“It sounds like the two men had a falling out,” Dr. Bradley said, “maybe over a deal gone bad. Canavar, have you collected any info on Herbst?”
“No, but I believe he has a . . . what dost thou call it? Web screen page?” Canavar replied. “Thou canst make a connection with the internet.”
Aly rolled her eyes. “Thanks for the tip.”
In a moment, she was looking at a badly designed site that seemed like it hadn’t been touched in years. “Not a lot about him,” she said. “There’s no date on the site and it looks like it was designed the day after they invented HTML. Opened shop in 1961, but I can’t tell if he’s still in business. I guess we could call or email him. He’d be really old, if he’s still alive at all . . .” She quickly opened a new browser tab and typed “Dieter Herbst obituary” into the search bar. Her face fell. “Died in 2004. While conducting a transaction at an auction house called the Ausser . . . Ausserge . . .”
“Aussergewöhnliche Reliquien Geschäft,” Torquin piped up.
Cass’s mouth dropped open. “You can pronounce that?”
“Professor Bhegad . . .” Torquin began, but at the mention of the name, he let out a squelched sob and rubbed his eyes. “Sorry . . . hrruphm. Sometimes Professor sends Torquin to auctions. Collectors sell relics. Torquin buys. Mostly two auction houses. Smithfield and ARG.”
Aly already had the ARG home page open. “Much slicker site . . .”
I leaned over her shoulder. “What are the chances you can find records from back in the sixties?”
“I’m not hopeful,” she said, as her fingers flitted on the keys, “unless they park the scans in some archive on the FTP site.”
A window popped up, and digits began scrolling in a blur. In about twenty seconds, Aly had broken through the firewall and was rooting around in a company file structure.
Canavar gasped. “In form and movement how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! What alchemy hath possession of this callow child? What arcane wizardry in her soul, what access to worlds unknown—”
“What a gasbag,” Torquin said. “Shut mouth.”
“Woo-hoo!” Aly nearly leaped from her seat. “Check this out.”
“Amazing,” Dad said.
“Old Herbster was busy,” Cass said. “And in Asia Minor—which is what Turkey used to be called.”
“The guy had a big haul in September,” Aly said. “He sold them off on the same day.”
“And he wasn’t very good at it,” I added. “Look at the other sellers—Heller and Henson. They offered their relics at one price and totally got what they asked for. Sometimes more. But Herbst sells at a way lower price than he asks, every time. Like he’s totally incompetent.”
“Or,” Aly said, “he’s in a hurry. Which he would be, if he knew the goods were stolen.”
“‘Relic, spherical stone,’” I said. “That could be a Loculus, I guess. Sold for four thousand dollars to AMNH. Which is . . .” I took the mouse and scrolled down to the list of abbreviations. “The American Museum of Natural History, in New York City.”
“Yyyesss!” Cass said. “Brunhilda to the Big Apple!”
As we headed for the door, Torquin shouted, “Wait!”
We turned. He had lifted Canavar by the back of his shirt collar, and he was holding him toward us as if he were a kitten. “Must say thank you to Canavar. He helped do the work of Professor Bhegad.”
“’Twas nothing,” Canavar said, his voice choked by the pressure of his shirt collar. “Wouldst thou kindly release me?”
As Torquin set the little guy down, we each shook his gnarled hand. “Peace out, Canavar,” Cass said. “How could we ever repay you?”
Canavar gave us his odd, twisted smile. “When thou hast successfully reached the age of fourteen years, consider returning to Bodrum to give me the joyous news.”
“Will do,” Cass said.
“We promise,” I added.
Dad was heading back toward the door of the warehouse. “Let’s load in some good Turkish grub now,” he said. “Food is expensive in New York City.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CODE RED
ERROR.
Aly’s monitor beeped at her for what seemed like the dozenth time on the flight to New York.
She pounded on the screen and sat back in her seat. “I need a nap . . .”
