aroma tickling Guster’s nostrils. They were taller than most cupcakes, with a thick layer of dark frosting, and an extra layer of pink flowers winding around the edges. In the middle, written in pink frosting in looping letters, were these words: “Fel
icity has the rest and is willing to bargain.”
“The Gastronimatii keep a careful eye on anything baked, stewed or roasted in this city,” said Felicity. “They will be watching the Patisseries with extra care.” She pulled the jar of sugar from the back seat of the limo, unscrewed it, then placed it on the closed trunk of the limo. She took a small porcelain bowl and grinder from the back seat and broke off a sugar nugget from the jar. She ground it up in the bowl and sprinkled the glistening sugar grains across the tray of cupcakes. It sparkled.
“That should get their attention,” she said. “They’ll be able to smell sugar like that from a mile away. It will be like reading a billboard to them.” She turned to the chef with the puffy hat. “Put one of these in every Casa-owned Patisserie in Paris,” she told him. He saluted, took the cupcake tray and slid it in the back of his truck, then drove away.
“And how will they find us?” asked Mom curtly. Guster was wondering the same thing.
“Oh, believe me, they’ll know where to look,” she said. It made their meeting sound so inevitable. Guster had to wonder how she knew them so well. Had she worked with them before?
Felicity slipped into the back seat of the limo. There were two long benches running down the length of it. Zeke and Mariah slid all the way to the front. Guster scrambled in behind and planted himself protectively next to the ice chest.
“This is how movie stars get places,” Zeke told Henry Junior smugly after Mom climbed in. The tiny boy tried to bite Zeke’s plump finger.
The driver drove across the runway through the security gates at the airport and out onto the streets of France. The same four jeeps that had taken them across Africa drove up alongside them, the Lieutenant steering the jeep in front, each seat filled with one of Felicity’s mercenaries. Guster waved, but the limo’s windows were probably too dark for anyone to see inside.
“In addition to this escort, I have a troop of more than twenty men hidden at the castle. Once we lure the Gastronimatii inside, that should be enough to help us subdue them and secure the chocolate.”
Having reinforcements waiting for them was reassuring. At least the plan sounded reasonable, and Felicity’s men would be there to keep Guster from doing anything stupid. If this wasn’t all just a ploy to make Felicity look innocent, that is.
“Right now, we’re about seven miles northeast of Paris,” said Felicity. “My castle is southeast of the city. It will take us more than an hour to get there.”
“And then what?” asked Mom.
“Then, we wait,” said Felicity.
Guster stared out the window as they drove through the countryside. It was lush, green and dotted with the occasional lake or pond. They passed a small village or castle here and there, which made the whole place feel old as if they were slowly going back in time as they drove.
Felicity held the jar of sugar diamonds in her lap. It was the one ingredient Guster hadn’t managed to place under his personal protection. She hadn’t let go of it since she’d taken it from Mariah in Africa.
If it weren’t for Mariah, I’d still be in the cave, he thought. Still clutching the sugar column, still licking it until I rotted into a pile of bones. How would that sugar taste once it was combined with eggs that tasted like the sun, butter that tasted like gold, sweet black tears of vanilla and the world-famous Arrivederci Chocolate? What kind of effect would it have on him then?
He hadn’t told anyone the extent of Palatus’ offer on Bear Island. He couldn’t even tell Mariah that.
And yet — he couldn’t wait to get his hands on it — the most delicious dessert in the history of the world.
At dusk the convoy rounded a lake and turned off the main road onto a narrow private drive that cut through a forest like a tunnel in the wood. Gray shadows under the branches overhead made it hard to see, even with the jeeps’ headlights.
The convoy halted when the drive turned the corner and came to a spiked, wrought iron gate blocking the way. The gate was held up by two stone pillars, each topped with a polished marble stuffed turkey that looked like it had come fresh from the oven on Thanksgiving Day. The letters ‘CDD’ were spelled out in curling iron in the center of the gate’s arch. The Lieutenant punched in some numbers into a keypad on a small black box and the gate swung slowly open.
“Welcome to the Chateau de Dîner,” said Felicity as they drove through the gates.
The forest opened onto a wide lawn with a river running through it. At the far end was a huge, gleaming white stone castle with a blue roof. It was enormous, with arched windows, dozens of chimneys and several imposing round towers capped in blue shingled cones. Between the two widest towers in the center, there was a small arched opening with an open wooden drawbridge.
“It’s like a princess’s castle,” said Mariah dreamily.
“The place where you keep your state-of-the-art kitchen,” Mom added.
