Peril at the Top of the World

by James Patterson

  “It’s true,” I added. “Because you guys taught us how to do it!”

  We split up. Beck and I hiked west and shot some pretty awesome stuff for our Kidd family film.

  We saw polar bears (and tried to warn them about the plasticky-tasting fish). We also photographed walruses, musk oxen, caribou (also known as reindeer), and an arctic fox!

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  “This is so awesome!” exclaimed Beck.

  “Yep,” I said, “it can’t get much better than this.”

  I was right. But it could get worse.

  Because the next time I aimed my camera, guess what I saw.

  A wolf!

  CHAPTER 44

  “Did it see you?” asked Beck as the wolf stared straight into my lens.

  “I think so. I mean, it sure saw my camera!”

  “When encountering a wolf,” said Beck, reciting some memorized survival guide, “you don’t want the wolf to see you.”

  “Too late.”

  “Okay. Where there’s one wolf, there’s usually two or three more.”

  I swung my camera left, then right. “Four. I count four.”

  “Quit looking at them!”

  “How else can I count them?”

  Beck dropped her eyes and started backing up. “Back away slowly, Bick. Avoid eye contact. Wolves see eye contact as a challenge.”

  “Who would want to challenge a wolf?” I said, staring down at my feet as I shuffled backward.

  “Other wolves.”

  “Don’t they know the no-eye-contact rule?”

  “Bick?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Shut up.”

  I tried that. For maybe ten seconds.

  “Should we run?” I asked.

  “No. Wolves run faster.”

  “Just keep them in front of you, Bick,” coached Beck. “If we show them our backs, their predatory instincts will kick in.”

  “And by predatory, you mean ‘surviving by eating others,’ correct?”

  “Yes, Bick.”

  “Just checking.”

  “This really isn’t the best time for a vocab drill, bro.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. If we’re going to die, I’d like to die a little smarter.”

  Beck and I moved back two steps. The wolves prowled forward two paces.

  “If only we had some meat,” said Beck, “we could probably distract them and get away.”

  “Like bacon, salami, and sausages?”

  “Exactly. That would be a miracle.”

  I patted my bulging (and somewhat smelly) pocket. “Actually, I’ve got some.”

  “What?”

  “From breakfast. I thought I might want a snack later on—”

  “Throw it, Bick!” Beck muttered as the wolves began circling us. “As hard and as far as you can.”

  “Well… then what are we going to do for a snack?”

  One of the wolves closed in.

  Beck eyed it nervously. “Toss it or I’ll throw you to the wolves!”

  “What? You wouldn’t really—”

  “Throw it! Now!” she screamed.

  I stuffed my hand into my parka pocket and squished all the slimy bacon, salami, and sausages together into one ginormous meatball.

  Then I reared back and hurled it as far as I could.

  The four wolves took off.

  The sound of their scrabbling paws churning through the snow and ice scared a caribou behind a drift. It bolted out and hightailed it across the icy plain.

  The swiftest wolf fielded my meatball and gobbled it down in one gulp. Then he and his three buddies took off after the fleeing reindeer. I was sort of hoping it was one of Santa’s so it could lift off the ground and fly to safety.

  “Come on,” said Beck. “Now we run!”

  We tore across the ice as fast as we could, heading for the research station.

  I saw something glinting in the sun.

  “Wait! Hold up.”

  Beck and I went over to inspect the object. It was an empty steel cage. I sniffed the inside… it smelled like wet dogs. Or, more likely, wet wolves.

  “Someone shipped these wolves up here!” I said.

  “No wonder Zolin’s two goons disappeared. They decided to let the wolves do their dirty work.”

  Beck saw something and used her boot to scrape away some icy snow from the base of the cage.

  “It looks like some sort of shipping tag,” she said, dropping to her knees to dig through the snow with her mittens. She showed me the tag.

  It had a big Russian 3 printed on it.

  Except it wasn’t a 3.

  It was a Z.

  “Zolin!” I said.