“Whoa, another new tower on Fifty-Seventh Street near Seventh Avenue,” Cass said, his face plastered to the window. “Construction on the West Side Highway, too—and check out Williamsburg, on the horizon!”
“Will you stop that, Cass?” Aly said, rubbing her forehead. “They’re buildings, that’s all.”
Cass spun around. He looked hurt. “Sorry, Aly. I geek out over this stuff.”
“Apology accepted. Wake me when we’re there.” Aly’s head lolled back in her seat. By the time it clonked against the window, she was fast asleep.
I glanced at Dr. Bradley. She had a newspaper unfolded in her lap, open to a crossword puzzle. But she was ignoring that now, staring intently at Aly.
As Brunhilda began her descent, Torquin yanked the steering mechanism this way and that in an attempt to do tricky moves. Dad was radioing the Marine Air Terminal for runway instructions. Cass was grinning out the window like a little kid.
Aly let out a sharp snoring sound. Her head began to slide downward. As she slipped off the seat, I realized she hadn’t fastened her belt.
“Aly?” I said.
She thumped to the carpet, her legs twitching.
Dr. Bradley was already on the move. She lifted Aly, swung her around to the back of the plane, and deposited her on the reclined seat that had once held Professor Bhegad. “Someone take the phone from my purse!” she shouted.
Aly’s chest lurched up and down. A cccchhhh sound came from her mouth, and her eyes rolled back into her head. I knelt by Dr. Bradley’s purse and fished out the phone.
Cass’s face was bone white. “She’s . . . she’s not due for an episode . . .”
“I have the phone!” I shouted.
“Do exactly as I say,” Dr. Bradley said. “Send a text to one-four-two-eight-five-seven. Two words. Code red!”
Dr. Bradley was holding Aly’s arms down. Trying to keep her from flailing. From hurting herself. My fingers shook as I tried to follow instructions.
CODE RESD.
Steady. Backspace . . .
CODE RED.
I jammed my thumb on send.
“No phone now!” Torquin bellowed. “Give treatment!”
“I would if I could!” Dr. Bradley shouted. “I don’t have my equipment! I may be able to sedate her briefly, but that’s it!”
Aly’s face was turning blue. Dr. Bradley’s hand was in Aly’s mouth, trying to keep her from swallowing her tongue.
The phone vibrated. I nearly dropped it.
Its screen now glowed with a string of characters:
1W72PH4
“What the heck does this mean?” I said.
Cass was out of his seat, staring over my shoulder. “It’s an address,” he said. “Number One West Seventy-Second Street. Right off Central Park. Not sure about the last part—PH four . . .”
“Penthouse four!” Dad said. “The apartment on the top floor, most likely. Is this where we’re supposed to go?”
“Who are we seeing?” I asked.
“Never mind that!” Dr. Bradley said. “And don’t even think of calling nine-one-one. We have no time. We need to land now.”
“We’re third in line for landing clearance!” Dad said.
Torquin yanked hard on the throttle. “Now we are first.”
The taxi screeched to a stop in front of 1 West 72nd Street. Dad had pulled some sort of strings to get us through customs in no time. He also promised the cabdriver double pay if he got us to the address on Dr. Bradley’s phone in twenty minutes. He made it in eighteen fifty-three.
Torquin, Dr. Bradley, and Aly were in another cab. It pulled to the curb direct
ly in front of us.
The building loomed overhead, a brick urban castle surrounded by a black cast iron fence festooned with carved angry faces. In a dark, arched entranceway, two guards stood, hands folded. Cass gazed at them, a spooked look in his eyes. “This is exactly where John Lennon was shot and killed,” he whispered.
“Will you stop it?” I said.
As Dad paid the fare, a man darted out of the archway toward the first cab. He wore a wool cap, dark sunglasses, jeans, and a black leather jacket, and he had something shiny and metallic in his hand.
“What the—?” Dad murmured.
The man leaned into the open back window of Aly’s cab. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but when he backed out, his hands were empty.
