Shatterproof (15 page)

Amy looked around at the thick walls that housed thousands of manuscripts. It was as if rivers of ancient knowledge converged within the institute, safe for another century. “We’ll make a donation before we leave,” Amy said.

“That’s very kind of you. We will accept it, but you can do something else for us.”

“Sure,” Amy said.

“Most people know about the famous cathedrals of Europe, or the caravan routes in the East,” Bazzi said. “But few people know about the ancient route where knowledge was shared. We call it the Ink Road, and you are at its epicenter.” He pointed at the manuscript in the glass case. “Who’s to say? Perhaps there is something in one of the manuscripts that has yet to be discovered by modern man. Will you tell people about our manuscripts? The only way to preserve them is for people to know.”

“We’ll tell everyone,” she promised, and mentally wrote out a check that would ensure the institute was funded for another fifty years. It wasn’t always awful to be a Cahill.

“Thank you,” Bazzi said. “Now, if you will follow me, our best computer is in our cataloging room.”

He led them through a maze of glass cases to a small door in the back. When he opened it, a blast of stale air hit them.

“Preservatives,” Bazzi explained. “Perhaps a little mold. You will get used to the odor.” He switched on the lights and then headed back to his desk.

It wasn’t a room. It was a warehouse. Manuscripts were stacked on racks twenty feet high.

Amy went pale. “It looks like an ancient recycling center. We’ll never find the ‘Apology’ here.”

“It’s not as hopeless as you think,” Jake said. “Remember the margin of error.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Vesper’s note,” Jake said. “‘Off to Timbuktu you go. No margin for error.’”

Amy was still confused.

Jake picked up a manuscript from one of the shelves and pointed to the doodlings around the primary text. “I’m guessing the ‘Apology’ is written in the
margin
of one of the manuscripts, in Latin.”

“That has to be it!” Amy threw her arms around him. Jake pulled her tightly to him . . . until they both realized what he was doing. The two snapped apart as if they had been shocked, but their eyes met again. Amy’s face was flaming and even Jake looked a little flushed. They tilted closer and closer together, as if some magnetic force was pulling at them. Jake leaned and Amy leaned, the space between them growing smaller and smaller. And then their lips touched.

Amy jumped back like a scalded cat, leaping away from an equally flustered Jake Rosenbloom.

“I’m — um —” Amy hadn’t been tongue-tied like this in weeks. She took a deep breath, but it caught in her throat and her voice came out as a squeak. “I’ll go out and Mouse the Dan.” Her cheeks burned. “Tell the Mouse to find Dan! I’ll go out.” She turned around and marched resolutely to the door.

“Yeah . . . uh . . .” Jake’s mouth wasn’t cooperating, either. “Good idea. I’ll . . . uh . . . I’ll start skimming the margins.”

But he was speaking to an empty room. Amy Cahill was gone.

As Bart predicted, Dan and Atticus were not welcomed with open arms at Mamma Haidara’s. The librarian, a Mr. Srour, nearly tossed them out as soon as they walked in. He was an older man with white hair, wearing stained khaki pants, a white shirt, and a tattered sports coat. Atticus pulled out his Harvard student card, but Srour scowled at it through thick glasses as if it were fake. Atticus’s next tactic was to drop a name. “Perhaps you’ve heard of my father,” Atticus said. “His name is Dr. Mark Rosenbloom.”

“The archaeologist?”

Atticus nodded.

“I met him,” Srour admitted grudgingly. “Several years ago.”

“That’s right!” Atticus said. “I’d forgotten. He was here to examine an old dig outside the city near the Niger River.”

Dan interrupted. “Dr. Rosenbloom sent us here to find something called the ‘Apology for a Great Transgression.’ ”

“Ahhh,” Srour said.

“You know it?” Dan asked, excitedly.

“No,” Srour said, shaking his head. “There are hundreds of thousands of manuscripts scattered throughout the city in libraries like ours, in museums, and in private homes,” Srour said. “I’ve done the calculations. It would take one hundred scholars twenty years to read them all, and that’s if they each read one full manuscript every day.”

“We don’t have that much time!” Dan said.

“All I can do is look up the phrase on my computer and see if it is in our database. If you’ll wait here.” He walked through a doorway in back of the reception area.

“There aren’t a hundred of
us
,” Dan said, “and we don’t have twenty years to skim a million moldering manuscripts. We have less than twenty hours, or someone is going to die.”

The boys immediately split up and started sorting through the manuscripts on display.

After a few minutes, Srour came back through the door, shaking his head. “I did the search several ways. The word
apology
doesn’t appear at all, and our collection is completely digitized. I’d recommend examining the other collections. There’s a map of them on the wall in my office.”

They followed him into his office. The map took up most of the wall behind his desk. It was dotted by red and blue pins. “The blue pins are the public collections,” Srour explained. “The red pins are the private collections. The private collections are in people’s homes. We are trying to convince them to bring the manuscripts in, but people are reluctant to give up their family heirlooms.”

