Treasure Hunters: Danger Down the Nile Page 6

“Yeah?” said Tommy.

  “Is this, like, the new you or something?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Good. Because it’s kind of sweet.”

  “Yeah,” said Storm. “It’s almost as if Dad were still here.”

  Suddenly it struck me: “This is why Dad told us to ‘be ware’ of that soup dude, Mr. Venable!”

  “Huh?” said Tommy.

  “On the business card. He scratched out those letters so we’d know to ‘be-ware’ of the sleazy jeweler. Okay—remember that guy Makalani in the market café? The one who told us that Bela Kilgore was a tour guide at the Giza pyramids?”

  “Yes,” said Storm as she called up her photographic memory of the encounter. “He had a food stain on his robe. Soup and a dried noodle.”

  “Exactly! Chicken noodle! He was working for Venable. I bet Bubu was working for him, too. And that fake security guard inside the pyramid probably does the shoe scam with Bubu at least twice a day!”

  “But why?” asked Beck.

  “Because somebody really doesn’t want us finding Aunt Bela!”

  “Who?”

  “Whoever’s paying Mr. Venable more than we did!”

  CHAPTER 30

  The burglars had made a rock-stars-on-tour mess when they ransacked our hotel room, but they hadn’t stolen anything except the thumb drive and treasure map.

  Not even the stack of cash sitting in the bustedopen closet safe.

  That bit of good luck didn’t stop Beck and me from launching into Twin Tirade No. 464.

  “So now what?” Beck started. “We go back to interviewing every single person in Cairo?”

  “If that’s the only way we have to find Bela Kilgore,” I said, “then yes.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Okay, it’s impossible.”

  “Wrong again, Rebecca. It just isn’t easy.”

  “Oh. You’re saying I’m lazy?”

  “You said it, not me.”

  “Grow up, Bickford.”

  “I can’t, unless you grow up, too. We’re twins, remember?”

  “This is like looking for a black cat in a coal mine, a drop in a bucket…”

  I jumped in with my own simile: “It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack!”

  “Okay, Bickford, that’s just stupid. Why would anybody ever look for a needle in a haystack?”

  “It’s an official cliché, Rebecca.”

  “You mean a stupid cliché. How do you lose a needle in a haystack? Who does their sewing anywhere near hay?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe that’s why you can’t ever find a needle in a haystack.”

  Beck nodded. “Maybe so. Good point.”

  “Well, you brought it up first.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  “We done?”

  “Totally.”

  Tommy and Storm came into the living room.

  “You guys,” said Tommy, still sounding extremely Dad-like, “we need to switch hotels.”

  “This one has been compromised,” added Storm.

  “I can pack in five minutes,” I said.

  “I can do it in three,” said Beck.

  “But where should we go?” I asked.

  “Well,” said Tommy, “according to a couple of websites I checked out, there are other top-notch hotels in Cairo. All of them give you a free bathrobe.”

  For some reason, this was important to Tommy. Probably because he spends so much time in the morning in front of the mirror.

  “There’s the Kempinski Nile, the Fairmont, the Sofitel, the Four Seasons…”

  “Of course!” I yelled as everything came together. “That’s where Aunt Bela is!”

  “Huh?”

  “The Four Seasons hotel! That’s why Mom said that stuff about ‘winter, spring, summer, and fall’ in the video. Those are the four seasons. She knew exactly where Aunt Bela would be staying in Cairo.”

  We grabbed a cab and headed to the Nile Plaza, where Cairo’s Four Seasons hotel was, to play my hunch.

  Tommy gave the bellman who opened our cab door a hefty tip. Make that massive: $300.

  It was enough to buy us the room number to Bela Kilgore’s suite.

  “But beware,” whispered the cooperative bellman. “You are not the only ones looking for her.”

  He tapped his shirt pocket. It was stuffed with cash.

  CHAPTER 31

  We took the hotel elevator up to the twentysecond floor and banged on Bela’s door.

  “Aunt” Bela didn’t look much like a spy. She was shorter than Beck and me and wore glasses with lenses so thick they made her eyeballs look like gigantic olives.

