The Emperor's Code

  He threw open the door. The cool air of the outside beckoned. Freedom; safety …

  Awww!

  Jonah spun around and ran back inside, jumping down into the pit. Through the rows of warriors he dashed, using the heat sensor to guide him.

  His mind whirled. If I get killed in China, the press is going to have a field day! Mingled with a more urgent thought: Hang on, cuz! I’m coming!

  When he came upon the attacker, he almost rear-ended him. Whoa, the guy was dressed up like one of the statues! Jonah’s eyes bulged. The fake warrior was twirling a mace, ready to smash Dan’s head in.

  “Yo!” he called.

  The imposter spun around, and the mace shattered the face of the terracotta swordsman beside him.

  Dan jumped up and threw himself onto the imposter’s back. Enraged, the man jabbed at him with the wooden handle.

  Jonah grabbed two fistfuls of the foam costume and pulled with all his strength. The material tore away, revealing track pants and a sweatshirt. The man swung at him with his free hand, landing a dizzying blow on Jonah’s cheek. The star went down, landing in a terracotta chariot, stunned.

  With a violent twist, the imposter threw Dan off his back and wheeled menacingly. Dan tried to scramble up again but whacked his forehead on the clay hoof of a battle horse. The attacker raised his mace high over his head, ready to bring it down with crushing force.

  Dan knew a moment of perfect horror. He was going to die. He was too hemmed in to roll away, and the imposter’s momentum was unstoppable.

  Momentum. The abbot’s voice echoed in Dan’s mind. The momentum of your adversary is your greatest ally.

  As the fake warrior loomed over him, arm high to deliver the fatal blow, Dan’s foot shot up and lodged in his attacker’s midsection. Dan’s hands were next, grabbing the ripped foam of the costume so he could guide his assailant up and over him.

  Dan was amazed at how little of his own force was required. Just as the wushu master had promised, the smaller Dan was able to launch his fully grown attacker fifteen feet down the row, wiping out warriors like tenpins. The man lay in the rubble, unconscious.

  Dan and Jonah were on him in an instant. Jonah pried the mace handle from the foam glove. “That was some serious Jackie Chan, cuz!” the hip-hop star wheezed in awe.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Dan hissed.

  “Not yet,” said Jonah grimly. He yanked their prisoner’s mask off and slapped him awake.

  The man shrugged blankly. “No speak.”

  Dan reached into the man’s fanny pack and pulled out a thick wad of hundred-euro notes. “Where did you get this?”

  Jonah brandished the spiked ball of the mace. “We could jog your memory.”

  “Children!” the imposter babbled. “Boy and girl!”

  “Got a name?” Jonah persisted.

  “No name! Talk like Simon on American Idol!”

  “British accent!” Dan breathed. “The Kabras — they set you up, Jonah!”

  “They set us both up,” the star amended. “And now they’re way ahead while we’re in the wrong city, fighting for our lives.”

  “We’ll pay them back,” Dan promised. “But first we’ve got to get out of this—”

  His sentence was interrupted by the loudest alarm either of them had ever heard. At the first sound of the Klaxon, their captive was up and gone, hopping along the rows, ripping off his costume as he ran.

  Jonah and Dan needed no further encouragement. They were off at a sprint, heading for the front exit.

  Security guards swarmed the pathways. Flashlight beams crisscrossed the pits. The emergency lighting came on. There was no place to hide.

  Jonah tripped over one of the figures and went down. Dan hauled him up. The two cousins clambered out of the pit onto a strip of unexcavated ground. It was a footrace now as they made it to the entrance and blasted through the unlocked door.

  Jonah leaped the turnstile — right into the arms of a policeman. A second officer scooped up Dan.

  They were caught.

  CHAPTER 18

  The holding cell was tiny and smelled bad. This may or may not have been because the toilet was right in the middle of the room, displayed like it was a stylish conversation piece. Dan hoped he wouldn’t be there long enough to have to use it.

