Secret of the Forbidden City Read online

  “It’s an address!” blurted Tommy.

  “Well, duh,” said Beck.

  I typed the street and number into my iPad. “Huh. It’s the Beijing branch of an American bank.”

  “Storm?” said Tommy. “What does yours say?”

  “It’s totally random.” She showed us.

  “It says ‘qībiyīshíliù,’” said Storm.

  “What’s it mean?” I asked.

  “Seven-sixteen.”

  “Cool,” said Tommy, pulling out what had been tucked inside his fortune cookie. It wasn’t a tiny slip of paper with words of wisdom, a street address, or a random number.

  It was a small key.

  “And look what’s engraved on the head,” he said.

  “Well, what do you know,” said Beck. “Dad has a safe-deposit box in China, too.”

  “That means he’s here!”

  “Um, not necessarily,” said Storm. “He could’ve given those cookies to Liu Wei years ago.”

  “No way,” I said. “They’d be all stale and moldy.”

  Storm shook her head. “Not sealed in airtight wrappers.”

  “But what about the rain slicker?” I insisted. “Dad’s secret message: me in China.”

  Yes, that was my big piece of evidence proving Dad was still alive. He had scratched out the A-D on the MADE IN CHINA label inside the rain slicker he’d been wearing the night of the big tropical storm, the last time any of us saw him.

  What could be important enough for our father to abandon his four children, not to mention his beloved ship, The Lost? How about his spy boss, Uncle Timothy, being up to some kind of no-good, dirty double-dealing with some shady Chinese characters?

  “Dad came here because he knew Uncle Timothy was up to something seriously slimy,” I said. “Dad had to abandon ship to stop Uncle T. from doing whatever he was about to do.”

  “I’m with Bick,” said Beck, which kind of surprised me.

  “Really?”

  “Yep. You’ve been saying ‘Dad’s still alive’ so long you’ve convinced me. Plus, have you noticed how much Chinese butt Uncle Timothy has been kissing on a regular basis? So, come on, you guys, let’s quit discussing this and go find Dad!”

  “Yeah,” I added. “This key is the first step on our next treasure hunt!”

  There was a sharp knock on the door.

  “You have company,” grunted one of our newly installed security guards from out in the hall.

  “Who is it?” asked Tommy.

  A familiar voice said, “Your uncle Timothy. Open this door, Thomas. Let me in.”

  CHAPTER 16

  I spent the next several seconds wondering how much of my anti-Uncle-Timothy tirade Uncle Timothy had heard out in the hall.

  Storm, Beck, and I quickly jammed our “fortunes” deep into our pockets. Tommy hid his safe-deposit box key, then unhooked the security chain on the door. With a final glance to make certain we were all ready, he opened the door.

  Uncle Timothy, wearing the mirrored shades he wears everywhere, indoors and out, strode into the room, followed by his own troop of security guards.

  “Hey,” said Tommy. “Uncle T. We were just talking about you.”

  “Is that so?” Uncle Timothy said to Tommy. “And what, exactly, were you saying?”

  “How those sunglasses are probably glued to your ears,” said Beck.

  “Or stapled to your nose,” I added. “You never take them off.”

  “Our friends want us to sanitize our trail,” Uncle Timothy said to nobody in particular. “You kids ready to roll? The high cultural minister wants to see you again. He has a proposition for you to consider.”

  “Is he ready to make a deal for Mom’s Ming vase?” said Beck.

  “I think so.”

  “What does he want in return?”

  “Your treasure-hunting skills.”

  CHAPTER 17

  We were whisked off in a motorcade and ushered up a long hallway to the high cultural minister’s office.

  The second Uncle Timothy stepped through the door, Beck motioned for me to hang back.

  “We should tell the minister about that stolen Picasso we found,” she whispered.

  “We will,” I whispered back. “Right after we get the vase. Family first.”

  Beck nodded. The two of us entered the office and stood with Storm and Tommy while Uncle Timothy, still wearing his shades, smiled a lot.

