Secret of the Forbidden City Read online

  Storm’s photographic memory clicked in. “The Nazis ‘liberated’ this painting from a French art dealer named Paul Rosenberg because Mr. Rosenberg was Jewish.”

  “It was part of their organized looting of art objects,” Storm continued. “The Nazis stole hundreds of thousands of art treasures, mostly from Jewish people, then stored them in salt mines and caves to protect their booty from Allied bombing raids. A lot was recovered after the war, but a lot is still missing.”

  “Like this one,” said Beck, gesturing at the giant Picasso painting in the Chinese art gallery’s display window.

  “Hey,” I said, “if we turn this stolen Picasso over to that high cultural minister, he’ll become an international hero when he returns the painting to its rightful owner. Maybe if we give him this, he’ll finally give us the Ming vase we need to rescue Mom!”

  “Worth a shot,” said Tommy.

  But the instant he said it, two gallery employees in white coats stepped into the showroom window and took down the Picasso!

  CHAPTER 8

  We barged into the gallery.

  “May I be of assistance?” said a very polite young woman in a business suit. She was wearing soft white cotton gloves and a big smile.

  “That Picasso,” blurted Beck, breathless with rage. “The one in the window.”

  “Oh, I am so terribly sorry. It is spoken for. A buyer has already claimed it.”

  “It’s stolen art,” said Storm, who’s never been one for sugarcoating anything. “The Nazis looted it from its rightful owner during World War II.”

  “And,” said Tommy, “in case you forgot, the Nazis were the bad guys. You ever see Raiders of the Lost Ark?”

  “I’m sorry, but the Picasso painting, Cubic Woman Selling Seashells by the Seashore, has—”

  “That’s not its name,” said Beck.

  The woman smiled some more. “I am afraid you are mistaken, Miss—?”

  “We’re the Kidds,” I said. “Maybe you saw our parade this morning?”

  She bowed. “I am honored to make your acquaintance, Heroes of the People.”

  “Likewise,” said Tommy, wiggling his eyebrows.

  “However, as I said, the painting you are interested in was just sold to an anonymous buyer. For seventy million dollars.”

  “That Picasso needs to be returned to the heirs of its rightful owners!” Beck said to the gallery staffer. “It’s stolen merchandise.”

  That’s when four very burly, very muscular security guards—all of them wearing snug black suits and sunglasses and sporting soul patches—came marching over to scowl at us.

  “Leave,” grunted the head scowler, who didn’t sound or look Chinese. In fact, he seemed to have a German accent. “Now.”

  “No,” said Beck. “Not until you—”

  She didn’t get to finish that thought.

  We were unceremoniously hoisted off the floor and hauled out of the art gallery to be tossed into the gutter, where we joined the soggy confetti and popped balloons from our recent parade.

  Guess that’s how it goes sometimes.

  One minute you’re a hero, the next you’re being thrown out with the trash.

  CHAPTER 9

  On our walk back to the hotel, we noticed something suspicious. A street vendor was passing out paper menus for a nearby restaurant, but he looked really nervous.

  Wearing a bright red apron, the little man was bald up top but had long, scraggly hair hanging off both sides of his dome. His wispy mustache was long and scraggly, too. His barely open eyes were darting back and forth like he was afraid the police might arrest him at any second. He was all kinds of jittery and jumpy.

  “Please take one,” he said, thrusting a stack of menus at us. “Crystal Jade Palace. The specials are very special today.”

  “Is this Chinese food?” asked Tommy, studying a menu.

  “Um, hello?” said Beck. “This is China, Tommy. All the food is Chinese food!”

  “Even at McDonald’s?”

  “Yep,” said Beck. “Over here, Mickey D’s serves bubble tea.”

  “The Happy Family is very good,” said the spooked paper-pusher, tapping a dirty fingernail on the menu.

  “What’s a happy family?” asked Tommy.

  “Us,” I said.

  “Speak for yourself,” said Beck.

  “What? You’re not happy?”