  If Dan was upset, Jonah was devastated. His fans would not have recognized their hip-hop idol, who sat on the wooden bench, his famous face sinking lower with each passing hour. Gone was his effervescent confidence. In fact, he wasn’t speaking at all. To Dan, who had only known Jonah the world-beater, the change was almost as scary as their current predicament.

  Dan tried to be encouraging. “Your dad was parked just down the block. He must have seen what happened. I’ll bet he’s on his BlackBerry right now, pulling strings to get us out of jail.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Jonah mumbled.

  Dan was bewildered. “Don’t you want to get out of here?”

  Jonah shrugged. “I don’t care.”

  “Well, you ought to care! You’ve got the world’s greatest life to get back to! You’re a rap star, a TV star—”

  “You think that means anything?” Jonah interrupted. “Seriously, yo, in our family, if you can’t hack it with the thirty-nine clues, you’re nothing!”

  “Fine,” Dan conceded. “Ian and Natalie put one over on us. So what?”

  Jonah was bitter. “So what if I stink at the thing I’ve been prepping for since the day I was born? Yeah, put me in a recording studio — double platinum. Put me on TV — hit show. Put me in the clue hunt—”

  “Who cares about the clue hunt?” Dan interrupted. “After all you’ve accomplished, you’re a failure because you don’t think you’re acing the clue hunt?”

  “I am a failure!” Jonah stormed. “As a Cahill and a person! Don’t you get it? I bailed on you tonight!”

  “You didn’t! You probably saved my life!”

  “I was halfway out the door, cuz,” Jonah insisted. “Okay, I came back. But I was gone.”

  “That proves you’re not bad,” Dan reasoned. “Any idiot can do the right thing. You know what’s hard? Doing the right thing when you’ve been hardwired to do the wrong one!” Who better than a Madrigal to understand that?

  “I flaked on an eleven-year-old kid who I set up to get killed!”

  Dan took a step back. “You wanted me dead?”

  The famous features twisted. “You were supposed to be my decoy. If the guards spot us, I throw you to the sharks and bounce. Nothing personal,” he added, noting Dan’s hurt expression. “It’s the clues, yo. They’re supposed to make you the most powerful human in history — I say they make you less than human!”

  Dan said nothing, mostly because there was nothing he could say. He wasn’t even all that angry at Jonah. Dan knew better than anybody how the Clue hunt could mess with your head. Look how it had turned Amy against their parents and split up two siblings who had scarcely left each other’s company for eleven years. Dan couldn’t escape a growing dread that this wasn’t a temporary separation — that there was a very real chance that he might never see his sister again.

  At the same time, he had saved his own life in hand-to-hand combat, using skills taught to him by a Shaolin master — how awesome was that?

  There was a clatter of metal on metal, and the guard appeared, accompanied by Broderick Wizard.

  “Are you guys okay?”

  His famous son didn’t even look up, but to Dan, the man was a welcome sight. This was the closest Dan would ever come to having a dad show up in the nick of time.

  “We’re all right,” Dan told Broderick. “Thanks for getting us out.”

  Jonah’s father marched them briskly through the building toward the waiting limo. Their quick pace and the dirty looks they were receiving from all the police officers plainly said that they were making their getaway before the cops changed their minds.

  “Don’t even ask what the record company had to say about this,
” Broderick informed his son as the limo pulled away from the station. “They called in favors they’ll still be repaying twenty years down the road.”

  Jonah slumped against the leather upholstery. “I thought the ‘gangsta’ image was good for sales.”

  “Not in China,” Broderick growled. “They take their terracotta warriors very seriously. And you turned six of them into dust.”

  “Blame the Kabras,” Dan said defensively. “And the hit man they hired.”

  “Well, he must have escaped,” Jonah’s father concluded, “because this whole rap is on your heads. And you wouldn’t believe what it cost to make it go away. Venice hit the ceiling! The Janus haven’t had a cover-up this big since Lufbery’s lion got loose in Piccadilly!”

  Jonah’s answer was a soft purring snore. He hadn’t slept a wink all night. Neither had Dan, but never could he remember being so wired — not even the time he’d put away forty ounces of Red Bull. He watched the sun rise over the miles of apartment buildings in Xian on both sides of the walls of the old city. The dawn of a new day that he had almost not lived to see. It felt — big.