  Beck nodded. “Guess this explains why his dogs are wolfhounds!”

  CHAPTER 45

  Beck and I made it back to the drifting research station without running into any more wolves.

  We were safe! So were Mom, Tommy, and Storm.

  Mom and Tommy were pretty impressed with our daring wolf escape. Storm was more impressed with Beck’s memorization skills.

  The five of us regrouped in our family tent and shared our photos and videos.

  I hadn’t snapped any shots of the wolves. For one thing, they weren’t really local animals. For another, my fingers had been frozen. With fear.

  “Great work, guys,” said Mom as she flipped through all the pix. “We’ll do some editing and upload—”

  Just then, our tent door flew open and not because of a blast of freezing Arctic wind. It was kicked open by a group of Russian soldiers led by (hold on to your earflapped fur hat) that blabbermouth of a tutor and tour guide, Larissa Bukova!

  I knew she was in cahoots with Minister Szymanowicz! She’s a walking, talking natural disaster.

  “You are to leave here immediately,” said Larissa. She sounded way angrier than I remembered. Even when we were in prison she didn’t sound this annoyed.

  Mom tried to speak.

  Larissa held up her hand to stop her.

  “We know that you are—how did the fifth clue put it? Ah, yes, ‘searching in the wrong place.’”

  “Whoa,” said Tommy. “You read that message from Dad?”

  “Da.”

  “But that was private and confidential!”

  “So?”

  Tommy looked very disappointed in his Russian crush. “That’s… that’s…spying.”

  “Da. Something your mother and father are quite familiar with. We also, of course, picked up your earlier satellite-phone text communication with Professor Thomas Kidd. The message where you confess that you are, and I quote, ‘no longer actively searching for missing Russian masterpieces at the North Pole.’”

  “The most recent clues from the Enlightened Ones suggest we are looking in the wrong spot,” explained Mom.

  “Of course they do!” snapped Larissa. “You, your husband, and your children have been playing us for fools. Creating this Enlightened Ones conspiracy-theory nonsense. Leading us on what you Americans call a wild-goose chase so your husband can abscond with our historic treasures!”

  “That’s not true!”

  “Pack up your things. We are taking you back to Russia! Minister Szymanowicz and Inspector Gorky would like to speak with you. You are never, ever to return to the North Pole. Ever!”

  So we were basically given ten seconds to grab our go bags. Then we were marched across the ice to that floating airport, where a Russian cargo plane was waiting with its engines running.

  CHAPTER 46

  It was a pretty long flight back to Mother Russia.

  Pretty bumpy too. Riding in the cargo hold of a transport plane isn’t exactly the same as flying first class.

  “The trip to the pole wasn’t a waste, kids,” said Mom. “We have our videos and photos.”

  “We can cut them together to make an awesome documentary,” said Storm. “The guys at Greenpeace might be able to help us too.”
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  Mom nodded. “For the next few days, we can shift back into treasure-hunter mode and focus on finding the missing Russian masterpieces stolen from the Hermitage.”

  “Won’t they just be in storage with all the other Enlightened Ones’ loot?” I asked.

  “Not necessarily, Bick. The two things may not even be connected. So, while Dad searches for the E-Ones’ treasure trove, we’ll focus on finding the four stolen paintings from Saint Petersburg. Let’s hope Minister Szymanowicz or Inspector Gorky has some fresh ideas and leads.”

  “They do,” said Storm sarcastically. “They think Dad did it.”

  “We’re really going to help the Russians?” grumbled Beck. “They’re our enemies.”

  I nodded. “They basically banned us from the North Pole. For life!”

  “They’ve been spying on us all along!” added Storm. “Tapping our phones. Intercepting our e-mails and texts.”

  “Plus”—Tommy sighed—“one of them broke my heart.”

  “They’re pure evil,” I said. “So why would we want to help these no-goodniks find their stolen treasure?”

  Mom fixed us all with a very stern look.