  “I thank you, once again, for returning our priceless national treasures,” the head honcho of Chinese culture said through his translator. “They will have an honored position in the new People’s Museum of Art we are currently constructing. Soon my new museum will be filled with the finest artistic treasures in all the world!”

  “Indeed, it will be,” said Uncle T.

  “We are honored we could help in some small, insignificant way,” I said, putting on my best official speech voice. “For you see, sir, we are treasure hunters, boldly going forth into the murky unknown, bringing back wondrous archaeological artifacts the world considered lost. And now the treasure we seek more than any other is the safe and immediate return of our parents. By giving us but one of the Ming vases, you—comrade, honorable top art official in the People’s Republic of China—you, kind sir, will be speeding us along on our noblest quest of all.”

  Yep. I was laying it on pretty thick. I smiled the whole time the translator mashed my words into metallic-sounding Mandarin.

  Then the minister uttered one sentence.

  “The Ming vase is yours” was its translation.

  I was all set to give that an arm pump and a “boo-yah,” when the translator added the minister’s “but.”

  “But, first, you must prove to me that you—ones so young—are, as your uncle Timothy insists, the finest treasure hunters in all the world.”

  Tommy got a cocky grin on his face. “Uncle T.’s correct, señor Gran Jefe. We’re the Kidds. We’re good. Real good.”

  “This is wonderful to hear,” the minister said through his translator. “Mr. Timothy has told me of your father’s many treasure-hunting maps. How you four followed your wise elder’s guidance to find your way to Zheng He’s sunken treasure ship. Perhaps your father has another such treasure-hunting guide hidden here in China?”

  Tommy didn’t take the bait and reveal the key he found in his fortune cookie. “Huh,” he said. “I guess it’s a possibility.”

  “This is wonderful news,” said the translator, after listening to the smiling minister’s next batch of words. “If you want the vase to free your mother, you will, first, lead my archaeologists into a place none has traveled for over two thousand years. You will find a way for them to open our first emperor’s tomb.”

  “The Secret Tomb of Qin Shi Huang,” said Storm, who memorizes Wikipedia entries in her spare time. “The first emperor’s burial chamber is filled with riches because Qin Shi Huang wanted to be an emperor in the afterlife, too. He built a whole underground city complete with palaces, servants, temples, armies, brass chariots, and mountains of untold treasure. Legend has it that the ceiling of his burial chamber is studded with sparkling pearls to replicate the twinkling stars in the night sky.”

  “Whoa,” said Tommy. “Sounds like the pharaohs and the pyramids.”

  “Exactly,” said Uncle Timothy.

  “But the Chinese already know where Qin Shi Huang’s tomb is,” said Storm. “Under a hill near the ancient city of Xi’an. Why do you need us or one of Dad’s treasure maps?”

  “To find a way for our learned scientists to enter the tomb safely,” said the minister’s translator. “Without becoming one of the dead buried there.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Turns out, Chinese archaeologists have already unearthed some of the first emperor’s hidden underground city.

  “They’ve been excavating the site for decades,” Uncle Timothy explained on the limousine ride back to our hotel. “Back in 1974, a farmer digging a well near Xi’an bent his shovel blade
on a life-size terra-cotta clay soldier.”

  “Wait a second,” said Tommy. “I’ve seen those clay warriors, all lined up in rows like gigantic chess pieces.”

  I nodded. “Tourists are always posing with those things.”

  “They’re very popular with visiting dignitaries,” said Storm. “So far, the Chinese have uncovered two thousand soldier, horse, and chariot statues.”

  “And they expect to find six thousand more as they keep digging their way into the vast maze of underground caverns surrounding Qin Shi Huang’s crypt,” said Uncle Timothy. “But nobody has ever been inside what has to be the most treasure-filled tomb in all of China—maybe the world.”

  “What’s stopping them?” I asked.

  “Rivers of poisonous mercury.”

  “Wha-hut?” said Tommy. “The silver gunk in thermometers?”

