Passport to Danger (11 page)

“Hah!” he said with a grin. “You kids
are
good!” Then his face flushed and he apologized. “I'm really sorry,” he said. “I was afraid to tell you the truth. I was sure you wouldn't have anything to do with me. I am an amateur detective myself,” he explained. “That is, I
want
to be one.”

“That's your story now,” Joe said. “How do we know you're not lying again?” Joe asked. He drank his juice in one gulp. He hadn't realized how hungry he was.

“I am not,” Jacques said. “I promise this is the truth. When I found out who you two were, I saw a
golden opportunity. I'm embarrassed to tell you this, but I wanted to learn some of your tricks. I can see by your faces that lying was a mistake. Let me make it up to you. Let me continue to help you with this case, and I'll be able to prove my good intentions.”

“Okay, Jacques,” Frank said. “One of my jobs for today was to interview Montie Roberts. Why don't you take that one. Find out where he was just before he came to the locker room. Get all the information you can about the message he says he got that told him to show up there in the first place—how it arrived, who he thinks sent it to him. Oh, and ask him if he's noticed anything missing.” Frank could feel the golden walnut in his pocket.

“You've found something. I can tell,” Jacques said. “What is it?”

“Just find out what you can,” Frank said. “We'll call you later and set up a meeting.”

“You've given me a tough assignment,” Jacques said. “Trying to get Monster Montie to talk will be a true test. I'll pass it with flying colors.” They finished their breakfast and Jacques left.

“Okay, what was that all about?” Joe asked when the Hardys were alone again. “I don't remember you saying anything about talking to Montie.”

“I just wanted to get Jacques out of our hair for a while,” Frank admitted. “I figured that would keep him busy, and wouldn't really affect our case one
way or the other. Plus, it's a good way to find out if he's telling the truth this time.”

“Okay, boss,” Joe said with a grin. “So what's
our
assignment?”

“I'm going to retrace Dad's route from yesterday morning,” Frank said. “Check with his driver, see if anyone along the way saw anything. I want to know if he was diverted from his route, or if he actually never intended to show up at the symposium.”

“That's the only part that really bothers me,” Joe said. “If this was something he'd planned, he would have told
somebody
. I get that he might not have been able to tell us, but someone at the conference should have known.”

“I know,” Frank said. “And I agree.”

“I'll stake out Isabelle's place,” Joe said. He pulled out the map and address that Jacques had given them Wednesday. They synchronized their handhelds and agreed to check in with each other every hour.

•  •  •

By about noon Joe was in the Montmartre district of Paris. A cluster of neighborhoods historically populated with artists, flea markets, and clubs, Montmartre was laid out on a series of steep hills. Joe followed his crude map and finally found Isabelle's garden apartment on a secluded street.

The apartment was half above street level and half below. Joe could look down into the apartment through the windows just above the sidewalk. He
saw no one inside, so he climbed over a wrought-iron fence and scurried along the side to the back.

Cautiously he let himself in. The small apartment was dusty and dark. He crept from room to room. They were all empty. The bedroom was off to the side and was separated from the dining room by a heavy curtain that had been strung across the opening. He peered around the curtain. The coast was clear.

As he stepped around the heavy drape, the brass rings at the top of the curtain moved along an iron rod. The sound of scraping metal was answered with a more animal-like sound; a long, low moan filtered through the closet door.

Joe dropped his backpack, picked up a heavy candlestick, and stepped to the closet. Holding the candlestick high above his head, he flung open the door.

Joe waited behind the door for just a few seconds. Nothing happened. He peeked around the door and saw a few clothes on spindly wire hangers hanging on a rod. On the floor of the closet was a large wooden trunk with leather straps.

Another moan caused him to spring into action. It came from the trunk—and it sounded like a human cry.

Joe dropped the candlestick, undid the leather straps, and pulled up the lid. Stuffed inside the trunk was Isabelle Genet, handcuffed and gagged. Her eyelids fluttered as the light washed over her face.