  It got pretty quiet in the hold of that transport plane. Well, as quiet as a droning Antonov AN-74 ever gets.

  “The Russians aren’t our enemies,” Mom said in her super-calm voice, which is actually scarier than her angry one. “There are no bad people, no bad nations. Not the Russians. Not the North Koreans. It’s always just a small group of knuckleheads in a country. Usually rich greedy men. Not always. But usually.”

  I wish some of those rich greedy men had heard Mom say that in her super-calm voice.

  If they had, they’d know the Kidd Family Treasure Hunters were coming to get ’em!

  CHAPTER 47

  We finally landed at Pulkovo International Airport, just south of Saint Petersburg.

  The Saint Petersburg in Russia wasn’t as warm and sunny as the Saint Petersburg in Florida, but after all the ice, igloos, and glaciers, we were totally pumped to be south of the Arctic Circle again.

  Our armed escorts ushered us through the cool, modern terminal.

  Straight to Inspector Gorky.

  “Welcome back, treasure hunters,” said Inspector Gorky with a fake smile. “Did you happen to find the motherland’s four missing masterpieces in an ice-sculpture garden protected by mutant polar bears?”

  Given his major ’tude, maybe Inspector Gorky should change his name to Inspector Snarky.

  “We were wrong about the North Pole,” admitted Mom.

  “No!” said Inspector Gorky with heavy sarcasm. “What a surprise. And where is your husband, the renowned art historian and treasure hunter Professor Thomas Kidd?”

  “We’re not sure,” I said.

  “He’s on his own secret mission,” added Beck.

  “And where might that be?” asked the Russian detective. “Somewhere in New York or London, where he’s talking to shady art dealers who would love to sell our national treasures to the highest bidder?”

  “Inspector,” said Storm brusquely, because that’s how she says everything, “for the last time, Dad did not steal Leonardo da Vinci’s Madonna Litta, Caravaggio’s The Lute Player, Giorgione’s Judith, or Rembrandt’s Danaë!”

  “Really?” said Inspector Gorky. “Then why have you memorized the artists and titles of the four paintings still missing from the Hermitage Museum?”

  “I have a photographic memory. It’s what I do. I memorize stuff.”

  “Dr. Kidd has been on another continent, tracking down the Enlightened Ones’ secret treasure trove,” explained Mom. “We have reason to believe it is nowhere near Russia. We also now suspect that they were not the ones who stole the art out of the Hermitage.”

  “Oh, really?” said the inspector. “And why do you think this?”

  “Because, while we were in flight, my husband texted me.”

  Gorky arched an eyebrow. “You had Wi-Fi in the rear end of a cargo plane?”

  “No,” said Beck. “We had satellites. Mom and Dad used to work for the CIA, remember?”

  “You can see it on this,” said Mom, unstrapping her high-tech wristwatch.

  Inspector Gorky put on his reading glasses, squinted, and scrolled through the block of text on the watch screen, which was about the size of a postage stamp. We all held our breath while we waited for him to finish.

  Finally, he looked up and nodded. At least the fake smile was gone.

  “Otlichno. Very good. Reading this, I am convinced that the Enlightened Ones are not our thieves. Neither is your husband. In fact, I now suspect someone here in Russia is our culprit. Therefore, since one who sits between two chairs may easily fall down, that is where we must focus our investigation.”

  “Huh?” said Tommy.

  “Another Russian proverb,” said Storm. “It means if you keep trying to follow two paths, you’ll end up going nowhere.”

  “Da. I have decided to follow only one. Yours. Find our treasures, Kidd Family Treasure Hunters. Find them soon!”

  With that, he handed Mom back her watch.

  And the sixth clue!

  CHAPTER 48

  All Beck and I could figure out was that maybe the Enlightened Ones’ secret hiding place was somewhere in America because D.C. could be Washington, D.C. Then again, it could be some other D.C.—maybe direct current, which, according to our walking Wikipedia, Storm, is electricity traveling in one direction (not to be confused with the boy band One Direction), like you get from batteries or solar cells. So that might mean the bad-guy billionaires were stashing their stolen art in a battery factory. Or a solar farm.

