Double Vision (12 page)

“The tunnel?”

The cop pointed farther around the big circular sidewalk we stood on. “Over there. Tourists take the tunnel underground to get to the arc.”

An underground tunnel—that made sense. Traffic wasn't exactly slow over here, and there were no crosswalks or lights. I should have paid attention a little more. “Okay.” I clutched my board and started to walk.

“Stop!” The cop pulled my backpack again. “You are still getting a ticket.”

“A ticket? No, you can't!” That would mean I'd get into trouble with Agent Stark. And right now, staying off her radar was a top priority. “No, wait. I didn't know I was supposed to use the tunnel.”

The policeman pulled a notepad from his jacket and smiled. “Ignorance is bliss, isn't that what you say?”

“No.” I was about to try using my charm to stop the policeman from writing a ticket, when I saw Benjamin Green. He stood under the arc, right next to Françoise. She said something to him, looking serious. Why was she even talking to him? I thought she hated the guy and that she was ready to kill him. Then the penny dropped.

She thought he was me
.

“No, no. Françoise!” I called but there was no way she could hear over the traffic. What was Green doing and what was he saying to her? What if she gave him the next clue—
our
next clue?

The cop was writing on his pad, looking determined. “Your name?”

I clutched my board and looked across the giant traffic circle at Françoise and Benjamin Green, talking like they were friends. Was she smiling? This was bad, really bad. I wished Françoise had her deadly stick.

“Your name,” the cop ordered, raising his voice. “NOW!”

If I was going to get a ticket, I might as well go and skateboard across the street and get my money's worth. Stop Benjamin Green from taking my place.

“Hey!”

I dropped my board onto the pavement and hopped on.

I heard the horns blaring, the cop yelling, the cold Paris wind buzzing against my eardrums.

And I rushed across to the arc, ready to charge Benjamin Green.

AS COOL AS IT WAS TO ZIP ACROSS THE
street to the Arc de Triomphe while a cop was yelling at me, I don't recommend it as a strategy when you're visiting Paris. As it turns out, my cranky policeman had lots of friends, and by the time I reached the Arc de Triomphe plaza, three of them were ready to take me down.

“No, no,” I said, raising one hand, holding my skateboard in the other. “I was just trying to get to a friend, see?” But Françoise and Ben were both gone.

The cops were actually really nice, even if they did arrest me on the spot and make me call Agent Stark. The policemen joked around about me trying to get to a girl, and I didn't want to argue, since it seemed to make them happy.

Agent Stark showed up with Agent Fullerton. Fullerton immediately worked on befriending the cops, giving me a wink, telling me everything would be okay. Stark didn't even try to hide her annoyance with me. She filled out some papers and made an effort to smile at the cops, which she obviously wasn't very good at. After about twenty minutes, they went back to their posts, and I was left with Agent Stark. Fullerton joined us after walking around the monument for reasons I didn't get.

“You said you were on your way to the hotel,” Agent Stark said.

“I took the scenic route.”

“Of course. You haven't even been in Paris for a day, and you got arrested already.” She folded the report in half. “That's a record even for you, isn't it?”

“Hey, I'm not some kind of criminal.”

“Give the kid a break, Stark,” Fullerton mumbled.

I glanced around, over Agent Stark's shoulder, and around the arc. But still no Françoise or Benjamin Green. “He was here, you know, and again earlier at the bakery.”

“Who?” Agent Fullerton asked.

“Benjamin Green, who else?”

Agent Stark started looking around, too. “Right here?”

“This guy has joined the other side, and he's not wasting time. He's after the evil
Mona Lisa
, and—”

“Keep your voice down,” Agent Fullerton hissed, but the rest of the tourists at the Arc de Triomphe were happily ignoring us. “Are you sure it was him?”

“Yes.”

“You need to go home,” Agent Stark said. “This is too dangerous.”

“But I'm not done!” I told the agents about the clue we found in the cookbook. “What if we can find the missing painting? Would that rescue the mission and get my family out of lawsuit trouble?”

Agent Fullerton squinted. “Yes, it would.” Tourists kept passing by, oblivious to what a dangerous weapon was out there, ready to hypnotize them. “I'll just have to run this by the big man.”

“Your boss.” I assumed he was talking about the guy in the Hawaiian shirt up in the Penthouse.

“You're lucky that I couldn't get us a plane back to the States until tomorrow,” Stark added.

“So what's the difference if I roam around Paris a little?” I gave them both my best smile. “I promise I'll behave.”

“Call me or Agent Fullerton every few hours,” Stark said. “And if you see Drake, or Benjamin Green, call me immediately.”

“Of course.” I didn't tell her that Benjamin Green had a way of finding me.

Fullerton nodded toward the other end of the arc. “I think that's Françoise over there. Maybe you can ask her what's going on.”

I grabbed my board.

“No more run-ins with the police, please!” Agent Stark called behind me.

“Yeah, yeah,” I mumbled. I couldn't help it that the French had no love for skateboarding, right? I walked up to Françoise, who looked nervous.

“Did you see him?” She leaned closer and scanned the crowd.

“Benjamin Green? Yeah, I did. So you knew it was him and not me?” I scanned the crowd, too, but I was pretty sure my noisy encounter with the French police had scared Benjamin Green away for now.

“Of course I knew,” Françoise snapped. “What am I, stupid? But I played along and made him think that I had no idea where the next clue is.”