“Don't worry,” Joe murmured. “You'll be okay.” At that point, he didn't know whether he believed what he was saying or not.

Gently he lifted her out of the trunk and laid her on the bed. He removed the gag, but she said nothing. Her eyelids kept fluttering. They didn't stay open for more than an instant at a time. Rummaging through his picks, he found one that worked on the handcuffs. Once he got them off, he rubbed her wrists for a moment and then clocked a weak pulse.

Joe phoned for an ambulance and watched over Isabelle until it arrived. The paramedics checked her out and said a few words to Joe, but he didn't understand them. He could tell by their grim faces, though, that her condition was not good. She didn't speak.

The medics slipped a couple of IVs into Isabelle's arm and hustled her away. Joe got the name of the hospital she'd be in, and thanked them. As they left, one of them turned back to Joe and spoke in halting English. “It is good,” she said. “It is good you called. It is good timing.”

Joe poked around the apartment a little while but found nothing of any value to the case.
If people know where she lives,
he reasoned,
she's too smart to leave anything incriminating around here
. He left the apartment and called his brother on the handheld. Joe told Frank what had happened, and they agreed to meet immediately at the computer café.

Joe got there first and ordered a soda. Frank arrived a half hour later.

“Sorry,” Frank said. “I made another stop.”

“Have you found out anything about Dad?” Joe asked. “Finding Isabelle stuffed in that trunk really threw me. These guys—whoever they are—play rough. We need to find Dad.”

“I know,” Frank agreed. “But I ran into a total dead end this morning. So after you called, I stopped at Jacques's. We know from everything we heard last night that Victoire had nothing to do with the fireworks sabotage or the exploding lights. The only thing they admitted to was plotting something involving the stands. So someone else must be responsible for the rest.”

“Right,” Joe said, listening intently to his brother. “The fireworks and night lighting both involved computer-controlled systems. The Victoires are such throwbacks, they're not going to be computer experts. They're so antitechnology they're probably not all that tech savvy.”

“So who do we know who
is
a superhacker?” Frank asked. “He's also a liar, but the part about being a computer genius is true, because everyone who hangs out here says so.”

“Yeah, but Jacques isn't the only superhacker in Paris,” Joe pointed out. “Or liar. There's nothing that connects him with any of this.”

“That's what I told myself too,” Frank said. “So I stopped by just to get his help. I figured we could have him crank up his computer and hack into the
Macri Magnifico database and also into Le Stade's lighting program. I wanted to see if he could track the sabotage hacker.” Frank's words were coming fast now. Joe wanted him to cut to the chase, but he knew better than to try to push his brother.

“So I proposed the deal to Jacques,” Frank said, “and I was totally surprised by his reaction.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I figured he's going to be really excited, right?” Frank said. “We're asking him to be involved in one of the most crucial parts of the case—to actually do some major detecting, not just interview a crazy soccer coach.”

“And he wasn't into it?”

“He was on his computer when I got there,” Frank said. “I proposed the deal, and he seemed to think the idea was okay. But it wasn't what I expected, and that raised a red flag in my mind. The phone rang, and when he left the room to take the call, I carefully ran through some of the things on his desk. I found these.”

Frank laid out three pieces of paper. They were computer printouts—one bio for each Hardy. “Look at the dates,” Frank said.

“He ran these Wednesday,” Joe concluded.

“But he said he didn't know who we were until he read the articles on Thursday,” Frank said.

“We already know he lies,” Joe pointed out.

“Yeah? Wait until you hear this,” Frank said. “When
he got back to the room, he told me the call was from Isabelle, and she was sorry she'd brushed me off at the rally. He said she'd changed her mind about talking to me and was asking Jacques to set up a meet between Isabelle, you, and me. He said it was for eight o'clock tonight at Les Catacombes.”

“Whoa,” Joe said under his breath. He leaned back in his chair, picturing Isabelle being pushed away on the gurney and loaded into an ambulance. “No way she's calling him from the hospital.”