  Or maybe D.C. means that D.C. Comics is somehow involved. They’re the guys who gave us Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and all sorts of evil villains.

  As you can tell, all we had were guesses about D.C.

  Same with H.H. We have absolutely no idea who or what those letters stand for. Mom suggested Horatio Hornblower. Probably because he was a sailor in a book, just like us.

  Basically, we were getting nowhere, fast.

  “Let’s focus on the part of the message about the missing Russian masterpieces,” said Beck. “We need to start somewhere.”

  “Good idea,” I said. “It says:

  According to the E-1s (and you have to figure billionaires like that have spies and paid informants everywhere), our art thief was a Russian local. Maybe even an “art hater” right here in Saint Petersburg.

  “How can anyone hate art?” wondered Beck, our family artiste, as Inspector Gorky ferried us from the airport to our hotel.

  “Maybe Picasso turned them into a cube or something,” suggested Tommy. “Or maybe they don’t like all those paintings and statues of people not wearing any clothes.” He paused. “You’re right, Beck. How can anyone hate art?”

  Inspector Gorky dropped us off at the State Hermitage Museum Official Hotel. “Get some rest,” he advised. “Thaw out from your time at the North Pole. Tomorrow, your most important treasure hunt begins. Find the four missing masterpieces. There will be trouble if the cobbler starts making pies.”

  We all just nodded. I figured it was another one of Inspector Gorky’s famous Russian sayings that I wouldn’t be saying to anybody anytime soon.

  We picked up our keys at the front desk and went upstairs to our rooms.

  Which weren’t exactly empty.

  Someone was waiting for us.

  And it wasn’t room service with a platter of Russian caviar.

  It was despicable Uncle Timothy!

  CHAPTER 49

  “I hope you kids don’t mind,” said Uncle Timothy as we just stood there gawking at him, “but I ate all the cheese straws in the minibar. All the M&M’s and Famous Amos cookies too. Breaking out of the most secure federal penitentiary in America really makes you work up an appetite.”

  He touched his ear.

  “Roger that,” he said to whoever was on the other end of his communication. “The
lambs are in the pen. I’ll run the canary trap. Set up the dead drop and organize an OP for the OPO.”

  “Timothy?” said Mom.

  “Hang on,” he said to his earpiece. “Yes, Sue?”

  “I was with the CIA, remember?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “So I understand spy jargon.”

  Uncle T touched his ear again. “Let me get back to you. Do svidaniya.”

  “What are you doing here, Timothy?” demanded Mom. “And why did you just tell your new boss that we’re lambs and you’re going to run a canary trap to expose an information leak?”

  “Because this operation is so classified, we can’t afford any leaks. Heck, I had to pretend to be a triple agent, get convicted of high treason, spend time in the Alcatraz of the Rockies, and make a daring escape through an extremely foul sewer pipe just to protect you and my four favorite little lambs!”

  “Baaaah,” said Storm. Not because she wanted to sound sheep-y, but because she didn’t believe a word Uncle T was saying.

  “I’m serious,” said Uncle Timothy. “Everything has been leading up to this one single extremely crucial operation. Everything: The search for the Grecian urn. The trek through Africa. Your time in China. The recovery of the art stolen by the Nazis. Every illegal art dealer that you—Tommy, Storm, Bickford, and Rebecca—have taken down so far, all the treasure you’ve recovered, it’s all small potatoes compared to the big fish behind this Hermitage heist.”

  “You’re mixing your metaphors,” said Storm. “Potatoes don’t swim in water.”

  Uncle Timothy probably gave Storm a dirty look. I couldn’t tell for sure. His sunglasses were so mirrored I didn’t know what his eyes were really doing behind all that shiny silver.

  “Timothy,” said Mom, “do you have a lead on who stole the art out of the Hermitage?”

  “I might.”