Seven Wonders Book 3 (20 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

T
HE
G
RAND
C
ARBUNCULUS
W
IZENDUM

I
AWOKE FROM
a dreamless sleep in an airless hotel. The heat had been jacked up and I was sweating through the sheets. Tinny music blared from a clock radio, and bodies were lying on every surface—Cass on another bed, Aly and Dr. Bradley sharing a fold-out sofa, and Dad on a cot. The closet door was open, and Canavar slept curled up on the floor. I could see Torquin's silhouette outside, pacing back and forth in the early-morning sunlight. We were all dressed in the same clothing as the day before.

“Rise and shine,” I groaned. As I slipped out of bed and into the bathroom, I threw open a window. We were just off the highway, and a gust of gasoline-scented air blew in.

“This hotel has bad breath,” Cass said.

“Sorry, it was the best we could find at four in the morning,” Dad replied.

One by one we washed up. Dad was last. No one was saying much of anything. Cass busied himself with a pad of paper and a pencil he had taken from the hotel room desk. I watched as he wrote the heading GOING FORWARD? across the top.

He stared at it a moment, then quickly erased the question mark.

I sat on the sofa. My head ached and my shoulder felt swollen and sore. We had agreed on a planning meeting in the morning, to discuss the future in a post-Bhegad world.

A future that was looking very, very brief.

As Dad began pacing the room, the gnarled figure of Canavar emerged from the closet. He sat in a corner, picking something out of his hair and popping it quietly into his mouth.

“I didn't see that,” Cass murmured.

“Artemisia,” Dad said. “She told you the Loculus was stolen, yes? Did she give proof?”

“Never,” Cass asserted.

“Maybe she was lying,” Dad said.

I shook my head. “The whole time we were there—the forest, the control center, the palace—I never once felt the Song of the Heptakiklos.”

“How big is Bo'gloo?” Dr. Bradley asked.

“We must have passed through maybe half of it, on foot or on the griffin,” Cass said with a scared gulp. “Why? Are you going to suggest we go back?”

“I'm sure Artemisia wasn't lying,” Aly declared. “She had no reason to hide it from us. She resented the Loculus.”

Cass nodded. “Also, if the Loculus was in Bo'gloo, Nadine would have been all over it. Griffins are bred to protect Loculi.”

“Okay, so who knew about the Loculus—and who'd have the motive to steal it?” Dad continued. “Seems to me there are only two possibilities.”

“The Karai Institute didn't,” Dr. Bradley said. “Professor Bhegad would have known about it.”

“Which leaves the Massa,” I said. “But we were at their headquarters. They were bragging on how great they were, on all the cool things they could do for us. One thing they didn't brag about was having a Loculus. If they did, don't you think they'd say something? Also, we found the safe where they were keeping Loculi—”

“And there were two of them,” Cass said. “The ones they'd taken from us. No others.”

We were back to square one. The room fell silent. Outside a car blew its horn at Torquin, who was wandering a little too close to the highway, muttering to himself.

“Would it be impertinent to speak up?” Canavar squeaked, raising a tentative hand.

We all stared at him, and he flinched.

“Erm, I take that as a yes,” he continued. “Well, as I mentioned upon thy arrival, many of the Mausoleum's treasures were stolen long ago. Perhaps this Loculus of thine was among them.”

“Impossible,” I said. “Crossing into the Mausoleum requires the mark of the lambda.”

“Indeed, yes.” Canavar nodded. “Many tomb robbers were known to employ youths for their ability to enter small spaces. Is it inconceivable that among them may have been one marked with the lambda? Or have there never been such genetic prodigies in any of the generations before thee?”

His words hung in the stale hotel air.

Cass, Aly, and I shared a look. Of course there had been Selects through the years. Dad and Mom had been studying them. But the likelihood that one had lived in Turkey and managed to get into the Mausoleum?

“I guess it's possible,” Aly said.

“Of course it is!” Canavar said. “I may be small of stature, but I bow to no one regarding powers of deduction—”

“Get to point!” Torquin was standing in the doorway now. His face was drawn, his eyes swollen.

“I am saying thou must . . . follow the money,” Canavar replied, “as they say.”

