The 39 Clues: Book 8 (6 page)

If
I
got kidnapped, she might also be in danger....
And Dan's abduction had been at the hands of Ian

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and Natalie. The Kabra
kids
were bad enough, but what if Amy had been visited by their mother? Isabel -- the murderer...

Don't be such a baby! Everything's fine. You heard Jonah -- they'll find Amy tomorrow.

It occurred to Dan that, just as the Kabras had used hired muscle to kidnap him, the Wizards might be using the high life to do exactly the same thing.

But if that's true, why put me in my own room, free to take off any time I want?

He got up, opened the door, and peered both ways down the long hall. No Broderick Wizard watching his suite while texting on his BlackBerry. No record company flunky. He could leave when he pleased --if he had anywhere to go.

Was it really so hard to believe that Jonah actually felt bad about the crocodile thing and was trying to make amends?

"Trust no one," William McIntyre, Grace's lawyer, had told them at the beginning of the contest. Yet Jonah had shown him nothing but kindness today. And the last time Dan had seen Amy, she had bombarded him with hateful accusations about their parents. If anyone deserved not to be trusted, it was her.

For all he knew, she was totally thrilled to be rid of him. She probably hadn't given him a second thought since Tiananmen Square, when he'd turned and walked (out) of her life.

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CHAPTER 8

Amy barely slept a wink.

Worry mingled with jet lag in her mind, a toxic brew that had her watching the LED readout on her bedside clock throughout the long night. Never did more than ten minutes go by between red-eyed updates.

In the other bed, Nellie was also sleeping fitfully, murmuring under her breath through nervous dreams. Even Saladin was restless and had coughed up three fur balls by morning.

It was after five when Amy finally fell into an exhausted sleep. She was plagued by nightmares about her brother wandering through the deserted predawn gloom of Tiananmen Square. He would know no other place to look for her. And where was she? Safe in bed.

It was all her fault. Why had she burdened her brother with her deepest fears about Mom and Dad? No eleven-year-old was ready to face something like that. She wasn't sure she could face it herself.

Nellie's urgent whispering penetrated her reverie. "... in Russia they ran ahead of me on purpose. This

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is different. Dan knew we were in the square, waiting for him, and he didn't come back--"

Amy sat up. "Who are you talking to?"

Startled, Nellie slammed down the hotel phone. "Your uncle Alistair," she said quickly. "We got cut off."

Amy frowned. "No offense, but that's not your call. We don't want to have anything to do with Alistair. He was there the night our parents were killed."

Nellie was stubborn. "That was then and this is now. You're in charge of the clue hunt. But when one of you kids goes missing, that's Nellie time. Do you speak Chinese? Me, neither. We need someone who'll pick up on it if there's a story around town about a lost American boy."

Amy nodded, chastened. "Call him back. Thanks, Nellie."

They arranged to meet Uncle Alistair at the Imperial Hotel in half an hour. And as they slipped out the door, leaving Saladin asleep on a pillow, a tiny nagging doubt tugged at Amy's mind. If Nellie had just been talking to Alistair on the phone, how come she'd had to look up the number?

"Amy. Nellie."

Alistair Oh stood as they approached his table and gallantly saw them into their chairs before reseating himself. He may have been a backstabber like all

53

the other Cahills, but his manners were impeccable.

"I took the liberty of ordering breakfast. Please help yourselves."

Amy and Nellie dug in ravenously. In the tumult of Dan's disappearance, they had skipped dinner.

"Amy, you must be frantic," Alistair said in a mixture of sympathy and worry. "Dan lost in Beijing. All of us who love you will find this most upsetting."

Amy's lips were tight. "How much did you love us when you faked your own death in Korea?"

Uncle Alistair did not apologize. "That was different. A clue was involved. We Cahills are destined to serve two masters -- our humanity and the thirty-nine clues."

"And if a clue becomes involved again this time?" Nellie put in pointedly.

"I care deeply about Dan, just as you do," he assured them, his expression pinched. "Where did you last see him?"

"In Tiananmen Square," replied Amy, mangling the name with her full mouth. "Near the Gate of Heavenly Peace. We had an argument, and he ran away and never came back."

The older man was astonished. "But you and your brother are so close. What were you fighting about?"

Amy stuck out her jaw. "The night our parents died. The fire Isabel set. And the other people who might have been there -- like
you."

Uncle Alistair shut his eyes for so long that both girls thought he might have dozed off. When he looked at

54

them again, it was as if his face had been drawn downward by a kind of peculiar gravity.

"If I could travel back in time and change a single hour, that would be the one," he said, his voice husky with emotion. "Two fine lives extinguished, two beautiful children orphaned. What a terrible calamity."

"Calamity!" Amy sat forward. "You talk about it like it was an accident! Isabel burned our house down!"

Alistair winced, as if the effort of recalling were physically painful. "Do you want the truth?"

"I have all the truth I need!" Amy seethed. "She set fire to your house in Java, and now Irina's gone! She did the same thing seven years ago!"

Alistair nodded tragically "We all knew Isabel's ruthlessness. I should have foreseen that she was capable of murder. Perhaps that is why I've always felt a special responsibility toward you and your brother--and why his disappearance is so distressing to me."

It was not that Amy had nothing to say to this. She simply did not trust herself to speak without falling to pieces, as if the only thing holding her together were her silence.

Nellie put an arm around her. "I know this is big stuff for you, Amy. But right now we have to concentrate on Dan."

"What do you need from me?" Alistair offered.

Nellie pulled a stack of Beijing newspapers out of a large tote bag and dropped them with a thud on the table in front of him. "Look through these. Anything

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suspicious --lost American kid, young tourist in trouble, boy found sleeping on the subway--that kind of angle. Check radio and TV news, too."