“Exactly,” Frank said. “He's setting us up.”

“He's got to be in on all this somehow,” Joe said. “Maybe he's one of Bergerac's people.”

“Or he could be in Victoire, for all we know,” Frank said, “and he's been setting us up from the very beginning—the rally, everything.” Frank took a long gulp of soda.

“He could even be a lone wolf,” Joe said.

“Well, I feel he's now the prime suspect for the sabotage at Le Stade,” Frank said. “He also could have sent the e-mail from Dad.” He felt a rush of adrenaline.

“So we roll tonight,” Joe said, bringing his chair back down on all four legs, “no matter what.”

“Into probably the worst trap we've ever been invited into,” Frank said quietly.

Joe went to the counter at the front of the café and picked up a brochure with information about Les Catacombes. “It's like an underground tomb,”
he said. Frank ordered some
croque-monsieurs
while Joe filled him in.

“‘In the late seventeen hundreds,'” Joe read, “‘they quarried stone from under the streets and left these enormous vaults. The cemeteries were all overcrowded because of war and disease, so they moved millions of bodies from battlegrounds and other graveyards and hospital morgues to the catacombs.”

“Millions?” Frank repeated.

“They added bodies for two hundred years, it says here,” Joe read, “until there were eventually six million. Now it's a tourist attraction that closes at four o'clock in the afternoon most days.”

“Except for people like us,” Frank said. “Tonight we get our own exclusive look at Les Catacombes.”

It was four o'clock when they finished eating. Frank placed his fifth call of the day to the symposium emergency number. The other times he'd talked to the same man who had called the night before. This time the call was answered by someone new, a woman with a kind, reassuring manner. She told Frank that all the conferees were working on locating Fenton Hardy, and no one was alarmed yet.

“He's working on a difficult case,” she told Frank. “He might not check in as often as we'd like, but that doesn't mean he's in danger.”

“Checking in often is never necessary,” Frank said, after he'd repeated the conversation to Joe. “Just checking in once, though, would be a help.”

“I'm with you,” Joe said. “I'm thinking Jacques might be really dangerous. I don't like the idea of him messing with Dad. Let's get there early. I want every advantage we can get.”

They returned to the apartment along the same path they believed Fenton had taken the day before and that Frank had retraced that morning. They repeated Frank's earlier efforts, showing shopkeepers and bus drivers a photo of their father and asking questions. No one had seen him the day before.

They got back to the apartment by about six o'clock. Frank checked for phone messages and e-mails, but there were none. Joe got out a map and they studied it carefully. Les Catacombes was located just a few steps from the Denfert-Rochereau Metro stop in the Montparnasse section of the city.

The Hardys memorized street and avenue names and other landmarks. They knew they had to be prepared to escape or to chase. And they had to know where they were going to be at all times.

“We can't take much with us,” Frank said. “We need to be lean and mean; we can't have backpacks weighing us down.”

“And no fancy spy gear for Jacques to steal,” Joe added. “We'll just take one handheld.”

“Do we know what we're getting ourselves into?” Frank asked. “He may have Victoire or Bergerac guys with him. Or he may be alone.” Each teen
tucked a lockpick into the bottom of his left sock. Joe slipped the handheld under his shirt, down below his jeans, and hid it behind his belt buckle. They were about the same size; if he got frisked, no one would feel the small device behind his buckle. Finally both Joe and Frank tucked penlights into their pockets.

“If he's by himself, he'll have to be armed,” Frank reasoned, “because he knows we could take him. And he probably won't dare frisk us because if he gets in too close, he risks our jumping him.”

By six forty-five they were ready. They took a couple of trains to the Denfert-Rochereau stop. As they walked from the train to the steps leading up to the street, Frank tried to picture the walls packed with bones. It was hard to imagine.

When they got to Les Catacombes, the area was deserted. The night was very dark. The full moon that had illuminated the lawn of Auguste Bergerac's chateau the previous evening was no help the next night. It was completely masked by thick clouds.