The 39 Clues: Book 8 (10 page)
Read The 39 Clues: Book 8 Online
Authors: Gordan Korman
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Action & Adventure - General, #Children's Books, #Adventure stories (Children's, #YA), #Children's Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #Juvenile Fiction, #Historical, #Family, #Ages 9-12 Fiction, #Children: Grades 4-6, #Historical - General, #Siblings, #Brothers and sisters, #Orphans, #Family - Siblings, #Juvenile Historical Fiction, #Other, #Ciphers, #Historical - Other, #Family & home stories (Children's, #Mysteries; Espionage; & Detective Stories
Cat
fur ...
Saladin?
Of course! Grace had kept a small replica of this statue on the landing of her stairs! It had been one of Saladin's favorite spots --the Egyptian Mau used to circle it endlessly, rubbing against the contours of the porcelain.
Amy and Dan had called it the Beard Buddha.
How could I ever forget that thing? I was scared to death of it!
And now he was staring at the real one.
He frowned. They never knew it when she was alive, but Grace Cahill had been embroiled up to her nostrils in the 39 Clues. The entire contest was her creation,
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written into her will with the help of William McIntyre. A lot of things Grace had casually mentioned over the years had turned out to be vital to the Clue hunt. It was almost like she was still searching from the grave.
He felt a brief flash of irritation at his grandmother. She had implanted so many things like this in his head -- and even more in Amy's, since the two of them had been extra close. Sometimes he couldn't escape the feeling that his brain was a computer hard drive infected with dozens of viruses just waiting for some outside trigger to set them off.
The one possibility Grace had never considered was that he might quit the contest and be stuck with all these mental time bombs to drive him crazy. Because, Clue hunt or not, he couldn't help being curious.
1) Jonah's Janus connections had sent him to the Shaolin Temple.
2) That was the
real
Beard Buddha up there. Coincidence?
Yeah, right.
The white statue loomed high above, seemingly miles in the sky. Directly in front of Dan, an endless series of ancient crumbling stone steps led up the mountain.
A million stairs -- at least it looked like that many.
Good thing I ate my silkworm today....
He was going to need the energy.
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CHAPTER 13
"That's pretty wild, you guys being fans, yo," Jonah said to Li Wu Chen.
The abbot regarded him disapprovingly. "So long we have waited and the branch sends us a foolish boy."
"Branch?" Jonah repeated. He dropped his voice to a murmur. "You mean--
Janus?"
"We are not fans of your obnoxious noise. Yes, we are Janus --the one true line of the Cahill family in Asia. We welcome you as the son of Cora Wizard." Li Wu Chen's gaze moved to Jonah's father. "And of course, her non-Janus husband."
It was as if a curtain had been swept aside. No wonder the branch leadership in Venice had sent Jonah here! As Janus representatives, the Shaolin monks might be able to help with a Clue in this part of the world.
"She's got a real sense of humor, my wife," Broderick mumbled, a little resentfully. His thumbs twitched as if his hands felt empty with no BlackBerry in them. "She could have told us the natives were Janus friendlies."
"Chill, Pops," soothed his son. "She got us where
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we needed to be, no harm done." Classic Cora Wizard. She ran the branch like one of her performance-art pieces -- equipping the actors with limited information and then stepping back to watch the sparks fly. It was very Janus, although he'd never expected her to do it with her own son.
The abbot ushered them into a small antechamber furnished with a rough-hewn round table. The door closed with a sucking sound, and they realized they were in a secure room.
"First things first," Li Wu Chen announced. "Who is the boy, and why is he with you?"
"His name is Dan Cahill," Jonah's father replied.
"Cahill." The abbot sat forward. "Janus?"
Jonah shrugged. "Nobody knows. He's Grace Cahill's grandson."
Li Wu Chen was impressed. "Ah, Grace Cahill. Good bloodlines. Dangerous woman. Few have come as close as she to solving the thirty-nine mysteries that cannot be solved."
"Easy on the lovefest," said Jonah firmly. "Grace did her thing, but my mom's got her smoked. I think that's why Cora hooked us up. Venice is one ingredient shy of duplicating the Janus formula."
The abbot leaped to his feet, shouting something in excited Mandarin. "Please excuse my exuberance," he added sheepishly, reseating himself. "Too long have we Janus in Asia lived in the shadow of those Tomas louts with their large muscles and small minds."
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"Word," agreed Jonah, thinking of the Holts.
"Consider the resources of the Shaolin order completely at your disposal. What is the missing ingredient?"
"I'm on it," Jonah assured him. "Mom's convinced it's here in China, but we don't know what it is or where to find it. That's why we're hanging on to the Cahill kid."
Li Wu Chen frowned. "Surely this small boy has no knowledge beyond the grasp of the Janus branch."
"Don't sell the kid short," Jonah insisted. "He looks dumb, but he and his sis have pulled off a lot of miracles. Maybe it's the Grace connection, who knows?"
"Wise to cover all possibilities," the abbot admitted grudgingly. "Perhaps representing the Janus and appearing on the cover of
Tiger Beat
are not mutually exclusive endeavors. Manipulated cleverly, Grace's descendant could prove to be a valuable asset."
"Uh --thanks." Was that supposed to be a compliment?
"Your mother has good reason to search for the missing ingredient in China," Li Wu Chen told him. "Replicating the Janus serum has been the goal of the Qing emperors dating back hundreds of years. It was this obsession --not their admirable devotion to the arts --that caused them to neglect their people."
"But did they get the job done?" Jonah probed. "Did any of those emperors score the formula?"
"We believe the answer is yes."
Broderick spoke up. "Believe? Don't you know?"
The abbot supplied the answer to Jonah, not his
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father. "As passed down through the decades, the story is thus: Puyi, the last emperor, hired a tutor named Reginald Fleming Johnston, a Janus scientist from the British Isles. Together, they completed the serum in a secret laboratory in the Forbidden City."
Jonah could tell from his father's scowl that Pops didn't appreciate being ignored. But this was more important than Broderick's bruised ego. "So, what happened to it?" he asked urgently.
"It was most unfortunate. The year was 1924. Puyi sensed that he would soon be exiled. Naturally, the safety of the serum was his paramount concern. Johnston knew a fellow British Cahill with a unique skill that enabled him to hide the formula where it would be preserved indefinitely. It is said that not another man alive at the time could have performed the task."
"But where did he hide it?" Broderick demanded, almost shouting.
Li Wu Chen shook his head. "There the legend ends."
"Tell me about this big player they hired to stash the merchandise," Jonah persisted. "Who was he?"
"This too is not known. After leaving the Forbidden City, Puyi became inactive. Some say he journeyed to the Great Wall prior to his death, but this has never been confirmed. Completing the Janus formula was his one great achievement. Not even his brief reign on the Throne of Heaven could compare. The rest of the life of Henry Puyi -- as a figurehead, a prisoner, a simple library clerk--this was no fate for a Janus." The abbot's
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eyes flashed to Jonah's father before settling back on the star. "For an ordinary person, perhaps even for an emperor. But not for a descendant of Jane Cahill."
With a whoosh, the door to the chamber swept open and in rushed another monk in a state of high anxiety. He held Broderick's BlackBerry between his thumb and forefinger, as if expecting it to explode at any second. The smartphone was lit up like a Christmas tree.
Jonah's father leaped to his feet. "That's Janus business--highest priority code!"
The agitated monk could not have been happier to hand it over and make his escape.
Only when the security door had slurped shut again did Jonah ask, "Is it from Mom?"
His father frowned. "No, not your mother." He held it up. Chinese characters filled the small screen.
Li Wu Chen produced a pair of reading glasses. "Most curious. It is a series of numbers. One, thirty-eight, fifty-three."
Broderick Wizard grimaced. "The message is from a dummy server. It won't let me identify the sender." He thumbed the keypad in frustration. "What's the point of encrypting a meaningless message?"
"Because it's not meaningless, Pops." Jonah was triumphant. "Section one, row thirty-eight, seat fifty-three--yo, this message is a seat location in a stadium!"
"But we don't have any more concerts scheduled this month," his father reminded him.
"Maybe that's the point," the star argued. "We set
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up a gig --in Shanghai, let's say--and whoever sent that message knows to show up in that seat. All we have to do is put an agent in the next spot over."
"Risky," Broderick mused.
"Not really. I'll be onstage with a microphone in my hand. If things get really hairy, I can bring fifty thousand screaming fans down on this guy. Even the Lucians don't have that kind of backup." He grinned with all thirty-two perfect teeth. He would have loved to have this get back to Mom somehow.
"Most clever, star of
Who Wants to Be a Gangsta?"
Li Wu Chen told him. "But, alas, you are wrong."
Jonah was insulted. "You're trippin'!"
The abbot regarded him disapprovingly. "Shaolin monks do not 'trip.'"
"No disrespect," Jonah said quickly. "It's just--well, you tell me what that message is supposed to mean."
"Gladly," the abbot agreed. "Are you familiar with the terracotta army at the tombs of Xian?"
Broderick frowned. "The message is from the army?"
"It is not a real army," Li Wu Chen explained with a weary sigh. "The terracotta warriors are considered the eighth wonder of the ancient world. If you could step back from your son's silly career for a moment, you might acquire a measure of wisdom beyond
Entertainment Tonight."
"Let's all take it down a notch," Jonah suggested, seeing his father redden. The last thing he needed was for Pops to get into a scrap with a Shaolin martial arts
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master. First of all, Li Wu Chen, although small and slight, could probably lay waste to a city. And second, if Mom found out, the payback would be a monster.
He turned to the abbot. "We didn't mean to dis your ancient wonder. We respectfully ask"--respect was big here -- "for the lowdown on this fly army."
"Just outside the city of Xian lies the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, first emperor of a united China. It is defended by a vast buried army of terracotta warrior statues."
"That's it?" asked Jonah. "Statues?"
"They are thousands in number, greater than life-size and carved with spectacular attention to detail. Even now, undiscovered battalions are being unearthed every month."
Jonah's father was skeptical. "But why are you so sure the message is about this place?"
"It is a reference to a specific terracotta figure," Li Wu Chen explained. "The fifty-third soldier in the thirty-eighth rank of the first excavation pit."
"Or," Broderick added, "it could be a trap."
"It's all good," Jonah said blithely. "Trap, no trap, I've got it covered."
The monk was wide-eyed. "Surely even you cannot be so reckless! The son of Cora Wizard would be a fine prize for our rival branches."
Jonah was unruffled. "Won't be me out there on the firing line." A flash of the grin that had graced so many magazine covers. "I knew it would come in handy keeping the Cahill kid around."
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CHAPTER 14
After the first three hundred stairs, Dan was breathing hard. By five hundred, he was ready to cough up his lungs and leave them on the flank of Mount Song.
A few times, orange-robed monks and kung fu students puffed past, running up the endless steps. No wonder the Shaolin fighters were unbeatable. If they trained
here,
they could probably bench-press the temple, and maybe the whole mountain with it.
He lost count somewhere around seven hundred fifty, and the Bodhidharma statue was still nowhere to be seen. Perspiration dripped from every pore of his body.
I'm turning my precious wushu outfit into sweat rags!
Dan glanced at his watch --he'd been climbing for nearly an hour. Where was the Beard Buddha -- on the moon?
Another group of monks jogged past, this time on the way down. There was a distinct chill in the air now. Surely he was near the top.
The stairs twisted abruptly to the right, and there towered his childhood nightmare, twenty feet tall. An
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