  “That’s right, Thomas. The ancient Chinese believed the liquid metal would bestow immortality. So Qin Shi Huang surrounded his final resting spot with a moat of mercury.”

  “But mercury is poisonous, even just breathing the fumes,” said Storm.

  “Exactly,” said Uncle Timothy. “And that’s the big problem: How do you enter Qin Shi Huang’s tomb without ending up dead like him?”

  “Good question,” said Tommy.

  “One your father may have answered. If he did, and you kids can find his map for entering the tomb, you’ll be flying off to Cyprus with a Ming vase in no time.”

  “And if we can’t?” said Tommy.

  “Then, Thomas, I hope you liked that Kentucky Fried Pigeon you ate for lunch. You’ll be seeing a lot more of it. The Chinese will not let you leave their country until you give them what I promised you would deliver.”

  “What?” screeched Beck. “You promised?”

  The limousine pulled to a stop in front of our hotel. Uncle Timothy opened the door.

  “This is where you get out, children. Go find your father’s map. Get us into that tomb.”

  Then he basically kicked the four of us out of his car and had the driver speed away.

  I was so tired of Uncle Timothy and his dirty tricks. Sending us into a tomb filled with lethal poison? Promising the Chinese we’d find Dad’s secret excavation plan? Making me even think about KFC Original Recipe Pigeon?

  I didn’t know about my sibs, but I was definitely not planning on sending out any “Happy Uncle’s Day” cards this year.

  Then I saw something incredible across the street.

  Maybe it was all that angry blood rushing to my head.

  Maybe I was hallucinating.

  Maybe there had been too much MSG in the Chinese food we’d been eating.

  But, believe it or not, I saw Dad! Right across the street!

  CHAPTER 19

  I swear it was him!

  He was standing in front of the art gallery we’d been kicked out of. His baseball cap had a big letter D on it. D for Dad! And, get this: He was flapping his arms like a big bird!

  “Dad?” I mumbled.

  He tossed something up into the air. A fistful of bread crumbs, maybe. Because a flock of pigeons took flight, lifting off from the sidewalk in a flurry so thick it blocked my view. When the gray cloud of birds dispersed, Dad had disappeared.

  I ran into the busy street. “Dad!”

  Somehow, I made it across the street and was standing in the spot where I’d seen Dad.

  There was no trace of him anywhere.

  I heard horns honk and tires squeal.

  Tommy, Beck, and Storm were racing across the street behind me.

  “Are you okay, little brother?” said Tommy.

  “It was Dad,” I said. “He was standing right in front of that window flapping his arms.”

  Tommy put his hand on my shoulder. “Hey, Bick, for what it’s worth, I believe you.”

  “Did you see Dad over here, too?”

  “No. I don’t believe that part. But, I think you and Beck are right. Dad is somewhere in China. Just not here. Or flapping his arms. Or doing anything ‘birdish’ or dorky. But, other than that, I’m behind you all the way. Dad is in China. Just like his rain slicker told you he was.”

  “And we’ve got to find him,” said Storm.

  “Wait,” I said. “You believe me, too?”

  Storm nodded.

  “We all believe you,” said Beck. “That’s what families do. We believe in one another even when everybody else thinks we’re nuts.”

  And then, right there on the bustling sidewalks of Beijing, we had an official Kidd family group hug.

  “Okay,” I said, after we’d all hugged it out, “now what? Do you guys think Dad really knew how to enter Qin Shi Huang’s tomb without dying of mercury poisoning?”

  “Definitely,” said Storm.

  I noticed that she had pulled out her fortune cookie fortune and was studying it again.

  “Did anybody else get a string of Lucky Numbers on the back of their fortune?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, looking at mine. “They do that all the time in Chinese restaurants.”

  “And sometimes,” said Beck, “on the back, they also teach you Chinese conversational phrases.”

  “True,” said Storm. “And today’s phrase is: ‘Dad put the information we seek inside his Beijing safe-deposit box.’”