There were a lot more red pins than blue. And there were a lot more places holding manuscripts than Atticus would have guessed. Dan was staring at the map as if he were hypnotized by it.

“I guess we better get going. Thanks for your time.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t more help,” Srour said.

Out on the street, Atticus asked Dan what the plan was.

“The plan is in serious jeopardy,” Dan said. “According to Srour’s map, almost every other building in Timbuktu has a load of ancient manuscripts. To find them all we’d have to almost do a house-to-house search. I guess we should start with the blue pins. When we get done with those, we’ll start in on the red pins.”

Dan’s head was reeling. Vesper One’s ransom demands were always difficult, but this one was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Like a needle in a thousand haystacks. His chest tightened. He could almost feel the time counting down with each heartbeat.

“What about Bart?” asked Atticus.

“We sure don’t need a taxi.” Dan pointed to a building less than half a block away. “That’s the next blue pin, and there are two reds in between.”

The Mouse ran up to them and started jabbering in a combination of Arabic and French. When the Mouse paused for breath, Atticus turned to Dan and translated.

“He says that Jake and Amy think the apology will be written in the margins, not the main text.”

“Of course,” Dan said. “‘Margin of error’! Tell him about the blue and red pins. Even with the margins, it’s still going to be impossible to flip through all the manuscripts. Someone’s going to have to get lucky.”

Dan told the Mouse about the blue and red pens. The small boy nodded, then sprinted back down the sandy street, dodging camels, goats, and . . .

“What are people from Timbuktu called?” Dan asked.

Atticus wasn’t sure. “Timbuktians?” he guessed.

“Let’s go meet some of them.”

Amy walked back into the library warehouse after getting the message from the Mouse. Jake was busy skimming manuscripts for Latin. She wanted to talk to him about the . . . thing. The thing that had sort of happened between them. The thing that was never going to happen again. But the blue and red pins were a lot more important at the moment.

“Wow,” Jake said, looking everywhere but at her. “That many?”

“Dan has perfect recall.”

Jake gazed at the shelves of manuscripts they hadn’t gotten to. “Then we have a problem.”

Amy nodded. “That’s why I was thinking we should split up.”

Jake jerked his head toward her, alarm written all over his face.

“I didn’t mean —” Amy stopped herself. She didn’t know what she meant. “I’ll go to the next library while you finish here.”

“Stay here!” Jake blurted. “I mean, we could finish in half the time if we work together. It’s the same difference either way.”

Amy shook her head and let her hair cover her flaming cheeks. “We have to streamline the process. I can do a computer search at the next library while you finish up here.”

“I don’t think it’s safe for you to be running around on your own.”

Now Amy had to smile. The only reason she and Dan hadn’t been kidnapped like the others was because she had single-handedly punched and kicked their three assailants into submission. Well, she had to admit that Dan had helped by dousing the three men with gasoline and threatening to light them on fire. But still.

“I appreciate your concern,” she said. And she meant it. “I’ll take the Mouse with me. He’ll come and get you if there’s even a hint of a problem.”

“Fine,” Jake said, but she could tell he was unhappy. “I’ll come and get you as soon as I’m done here.”

The first three places Dan and Atticus went into were complete busts. None of them had heard of the “Apology for a Great Transgression” and all their manuscripts had been digitized. They walked down the street toward the fourth collection and were stopped in their tracks by a noxious smell and a swarm of flies.

“Butcher shop,” Atticus said.

“Camel heads,” Dan said.

There were six of them stacked in a short pyramid outside the butcher’s door.

“The sign says the camel heads are eight dollars apiece,” Atticus said.

“What a bargain!” Dan said. He took his camera phone out to get a photo of the grisly sight. “Remind me not to order any red meat while we’re here.”

As he snapped the picture, his phone chimed.

“I’ve got bars!”

He wasn’t the only one. People poured out of the shops and houses, whipping cell phones out of their pockets and robes. Dan and Atticus were jostled, elbowed, and stepped on as the Timbuktians jockeyed for position to catch a signal. After a few seconds there was a collective moan of disgust as the elusive signal drifted elsewhere.

The crowd dispersed. Some returned to their homes and shops, others ran down the street holding their cell phones in the air to try to catch the tail end of the signal.

Someone shouted. Dan and Atticus turned from the signal catchers and saw a bloody-aproned butcher pointing angrily at the pyramid of camel heads. The top one was missing.

Looking at the pile of heads, something snapped in Dan’s head.

Heads for Phoenix. Tails for Oh.

The camel heads didn’t look nearly as funny as they had a second before.

He looked down at his screen.

I set you up to SUCCEED at the Pergamon Museum. And succeed you did. I will tell you all about The Book of Ingenious Devices when I see you. I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to that day. AJT

“Succeeded for him,” Dan said.

“What?” Atticus asked.

“None of your business.” Dan stomped away. Atticus might be a genius, but there were things even he couldn’t understand. He didn’t know what it was like being a Cahill. To know that nothing was what it seemed. To have a painful past that refused to stay buried.