“Canavar, are there any records of the thefts in the museum?” I asked. “Have there been projects to recover the stolen loot?”

“No,” the small man replied. “Not at the museum. But in a grand ancient chamber convenes a regular meeting of scholars, the Homunculi, dedicated to the return of such purloined treasures.”

“The Homunculi?” Aly said in an undertone. “You mean there's a whole group of creepy little humanoids like Canavar?”

Canavar gave her a severe look and raised his voice slightly. “A group to which, I must add, I have been elected Grand Carbunculus Wizendum for twelve years straight.”

“Grand what?” Cass asked.

“Roughly equivalent to treasurer,” Canavar said. He slipped off the sofa and moved toward the door. “Our rituals are sacred, our methods arcane. Thou shall be the first of the noninitiates to enter the inner sanctum.” He smiled. “It is fitting, I suppose, for those named Select.”

CHAPTER FORTY

T
HE
F
ENCE

O
UR VAN PUTTERED
to a stop in an empty, weed-choked lot. Torquin parked right up next to the entrance of a warehouse building with corrugated metal walls. A cardboard sign hung lopsided over the front door. On it, in thick marker, were three lines of words in Greek, Turkish, and English. The bottom line read
GRAND AND SECRET ORDER OF THE HOMUNCULI MAUSOLIENSIS
.

“Behold!” Canavar said, his face pinched with pride.

“I quiver with awe,” Cass drawled.

“Very secret,” I whispered to Aly. She smothered a laugh.

As we poured out of the van, Canavar skittered to the front door and fiddled with the rusty combination lock. After a few unsuccessful tries, he gave the door a swift kick and it swung open.

He reached in and flicked on a light switch. A chain of bare lightbulbs illuminated a vast, musty room. It was lined with metal bookshelves, file cabinets, piles of papers, tables containing unfinished jigsaw puzzles, and a spilled container of congealed orange liquid labeled
SEA BUCKTHORN JUICE
. Black streaks wriggled along the baseboards as unidentified small creatures ran for shelter.

“Love the scent,” Cass said. “Mold, mildew, or mouse?”

Canavar went straight to a desktop PC with a monitor the size of a small doghouse. He pressed a button on a giant CPU and waited as a logo lit up the screen:
WINDOWS 98.

“Even the computer is an antiquity,” Aly said.

Canavar let out a disturbed
fnirf-fnirf-fnirf
sound, which I realized was a laugh. “Ah youth, thou canst not envision a world without the flash and blaze of computerweb. I shall now use the mouse-clicker upon its pad, to activate the documents folder . . .”

Aly slipped by him and sat in a ragged office chair. “I'll do it.”

She stared at the screen for a moment, motionless. I gulped, remembering our encounter with the river Nostalgikos. “Aly,” I said. “It's okay if you can't do it. You'll be able to build your skills again . . .”

Aly raised an eyebrow in my direction. “Dude, that griffin scared the pants off all of us. Whatever it was that I lost—it's back, big-time.” She turned back, clicking confidently away at the keyboard. “Lots of data here. Shipwrecks . . . sonar scans . . . correspondence . . . auction house records . . . periodical archives . . .”

“Yes. That one—the archives!” Canavar blurted. “Most are in Turkish, of course, but owing to my English education, I have endeavored to include many translated pieces from the international press. I would draw thy attention to a newspaper report dated March of 1962 . . .”

“Got it,” Aly said, clicking on a pdf that instantly filled the screen:

“‘Glowing blue ball,'” Cass said. “That could be it.”

“It could be the ale talking,” Aly said. “Do you have anything on this guy Gencer?”

“Naturally,” Canavar said, directing Aly to another folder marked
RESEARCH: LOOTING, PERSONNEL.

Another pdf opened on the screen, and Aly read aloud from a blurry image of a typewritten list: “‘Arrested for public misconduct, 1962 . . . arrested for impersonation of public official, 1961 . . . arrested for forging the name of the Beatle Ringo Starr on a check, 1963 . . . arrested for assaulting a prominent German art and antiquities dealer named Dieter Herbst, 1965 . . .' Nothing on Gencer after that . . .”