"What about the US Embassy?" Alistair suggested.

"No embassy!" Amy rasped. "At least, not yet. Dan and I are wanted by Social Services! If they run our names through a computer, we're out of the contest."

"The contest," he repeated carefully. "My dear child, far be it from me to use this terrible situation to pressure you to reveal secrets. But if I perhaps knew what you two were working on --"

"Don't you Cahills ever turn it off?" Nellie interrupted angrily. "How stupid do you think we are? We've got a missing kid, and you're gaming it to squeeze information out of us!"

"It's okay," Amy decided. "Dan might follow the clue hunt, hoping to find us that way." From her backpack, she produced the silk sheet from the Forbidden City and spread it out on the table.

Alistair sat forward, stiff with wonder. "Where did you acquire this item? In the Imperial Palace?"

Nellie spoke up. "Just be grateful that you're seeing it at all. What do you know about it?"

The older man was vastly impressed. He pointed to the red signature chop in the bottom corner. "That is without a doubt the personal seal of Puyi himself, the last emperor of China."

"So it's true!" breathed Amy. "The Qing dynasty were Cahills."

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Alistair nodded. "That is well known among the Asian branches of our family. It began with Emperor Qian Long, who ascended the throne in 1736. His mother was related to the Janus in Manchuria."

"But Puyi only reigned until he was six," Amy mused. "No way is this the work of a six-year-old."

"He was no longer emperor," Alistair agreed, "but he was permitted to live the emperor's life until he was eighteen. Like his Qing ancestors, he pursued the arts. And, we now know, the thirty-nine clues."

Amy indicated the "equation" of Cahill symbols. "What do you make of this?"

"It seems fairly self-explanatory. The Lucian, Janus, Tomas, and Ekat branches comprise our family."

"But if it's so obvious, why treat it like some huge secret?" Amy persisted.

Alistair avoided her eyes, focusing instead on the Chinese message on the silk. "This part appears to be a poem. It says:

That
which you seek, you hold in your hand,

Fixed forever in birth,

Where the Earth meets the sky.'"

"Well, that explains everything," Nellie said sarcastically, jotting down his translation on a napkin.

"Some poem," scoffed Amy. "It doesn't even rhyme."

The older man regarded her with perplexity. "Surely

57

you know, Amy, that poetry is often free verse."

"I
do," Amy replied shakily. "I was just thinking that, if Dan were here, that's what he'd probably say."

It sobered them all.

Uncle Alistair broke the melancholy silence. "To business, then." He scanned the headlines of the
Beijing Daily
and then opened the paper to page two.

A very famous face smirked out at them.

"Jonah Wizard!" Amy exclaimed. "Why is that bonehead getting so much press?"

Alistair scanned the article. "It would appear our Janus rival is also in Beijing. He's performing a rap concert at the Bird's Nest this evening."

"I remember that stadium from the Olympics," Nellie put in. "How's a no-talent creep like him going to fill that place? It holds, like, eighty thousand people."

"And we're going to be two of them," announced Amy.

Nellie made a face. "Why would a missing kid go to a hip-hop concert?"

"Think, Nellie. He doesn't know the language, he's got no money, he can't go to the embassy, he can't find us. Jonah's a familiar face for him."

Alistair frowned. "We're all anxious to find Dan, but this seems far-fetched. It makes very little sense to go."

"Maybe," said Amy. "But it makes even less to stay away."

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CHAPTER 9

From backstage, the sound system in the Bird's Nest was shattering. The drumbeats were artillery shells. The capacity crowd swallowed this incoming fire and howled for more -- eighty-one thousand people in frenzied overdrive, rattling the interlacing steel "twigs" of the most famous stadium in the world.

Dan had never much appreciated Jonah as a person or as a celebrity. But the guy definitely knew how to work an audience, even a humongous one that didn't speak much English. He conjured his rhymes like Zeus conjured thunderbolts. And yet, when he addressed the crowd in his down-to-earth way, it was somehow intimate, as if every one of the eighty-one thousand were enjoying a personal visit with the megastar. He was electrifying.

Clutching his backstage pass, Dan stood in the wings with Jonah's father and assorted roadies, bodyguards, and music journalists. He couldn't help wondering why Jonah even bothered with the 39 Clues. Who needed to become the most powerful person in history when

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being famous was so flat-out awesome? Jonah had it all --money, fame, screaming girls. Even the Cahill family had nothing to offer compared with that.

A few feet away, Mr. Wizard's BlackBerry lit up like a Roman candle, and he took an urgent phone call.

Dan looked on eagerly. "Is that about my sister? Have you found their hotel?" He had to cup his hands to his mouth and shout directly into the man's ear.

"No --no luck on that!" Jonah's father yelled back. "But this is an emergency! The fans have broken through to the tunnel outside the dressing room. Security says there are hundreds of them! It's not going to be easy to get Jonah out of here! Come on!"

He led Dan and the bodyguards through a heavy door marked RESTRICTED ACCESS in a dozen languages. Now they were in the true guts of the Bird's Nest, the passages no one got to see during the Olympics on TV. They navigated the network of underground concrete tunnels, squinting in the harsh fluorescent light. After a few turns, they emerged into the main corridor and sheer bedlam.

Five hundred Jonah Wizard fans, amped up to fever pitch, were jammed in like sardines, screaming for a glimpse of their idol. They held up signs, in Chinese and English, with messages like MARRY ME, JONAH; I WANNA BE
YOUR
GANGSTA; and THE YEAR OF THE WIZ
.
The never-ending chant of
Jo-nah! Jo-nah! Jo-nah!
rivaled the gigawatt sound system of the stadium.

Broderick and the security guards formed a human