The 39 Clues: Book 8 (2 page)

10

He received a sharp
mrrp
of admonishment in return.

As they left the baggage claim, the cat's agitation grew. He clawed nonstop at the mesh of the carrier.

Amy was worried. "What's wrong with Saladin, Dan? Is he sick?"

"He's probably just stir-crazy," Dan replied. "I'm going to cut him loose, let him stretch his legs."

"You can't do that," Nellie protested. "We're in the middle of a crowded airport."

But Dan had already sprung the door.

Saladin burst from the carrier like he'd been shot out of a cannon, claws skittering on the tiles. He spun around, getting his bearings. Then, before their horrified eyes, he launched himself at a tall, lean older man seated on a nearby bench, reading a newspaper.

"Saladin!" Amy gasped. "No!"

A cry of shock escaped the victim, and he leaped to his feet, sending his hat flopping to the floor.

Dan grabbed the cat. Amy picked up the fallen hat and held it out to its owner. "Sorry, mister--" Her eyes fell on his diamond-handled walking stick.

He accepted the hat with a sheepish smile. It was Alistair Oh, Cahill cousin and competitor in the search for the 39 Clues.

"Ah, hello, children. You're looking well."

The Egyptian Mau hissed at him from Dan's arms.

"You were spying on us!" Amy accused.

"Spying?" Uncle Alistair repeated. "No. I'm merely here to welcome you back to Asia and offer my assistance.

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The language barrier can be quite a hurdle in China, but my Mandarin is excellent."

Nellie's eyes narrowed the way they always did when she suspected her charges were being taken advantage of. "And you're making this offer out of the goodness of your heart?"

"Of course! Although"--Alistair's gracious smile began to seem slightly forced -- "it would be an excellent opportunity to bring one another up to date on our progress on the clue hunt."

"Aha!" Dan exploded. "You only want to help so you can steal our clues because you know you're
losing]"

The smile disappeared, and Amy and Dan noticed their distant cousin's exhausted, red-rimmed eyes.

"I'm afraid, children, that we all might be losing," he admitted. "Ian and Natalie Kabra have been in China for several days already. Even more worrisome, the Holts have completely dropped off the radar screen."

"Try the Mr. Universe contest," Dan suggested.

Alistair regarded him ruefully. "We've all underestimated the Holts. In Ekat circles, the rumor is that they've made a major breakthrough. It's not too late to catch them--
if
we work together."

Amy's eyes locked with her brother's. Of all their competitors in the contest, Uncle Alistair was the only one who felt like family. True, he had betrayed them--and more than just once. But out of their Cahill cousins, Alistair alone seemed to care what happened to them.

The image of Uncle Alistair faded in Amy's mind,

12

to be replaced by a much darker picture. That terrible night years before; the fire that had killed their parents. Alistair had been there.

Amy's eyes filled with tears.
Stop thinking about it!

Alistair was no murderer. At worst, he had been Isabel's unwitting accomplice. Still, it would take a lot for her to confide in him. And as for Dan ...

"Why can't you just lie and cheat like the others?" Dan snapped. "Can't you see that's better than being nice one minute and then turning around and selling us out? It may be very Cahill, but it
stinks!
Grace had a saying: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, I'll conk you with this pet carrier!"

"You must reconsider," Alistair began urgently.

Nellie spoke up. "The kids said it's not happening."

"Yes, but-"

Dan let go of Saladin, and the Egyptian Mau pounced on Alistair's ankles. There was a ripping sound as the cat's claws removed most of the left cuff from Alistair's custom-tailored dress slacks. Fabric flapping, the old fellow hightailed it to the exit.

"If you change your mind, I'm at the Imperial Hotel," he tossed over his shoulder, and was gone.

Nellie put an arm around her two charges. "I hope you knuckleheads have a plan, now that you've sent Alistair packing."

Amy manufactured a nervous smile. "Next stop--the Gate of Heavenly Peace."

13

CHAPTER 3

The 39 Clues may have been a high-stakes treasure hunt with world domination as the prize. But sooner or later you always ended up in some dumb museum.

Sad but true,
Dan thought as the smiling tour guide led them through vast halls filled with floor-to-ceiling display cases. The Palace Museum inside the Forbidden City held more than three hundred thousand ceramic and porcelain pieces alone.

"You could have soup in a different bowl every day for, like, a thousand years," he whispered to Amy.

"This is the greatest art collection I've ever seen," she marveled, missing his wisecrack. "Even better than the Janus stronghold in Venice!"

"Those emperors were Cahills, all right," Dan decided. "Totally loaded -- like everybody else in the family except us."

Amy's brow knit. "The emperors lived here for six centuries. How do we know which generation was involved in the clue hunt?"

"Our parents must have had an idea," Dan put in.

14

"Why else would they come here after Africa?"

She nodded. "Good point. Let's listen to the tour guide. We might learn something important."

Dan groaned. Like there was going to be a Clue in the butterfly pattern on an old chamber pot. They already knew what they were looking for --the crest from
The Last Emperor.
It was out there somewhere, faded but still visible, on the wall of one of these buildings.

Dan checked his watch. Still more than three hours to go before they were meeting Nellie, who was off with Saladin, looking for a hotel. And no chance of pushing the time up. None of their new phones had service in China. They were trapped here with three hundred thousand plates.

"This collection began in the Ming dynasty, but the size increased greatly during the Qing," the guide was saying. "The Qing emperors were renowned for their obsessive commitment to the arts...."

"That's it!" Amy hissed.

"That's what?"

"Obsessed with art? Does that sound familiar?"

Dan was beginning to clue in. "The Janus! Those guys would trade their mothers for a painting!"