“So you found the next code?”

“Heck no, but I didn't want him to know that.”

“So you told him you had no clue, so he wouldn't know you had no clue?” This was confusing and sort of funny, too.

Françoise laughed. I was pretty sure I hadn't seen her laugh out loud until then, so I laughed along. With all this chasing across Paris and dealing with the police, it felt good.

“Now what?” I asked her once we stopped laughing. “I think we sent Benjamin Green on his way, so what do we do next?”

“I don't know.” Françoise stared up at the Arc de Triomphe while I strapped my skateboard to my backpack. “According to the clue, there should be something here for us to find.”

I looked up, too, and it made me dizzy. “This place is huge.” I studied the arc, the carved detail up high. Guys on horses, looking angry, ready to charge with their swords pulled. On the walls below it, names were carved into the stone. Hundreds of dead people—it was actually pretty creepy when you thought about it. “You think your father hid a code here somewhere?”

“I don't know how he would have been able to hide anything here. This monument is more than a hundred years old. It's not like he could carve his code into the stone or write it on it, even.” She motioned around at the policemen guarding the arc and the traffic circle around it. “There's always someone watching.”

“No kidding.” I told her about my ticket for skateboarding, and she laughed. “I guess you're supposed to take the tunnel to get here?” I asked.

“We'll make sure we take it on our way out. But first, we have to find out why my father sent me here. Maybe there's a clue on top of the arc.” She bought us both a ticket, and we made our way to these really tight circular stairs. “You have to climb two hundred and eighty-four steps to get to the top.”

I thought of calling it quits around step 103, but then Françoise had already bought the tickets, so that would be rude. But 284 steps? “Why no elevator?”

“Oh, there's an elevator, too. But maybe the clue is on the walls.”

It wasn't. By the time we made it to the top, I thought I was going to die. I was about to complain when I saw the view: all of Paris, wherever you looked. The Eiffel Tower, Nôtre Dame—all of it. From up here, you could see how all the major roads in Paris connected right where we stood. You've been hanging around me long enough to know that I'm never really speechless, but right there at the top of the Arc de Triomphe, I was.

“They call this point the Étoile—the star,” Françoise said next to me. “Napoleon built the arc to celebrate military victories. My father used to take me here all the time.”

“Maybe you can see a clue from up here?” I was reaching, but Françoise looked so desperate.

“Can you imagine where?” she asked.

We circled the deck—Françoise even made people move so she could look for clues on the stone floor under their feet. That got her a few puzzled looks from tourists and a dark one from the guard.

“There's nothing,” Françoise concluded, her shoulders slumped. “I don't understand. Why would Papa send me here?”

“Maybe there's something we missed downstairs,” I said, trying to hide that I was just as discouraged as she was. We made our way down by elevator instead of the stairs, which was a good thing. This chase around Paris was seriously draining my energy.

We looped the monument at least a half dozen more times. My feet hurt, and I was getting hungry, but I wanted to find something,
anything
to get us to the evil
Mona Lisa
.

“There's nothing here,” Françoise said after another walk around the Arc de Triomphe. “Let's just go home.”

“Maybe we can come back,” I said, trying to keep some hope alive for her.

“Maybe. This way out,” Françoise said. We walked down these wide stairs into a tunnel that smelled like dirt and faintly of pee.

“So now what?” I asked. My voice echoed off the walls and the low ceiling. The lights flickered.

Françoise sighed and started walking faster. “Now we go home.”

I hurried to catch up with her, passing other tourists and some guy in overalls, holding a brush. There was graffiti on the walls that he was ready to clean up. And I stopped, because I saw something I recognized. Something I'd seen in
Codes and Ciphers
, the pocket book from the Mégère Vault.

Dots and lines.

“Françoise!” I called, probably a little louder than I should have. Her name echoed off the walls. Tourists looked my way, slightly irritated.

Françoise rushed back, looking irritated like the tourists, but she dropped that attitude once she saw the wall.

“Did you bring your codebook?”

She handed it to me, all while staring at the concrete. “You think this is from Papa …?”

I flipped through the book. “Right, here!” I showed her the page. “It's Morse code.”

Françoise walked along the walls, looking at the black dots and lines that looked like some kind of computer code. She almost bumped into the guy in the overalls who was washing the walls. He was muttering something in French, frowning.

“Let's hurry up and write down what's here.”

Françoise pulled out the piece of paper she'd ripped from the delivery book, the paper that had our first clue on it. She turned it over and had me scribble down the code:

_ _

_ _ _

_ .

_

_ _

. _

. _ .

_

. _ .

.

Françoise took the paper, and we both feverishly studied the book's page on Morse code. We were so focused on deciphering the message, I didn't see him come up behind her until it was too late.

This kid in a hooded sweatshirt. For a second I thought it was Benjamin Green, but he was too husky. I swore I recognized this guy. I'd seen him before, but I couldn't remember where or when.

Not that it mattered, because he pushed Françoise. Hard.

Before we could do anything, he snatched the piece of paper. And ran.

YOU KNOW ON TV, WHEN THE COP TELLS
the bad guy to freeze? I never get why they do that—I mean, the bad dude is obviously going to make a run for it. But as the hooded kid took off in that tunnel, that's exactly what I did.

“Stop!” I yelled, going after the guy. He was almost out of the tunnel by the time I caught up and grabbed his arm.