The French Code

Cover

Copyright

Imprint Page

Dedication

Title Page

Chapter 1: A Mysterious Midnight Meeting

Chapter 2: An Urgent Call and a Convenient Cover Story

Chapter 3: A Stern Mission Brief

Chapter 4: Sleeping Powder and Another Bout of Lovesickness

Chapter 5: A Bad Tempered Poodle and a Mysterious Stranger

Chapter 6: A Meeting in the Louvre and a Suspicious Phone Call

Chapter 7: An Angry Outburst and a Whispered Confession

Chapter 8: An Ancient Amulet and a Grave Rendezvous

Chapter 9: Bibliomancy and a Meeting at the Cemetery

Chapter 10: A Graveyard Rescue and A Very Close Call

Chapter 11: Gatekeeper of the Underworld and an Almost Fatal Warning

Chapter 12: The Underground Museum and a Deathly Fall

Chapter 13: A Verminous Attack

Chapter 14: A Muddied Fall, a Stoush and a Secret in the Forest

Chapter 15: Scribbled Messages and a Kind of Rescue

Chapter 16: A Surprise Makeover and Hints of an Evil Plan

Chapter 17: Some Sneaky Spy Work and a Terrible Discovery

Chapter 18: Exploding Soap and a Rough Ride

Chapter 19: An Evil Spell and a Watery Threat

Chapter 20: Saying Goodbye

About the Author

Max Remy Series

Jasper Zammit Series

Hurried footsteps echoed down a sparsely lit corridor of the Louvre museum in Paris. A darkened figure stole a quick look over his shoulder and tripped, falling heavily to the floor. His cane snapped across the room, stopping out of his reach. He lay there, arms and legs splayed, his head aching from its clash against the cold marble floor. ‘Don't stop now,' he breathed. ‘You have come too far for that.'

With a groan of effort, he retrieved his cane and pulled himself to his feet. He scuffled forward, through the dim light of the exit signs. His monstrous and elongated shadow spilt over the walls with their ancient stone carvings from temples and tombs, over pedestals bearing the sculptured heads of pharaohs and the mummified hands of kings.

It was late. Just on midnight. The museum had long been closed.

The figure wheezed, his chest heaving, but he only slowed his pace when he stood before a lit office at the end of the corridor. He gathered his breath before entering.

A hunched-over man in a rumpled suit with an equally rumpled and tired smile looked up from behind a desk. ‘You're here. Thank you for coming,' he said.

‘I am always here for you, Antoine,' the figure whispered back. He was an older man, with skin the colour of wet cement, ruled with faint lines as if he'd been preserved in formaldehyde. Antoine drew a small leather satchel from the top drawer of his desk and laid it on the surface between them. The old man sat down heavily on a chair opposite. ‘Is that it?'

Antoine pushed a pair of wire-rimmed glasses along his nose. ‘I think you'll be very pleased.'

The old man rubbed his hands together, wet from sweat and anticipation. He untied the straps of the satchel and peeled the leather away, pausing. ‘It's beautiful.'

‘Just as you expected?'

‘More so.' The old man's breath quickened. ‘Are you sure that it's the right one? There were many forgeries made.'

‘I have checked for all the distinguishing marks and it matches perfectly. Including the setting for the final piece. Just as the book explained.'

In the corridor, two security guards silently moved towards the office door, their leather shoes cushioning their steps over the polished floor.

A nervous gasp caught in the old man's throat. ‘And you have the final piece?'

‘Yes. I found it, just as I said on the phone.' Antoine shifted nervously in his seat. ‘But there is a problem.'

The two guards waited on opposite sides of the door, listening, barely breathing.

Antoine's glasses slipped down his nose. ‘I can't give them to you.'

The old man winced, as if from a stabbing pain. ‘Can't give them to me?'

‘I've discovered that what we have been searching for is far more powerful than we could have imagined.'

The old man shifted forward on his seat. ‘You've tried it?'

‘Yes.' Antoine allowed himself a brief smile. ‘And for that reason I have to insist it stays within the museum's secured vault.'

An icy pall fell over the room.

‘But you can't mean that … not after all that we've …' His creased brow freckled with sweat. ‘But I need …' He slammed his fist into the desk. ‘You
owe
me this.'

Antoine realigned his glasses, his jaw set in firm resolve. ‘I'm sorry, I know how much this means to you, but I've made up my mind.'

The old man's hands shook, and he was seized
by a hacking cough that echoed into the corridor.

One guard nodded to the other and they made their move.

The lights in the office suddenly extinguished. Smothered cries for help were followed by desperate clambering and a series of thuds. The two guards emerged from the office dragging the unconscious bodies of Antoine and the old man after them. They made their way down the corridor, past the blank, unseeing eyes of ancient kings and pharaohs to a service elevator. They stepped inside, dumped the bodies and waited while the doors closed on their deep, satisfied smiles.

The numbers above the doors lit in turn as the elevator descended to the lower floors.

Outside, at one of the museum's service entrances, a waiting garbage truck received its unusual cargo. The two guards climbed into the cabin, cranked the gears into place and the truck ferried them into the darkened streets of Paris.

‘I wasn't spying. I swear. I'm just a kid. What would I be doing spying?' Agent Max Remy yelled at the locked prison door. Her tied hands squirmed in the rope behind her. It was itchy and thick and, even from there, smelled of cow manure. ‘And couldn't you find a less stinky rope?'

Trouble was, Max had been spying. And she'd been caught.

Max and her spy partner, Linden Franklin, were members of the elite intelligence agency, Spyforce. They were in Nigeria, in the city of Lagos, on the verge of uncovering an animal smuggling ring when soldiers spied Max pointing her camera at them and had them thrown in jail on charges of spying.

After being held for six hours in a hot and airless cell, circled by scuttling cockroaches and the occasional scorpion, the metal door opened with a whine. The four imprisoning soldiers entered and positioned themselves at attention against the wall, while the officer in charge followed behind and circled the two young spies with slow, ominous steps.

He wore dusty army greens, a dismissive smirk and large, mirror-lensed sunglasses. When Max stared at him, all she saw was her miniaturised self caught in their smudged reflection.

‘Listen, I think you're upset about the camera, but I didn't take any pictures of these guys. It has sand stuck in the focus ring from a sandstorm in the Sahara. So you see, I wasn't spying – I was checking for sand.'

There was a stifling silence. Max swallowed hard against the drying heat and flinched as another cockroach scampered over her boots.

The officer stood before them and began talking quietly in a language foreign to Max and Linden. His voice grew louder as he stabbed the air with his fingers only centimetres from their faces. Max jumped when he slammed a fist into his palm. He turned to the soldiers, shouting an order that he punctuated with a swipe of his finger across his throat.

‘I didn't understand the first bit,' Linden said. ‘But I know what that last bit means.'

The soldiers pulled Max and Linden up by their shirts and pushed them out of the room.

‘Where are you taking us?' Max shouted. ‘Let us go. We haven't done anything!'

‘Max, I'm not sure your screaming is working.'

‘You got a better idea?'

‘Not yet,' Linden answered.

‘Then screaming it is.'

They were shoved through a stone archway
into a large, walled courtyard with a murky green pond in the centre.

‘You might want to get your pool cleaned,' Max said before she felt the hard end of a gun in her back, pushing her forward.

‘There is no way I am going in there.'

The soldier pushed the weapon into her even harder. ‘Easy with that thing. You might hurt someone … like me.'

‘Um, Max?' Linden said.

‘I'm a little busy telling off Mr Gun-happy.'

‘We have a visitor.'

Max turned to see the rounded snout and spiked back of a crocodile emerge from the water.

‘Oh.' Max's chest seized with panic as the courtyard door slammed behind them, leaving them alone with their new oversized friend. The crocodile edged closer, his giant prehistoric feet hauling his hulking body towards, what Max now realised, was his lunch.

Was this the end of Max and Linden? Were their short lives to be ended in the jaws of an algae-riddled dinosaur? Would the last sound they'd ever hear be the hiss of a crocodile as he was about to

‘Aaaah!' Max's palm computer vibrated against her leg.

‘Yes, Max? Is something wrong?'

Max looked up from her story and stared at the unamused face of her teacher, Miss Yates.

‘No, Miss.'

The palm computer vibrated again. Max snuck her hand beneath her desk and slid the top of the device out of her pocket. It was Spyforce calling during the middle of a creative writing class. ‘I mean, yes. I need to go to the bathroom.'

‘You've only just come back from recess.'

Max leant forward and clutched her stomach. ‘Yes, but I think I'm going to be sick.' Her hands flew to her bulging cheeks.

‘Oh.' Miss Yates turned pale and her eyes widened with the impending threat of child vomit. She waved Max towards the door and sat heavily in her chair, fanning herself with an old copy of
Alice in Wonderland
.

Max ran to the toilets and pulled the palm computer from her pocket. ‘Hello?' she panted.

‘Max, how completely delightful to see you.' The beaming face of Steinberger, the Administration Manager of Spyforce, appeared on the screen.

Just as a toilet flushed.

‘Oh dear.' Steinberger blushed and looked away. ‘I hope I haven't interrupted anything important.'

‘No. Just give me a second,' Max whispered. She snuck into a cubicle and waited for a kid to leave the toilet. ‘Go ahead.'

‘We have another mission we think you and Linden will be perfect for. How soon can you get to London?'

‘I'm at school,' Max said. ‘I'm a kid, so this is what I do most days.'

‘Yes, yes, of course you are. I meant to say firstly that that's all been covered. We have arranged for you and Linden to be chosen as last-minute honorees in a group of specially selected students going to France on a short cultural exchange trip.'

‘France? What's the mission?'

‘I'm afraid I can't tell you much yet, but I've sent some documents to your computer for you to read.'

‘When will you need us?'

‘Tomorrow.'

‘Tomorrow?'

‘Yes, I'm sorry about the short notice, but we do need you here as a matter of some urgency. Can you make it?'

‘Absolutely, I can …' Max stopped. ‘Have you told my mother?'

‘Yes. I spoke to her by phone this morning undercover as Professor Steinhoffer, one of the administrators in charge of the exchange, and she was completely delighted.'

‘She was?'

‘Yes, apparently she went on an exchange to France as a young girl, which brought back many fond memories. I have given her all your flight details, and she will have you at the airport tomorrow afternoon. Linden is making the trip from Mindawarra with his dad and your Uncle Ben and Aunt Eleanor. So, does another mission sound okay to you?'

‘It sounds very okay.'

‘Excellent. So we will see you both very soon. It will be a joy as always to work with you once again, Max Remy. Goodbye.'

Max stared at her palm computer and waited for what she knew would happen next: a few moments later it vibrated to life again.

‘I know,' Max said to Linden's small face on her screen. ‘A mission to France. Coming?'

‘Wouldn't miss it. Do you know what it's about?'

‘No, Steinberger wouldn't say,' Max replied.
‘But from the urgency of the call, it must be something very big. It might even be our biggest mission yet.'

‘Better wear my best jumper then.'

‘You have a best jumper?' Linden wasn't known for his flair for fashion.

‘It only comes out for special occasions.'

Max smiled. ‘I guess I'll see you and your “special occasions” jumper tomorrow.'

‘Sure thing, boss.'

‘And don't call me boss.'

 

‘Mum, you have to stop crying.'

Max looked around the airport to see how many people were staring at her mother as she blubbered loudly into another tissue. ‘I can't help it. My little girl is going away to see the world.' Another blubber and sniff. ‘She's growing up so fast.'

There was a time when Max's mum was less sentimental. On occasion, Max missed those times. Like now.

‘Yeah, but it'd be a lot less embarrassing if you let me do the growing up without the crying in public.' Max tried to hide from the stares and stifled laughing of passing passengers.

‘Not so long ago you were my little baby. Next
you'll be leaving home and …' This thought was a cue for more crying.

Max gave her Uncle Ben a ‘save-me' look. He moved in and cradled Max's mother's shoulders. ‘There, there, Anna. She's coming back. The exchange is only for a week. She's not leaving you forever.'

‘Forever?' Max's mum looked horrified before turning to weep into Ben's chest. Now it was Ben's turn to throw a ‘save-me' look to Linden's dad, who took over the shoulder cradling.

‘It's all part of letting go,' he said.

‘Yes.' A coy smile dangled from Max's mum's lips. ‘I suppose you're right.'

Eleanor slipped her hand into Max's and turned her away from all the comforting. She took a thick leather belt from her bag and handed it to her niece. ‘And one Time and Space Machine,' she whispered.

Ben and Eleanor were also secret agents of Spyforce and were the inventors of the machine.

‘Thanks, Eleanor.' Max tied the belt around her waist, making sure it was completely concealed beneath her shirt.

‘Ah, and you must be our exchange students.' A widely grinning Steinberger stepped through
the crowd in his shiny shoes and even shinier cheerfulness. And next to him was the Spyforce chef, Irene. ‘I am Professor Steinhoffer and this is Professor Irena.'

Irene was a plump woman who usually dressed in kaleidoscopic colours like a human merry-go-round. But on this occasion she wore a grey suit with her hair pulled back in a very un-Irene-like bun.

‘We are officers with The Centre for International Cultural Exchange.' Steinberger and Irene held out their cards to the adults. ‘Promoting a world of friendly international relations and mutual harmoniousness which, I think you'll agree, the world needs now more than ever.'

‘That and muffins.' Irene carefully pulled a container from her bag. ‘Anyone care for one? I baked them myself.'

Linden went into a mini-meltdown. His shoulders drooped and his mouth opened in a trance-like joy. He and Irene bonded over their fine appreciation of food, which to Max was more like some kind of brain-zapping madness.

Food could make Linden forget anything, including the fact that they weren't supposed to let on that they knew Irene and Steinberger.

As his feet almost propelled him into Irene's
arms, Max stepped between them. She grabbed two muffins and handed one to Linden with a warning look. ‘Thanks,
Professor Irena
.'

Linden took a long, slow whiff of the muffin before taking a bite. His eyes drifted closed and his body began to sway. ‘White chocolate chips, macadamia nuts, dark Belgian chocolate and,' Linden grinned, ‘New Zealand manuka honey.'

‘Perfectly right.' Irene only just held herself back from giving him a bear-sized hug and instead shook his hand. ‘Always a pleasure to meet a food connoisseur.'

‘Nice to meet you, Steinber … I mean, Professor Steinhoffer.' After Ben introduced the adults, he said, ‘And, of course, this is Max and Linden.'

‘I recognise you from your gorgeous photo.' Irene winked at Linden. ‘You're even better looking in real life.'

‘He certainly takes after his father.' Everyone turned to Max's mum, who held her tissue to her mouth as her cheeks glowed bright red. ‘I mean they look alike … the hair … the eyes …' She searched for someone to take the focus off her. ‘Don't you think?'

Now it was Max's mum's turn to throw a ‘save-me' smile at her daughter.

‘Don't tell him he's good-looking,' Max said to Irene. ‘His head won't fit through the door of the plane.'

A woman's voice floated above them, announcing the boarding of their flight.

‘Have fun over there.' Linden's dad pulled his son in for a hug.

‘Please take care of my little girl.' Max's mum had begun crying again.

Irene offered her a fresh tissue. ‘They will be treated as if they were our very own.'

‘Take care, you two.' Ben started to tear-up as well.

‘We will.' Max had forgotten how soppy goodbyes in her family could get. ‘Like you said, we're not going away forever.'

‘Forever …' Her mother let out a fresh wail, and Ben followed with a loud sniff.

‘Speaking of going away,' Steinberger looked at his watch, ‘there's the boarding call again. Your French adventure awaits.'

There was a bustle of last-minute hugs and kisses and double hugs, until Steinberger finally managed to coax his young spies away. They stood
at the exit leading to the international flight area, waved to Ben, who was being comforted by Eleanor, and Linden's dad, who was hugging Max's weeping mother.

‘Okay, that's enough crying for one day.' Max wiped great smudges of lipstick from her cheeks and gave her family a final wave. She turned and headed with the others through the sliding glass doors. Inside, lines of passengers were putting bags, coats and trays of wallets and coins through the X-ray machines.