  “We’re the Kidds,” said Tommy. “Tommy, Storm, Beck, and Bick.”

  Bela Kilgore wasn’t very happy to see any of us.

  “How did you children find me?”

  “It wasn’t easy,” said Tommy. “Plus it cost me my brand-new Nikes.”

  Bela Kilgore’s eyes started bulging out of their sockets like one of those rubbery panic dolls you squeeze. “Does your strange uncle Timothy know where I am?”

  “I doubt it,” said Beck. “Heck, he doesn’t even know where we are.”

  “Quick question,” I said. “Are you ‘related’ to Uncle Timothy? Are you another CIA contact for our mom?”

  She gasped. “How did you figure that out?”

  “Well, the whole uncle/aunt thing made it kind of easy.”

  Now her eyes darted back and forth. “Very well. You children are as clever and cunning as your parents. I might as well tell you the truth. Yes! I manage your mother’s missions!”

  “Boom!” I said, doing an arm chug. “Nailed it! I knew you helped Mom. But noooooo. Everybody else—”

  Bela cut me off. “Did anyone follow you children here?”

  “Maybe,” said Tommy. “The bellhop dude downstairs is making a ton of cash giving people your room number.”

  “The bellhop…” Bela muttered, picking up a designer leather backpack and strapping the dainty thing over her shoulders.

  “Going somewhere?” said Beck.

  “Yes, and so should you. Leave here, children. Immediately! Go far, far, far away! Otherwise, you will blow my cover, and if my cover is blown, there will be dire consequences—not just for me, but for all of western civilization. If my true identity is discovered by certain interested parties, it could threaten the security of the Free World!”

  Tommy was impressed. “Whoa. Seriously?”

  “Look, Kidds, I know what I just said sounds absurd.”

  “Uh, yeah,” said Beck.

  “It’s, like, dialogue from a James Bond movie,” I said. “One of the lamer ones, too.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you foolish children think,” Bela snapped as she backed up toward the giant windows overlooking the Nile River, twenty-two stories below. “You’re just kids. You know nothing about the real world. Your mother and father would agree. So just go away.”

  I moved closer. “Is our mom alive?”

  “Go away, little boy.”

  “Not until you tell us the truth. Yes or no? Is our mother still alive?”

  Bela reached over her shoulder and yanked a pen out of her leather backpack. “This pen is actually a mini–rocket launcher capable of shooting a high-powered explosive accurately up to forty yards.”

  Tommy chuckled. “That’s from James Bond, too, right? Are those sofa cushions actually multiple ejector seats?”

  “Go away, Kidds. You bother me.”

  “Tell us the truth,” I demanded. “Is our mother still in Cyprus?”

  “Just go away!”

  Now Beck moved in on Bela, too. “Are you ever honest with anyone about anything?”

  “All the time. Let me demonstrate: I honestly want you children to go away. Now.”

  Beck kept pressing. “What’s up with Julius Caesar and the number thirteen?”

  “Go! A! Way!”<
br />
  Now Storm jumped in. “Where’d you get that dive watch?”

  “What?” Bela fidgeted with the watchband, which was way too loose on her bony wrist.

  “It’s a Breitling Superocean Heritage Chronograph, correct?” said Storm. “Did our mother give it to you?”

  And finally, Bela Kilgore told us the truth: “Yes!”

  CHAPTER 32

  Bela Kilgore worked Mom’s dive watch off her wrist.

  “Here—take it,” she said, tossing the watch to Storm. “It doesn’t match my backpack.”

  Okay, I had to wonder: How could this tiny, bad-tempered, nearsighted woman be our athletic, smart, and incredibly savvy mom’s boss? Our mom was way too cool for Bela.

  “You’re Storm, correct?” she said as Storm examined the watch.

  “Yep.”

  “Well, your mother specifically told me to give that watch to Storm if ever we met. Under the circumstances of our meeting, I was initially hesitant to hand it over.”

  Suddenly there was a knock on the door.

  “Room service,” said a thickly accented voice in the hall.

  Bela’s eyes went buggy again. “I didn’t order room service!”