Amy's eyes were alight with excitement. "Dan, it's all coming together. Whatever brought our parents to China -- it has something to do with the Janus branch. Something
big."

Dan nodded. "But how are we going to find the Janus crest if we're stuck doing the dishes?"

15

Amy took in the walkie-talkie dangling from the guide's belt. "If that guy sees us sneaking away, he'll call security. Besides, we don't know where to look. The Forbidden City is the largest palace complex in the world. There are more than nine hundred buildings!"

Dan opened their brochure to the grounds plan of the 180-acre Forbidden City. "I think I remember the movie. If I can figure out which way to tilt this map --" He shifted the page, studying it intently. Dan had a photographic memory, but coordinating film scenes with a printed diagram was tricky. "Let's see, the doohickey of supreme whatchamacallit is over
there--"

"Hall of Supreme Harmony," Amy corrected.

"--so I bet the Janus crest should be somewhere in
this
section, over by the whatchamacallit of tranquil thingamajig."

"Palace of Tranquil Longevity," Amy supplied.

"I'll find it," Dan decided. "Okay, you create a diversion--"

His sister was nervous. "What diversion? I can't do cartwheels in here. Something could get broken."

"Yeah," Dan said, "you wouldn't want these guys to run out of plates. It's not rocket science. Just go to the other side of the group and start asking boring questions. And while he's giving you boring answers, I'll slip away."

"Fine," she replied, sounding only a little miffed at his word choice. She raised her hand. "Ex-ex--" Sfop
it,
she commanded herself. Her stammer often came out

16

Qt
moments of stress, but this was
important.
"Excuse me, how old are those pieces -- no,
these
over here --"

Amy had chosen well. A line of tall glass cases separated Dan from the group. It was no problem for him to slip out of the room. His sister was annoying, but he had to admit they made a pretty good team.

Not bad for a couple of Madrigals,
he reflected, and immediately regretted the thought.

It was no joke. In Africa they'd learned that the aliases on their parents' passports --Mr. and Mrs. Nudelman -- matched the names of a notorious pair of murderers and thieves. Mom and Dad -- the Bonnie and Clyde of the Southern Hemisphere? Ridiculous. A coincidence. And yet...

Husband and wife ... ruthless killers ... Madrigals ...

Just the thought of it made his shoulders sag.

He got lost a few times sneaking out of the building, wandering through the labyrinth of ornate rooms. At last, he managed to find an entrance and stepped out into the Forbidden City. It was an immense complex, with five ginormous palaces and seventeen that counted as merely huge -- not to mention nearly a thousand smaller buildings of various shapes and sizes. The temples, monuments, and gardens seemed to go on forever. It really was a
city
--as if half of downtown Boston had all been built for one guy to live in. But this was far more colorful than any part of Boston -- a kaleidoscope of imperial yellow, rich red, and glittering gold leaf.

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Everything screamed wealth and luxury beyond imagination. Yet despite the size of the place, Dan couldn't escape a shut-in feeling -- the four massive outer gates, the high walls, the observation towers at the corners. He tried to picture Puyi -- the kid emperor from the movie --having all this as his personal playground. According to the tour guide, Puyi had officially abdicated at age six, but the Chinese government let him stay here until he was a young man.

Using the Gate of Heavenly Peace as a point of reference, Dan got his bearings and headed for the area he remembered from
The Last Emperor.
He knew a moment of uncertainty. Was he searching in China for a crest that was really six thousand miles away on a Hollywood soundstage?

Too late to worry about that now...

Soon he was in a section of smaller, lower buildings. Even though the Forbidden City had been the emperor's home, there had been plenty of attendants, monks, and --ouch --eunuchs who'd lived there, too. Maybe this was their neighborhood. As he began to pass between the rows, scanning walls for the Janus crest, he wondered how high up on the trouble scale it would be to get caught here. There were no tourists around, and also no security. Everybody seemed to be at Plates "R" Us, either looking at dishes or guarding them.

Dan forged on. Artwork, designs, and calligraphy surrounded him on pillars, signs, and walls. A very Janus place, for sure. So where was the crest?

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A feeling of deep dread took hold in the pit of his stomach. This was their only lead. If they couldn't find it, they'd be left wandering around a vast country of more than a billion people without the faintest idea what they were looking for.

Frustration melted into alarm. He'd miscalculated somehow. Maybe his photographic memory wasn't as photographic as he'd thought. He spun around desperately. Nothing! Except--

Around the corner, on the wall of a small temple, his eyes fell on a shape that didn't belong. The letter S.

Everything else is in Chinese. What's an S doing there?

The paint was old and washed out, barely visible anymore. He squinted at the wall... and suddenly he was looking right at it.

It wasn't an S at all! It was the curled tail of an animal -- a picture that had faded over the years, bleached by sun and worn by weather. A standing wolf in a fighting pose, glancing over its shoulder.

Symbol of the Janus branch!

19

CHAPTER 4

Dan could barely restrain himself from letting out a whoop that would have shattered every dish in the museum.

Calm down. Finding the crest is the easy part.

The trick was to figure out what it meant.

The original temple had an open entrance, but in modern times a metal gate had been installed to keep intruders out. Cautiously, he edged up to the chain mesh and peered inside. The interior reminded him of a house right after movers had driven off with the entire contents --a hollow shell. It was empty, except for dust and a few crickets.

He examined the barrier critically. He could probably break in somehow, but why bother? There didn't seem to be anything here. Besides, his sister would go nuts if he defiled a four-hundred-year-old temple. He smiled in spite of himself. For her, it was a short trip.

He stepped back off the wooden porch, watching S the crickets on the sloped roof.

This place could use a Roach Motel,
he reflected.