  Jonah woke up as the limo stopped in front of the Bell Tower. He followed along like a zombie as they took the private elevator up to the penthouse.

  “There’s a surprise waiting for you in the room,” Broderick promised his son.

  “And I’ve got a surprise for you. I’m out. No more clue hunt for this kid. I don’t want it and I don’t like what it’s turning me into. Tell Mom she’s going to have to find another chump.”

  At that moment, the elevator door slid aside, leading them directly into the suite, and a strong female voice declared, “Why don’t you tell me yourself, Jonah?”

  Jonah’s eyes widened. “Mom?”

  Cora Wizard, internationally renowned sculptor and performance artist. The youngest Nobel laureate in history. Legendary leader of the Janus branch.

  The woman standing before them looked a lot like — Dan did a double take — a hippie?

  Yeah! Her shoulder-length hair was pulled back with a headband. She wore a simple, loose-fitting tunic. This was Jonah’s mother?

  But on closer inspection, her ordinary appearance concealed the bearing of a five-star general. Her black eyes moved like the targeting mechanism of a laser-guided missile launcher. Around her neck hung a rope dangling a copper modern art piece — one of the many she was famous for. And, at her instant command, an army of the world’s most brilliant and creative people — thousands of actors, musicians, directors, writers, painters, comedians, sculptors, magicians, and swashbuckling showmen of all stripes.

  “You have to find someone else to win the contest for the Janus,” Jonah said plaintively. “I can’t do it anymore.”

  “It’s good to see you, too, son who’s been away for three months,” Cora replied sarcastically. She turned her penetrating gaze on Dan. “And I can’t tell you how happy I am finally to meet Grace’s grandson.”

  “You’re not listening, Mom,” Jonah interjected.

  “I’m multitasking, dear.” She cut him off in a voice that was at once motherly and tempered steel. “You’ll have the help you need soon enough.” To Dan, she went on, “You and your sister are the pride of the family. Everybody’s raving about how you’re holding your own in the clue hunt. And at last we understand why.”

  Dan waited. What was she talking about?

  “For all these weeks, you’ve been wondering which Cahill branch you belong to. Well, the mystery is over. Our genealogy department has proven once and for all that you and your sister are Janus. Welcome to our clan!”

  Her husband applauded, and even Jonah smiled. “That’s tight, cuz. I knew you had it going on.”

  Dan nodded weakly. Janus? But that was impossible! He knew his branch all too well. He would have given anything to change that awful truth, but wishing didn’t make it so.

  Why was Cora Wizard lying to him? Not that the deception bothered him. He expected that from any Cahill. But why this lie? Was she trying to recruit the Cahill kids to jumpstart the Janus effort for the 39 Clues? This was a woman with wushu masters at her beck and call, fencers and expert marksmen. She could pick up the phone and have Steven Spielberg, Justin Timberlake, and half of Hollywood on a plane to China. What did she need Amy and Dan for? Were they really that good? Half the time, it felt like they were in way over their heads, bickering about nonsense because their true situation was just too awful. Parents dead; grandmother dead; fugitives from Massachusetts Social Services; and now their only asset — their strength as a unit — taken from them.

  “Well?” Cora prodded. “Don’t you have anything to say?”

  He stared at her, mesmerized, the doomed fly in the spider’s thrall. He looked away from the burning black eyes and found himself gazing at the copper piece on the end of her necklace.

  Weird — it seemed familiar somehow. But that didn’t make sense. This was the first time he’d ever laid eyes on Jonah’s mother.

  When the distant memory came back, it struck him like a hammer blow, and he actually staggered from the impact. He’d been only four, but he would never forget. The metal sculpture, one of the handful of objects that survived the fire. The artwork with the bug — the listening device.

  Cora’s necklace is a miniature replica of that sculpture!

  The sculpture had come from Cora, her personal design! A gift, she had probably called it. And all the time it had been a ruse to spy on his parents — part of an escalating cycle of surveillance and coercion that ended with the fire that devoured Hope and Arthur and left their children orphans.

  No, Cora hadn’t set that fire. But only because Isabel Kabra had beaten her to it. They were all guilty — all those Cahills who let their blind ambition and craving for power fuel the runaway train that was the search for the 39 Clues. It was that unstoppable juggernaut — as much as any flaming match — that had killed Mom and Dad.

  When at last he found his voice, it was the voice of a much taller, much older young man, as if he had aged ten years in the past ten seconds. He had been blind before, but it was crystal clear to him now. Jonah’s father had never tried to find Amy. They had been keeping him, using him like a puppet on a string. And now along came this horrible woman who had participated in the confrontation that had led to the death of his parents. And she had the nerve to welcome him to her poisonous family.

  “Janus?” he spat contemptuously. “I’m no Janus! I know exactly what branch I am!” He stormed to the open elevator and turned for a parting shot. He was so full of emotion that it was out before he could stop himself:

  “I’m a Madrigal!”

  The last thing he saw before the doors swept shut was the first family of the Janus frozen in openmouthed shock.

  CHAPTER 19

  The fine for dropping a cat off the Great Wall of China turned out to be four hundred yuan — about fifty-nine US dollars. Amy and Nellie also paid a hundred-yuan tip to the soldier who went down to bring Saladin back to them, plus another forty-three and change to buy ointment and bandages for the scratches he received.

  Their hotel was really more of a guest cottage — just barely adequate. It was called the Golden Monkey. It didn’t have monkeys, but a couple of the cockroaches could have passed for pygmy marmosets.

  Amy barely noticed the dingy, cramped room and the bugs. The only thing on her mind was Dan.

  “We blew it, Nellie,” she exclaimed, staring out the fly-specked window at the distant ramparts of the Great Wall. “We took a gamble and we lost. For some reason, Jonah blew off that trip to the Wall. Or we were in a different part. And by now he could be anywhere. They might not even be in China anymore. For all we know, we’re on the wrong continent.”

  Nellie was at the tiny desk, hunched over Dan’s laptop computer. “Hey, come and look at this.”

  “You found Jonah?” Amy asked eagerly.

  “No. But I’ve been thinking about your idea — that Puyi was working on something Cahill wh
en he got turfed out of the Forbidden City. And that we might be able to take a guess at it by looking at major world events around 1924.”

  “I don’t care,” Amy groaned. “I just want Dan back.”

  Nellie looked up sharply. “Hey, little girl, you get a grip. The clue hunt isn’t over, and it’s doubly important now. Remember, Jonah’s still on it, which makes it the best way to pick up Dan’s trail. Now, I’ve made a list of some of the top news headlines from the early 1920s. See if any of this rings a bell in the Cahill world.”

  Chastened, Amy got up to join her. Of course her au pair was right. Without a lead pointing directly to Dan, all they could do was pursue the 39 Clues in the hope that Dan would do the same.

  She peered down at the screen:

  20-ton meteorite lands near Blackstone, Virginia.

  Egypt gains independence.

  President Harding dies in office.

  Construction begins on Yankee Stadium.

  George Mallory and Andrew Irvine lost on Mount Everest.

  Great Kanto earthquake devastates Japan.

  First US execution using poison gas.

  J. Edgar Hoover appointed head of FBI.

  Amy read the full three-page list and sat back with a sigh. “I don’t know. I think Grace may have mentioned some of these things over the years, but I can’t be sure. The truth is, she’s only been dead a couple of months, and already I’m having trouble remembering the sound of her voice.”

  Saladin rubbed up against her leg and emitted a sympathetic “mrrp.”

  “So what should we do?” she asked worriedly.

  Nellie shrugged. “We’ll go back to the Wall. We’re already here. We might as well give it one more try.”

  Amy nodded. They had no other leads — for Dan or the Clue hunt. If they came up empty today, they would be completely adrift.

  The pounding punk rock chords were tinny and distorted through the tiny speaker.

  “Hi, this is Nellie. I’m probably off tasting food you’ve never heard of, or listening to music that would blow your mind. So what are you waiting for? Leave a message.”