Before we could do a thing, he was pulling open the back door of our cab. “To the river!” he shouted to the taxi driver, yanking open the rear door and squeezing into the backseat with Cass and me. “And step on it.”
In front of us, Torquin was lifting Aly out of the other cab. I caught the flash of silver as her arm flopped limply down.
“Sir,” the cabdriver said meekly, “I must discharge these passengers—”
“I said go!” the man barked.
As the taxi squealed away from the curb, Dad whirled around. “I beg your pardon!” he said. “We have urgent business in that building.”
The man put a hand into his jacket pocket. “If you know what’s good for you, you will do exactly as I say.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
HACKED?
IF YOU EVER wondered what it was like to ride down a New York City street in the backseat of a taxi whose driver is whimpering “We are going to die, we are going to die, we are going to die,” I’ll tell you: it’s not fun.
He was careening from side to side. He sideswiped a parked minivan, then cut across two lanes and nearly collided head-on with a baby-supplies truck driver with a potty mouth.
The car screeched to a halt at a red light on Columbus Avenue. “I said go, not kill your passengers,” said the man in the leather jacket. He was holding a leather wallet, which he had just pulled from his jacket pocket. “If you expect a tip, I recommend you drive in a sane manner and deposit us alive at Riverside Drive.”
The driver looked warily over his shoulder. “This is not a stickup?”
“What? Of course it’s not.” The man sighed and sat back, removing his hat and then his sunglasses. His hair was silver and thick, swept straight back like a marble sculpture. His eyes were a cold blue-gray, set into a rocklike face that was tanned and deeply cragged.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
“Your dream come true,” he said. “Dr. Bradley did well. By calling a Code Red, she was following KI protocol for emergencies.”
“You’re a part of the KI?” Cass said. “But the KI was destroyed!”
“Correction—the island was occupied,” the man said, “but the Karai Institute still exists. For reasons of security, the leader of the KI is never on-island. All Code Red messages go directly to the central office. We have satellites in many places, one of them here.”
Number One.
Omphalos.
Professor Bhegad had told us about a Karai leader, someone who he took orders from. But not much. Not even a name. “Is that who Aly is seeing?” I said. “Bhegad’s boss?”
“Your friend is in very good hands.” The man leaned forward. “Driver, let us off at the far corner, end of this block.”
We climbed out on Riverside Drive, at the entrance to a park. Just beyond the jogging path flowed a wide, silver-blue river. “The Hudson,” Cass said. “And that’s New Jersey on the other side —”
“Quickly,” the man said, ushering us past a low stone gate. He was shorter and older than my dad. Under his leather jacket was a white turtleneck shirt that revealed a little paunch. “You were followed to New York.”
“We couldn’t have been,” Dad said. “We were in Turkey. And before that—”
“Mongolia, yes, we know this.” Reaching into an inner pocket, he took out two thin, silvery bracelets. “Put these on. Iridium bracelets. Aly has one, too.”
I took one and turned it over in my hand. Iridium. These bracelets were replicas of the ones given to us at Massa headquarters in Egypt.
“This is the only substance that blocks our trackers—the ones you implanted in our bodies on the island,” I said.
“Why do we have to wear them now?” Cass asked.
The man looked at Cass stonily. “The Massa are on high alert. They have access to your trackers—which means we have just led them here, away from your friend Aly. Once you put yours on, the signal becomes a dead end.”
I shook my head, remembering Aly’s antics in Building D. “No. Aly disabled the KI’s tracking machines. Fried them with an overload of electricity.”
The man’s rocklike expression twitched.
“You . . . have this much confidence in her ability?” he said.
“If you knew her, you would, too,” I said.
The man nodded. “So if they’re not tracking, how did they find you?”
Cass and I exchanged a look and shrugged.
The man took our arms. He pulled us toward Seventy-Second Street, back the way we’d come. “Tell me who exactly you met in Turkey.”
“What do you mean they hacked you, Canavar?” I barked into the speakerphone.
