The Adventures of Tintin (19 page)

At that moment, Captain Haddock, who had been leaping across rooftops with Snowy right behind him, plunged down from a nearby building into the enemy’s jeep. “Bashi-bazouks!” he roared. “Mutineers!” He laid into the sneezing Tom and Allan with his fists, pummeling them. “Ah, Mr. Allan!” he said. “You ship-stealing parasite. Allow me to return the favor!”

The vehicle jerked forward and roared off despite Captain Haddock’s best efforts. He grappled with Allan as Tom tried to keep the jeep under control while dodging stray punches from both of them. Sakharine swiveled around, looking for his falcon.

Tintin was hot on the bird’s trail. The chase carried him into a house built on stilts near the harbor, and he rode the motorcycle up the front steps and through the front door. He crashed into a living room and saw the falcon get tangled up in threads trailing out from a loom in one corner. The falcon flapped and struggled free, but with stray threads clinging to its feathers, it bobbled in the air. “Excuse me! Pardon me!” Tintin called out to the surprised occupants of the apartment. He accelerated out the window on the other side of the building, hitting the back wall hard enough that the entire house fell over and split open like an egg.

The motorcycle zoomed up a flight of stairs, smashing into a stone wall. Rebounding from the impact, Tintin caught one of its handlebars as it flew off the crashed bike. He strung it on telephone wires and rode them like a zip line, following the falcon, which trailed wisps of spun cotton.

As he ran out of phone line, Tintin jumped off into the nearest window, and found himself in an apartment. He dashed through the apartment, keeping pace with the thread-tangled falcon as he passed each window. He burst out onto a balcony and saw the falcon dropping one wing, just beginning to bank away from the building. Tintin knew he would lose the bird if he didn’t act fast.

There was only one thing to do.

He leaped onto the balcony railing, sprang out into the air—and caught the falcon in the midst of its turn!

He landed with a grunt on a wooden platform. Somehow, the chase had led them to the harbor. Seawater lapped at the pilings that supported the platform. The bird fought, but Tintin held on. There wasn’t a moment to waste. He had all three scrolls now, even though the falcon wouldn’t let the third go. That was all right. He held the bird in one spot and put the other two scrolls next to the one it held. “Hidden numbers,” he said to himself as he got the three scrolls aligned and saw . . .

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you!” called Sakharine’s voice.

Tintin looked up and saw that Tom and Allan had captured Captain Haddock. They held him out over a long drop from a nearby building. They had Snowy, too. He dangled from a rope tied to Captain Haddock’s waist. Below them, the harbor churned at the mouth of the canal, clogged with wreckage and mud.

“Let the bird go,” Sakharine demanded. “What do you value more, those scrolls or Haddock’s life?”

“Don’t listen to him!” Haddock shouted. “You’ll never get away with this, you sour-faced sassinack!”

“I will kill him!” Sakharine threatened.

Tintin held on to the falcon. He had a plan, but he wasn’t sure it would work. One thing he did know was that Sakharine’s goons were going to drop Captain Haddock no matter what Tintin did. That was the problem with being a villain, he thought. Nobody believed you when you said you would make a fair trade.

“Let the bird go now or this man dies!” Sakharine threatened.

“No, wait!” Tintin said. He was so close. So close . . . the crucial clue was literally in his hands!

Dangling from the balcony, Captain Haddock raged on. “You two-timing troglodyte! You simpering son of a profiteer!”

I just need one more moment
, Tintin thought . . . but he wasn’t going to get it. “Here’s mud in your eye!” Sakharine gloated. Tom and Allan let go of Captain Haddock, who plunged downward toward the muddy water.

“Fathead!” Captain Haddock roared, and disappeared into the harbor. Snowy splashed in a split second later.

With a cry of frustration, Tintin let the falcon go and dove in after them.

When the flood had calmed, the entire town of Bagghar was celebrating. Its canals were full of sparkling fresh water. The river flowed down its natural course, winding its way from the blown spillway to the sea. Sheik Ben Salaad’s palace was partially in ruins, some of its walls undercut by the initial flood. The people of Bagghar were jubilant. They had water! They had fresh water for the first time since . . . how long had it been?

The hotel caught on the back of the tank had come to rest at the edge of the beach when the tank had run out of gas. The hotelier was painting beachfront access on the sign at that very moment as his guests took in the fine view from their windows. Among the guests were Thompson and Thomson, who were just then turning to each other and saying, “You always wanted to go to the beach.”

These were the conversations going on around them as Tintin and Captain Haddock sat on the beach watching the
Karaboudjan
steam out into the bay. Captain Haddock was purple with rage. “
Nobody steals my ship
!”

“They already have,” Tintin said dejectedly.

After a pause to think this over, Captain Haddock said, “Nobody takes my ship
twice
!”

The
Karboudjan
’s horn sounded, the blast rolling across the bay as the ship made the wide turn around the harbor’s breakwater toward open ocean.

“We’ll show them, eh, won’t we, Tintin?” Captain Haddock said. He seemed manic with an optimism Tintin couldn’t understand. “All right, then, what’s the plan?”

“There is no plan,” Tintin said.

