The Golden Vendetta (19 page)

“Reyah. Reyah. Merci.”

Becca tucked her bag tight under her arm and wove with Reyah to the end of the alley and out across the nearest square.

T
he sun was directly overhead now, burning down on the streets.

Wade eventually did lead the way through them, but it was only because Lily let him. She seemed tired. Tired of everything, actually.

When he asked her what was up, she said, “Nothing.” A few seconds later, she said, “Well, not nothing. A text from my mom. She wants to talk to me. They both do. Together.”

“What about?”

“I didn't get to answer before the goons busted my phone.”

“It could be good.”

She shook her head. “No, it couldn't. I know why she's calling. It's about how to split visitation. Who I want to live with which days, and who doesn't want me which days. Splitting me between them. Anyway, that is as far away from all of this as possible. I can't think about it. But I also can't lead. These streets all look alike to me. You lead.”

So he did.

After a thousand false starts and blind alleys, they finally made it out of the crowded medina and scraped enough coins together to pay for three tram rides, the last of which they left when it stopped at Boulevard Abdelmoumen. From there, a twenty-minute zigzag walk due east brought them to the Hôpital d'Enfants.

Wade ran when he saw Becca waiting for them, and didn't mind what anyone thought when he wrapped his arms around her. She must have felt the same, at least partly, because she hugged him back, then Darrell and Lily, too. Even so, it was the new-style reunion. Short, sweet, back to the business at hand.

“Meet Reyah,” Becca said, introducing the girl with her. “She helped me and fed me and brought me here. We can trust her. I think she can help us, too. Sara's just inside—”

“Here!” Sara ran out from an office, dirty, her face
smudged and bruised, but happy to see them together. Silva, suffering a minor bullet wound to his arm, had escaped his captors—who didn't want him anyway—seen the kids on the tram, then had found Sara and accompanied her to the hospital.

Knowing Julian would want the kids and Sara to have new phones, Silva then went out to purchase one for each of them and a tablet for Lily. He also drew on his bank account to provide Sara with a thick pouch of dollars, euros, and Moroccan dirhams.

Lily right away powered up her new phone and the tablet, downloaded her favorite apps, and checked her remotely stored data and found it all there. After that, she texted her new number to her parents, then paused and turned both devices off—unheard of for her.

“They stole our passports, too,” said Darrell with mock regret. “I think we should use our real ones now. Galina knows we're in the game. We can't hide forever.”

Sara seemed to think about that for a moment, then nodded. “Agreed. There are miles to go before this is over. We'll need to be us again.”

“Drangheta asked us about Dad,” said Wade. “He's hot to get to him for some reason. And he said Galina is, too. We need to warn him.”

Sara asked them exactly what Drangheta had said,
then made the call, while Becca told them what the glasses did and what she had discovered in the diary. She showed them all the drawing she'd made in her notebook. “Reyah, this is what I wanted you to see.”

Reyah was bewildered but interested.
“Très fascinant. Il est vieux?”

“Yes, very old,” said Becca.

Wade wanted his brain to piece everything together, but it wasn't all there yet. “In 1517, Nicolaus asks da Vinci to make a silver arm for Barbarossa. But he dies, so they bury the arm with the relic still inside. You can only find it with three keys, which Nicolaus and Barbarossa Two hide when they're old. This drawing tells us the location of one of the keys, is that right?”

“Right,” said Darrell. “But how do we decode the drawing?”

After Sara left a message for Roald, she studied the picture. “It's an allegorical drawing. The sun, the ruined columns. The tree coming out of the column. And there are words. Reyah?”

Reyah squinted and studied the tiny writing. She told Becca that the Arabic word beneath the broken column on the right was
Hijri,
which was like a version of “AD” or “BC” for the Islamic calendar. Combined with the number it would mean
Hijri 84
or
Year 84.
She didn't
know exactly what that translated to, but it was a long time ago. The word beneath the central column was
Carthage.

“Which means what?” asked Darrell.

“Ruins. Old city. Very old,” Reyah said in English.

“Where is Carthage?” asked Wade.

“Tunis. Coast of Tunisia. Two thousand kilometers, maybe. Far from here.”

“We need to get there,” said Sara. “We need to get a flight.”

“Not at the major airports,” Silva said. “Your enemies—all of them—will be watching for you. You have the glasses they both want. You're the target.”

“So we need to fly under the radar,” Wade said.

“Fly? Plane?” said Reyah, flapping her hands like wings.

“Oui, mais secrètement,”
Becca said.

“Voilà! Médiouna. Vous pouvez voler à Tunisie de Médiouna!”
The way she said it,
Médiouna
sounded like a fantasy city in a tale of genies and flying carpets.

Silva frowned. “Médiouna
is
an airfield. That is, it
used
to be one, and I heard about a club of British flyers who used to keep their rigs at the place. I'm not sure if any of them are still there, or even alive, but if they are, Médiouna might be the best field to fly from, after all.
I'll drive you out there—”

“No you won't,” said Sara, like a den mother. “You're bleeding. You're going straight into this hospital and, child or not, you're going to get fixed up while we find ourselves a nice taxicab. We're ahead of the game so far, we have the glasses, the diary. Kids, come on.”

O
ne hour, three cab rides, and fifty euros later, the five of them arrived at a ghost town of wooden shacks, broken strips of pavement, and fields of weeds and dirt, which was—so their final driver insisted—an airport.

“Where in the world are we?” Wade asked.

“Is Médiouna!” said the man behind the wheel.

“This can't be right,” said Becca.

“Yes, yes, is Médiouna Airfield. You fly from here.”