“Dieter Herbst?” Cass said. “I would kill for a name like that.”

“Why would an art dealer consort with a small-timer like Gencer?” I asked.

“Fence,” Torquin grumbled.

Cass scratched his head. “They had sword fights?”

“A fence is someone who sells stolen goods,” Dad spoke up, “someone who has a side deal with a thief. Since the fence didn't actually steal the stuff, he or she can claim ignorance. Fences can be a sleazy lot, but sometimes they run outwardly respectable businesses.”

“It sounds like the two men had a falling out,” Dr. Bradley said, “maybe over a deal gone bad. Canavar, have you collected any info on Herbst?”

“No, but I believe he has a . . . what dost thou call it? Web screen page?” Canavar replied. “Thou canst make a connection with the internet.”

Aly rolled her eyes. “Thanks for the tip.”

In a moment, she was looking at a badly designed site that seemed like it hadn't been touched in years. “Not a lot about him,” she said. “There's no date on the site and it looks like it was designed the day after they invented HTML. Opened shop in 1961, but I can't tell if he's still in business. I guess we could call or email him. He'd be really old, if he's still alive at all . . .” She quickly opened a new browser tab and typed “Dieter Herbst obituary” into the search bar. Her face fell. “Died in 2004. While conducting a transaction at an auction house called the Ausser . . . Ausserge . . .”

“Aussergewöhnliche Reliquien Geschäft,” Torquin piped up.

Cass's mouth dropped open. “You can pronounce that?”

“Professor Bhegad . . .” Torquin began, but at the mention of the name, he let out a squelched sob and rubbed his eyes. “Sorry . . .
hrruphm
. Sometimes Professor sends Torquin to auctions. Collectors sell relics. Torquin buys. Mostly two auction houses. Smithfield and ARG.”

Aly already had the ARG home page open. “Much slicker site . . .”

I leaned over her shoulder. “What are the chances you can find records from back in the sixties?”

“I'm not hopeful,” she said, as her fingers flitted on the keys, “unless they park the scans in some archive on the FTP site.”

A window popped up, and digits began scrolling in a blur. In about twenty seconds, Aly had broken through the firewall and was rooting around in a company file structure.

Canavar gasped. “In form and movement how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! What alchemy hath possession of this callow child? What arcane wizardry in her soul, what access to worlds unknown—”

“What a gasbag,” Torquin said. “Shut mouth.”

“Woo-hoo!” Aly nearly leaped from her seat. “Check this out.”

“Amazing,” Dad said.

“Old Herbster was busy,” Cass said. “And in Asia Minor—which is what Turkey used to be called.”

“The guy had a big haul in September,” Aly said. “He sold them off on the same day.”

“And he wasn't very good at it,” I added. “Look at the other sellers—Heller and Henson. They offered their relics at one price and totally got what they asked for. Sometimes more. But Herbst sells at a way lower price than he asks, every time. Like he's totally incompetent.”

“Or,” Aly said, “he's in a hurry. Which he would be, if he knew the goods were stolen.”

“‘Relic, spherical stone,'” I said. “That could be a Loculus, I guess. Sold for four thousand dollars to AMNH. Which is . . .” I took the mouse and scrolled down to the list of abbreviations. “The American Museum of Natural History, in New York City.”

“Yyyesss!” Cass said. “Brunhilda to the Big Apple!”

As we headed for the door, Torquin shouted, “Wait!”

We turned. He had lifted Canavar by the back of his shirt collar, and he was holding him toward us as if he were a kitten. “Must say thank you to Canavar. He helped do the work of Professor Bhegad.”

“'Twas nothing,” Canavar said, his voice choked by the pressure of his shirt collar. “Wouldst thou kindly release me?”

As Torquin set the little guy down, we each shook his gnarled hand. “Peace out, Canavar,” Cass said. “How could we ever repay you?”

Canavar gave us his odd, twisted smile. “When thou hast successfully reached the age of fourteen years, consider returning to Bodrum to give me the joyous news.”

“Will do,” Cass said.

“We promise,” I added.

Dad was heading back toward the door of the warehouse. “Let's load in some good Turkish grub now,” he said. “Food is expensive in New York City.”