  “Me neither,” said Tommy. “But I am kind of hungry.”

  Another knock. “Ms. Kilgore? I have your hummus and baba ghanoush.”

  Now Bela squinted. “I didn’t order hummus. Or baba ghanoush!”

  She spun around and kicked at the huge window.

  “Hiya!”

  Glass crackled and showered out of the frame. Loose papers and flower petals were sucked through the gaping hole where the windowpane used to be.

  I heard two soft pops in the hallway—Thwick! Thwick!

  The doorknob tumbled out of the door.

  Bela Kilgore leaped out the window.

  The bottom of her designer leather back-pack exploded with fire, and she rocketed across the sky.

  “Awesome!” said Tommy. “It’s a CIA jet pack!”

  Thwick! Thwick!

  “Um, somebody’s shooting at the door,” said Beck as a dead bolt lock went flying across the room.

  “Sounds like they’re using a silencer,” said Storm as she tucked Mom’s dive watch into the pocket of her cargo shorts.

  Meanwhile, outside, Bela Kilgore’s jet pack started sputtering as it careened wildly like a balloon losing all its air. I saw her spiral into a nosedive, then crash with a splash and a sizzle into the Nile River.

  Did she live? Did she die?

  I couldn’t really tell.

  Plus we were kind of busy.

  Because somebody holding a long-muzzled pistol kicked open the hotel suite door.

  It was a man in an eye patch with a pencil-thin mustache who happened to be wearing a French Foreign Legion hat. It had to be Guy Dubonnet Merck, the man our mother had warned us about in her video!

  CHAPTER 33

  As Guy Dubonnet Merck strode into the hotel suite, I remembered what our mother had said about the skeevoid in her video: “If you ever meet him, run away! Tell Aunt Bela to run away, too.”

  I sort of wished we all had designer leather backpacks like Aunt Bela’s. The kind with rockets inside.

  Merck tucked his smoldering pistol into a holster hanging over his khaki army shorts. With his Foreign Legion hat, tan military shirt straight out of World War II, and socks that were rolled back just below his knee, the mustachioed man in the eye patch looked like an evil Boy Scout leader from France.

  “Excusez-moi, children,” he said in a very thick French accent. “Where is Mademoiselle Kilgore?”

  “She flew the coop,” I said. “Literally.”

  Merck marched over to the shattered window and gazed out—the wind whipping through the gaping hole ruffled his billowy shorts and made his eye patch flap.

  “C’est bon. An ambulance crew is fishing her body out of the Nile.”

  “Is she dead?” asked Beck.

  “Oui. I believe so.”

  “You m-m-murdered her,” Beck stammered.

  Merck turned from the blasted-open window and tsk-tsked. “Little girl! Murdered is such an ugly word. I prefer eliminated. Now, then—did Mademoiselle Kilgore tell you children anything about your maman before she, as you say, ‘flew the coop’?”

  “Our mother?” I said. “No.”

  I can fib fast.

  “Merveilleux! I have earned my fee.”

  “What exactly do you want here, Merck?” demanded Tommy.

  “You know my name?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Our mother told us all about you!”

  “Ah, yes. You see, little Kidds, I was and remain your parents’ worst nightmare: a ruthless treasure hunter who will stop at nothing, I repeat, nothing, to obtain that which I desire. Your parents? Ha! They think they are so smart. They think they can outwit me? Pah!”

  He actually spit on the hotel carpet.

  “I laugh at explorers such as they who would spend so much time reading the books and doing the research. Books? They are boring. Research? It is worse. Reckless adventure? That, mes amis, is exciting. You may quote me.”

  With the way Merck was throwing around his French, it was a good thing our parents homeschooled us in at least a half-dozen languages.

  “You’re not our ‘friend,’mon ami,” Beck piped up.

  “And we won’t be quoting you anytime soon,” Storm chimed in.

  Merck squinted at us with his one good eye. “Now then, little Kidds, tell me, how did you four make your way to Cairo? I am given to understand that your Uncle Timothy now controls your family fortune.”