“Of course there’s a plan,” Haddock said. “You’ve always got to have a plan.”

“Not this time,” Tintin said.

Haddock just looked at him, as if expecting a punch line.

“Sakharine has the scrolls,” Tintin said. “They’ll lead him to the treasure. It could be anywhere in the world. We’ll never see him again. It’s over.”

“I thought you were an optimist!” Captain Haddock yelled.

“Well, you were wrong, weren’t you?” Tintin said. “I’m a realist.”

Captain Haddock braced his fists against his hips. “That’s just another name for a quitter.”

“You can call it what you like. Don’t you get it? We failed.” He sank his chin into his hands and looked out over the water. The
Karaboudjan
had nearly completed its maneuver around the breakwater. They had lost. Tintin was deep in self-pity. After coming all this way, he would never find the answer to the mystery. The secret of the
Unicorn
was lost to him forever.

“Failed?” Captain Haddock echoed. “There are plenty of people out there who’ll call you a failure. A fool, a loser, a hopeless souse! But don’t you ever say it of yourself!”

He sat next to Tintin on a chair that had washed out of one of the buildings in town. Tintin could feel Haddock looking at him.

“You send out the wrong signal, that’s what people pick up, understand?” Captain Haddock went on. “You care about something, you fight for it. You hit a wall, you push through it.”

He stood up again, on fire with nervous energy, and walked a short distance away. The
Karaboudjan
was farther away now, lost to them along with the secrets it carried. “There’s something you need to know about failure, Tintin,” Captain Haddock said. “You can never let it defeat you.”

Something in that avalanche of words got through the fog of gloom surrounding Tintin. He tried to replay what Captain Haddock had said, but kept getting lost. “What did you just say?” he asked.

“You hit a wall, you push through it!” Captain Haddock answered.

“No, you said something about . . . sending out a signal!” Everything snapped into focus, and Tintin stood up, slapping the sand from his trousers and hands. “Of course! I sent a radio message from the
Karaboudjan
. I know what frequency they use!”

Now it was Haddock’s turn to be confused. “How does that help us?”

“All we have to do is get the information to Interpol,” Tintin said. “They can track the signals and work out which way the
Karaboudjan
is heading.”

“Interpol,” Captain Haddock said, as if the word were somehow magic.

“Interpol,” Tintin said, pointing down the beach.

Captain Haddock turned to look, and both of them watched as Thompson and Thomson walked out the front door of the now-beachfront hotel and promptly fell next to each other in the sand. “Any port the ship enters, we’ll know at once,” Tintin said.

Haddock looked up and down the beach. He spotted a seaplane, rocking gently at its mooring in shallow water. He clapped his hands. “And we can get there first!”

SAKHARINE INHALED THE
fishy salt air of the docks as he strode down the gangway from the stolen
Karaboudjan
flanked by Tom and Allan. His favorite car, the limousine he kept for special occasions, waited on the cobblestone quayside. Nestor stood by the passenger door, wearing his chauffeur’s uniform. A locomotive belched steam and smoke nearby as the
Karaboudjan
’s regular cargo was unloaded onto the flatcars behind it. Everything was coming together despite that irritating urchin Tintin and the sot Haddock.

“What are we doing here, boss?” Tom asked as they
crossed
the train tracks. An enormous crane swung over them to hoist pallets of cargo out of the
Karaboudjan
’s hold. There were several cranes nearby, on twenty-foot scaffolds bolted into platforms on the ground. “I don’t get it. We’re right back where we started.”

“You’re to speak of this to no one,” Sakharine snapped. “Keep your mouths shut.”

“Don’t worry, long as we get our share,” Allan said.

“Oh, you’ll get your share,” Sakharine said. He pointed back toward the gangplank. “Guard the ship.”

Three scrolls in hand, Sakharine kept walking. Behind him, Tom kept complaining. “But where are you going? Where’s the filthy moolah?”

You’ll get just what you deserve
, Sakharine thought. He left Tom and Allan where they stood and approached his car. Nestor opened the door. “Good evening, sir,” he said. “I trust you had a successful trip abroad?”

“Do I pay you to talk to me?” Sakharine said. He got into the car. As Nestor shut the door after him, he heard him say, “You don’t pay me at all.”

Which was true enough, but Sakharine had more important things on his mind than the petty grumblings of his subordinates. He settled into the rich leather seat and focused his mind on the long-awaited conclusion to the quest for the secret of the
Unicorn
.

Then the car moved, but not forward.

Sakharine sat up. He looked out the window and saw to his astonishment that the car was rising into the air. “What the blazes?” he said. “Nestor!”

He rolled down the window and saw Tom and Allan running from the base of the gangway where he had stationed them, guns drawn. The car rose into the air, swinging gently, and Sakharine realized that one of the ship’s large cranes had picked it up. “Tom, Allan, you blithering idiots, don’t just stand there!” he screamed out the window.
“Do something!”

Then, as the car swung around, Sakharine saw the accursed Captain Haddock in the cab of the crane controlling it . . . and singing one of his abominable songs as he worked the levers!

No
, Sakharine thought.
It does not end like this
.