  “Uh, no, Bick. That art gallery is peddling pilfered art. We need to stop them.”

  “Actually,” said Storm, “the Happy Family is a popular Chinese stir-fry dish, combining meats with colorful vegetables, such as broccoli, water chestnuts, baby corn, and—”

  “Huh,” said Tommy, cutting off Storm’s recitation. “On the back, there’s a special Kidds’ menu.”

  “So?” said Beck. “A lot of restaurants have kids’ menus.”

  “Not spelled like this. It looks like our name. K-I-D-D.”

  “So,” I said. “It’s just a coincidence. Right?”

  I turned to face the wizardly looking paper-pusher.

  But he was gone.

  “Okay,” I said. “Maybe it’s a clue!”

  “No way,” said Beck. “It’s a misprint.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  And right there, not far from Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, in the heart of Beijing, China, Beck and I launched into Twin Tirade No. 484.

  CHAPTER 10

  These angry outbursts are something Beck and I just do.

  Constantly.

  I guess it’s because we’re twins and so tightly wired together. Every now and then we, basically, explode.

  Mom is the one who came up with the snappy title Twin Tirades for our manic meltdowns because: (a) we’re twins and (b) a tirade is a harangue or diatribe (yes, Mom, our homeschool ELA instructor, was always trying to boost our vocabulary skills) that’s supposed to be long and acrimonious.

  If I remember correctly, acrimonious means nasty.

  But our Twin Tirades are never very long and not necessarily nasty. They’re more like biting into a superspicy chicken wing dipped in sinus-scorching Chinese mustard. Your face turns all red, steam shoots out your ears, and you shout, “hot-hot-hot!” a lot.

  Ten seconds later you’re done and hungry for another wing.

  “It is not a clue, Bickford! It’s a typo!”

  By the way, whenever Beck calls me by my full name, I know she’s ready to tirade.

  We ranted for a full ninety seconds.

  But then my stomach started grumbling.

  “You hungry?” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Beck.

  “So let’s go check out that Kidds’ menu.”

  “Good idea.”

  And just like that, Twin Tirade No. 484 was officially over.

  The Crystal Jade Palace was on the other side of the street, right next to our hotel. I was hoping today’s special was something besides stir-fried pork and veggies.

  I was hoping for a message from Dad!

  CHAPTER 11

  “Mmm,” said Tommy, sniffing the heavily scented air of the Crystal Jade Palace restaurant. “It smells familiar.”

  “What?” said Beck with a laugh.

  I was right there with her. “It smells familiar?”

  “Actually,” said Storm, “our sense of smell can trigger powerful and vivid memories.”

  “Chyah,” said Tommy. “I remember coming here, back when I was a little kid and Storm was, like, two. See that lobster tank? I named the big one Binky. This was Mom and Dad’s favorite restaurant in all of China.”

  “Dad really liked a waiter here,” said Tommy. “Guy named Liu Wei.”

  “Now you remember all this?” said Beck.

  “Sorry,” said Tommy. “I’d forgotten all about this place until I smelled that stir-fried fish sizzling in hoisin sauce. Oh, by the way—stay away from the pig brains dunked in boiling oil. Even Dad thought that dish was too bizarre to eat.”

  And so we had our first taste
of authentic Chinese food. Trust me, it’s nothing like the syrupy, gunky, sweet-and-sour stuff you find at the Chinese restaurants in American strip malls. We feasted on Beijing roasted duck, all sorts of dumplings, steamy noodles, spicy Sichuan hot pot, pork meatballs, mashed pea cake, and, for dessert, candied haws on a stick (the red fruit of the prickly hawthorn bush, covered with sugar crystals and speared on a bamboo skewer).

  As we were passing around dishes, everybody sampling what everybody else ordered, a frail waiter hobbled up to our table.

  His faded plastic name tag read LIU WEI.

  It was our father’s friend.

  Tommy smiled at Liu Wei and gave us all a silent signal—one that said, Nobody jump up and down and shout “Woo-hoo! It’s Dad’s old friend Liu Wei.”

  We needed to play this cool.

  Otherwise, Liu Wei could end up worse off than those deep-fried pig brains.

  CHAPTER 12

  “Um, hello, waiter-type person,” said Tommy, who’s never been very good at improvising dialogue. “What else might you recommend from this fine menu of food items?”

  “Wise elders suggest that you move on to the bird’s nest soup and squab.”

  “Wise elders?” said Beck, arching an eyebrow. “Any fatherly type people we might know?”

  “Perhaps,” said Liu Wei cryptically, which, I’ve learned, is how a lot of spy people say stuff. “This wise teacher is a steady hand to have at the helm whenever you fear your ship is lost.”

  Okay. I know spy talk when I hear it. Liu Wei was definitely talking about Dad, the captain of The Lost, who manned its helm up until that night he disappeared in the storm.

  “I was right,” I mumbled out loud. “Dad is so totally still alive!”

  The others shot me a look. They were right, too. I wasn’t being cool like I was supposed to.

  “Sorry.”

  Tommy calmly ordered the food that Liu Wei had suggested: bird’s nest soup and squab.

  The “waiter” bowed and bustled away.

  “Um,” said Tommy, “anybody know what squab is?”

  “Pigeon,” said Storm, very matter-of-factly. “A pathetic winged creature. A flying rat. An urban seagull. An ugly—”

  “We get it,” said Beck. “You don’t like pigeons.”

  “One pooped in my hair in Paris. I’ll never forget its face. Or its satisfied smile as it flew away…”

  Yep. That’s the downside of having a photographic memory: There are some pictures you can’t erase even though you wish you could.

  We ate our bird’s nest soup and squab.

  Okay, we looked at it. None of us were too hungry for anything “birdy” after Storm’s little monologue.

  “You think there might be a Dairy Queen around here?” said Tommy.

  “Wait,” I said, staring at the soup sitting in a bowl made out of crispy twigs soaked in broth. “This bird’s nest has to be a clue.”

  “The squab, too,” added Beck, who, of course, was thinking the same kinds of thoughts I was thinking. It’s a twin thing.

  “Maybe Dad is trying to tell us what treasure to hunt for next!” I said.

  “Seriously?” said Storm. “What, the lost Imperial Pigeon Eggs of Russian Tsar Alexander the Third? I don’t remember seeing those on Dad’s list.”

  “Dudes!” said Tommy. “I’ve got it. Maybe he already found the eggs. In a bird’s nest.”

  “What?” said Beck.

  “The Bird’s Nest is what everybody called the Beijing National Stadium during the 2008 Olympic Games.”

  “So?” said Beck.

  Tommy grinned. “So maybe Dad found those jewel-encrusted Russian pigeon eggs Storm was talking about and hid them at the stadium. Maybe he buried them in the end zone!”

  “This is China, Tommy,” said Beck. “They don’t play American football.”

  “So?”

  “So they don’t have end zones.”

  “Okay. Maybe he stashed the jewel-encrusted pigeon eggs in the locker room!”

  That’s when (fortunately) Liu Wei came back to our table.

  “Do not visit the Bird’s Nest,” he said very softly, his eyes flitting back and forth as he checked out the other diners.

  “Where should we go?” I whispered.

  Liu Wei smiled like a wise shīfu, which is Chinese for respected teacher.

  “Let fortune be your guide,” he said.

  With that, he presented us with a tiny lacquer tray. Four cellophane-wrapped fortune cookies were sitting on it.

  “Um, people in China don’t really do the whole fortune cookie thing,” said Storm. “They think finding little slips of crinkled paper stuck inside food is gross. Means the chef was sort of sloppy.”

  “This is a special treat for our distinguished American visitors,” said Liu Wei with a grin. “Very special.”

  CHAPTER 13

  “You guys?” said Tommy as the rest of us grabbed our fortune cookies off the tray. “We need to leave.”

  I wanted to tear the wrapper off my fortune cookie. I was thinking Dad had stuffed a top secret message inside it. “Wait, Tommy. We should—”

  “Now,” he said firmly.

  All those years manning the spyglass up on the poop deck of The Lost had given Tommy albatross eyes. He can spot trouble coming from ten nautical miles away.

  I looked around and noticed several diners at nearby tables were staring at us. One was working his phone, trying to cover up his frantic conversation with his hand.

  Liu Wei bowed quickly and dashed to the kitchen.

  The four of us scooped up our shrink-wrapped cookies and stuffed them into our pockets.

  Tommy dropped a stack of yuan bills on the table, more than enough to cover the cost of our meal.

  Dozens of eyes following us, we strolled casually toward the front of the restaurant. Tommy started whistling. As he went to push the door, someone out on the sidewalk yanked it open—tearing the handle out of Tommy’s hand.

  The four soul-patched goons from the art gallery.

  “Thieves!” shouted Beck.

  “Dàozéi!” cried Storm. “Dàozéi!”

  (I figure that’s how you hollered “thieves!” in Chinese.)

  As the goons closed in, Tommy yelled, “Run!”

  CHAPTER 14

  “Kitchen!” barked Tommy.

  The four of us spun around and tore through the tight maze of tables. Fortunately, our pursuers were big and beefy and had trouble negotiating the same narrow lanes. They bumped into tables, tipped over steaming trays of squid, and took out the lobster tank.

  Fortune cookies secure in our pockets, we raced through a pair of swinging doors to the kitchen. The air was thick with steam coming up from all the boiling dumplings. Chefs were stirring flaming woks.

  “Back door!” shouted Tommy.

  We dove through it.

  And found ourselves in an alley.

  “We’re behind our hotel,” said Storm.

  We heard the kitchen doors swing open. I whirled around.

  The four warriors of the art gallery were hot on our trail. One had a lobster clamped to his left shoe.

  “Up to our room!” shouted Tommy.

  We ran up the alley to the street, rounded the bend, and headed for the hotel entrance. Spinning through the revolving doors, we flew across the lobby.

  A bell dinged.

  “Elevators!” shouted Tommy, who really is a good captain, even without a ship.

  The four of us hopped in, just as the doors slid shut—right in the four gallery goons’ faces.

  Getting off on the seventeenth floor, we hurried down the corridor to our room. Two very beefy men in black suits were standing in the hallway, their arms crossed genie-style over their chests.

  They hadn’t been there when we left the hotel in the morning.

  Had our pursuers beaten us up to the seventeenth floor?

  No. These guys didn’t have soul patches. They also looked Chinese.

  “Are you the
Kidds?” asked one of the gigantic men, lowering his sunglasses.

  “That’s right,” said Tommy, while the rest of us caught our breath.

  “Welcome, honored guests. We have been assigned to be of service during the remainder of your heroic stay in our beloved homeland.”

  The elevator bell dinged again.

  “Swell,” said Storm, jabbing a thumb over her shoulder. “Start with tossing out the trash.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Tommy swiped his hotel card key.

  The lock clicked open.

  The four of us practically leaped into our room and slammed the door shut.

  Out in the hallway, we could hear our goons telling the art gallery’s goons to go away. I think our goons had better weapons. After grumbling something like, “Tell zee Kinder to stay away from our boss’s loot or there will be ernsthafte Konsequenzen,” the stump-necked art gallery musclemen stomped away.

  We were safe.

  “So what’s an ernsthafte Konsequenzen?” asked Tommy.

  “Some kind of pastry?” I suggested.

  “No,” said Storm. “‘Serious consequences.’”

  Tommy laughed. “Aren’t they always?”

  It was time to open our fortune cookies, which were now just crumbs inside their wrappers.

  We sat down in the hotel suite’s posh living room (the People’s Republic of China was treating us like royalty, even though they don’t really have royalty in Communist countries) and tore them open.

  Beck and I got the exact same fortune (guess it’s another twin thing).

  “It’s not very poetic,” said Beck.

  “What’s it say?” asked Tommy.