  “We stowed away,” I said, because one lie usually leads to another. “On an empty oil tanker. It was the USS Hess Truck sailing out of Newark, New Jersey, on its way to Saudi Arabia for a quick refill. When the tanker reached the Suez Canal, we shinnied down the anchor chains and swam ashore.”

  “We’ve come to Africa to find King Solomon’s Mines,” blurted Storm.

  “Ah-hah!” said Merck. “What I have been told is true. You imbecilic children are attempting to take over your parents’ treasure-hunting business?”

  He shook his head and tsk-tsked again.

  “Sacre bleu. Children can be so… so… childish! But, tell me, young and foolish Kidds, how do you intend to find King Solomon’s Mines without… this!”

  With a very dramatic flourish, the Frenchman whipped a familiar-looking document out of his breast pocket.

  It was our treasure map.

  The one Merck had stolen when he ransacked our hotel room.

  CHAPTER 34

  Just so you know—when Mom and Dad homeschooled us aboard The Lost, they didn’t just make us book smart about math, science, literature, and foreign languages.

  They also gave us diving lessons, music lessons, martial arts training, and, believe it or not, acting lessons. Trust me, acting is a very valuable skill. Especially when you want to fool someone into thinking you desperately need the treasure map he has stolen when all you really need is your big sister’s photographic memory of that same map.

  So we put on quite a show for Guy Dubonnet Merck.

  “We’re doomed,” I said. “This clever French guy—”

  Merck shook his head. “It is pronounced ‘ghee.’ ”

  “This clever French guy ghee has clearly outwitted us.”

  “This stupid trip to Cairo was a waste of time,” said Beck, playing along.

  “It was?” said Tommy.

  Beck and I are such good actors we can even fool Tommy sometimes (not that it’s all that hard to do).

  “Yes, Tommy,” I said. “We’re simply no match for Monsieur Merck. He is so clever, cunning, and crafty.”

  “It is true,” said Merck, proudly. “I am all of these things you say.”

  “This will be the Kidd family’s final adventure,” said Beck, making it sound like she was about to sob. “Our final failure.”

  “We should go home,” I said, pretending to choke u
p a little, too. I even bit a knuckle. “Except, we don’t really have a home anymore, do we?”

  “No,” said Tommy, sounding very sad. And he wasn’t acting, either. “We don’t.”

  “And we’re broke,” added Beck.

  “What?” said Merck. “What about all those one-hundred-dollar bills I saw stacked inside your hotel room safe?”

  “Gone,” I said, with a head nudge toward Tommy. “Someone likes to gamble. At the racetrack. He kept picking the wrong camel.”

  “This is very sad for me to hear,” said Merck. “I may be ruthless and heartless, but that does not mean I do not have a heart.”

  (Well, actually, it kind of does, but I wasn’t about to contradict him.)

  “Inwardly, I weep for you and your misfortune,” Merck continued. “Therefore, Kidd children, I will help you abandon your foolish quest to find King Solomon’s Mines. I will give you enough money to make your way back to America, where, your uncle Timothy will welcome you with open arms!”

  “How do you know our uncle Timothy?” I asked.

  “He is, how you say, an acquaintance. Of course, I cannot fly you first class on Egypt Air, like certain soup merchants…”

  “You know Mr. Venable, too?”

  “Monsieur, I am Guy Dubonnet Merck! I know everybody!”

  I figured he paid Venable to have Makalani send us on that wild-goose chase around the pyramids while he trashed our room and tracked down Bela Kilgore for himself.

  “Rejoice, mes amis—I shall pay for your safe return home.”

  “Thank you, kind sir!” I faked it good.

  “If, of course, you do not mind traveling in steerage. On a friend of mine’s cattle boat. You will have to share two stalls. Boys in one, girls in the other.”

  “But,” I said, “it’ll be a grand adventure! Maybe our most exciting journey ever. I’ll keep a diary like the sailor in Two Years Before the Mast, that book Dad loved so much. I hope it’s nothing but heavy seas, strong gales, and frequent squalls of hail and snow.”

  “Books,” sniffed Merck. “Pah! Again I say: They are nothing but a waste of time.”