  CHAPTER 20

  Tommy put a finger to his lips.

  He didn’t want Storm to say anything else until we were somewhere besides a crowded sidewalk.

  We hurried back to our hotel and into the elevator.

  “Let’s check out the banquet halls,” said Tommy, punching the button for the eighteenth floor. “One of them might be empty.”

  “Um, why can’t we just go to our room?” I asked.

  “Earth to Bick,” said Beck. “Remember our brand-new security guards? Our room is under constant surveillance. It’s probably bugged, too.”

  “And,” said Storm, “with the minister forcing us to do this very important treasure hunt for him, you can bet they’ve beefed up our babysitting brigade.”

  We ducked into a huge and completely empty banquet room and grabbed a table underneath a landscape painting.

  “Okay, Storm,” said Tommy, “quick, before hotel security comes in to politely toss us out of here, what’ve you got?”

  “Bick? Beck? Show me your fortune slips.”

  We both did.

  “Flip them over,” said Storm.

  We did that, too.

  “Just as I thought. The three of us got the same string of Lucky Numbers.”

  “What is it?” asked Tommy.

  “Easiest code in the world,” said Storm. “Alphabet numbers. The seventeenth letter of the alphabet is Q. The ninth is I. The fourteenth, N.”

  “Qin Shi Huang!” said Beck, so Storm didn’t have to recite the whole thing out loud. “The emperor with the buried treasure!”

  “Sorry, you guys,” said Storm. “I should’ve cracked this sooner.”

  “Hey,” said Tommy, who can be a pretty awesome big brother when he isn’t too busy flirting or scrunching his hair. “You did great, Storm. And you did it exactly when we needed you to do it.”

  “True,” I said. “Yesterday I would’ve thought that Qin Shi Huang was another kind of steamed dumpling.”

  “Or fried monkey butt,” added Beck.

  We were all smiling around the table when a woman dressed in a bright red business suit bustled into the banquet hall. She was followed by a couple of guys in military uniforms.

  Uniforms that included pistols strapped into holsters.

  “I am Jin Xiang,” said the woman in red. “I will be your cultural attaché.”

  “You mean like a briefcase?” said Tommy.

  The woman smiled. “You must be Thomas.”

  “Chyah,” said Tommy, wiggling his eyebrows. “And there must be something wrong with my eyes, because I can’t take them off you.”

  Our cultural attaché completely ignored Tommy’s cheesy line. G
uess it wasn’t very cultured.

  “Since you four are our honored guests fulfilling a personal mission for the high cultural minister as well as the people of China, we will do everything in our power to show you our very distinctive Chinese hospitality.”

  “The soldiers, too?” asked Beck, somewhat snidely.

  “The soldiers are here to protect you,” said Jin Xiang.

  “From what?” I asked.

  “From whatever dangers might come your way.”

  I looked at the guys with the guns.

  They looked pretty dangerous. And they’d already come our way.

  “Please,” said Jin Xiang, “follow me to your room. And, in the future, if you wish to sit in an empty banquet hall, kindly check with your military escorts first.”

  The lady spun around on her heel and led the way to the exit.

  The soldiers flanked the four of us, then goose-stepped us out the door.

  All of a sudden I had a funny feeling that our hotel room was now a prison cell.

  CHAPTER 21

  There were so many Chinese government functionaries, flunkies, and PR flacks crowded into our posh hotel room I think our official handlers had official handlers.

  “We hope to make your stay as pleasant as possible,” said Jin Xiang.

  “You already have,” said Tommy, wiggling his eyebrows again.

  The cultural attaché pretended like, all of a sudden, she couldn’t understand English. Or, at least, Tommy’s version of it.

  “In China,” said another of our attendants, “guests are always treated with great kindness and respect. You are also encouraged to do what you like!”

  “Fantastic,” said Beck. “I’d like to go for a walk. By myself.”

  “I am sorry, friend. That would not be safe. It is dark outside. Would you like something to eat?”

  “No, thank you,” said Storm.