We were back in the KI meeting room in the New York City headquarters, in a sprawling corner apartment in the castlelike building. Dad was glaring at the silver-haired man, still upset about the way he’d hijacked the taxi.
Canavar’s reply squeaked through the tiny speaker. “Perhaps I have not used the proper terminology. It appears that early this morning thy dreaded nemesis the Massa made several phone calls. They reached out to each vicinity that is home to one of the Seven Wonders—including our museum at Bodrum. My employer. Naturally by that time, I had, well, mentioned our exploits to a discreet friend or two . . .”
The back of my head hit the seat’s leather headrest. “That’s not hacking, Canavar,” I said. “That’s a big mouth. You weren’t supposed to say anything!”
“But . . . an experience so momentous!” Canavar said, “of such singular archaeological interest!”
“Canavar, did you tell them where we were headed?” Cass demanded.
The phone stayed silent for a long moment. Then a tiny, “Mea culpa.”
The gray-haired man pressed the off button. “That’s Latin for ‘my fault.’ We have our answer.”
He sat back in his thick leather seat, closing his eyes and pressing his fingers to his temples. The room fell into a tense silence. Cass gave me a kick under the table. His hands still in his lap, he pointed to our companion.
Omphalos, he mouthed.
I don’t know if it was a question or a statement. But I felt a shiver up my spine.
Was it possible?
The man was no-nonsense. Steely. Smart. Cagey. Hadn’t answered when we’d asked his name. He kept his cool, said exactly what he meant and no more, and understood Latin. He didn’t draw attention, yet he could strike fear with a glance or a gesture. The perfect profile for a leader.
And this realization made my heart sink.
Because he was no longer the KI’s best-kept secret. He was here with us, on the ground. Pulling antics in a cab. Totally misunderstanding how we were tracked. Taking unnecessary risks. Revealing his weaknesses. To me, it was a sign. This centuries-old organization, the KI, was on its last legs.
The Massa were out there. Somewhere. Stronger than ever. About to win the game.
I gazed through the window. Below us, tourists wearing green-foam Statue of Liberty crowns were heading into Central Park. Some of them were tossing flowers onto a colorful mosaic that spelled out one word:
IMAGINE.
I turned away.
I didn’t want to.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
LOSING IT
DR. BRADLEY’
S LATEX gloves snapped as she pulled them off her fingers. Her face was lined and haggard. “Aly will be all right for now. Thanks to my New York colleagues. They are lifesavers.”
Cass and I stood in the doorway of the makeshift operating room, watching the two other medical personnel carefully unhook electrodes from Aly. Her mouth moved slightly. I could hear a soft moan. As the KI doctors left with the silver-haired man—Number One, aka the Omphalos—we shook their hands. Torquin sat quietly on a stool, which barely contained him. “No ukulele . . .” he said sadly to no one in particular.
“This is amazing news, Dr. Bradley,” I said, “because we were just told we have to move Aly right now.”
She shook her head. “She’ll need some recovery time. I told that to Number One.”
Cass gave me a quizzical look.
“When did you talk to him?” I asked, puzzled.
“I didn’t. Not directly.” She pointed to a monitor on the wall. “He texted us, on that.”
“Sneaky guy,” Cass said. “I didn’t even see him take out his phone, did you, Jack?”
“Take out his—What are you talking about?” Dr. Bradley asked. “You’ve seen Number One?”
“We took a cab ride with him,” I said.
Dr. Bradley dropped a length of IV tubing. “You what?”
Before we could answer, our taxi companion came running up the hallway. “They’re onto us. The Massa. We were hacking into their text messages and they just went dead cold.”
“Do you know where they are?” Dr. Bradley asked.
“Unclear whether they’ve landed in New York yet,” he replied. “If the girl isn’t ready, the other two must get to the museum now.”
“Not two,” Torquin grunted. “Three.”
Behind us, the monitor on the wall beeped. A message instantly materialized:
NOT SO FAST.
Cass jumped back. “Who’s that?”
The response crawled quickly across the screen: