The Emperor's Code Read online

  CHAPTER 3

  The 39 Clues may have been a high-stakes treasure hunt with world domination as the prize. But sooner or later you always ended up in some dumb museum.

  Sad but true, Dan thought as the smiling tour guide led them through vast halls filled with floor-to-ceiling display cases. The Palace Museum inside the Forbidden City held more than three hundred thousand ceramic and porcelain pieces alone.

  “You could have soup in a different bowl every day for, like, a thousand years,” he whispered to Amy.

  “This is the greatest art collection I’ve ever seen,” she marveled, missing his wisecrack. “Even better than the Janus stronghold in Venice!”

  “Those emperors were Cahills, all right,” Dan decided. “Totally loaded — like everybody else in the family except us.”

  Amy’s brow knit. “The emperors lived here for six centuries. How do we know which generation was involved in the clue hunt?”

  “Our parents must have had an idea,” Dan put in. “Why else would they come here after Africa?”

  She nodded. “Good point. Let’s listen to the tour guide. We might learn something important.”

  Dan groaned. Like there was going to be a Clue in the butterfly pattern on an old chamber pot. They already knew what they were looking for — the crest from The Last Emperor. It was out there somewhere, faded but still visible, on the wall of one of these buildings.

  Dan checked his watch. Still more than three hours to go before they were meeting Nellie, who was off with Saladin, looking for a hotel. And no chance of pushing the time up. None of their new phones had service in China. They were trapped here with three hundred thousand plates.

  “This collection began in the Ming dynasty, but the size increased greatly during the Qing,” the guide was saying. “The Qing emperors were renowned for their obsessive commitment to the arts….”

  “That’s it!” Amy hissed.

  “That’s what?”

  “Obsessed with art? Does that sound familiar?”

  Dan was beginning to clue in. “The Janus! Those guys would trade their mothers for a painting!”

  Amy’s eyes were alight with excitement. “Dan, it’s all coming together. Whatever brought our parents to China — it has something to do with the Janus branch. Something big.”

  Dan nodded. “But how are we going to find the Janus crest if we’re stuck doing the dishes?”

  Amy took in the walkie-talkie dangling from the guide’s belt. “If that guy sees us sneaking away, he’ll call security. Besides, we don’t know where to look. The Forbidden City is the largest palace complex in the world. There are more than nine hundred buildings!”

  Dan opened their brochure to the grounds plan of the 180-acre Forbidden City. “I think I remember the movie. If I can figure out which way to tilt this map—” He shifted the page, studying it intently. Dan had a photographic memory, but coordinating film scenes with a printed diagram was tricky. “Let’s see, the doohickey of supreme whatchamacallit is over there—”

  “Hall of Supreme Harmony,” Amy corrected.

  “—so I bet the Janus crest should be somewhere in this section, over by the whatchamacallit of tranquil thingamajig.”

  “Palace of Tranquil Longevity,” Amy supplied.

  “I’ll find it,” Dan decided. “Okay, you create a diversion—”

  His sister was nervous. “What diversion? I can’t do cartwheels in here. Something could get broken.”

  “Yeah,” Dan said, “you wouldn’t want these guys to run out of plates. It’s not rocket science. Just go to the other side of the group and start asking boring questions. And while he’s giving you boring answers, I’ll slip away.”

  “Fine,” she replied, sounding only a little miffed at his word choice. She raised her hand. “Ex-ex—” Stop it, she commanded herself. Her stammer often came out at moments of stress, but this was important. “Excuse me, how old are those pieces — no, these over here—”

  Amy had chosen well. A line of tall glass cases separated Dan from the group. It was no problem for him to slip out of the room. His sister was annoying, but he had to admit they made a pretty good team.

  Not bad for a couple of Madrigals, he reflected, and immediately regretted the thought.

  It was no joke. In Africa they’d learned that the aliases on their parents’ passports — Mr. and Mrs. Nudelman — matched the names of a notorious pair of murderers and thieves. Mom and Dad — the Bonnie and Clyde of the Southern Hemisphere? Ridiculous. A coincidence. And yet…

  Husband and wife … ruthless killers … Madrigals …

  Just the thought of it made his shoulders sag.

  He got lost a few times sneaking out of the building, wandering through the labyrinth of ornate rooms. At last, he managed to find an entrance and stepped out into the Forbidden City. It was an immense complex, with five ginormous palaces and seventeen that counted as merely huge — not to mention nearly a thousand smaller buildings of various shapes and sizes. The temples, monuments, and gardens seemed to go on forever. It really was a city — as if half of downtown Boston had all been built for one guy to live in. But this was far more colorful than any part of Boston — a kaleidoscope of imperial yellow, rich red, and glittering gold leaf. Everything screamed wealth and luxury beyond imagination. Yet despite the size of the place, Dan couldn’t escape a shut-in feeling — the four massive outer gates, the high walls, the observation towers at the corners. He tried to picture Puyi — the kid emperor from the movie — having all this as his personal playground. According to the tour guide, Puyi had officially abdicated at age six, but the Chinese government let him stay here until he was a young man.

  Using the Gate of Heavenly Peace as a point of reference, Dan got his bearings and headed for the area he remembered from The Last Emperor. He knew a moment of uncertainty. Was he searching in China for a crest that was really six thousand miles away on a Hollywood soundstage?

  Too late to worry about that now …

  Soon he was in a section of smaller, lower buildings. Even though the Forbidden City had been the emperor’s home, there had been plenty of attendants, monks, and — ouch — eunuchs who’d lived there, too. Maybe this was their neighborhood. As he began to pass between the rows, scanning walls for the Janus crest, he wondered how high up on the trouble scale it would be to get caught here. There were no tourists around, and also no security. Everybody seemed to be at Plates “R” Us, either looking at dishes or guarding them.

  Dan forged on. Artwork, designs, and calligraphy surrounded him on pillars, signs, and walls. A very Janus place, for sure. So where was the crest?

  A feeling of deep dread took hold in the pit of his stomach. This was their only lead. If they couldn’t find it, they’d be left wandering around a vast country of more than a billion people without the faintest idea what they were looking for.

  Frustration melted into alarm. He’d miscalculated somehow. Maybe his photographic memory wasn’t as photographic as he’d thought. He spun around desperately. Nothing! Except—

  Around the corner, on the wall of a small temple, his eyes fell on a shape that didn’t belong. The letter S.

  Everything else is in Chinese. What’s an S doing there?

  The paint was old and washed out, barely visible anymore. He squinted at the wall … and suddenly he was looking right at it.

  It wasn’t an S at all! It was the curled tail of an animal — a picture that had faded over the years, bleached by sun and worn by weather. A standing wolf in a fighting pose, glancing over its shoulder.

  Symbol of the Janus branch!

  CHAPTER 4

  Dan could barely restrain himself from letting out a whoop that would have shattered every dish in the museum.

  Calm down. Finding the crest is the easy part.

  The trick was to figure out what it meant.

  The original temple had an open entrance, but in modern times a metal gate had been installed to keep intruders out. Cautiously, he edged up
to the chain mesh and peered inside. The interior reminded him of a house right after movers had driven off with the entire contents — a hollow shell. It was empty, except for dust and a few crickets.

  He examined the barrier critically. He could probably break in somehow, but why bother? There didn’t seem to be anything here. Besides, his sister would go nuts if he defiled a four-hundred-year-old temple. He smiled in spite of himself. For her, it was a short trip.

  He stepped back off the wooden porch, watching the crickets on the sloped roof.

  This place could use a Roach Motel, he reflected. Was there such a thing as a Cricket Motel?

  And then one of the insects disappeared.

  Huh? He paid closer attention. There must have been an opening in the roof tiles that the crickets were crawling in and out of.

  He returned to the security gate and peered inside. The temple ceiling was low, almost claustrophobic. Yet the roof was a tall A-frame….

  An attic! A secret attic!

  With a furtive look around to confirm he was alone, he climbed onto the porch rail and began to shinny up the corner post to the eaves. A moment’s hesitation — unobserved also meant there’d be no one to call an ambulance if he fell off the building. Mustering his strength, he reached past the overhang and hoisted himself onto the steep roof, holding on like Spider-Man to the ancient yellow tile shingles.

  He clung there for a moment, catching his breath and listening to the steady pounding of his heart. No, wait — that wasn’t his heartbeat! It was the thrum, thrum, thrum of marching feet. He flattened himself on the steep sloping roof and tried to disappear.

  In the pathway below, a unit of six soldiers trooped by in close-order formation. Security? No, they were dressed in red silk tunics with matching hats — like palace guards from back in the day when the emperors lived here. This was a ceremonial parade. The soldiers were trained to keep their eyes riveted straight ahead and never noticed the intruder on the roof.

  As they disappeared into the maze of crimson walls, Dan allowed his body to relax. And that was something you should never do on a steep incline.

  He was sliding before he even noticed. Frantically, he scrabbled for a handhold, to no avail. He was skidding slowly but inexorably toward a long drop.

  In desperation, he tried to wedge his fingers into the gap in a broken tile — anything to gain some leverage. With the creak of rusty hinges, a section of shingles came away from the roof, opening like a mailbox.

  He hung there, stopped at last, his astonishment turning to triumph. A trapdoor! This was the way in.

  The discovery brought a hidden reserve of strength. Dan hauled himself up and over the lip of the opening and dropped down onto a dusty wooden floor.

  The chirping was all around him like church bells, so loud that he felt it below the line of his gums. Crickets. Thousands of them. The floor and walls crawled.

  Instinctively, he reached for the inhaler in his pocket. No, he told himself. You don’t get an asthma attack from being grossed out.

  With effort, he forced away his revulsion and examined the hidden compartment.

  The attic was narrow, with decent headroom only at the center. In the corners, he had to duck. The place was empty except for the crickets. Could crickets be the Clue? That made zero sense. There was no way these crickets could date back to some Chinese emperor.

  Then he realized that the place wasn’t empty after all. On the floor in the far corner lay a piece of fabric about the size of a hand towel. He stooped and picked it up, shaking off several crickets and a puff of dust. It was a dull gold sheet of silk covered in Chinese calligraphy, with a large red signature stamp — a “chop,” the tour guide had called it.

  He looked closer in the dim light. It wasn’t all Chinese characters. With mounting excitement, he recognized the symbols for the four branches of his illustrious family, as well as the Cahill crest.

  His brow furrowed. The symbols were laid out like a mathematical equation:

  There was no question about it. This object was what had brought them to the Forbidden City. He had to get it back to Amy so they could figure out what it meant.

  “Later, dudes,” he breathed to the chirping crickets. He folded the piece of silk and stuffed it into his shirt. Then he stretched for the opening above and hauled himself back onto the roof.

  He was extra careful on the way down, pressing himself into the tiles as he shut the trapdoor. He practically oozed to the pillar that was his safe passage back to ground level. Perhaps he should have used some of that great care to scout the area first. For when he set foot on the pathway, he found himself in the grip of a uniformed guard. And this one wasn’t wearing the ceremonial garb of centuries past. His jacket bore the red star insignia of the Chinese army.

  The man barked something in his own language, then took in Dan’s Western features and switched to English. “This area is restricted!”

  “I lost my tour group—” Dan began.

  The officer began to pat him down, pausing at the soft bulge under his shirt.

  “What is this?” He pulled out the folded silk.

  Dan’s mind worked at light speed. If he sees the writing inside, he’ll never let me keep it.

  With a wheeze, he sucked back all the dust of the attic that had found its way into his nasal passages. Then he snatched the silk out of the officer’s hand and unloaded a mighty sneeze into it.

  The man grimaced. “Where are your parents?”

  “Dead,” Dan replied, sticking the silk back under his shirt. “I’m here with my sister, and I got lost.”

  “You lie. I saw you climbing down from the roof of this structure.”

  “I wanted a better view. I was trying to find the museum so I could go back.”

  The man scoffed and indicated the immense roof of the main palace towering over the Forbidden City. “The museum is difficult to miss.”

  “I’ve got a lousy sense of direction,” Dan said.

  “You are rude, young man. You are also — how do they say it in your language? Ah, yes — busted.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Amy walked with the rest of her tour group toward the Gate of Heavenly Peace, wondering if Dan had located the mysterious Janus crest they had spotted in the movie.

  The tiny twists of fortune that spelled the difference between discovering a Clue and being left clueless could be so minor. It would almost be funny — if the fate of the world didn’t hang in the balance.

  As for the thought of her eleven-year-old brother on the loose in the Forbidden City — well, it made her nervous, but she was learning to live with it. Over the past weeks, the two of them had survived near misses that made this seem like playtime at day care. Anyway, they would be reunited when they met Nellie in — she consulted her watch — half an hour. She hoped the au pair had found them a decent hotel.

  The thought made her frown. Lately, there had been hints that Nellie might be more than she seemed.

  Or maybe I’m just getting paranoid….

  She had no trouble believing that paranoia was very Madrigal. Her parents had been paranoid — and with good reason. Everybody had been out to get them.

  And one had succeeded.

  Yet even with their small children, Mom and Dad had been strangely secretive. Thinking back, there had always been rules — keep out of the basement or a certain closet; don’t open that crate or that duffel bag. Only now did it occur to her to wonder what they’d been hiding — black-market grenades, a severed head, uranium 235, the Ebola virus, the lost remains of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. They were “Nudelmans,” after all. She cringed as if shrinking from something horrible. She had so few memories of her parents, and now even the tiny scraps that were left had to be put through the Madrigal detector — every word, every gesture scanned for signs of evil. How pathetic was that?

  A member of her tour interrupted her tortured reverie. “Excuse me, dear, but isn’t that your little brother over there? Why does that soldier have him
in handcuffs?”

  Just inside the gate stood an angry-looking man in a military uniform, with Dan in custody.

  Amy rushed forward. “What are you doing to my brother?”

  The guard spoke up. “You are in charge of this boy? You yourself are a child.”

  “We’re meeting our au pair in Tiananmen Square,” Amy explained. “Dan, what happened?”

  Dan winked at her and shrugged. “I couldn’t find you, so I climbed up on some temple for a better view. And this guy got all bent out of shape about it.”

  The guard reddened and unlocked the cuffs. “You will leave and never return.”

  “How about that,” Dan said mildly as they were escorted through the Gate of Heavenly Peace, across the footbridge, and over the moat. “Forbidden from the Forbidden City. Oh, well, if you have to get forbidden, I suppose this is the place for it.”

  “Very funny,” Amy hissed as they crossed the boulevard into Tiananmen Square. She shuddered. Considering the vast size of the square, it was packed with people. Amy didn’t like crowds — and here she was in the most crowded place in the most crowded country on earth. “Now we can’t go back and look for—”

  “I’ve already got it,” Dan said, removing the folded silk from inside his shirt. “Here, hold it by the edges. I had to blow my nose in it so Mr. Happy would think it was a handkerchief.” He handed it to her.

  Amy nearly dropped it. “You put snot on the clue?”

  Dan was annoyed. “You want to see it or not?”

  Amy unwrapped the soiled, wrinkled silk, keeping it hidden from curious passersby in the bustling square. In the bright sun, they could see that the pale gold silk was overlaid with a pattern of butterflies:

  “‘Lucian plus Janus plus Tomas plus Ekat equals Cahill,’” she recited aloud. “What could that mean? That if you add up the branches you’ve got the whole family?”

  “If that’s the big message,” Dan concluded, “then it wasn’t worth getting arrested. That’s like saying hearts, spades, diamonds, and clubs make a deck of cards.”

  “What’s this shape?” Amy traced a line that circled the Lucian crest. “There’s one around each symbol, including the Cahill coat of arms.”