“One and the same,” said Felicity.
They drove up the long driveway through the spacious grounds. They were exquisite, even in the dark, with shrubbery trimmed to look like dinner forks, knives and spoons. A fountain sculpture of a milk-maid holding a pot of soup under one arm adorned the center of the lawn. Water poured out of a ladle she held in her other hand.
About a half mile from the house, Felicity suddenly grew tense. “Stop the car,” she said.
“What is it Madam?” asked the driver.
“Something’s wrong. Kill the lights.”
The driver shut off the headlights. Felicity stared out the window into the night. She pushed an intercom button in the back seat and whispered into a speaker, “Lieutenant, stealth mode.” All four jeeps in the convoy shut off their headlights too, and the lawn went dark.
“What’s wrong?” asked Mom.
“The drawbridge is down,” said Felicity. “That’s not the way I ordered it. My men know that we always leave the drawbridge up. It’s a standing order.” She pressed the button on the intercom again. “Lieutenant, recon!”
The Lieutenant hopped out of the jeep and fished a pair of clunky black goggles from his bag. He slid them over his head, turned a few dials, then snuck up toward the house on foot. The darkness swallowed him.
Guster didn’t dare make a sound. If whatever was going on was enough to cause Felicity concern, it had to be something important. Everyone else must have felt it too, because nobody said a word.
A few tense minutes later the Lieutenant returned. He pressed a button on his helmet and his voice crackled through the speaker inside the limo, “Ms. Casa, Chateau de Dîner security has been compromised. Usual guard detail is not present. No signs of forced entry. Lights on inside the west wing indicate that it is inhabited.”
“Impossible!” cried Felicity slamming her fist on the limo wall. “I’ve got twenty highly-trained mercenaries in there!”
The intercom crackled again, “Ms. Casa, there’s something else.”
“Yes?” said Felicity.
“There were two huge brutes in hoods standing watch in the shadows by the drawbridge. I think — I think the Budless are guarding the entrance,” said the Lieutenant.
Felicity got quiet. Whatever the Budless was, it sounded bad. She reached for the intercom and pressed the button again. “Lieutenant, turn the convoy around. Take us back toward the road.”
“What’s going on?” said Mom. Guster was wondering the same thing.
“The Gastronimatii — they’re here,” said Felicity.
Guster felt his throat dry up. What about the plan? It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Felicity’s armed guard was supposed to be waiting inside — what about them?
“How can you tell?” asked Zeke, his voice shrill. Guster wasn’t the only one who was afraid.
“Because the Budless are the minions of the Gastronimatii. They’re gigantic men raised from birth to serve the purposes of the Arch-Gourmand and obey his every whim. The Gastronimatii burn their mouths when they’re very young, killing off their taste buds. They even s
ear their nostrils, giving them almost no sense of taste or smell.”
“But why?” asked Zeke. He was starting to tremble.
“To make them their slaves and their enforcement squad. They are the exact opposite of the Gastronimatii — they know nothing of taste or cuisine. They have no desire for flavor. They don’t know what it is. It’s like having a guard at your bank who doesn’t care about money — you know he’ll never try to steal it. They’re the perfect protectors for the Gastronimatii treasury.”
“Which means they’ve got something to protect,” said Mariah. “The chocolate is already here,” she whispered.
Felicity looked smug. If Mariah was right, and the Gastronimatii had brought it, it would prove her innocence. But that also meant that all the ingredients were in one place. Guster felt his mouth tingle again, like it wasn’t his own.
They rolled down the driveway, past the gate and back out onto the private drive. The limo driver switched his headlights back on and sped along, the jeeps following behind. No one made a sound, as if talking would alert the Gastronimatii to their presence. Why did Guster feel like he was waiting in line for a roller coaster that would fly off the track?
Felicity stared out the window, counting quietly to herself as they drove past tree after tree. After more than fifty, she spoke, “Stop.”
The driver slammed on the brakes. Felicity got out of the back. A tall row of wild-growing hedges filled the gaps between trees forming a solid wall on either side of the drive that looked completely impassible. Felicity paced up and down the length of it, inspecting the ground.
It didn’t make sense. She was the Queen Bee of the American Household, but was she really concerned about gardening at a time like this?
She bent down and pushed on the trunk of one of the shrubs. The whole wall of bushes shook and moved slightly. “Lieutenant, a little help, please?” she said. The Lieutenant jumped from his jeep and pushed on the nearest bush until the entire wall of shrubbery swung away like a tangled green gate.
Evertaster Page 20