In his mind, Wade watched the relic drift so far from their grasp that it vanished in the sandy distance. How long a journey did they have ahead of them? They didn't even have the first of the three keys. Did Triangulum
still exist? Plus, where in the world
were
they?

“Médiouna!” said the driver. He took their money and left.

“Seriously, there's nothing here,” Darrell said. “I mean no . . . thing.”

“There's flat . . . ness,” said Becca.

“No, you know, this is good,” Lily said surprisingly. “If the first of the keys is in Tunis, then we need to get there before Galina does. She doesn't know where to look yet, so we have a real chance. Either way, we shouldn't waste any more time.”

Wade was glad to hear Lily step up. She was feeling bad about her parents, but she had a spark. It was enough to get them moving.

They hiked through the weeds and outlying sand to the only hangar that had a sign of life. A transistor radio was playing. Darrell identified the tunes as British rock from the 1960s. Maybe that was new music here. Half in and half out of the hangar stood what appeared to be a broken-down wreck of an old single-wing cargo plane. A wrinkled man sat at a small desk just inside the doorway. He was bent over it, doing paperwork. He wore a desert cap with a flap down the back to protect his neck from sunburn. A large dog lay sleeping at his feet.

“Excuse me, we need to fly to Tunis,” Sara said. “A
friend suggested we might get there from here?”

The man raised his face. He had, Wade estimated, a good twenty years on his stepmother, or may simply have been in the sun too long.

“Tunis, is it?”

He spoke like an English actor.

“We need to get there in a hurry,” Becca added.

It was as if the man suddenly woke up. “Tunis? In a hurry? Do you, by Jove?” he said, bolting up from the desk and extending his hand. “Welcome! I'm Pinky Chamberlain. My partner, Bingo, will fly you to Tunis, every single one of you. If you can pay, that is.”

“We can pay,” Sara said. “But we need to get there as soon as we can.”

“You're on desert time now,” Pinky said, waving them inside the hangar. The dog followed, wagging its tail slowly. “Tunis is quite a jaunt, after all. You didn't happen to bring your own plane, by any chance?”

They stared at him.

“No? Well, no problem. We do have one, of course. It's just that it's a bit . . .” He trailed off. “I say, Bingo. Customers! You'll love Bingo, you will. He'll have the plane up and running in no time. Or, rather, running and
then
up, if you see what I mean. Oh, Bingy, do be sociable!”

The man named Bingo removed his head from an open panel under the engine of the cargo plane. He was tall and sticklike, and his hair, what there was of it, flew away from his head in all directions as if it didn't want to be there.

Pinky explained what they'd come for, while Bingo shook their hands.

“Really?” said Bingo, his eyes wide with surprise. “Fly the old deathtra . . . mail plane, eh? I'd be delighted. Delighted, I say! You have life insurance, yes? No matter, let's just be off! But seriously, we'll need a list of next of kin.”

“We're pretty much all here,” said Sara, introducing them all.

“Well, I call this a party!” Bingo boomed. “Last one on board is copilot.” When Wade laughed, he added, “No, son, I'm serious. Someone really will have to help with the whole mappy thing. The sand all looks pretty similar to me.”

“Oh, he's just joking, of course!” said Pinky. “But if you could help him, naturally, it might make your trip a bit more . . .” He didn't finish.

It was settled quickly. The only plane, a Piper J-3 Cub, had a normal range of a hundred and fifty miles. The distance to Tunis was “somewhere around a thousand
miles.” But this “original Flitfire,” as Pinky Chamberlain proudly called it, had been equipped with two extra fuel tanks for long-distance mail service. “Which makes it pretty cramped inside, but it can make it to Tunis in five hours, including only one refueling stop. Or more, at the most.”

Bingo quickly finished working on the plane, then Pinky joined him, wielding a pair of hammers to help get the engine panel back into place. The dog barked with each rap of the hammer.

“All aboard!” said Bingo, and he and Pinky embraced as if it was the last time they'd see each other. It was a long hug. You could barely tell where Pinky ended and Bingo began. Finally, they pulled apart.

“Woof, woof, Gussie,” Bingo said, and the dog echoed him. “Off we go!”

With a symbolic point of his finger to the east—the direction they were flying—Bingo climbed into the pilot's seat, lowered his goggles, and set the controls for starting. They piled into the cabin after him. It was even tinier than Wade expected. The six of them were jammed into one another, even when Wade decided to take his place up front in the copilot seat.

Meanwhile, on the ground, Pinky gripped the propeller with both hands and swung it down with a
grunt. Nothing. He did it again. Nothing. Again. Again. Nothing. Nothing. Neither Bingo nor Pinky seemed surprised.

The seventh time, it caught.

It caught, but the engine at full power sounded like a cross between a go-kart and an electric can opener. It vibrated though the frame and rattled the fuselage. The way the plane tumbled out of the hangar was also not inspiring. Pinky waved exaggeratedly with one hand, wiping his cheeks with the other.

“We'll make it, won't we?” asked Lily.

“Sorry, headphones, can't hear you!” said Bingo. He wasn't wearing headphones.

And they were off. Mostly off. The airstrip was half smothered in drifted sand, and its borders were difficult to make out, even for Bingo. Until he lifted his goggles off his face. “Ah, there it is,” he murmured.

With the engines screaming like a chorus of cats, and the soft wheels bouncing like beach balls, the plane finally dragged itself up from the ground. They banked once over the airfield, where they saw the tiny form of Pinky waving both arms, and Gussie running circles around him, then headed east. Soon they were over the desert—the real desert of sand dunes rolling to the horizon like golden waves.