Double Vision (20 page)

I glanced around, to see if any of the agents were there to hear us. “I need your help with something.” I told Henry about the phone call, how the guy had kidnapped my grandpa, and how I needed to give Drake the evil
Mona Lisa
.

“I think I can help you.” Henry ripped the tape off one of the boxes and dug inside. “Do you remember that device I was working on?”

“The evil detector, something about heat sensing or whatever?”

“I call it the Double Detector.” Henry pulled what looked like a tablet computer from the box. “It looks ordinary, right?” He turned the Double Detector on, and there was a picture of the latest kid-wizard novel. “Looks like I'm reading the new bestseller, right? But not if I punch this blue button four times, like this.”

We both waited, until the book cover changed to a blue screen.

“Now what?”

Henry bit his lip. “Well, now we need a Dangerous Double. When you get this detector near the evil
Mona Lisa
, it will register the painting's temperature to be twenty point two degrees Celsius. You'll see it as a red rectangle on your screen.”

“Can you show me?”

“Not without the painting. And if we had that, we wouldn't be talking.” Henry turned the Double Detector off. “I tested it on a cup of water at exactly twenty point two Celsius—but we don't have time to heat water now. Get within twenty feet of the evil
Mona Lisa
and it'll work.”

“Thanks.” I tucked the Double Detector into my backpack.

“You want me to come?” Henry pushed his glasses up, but I knew he was just more comfortable in a lab.

“I'll be fine.” I turned and punched the elevator call button. The doors opened right away, like it knew I had no time to waste. I got on, taking a deep breath.

“Hey, Linc,” Henry called from his stack of boxes, just as the doors began to close. “Don't forget: you can always use the Henry!”

AS I RODE THE ELEVATOR DOWN FROM
the Penthouse, I tried to come up with a plan to find the evil
Mona Lisa
. I mean, the Double Detector was useful only if I was within twenty feet of the painting. Paris is a big city, right? And this new clue wasn't exactly easy to interpret.

Home sweet home
. Could mean lots of things. I really needed Françoise's help. So I took off on my skateboard across Paris, rushing to make it to the Mégère bakery.

Françoise's grandma was outside on the sidewalk, sweeping up bits of glass. The place looked even worse in daylight, with all the windows broken by Drake, a forgotten bread basket strewn in the street. I picked it up and waved to Françoise's grandma. She gave me a cranky look as I grabbed my skateboard and went inside.

Françoise was cleaning up the mess in the store. There was an open trash bag full of crushed pastries, mashed chocolates, and pieces of bread—Mégère creations that Drake and his guys had trampled over.

“Runaway basket,” I said, stepping over broken glass to place it on the counter.

“Hey,” Françoise said with a little smile. “I see you managed to get out of your parachute.”

“The police showed up. They were super helpful.” I took off my backpack, attached my skateboard to it with Henry's nifty Velcro straps, and brushed some glass aside to set it in a corner. “I really have to find the evil
Mona Lisa
,” I blurted out. I told Françoise about the phone call, Grandpa being kidnapped, everything. “We have to solve this last clue, for both our families.”

“What happens after we find the evil
Mona Lisa
?”

“You get your dad back, I get Grandpa.” But then I realized why she asked me her question. “And Drake sells the evil
Mona Lisa
to this terrorist group.”

Françoise nodded in silence.

“We'll just have to improvise. Chase Drake and the painting down or something.”

“Sure, that's a great plan.”

“What was in the box your father gave you on the airplane?” I asked, hoping to change the subject.

She reached inside her jacket and pulled out the rectangular wooden box. Françoise opened it, and carefully picked up these wire-rimmed glasses. “They were stored with the secret da Vinci collection.”

“What makes these so special?”

“You use them so you can look at the painting and not get hypnotized—they're just a really strong prescription that makes it hard to see. The story was that da Vinci's assistant Salai stole the glasses from a neighbor. He was a bit of a thief, I guess.” Françoise closed the box and tucked it back inside her jacket. “We have to be close to the painting for Papa to give me these.”

“I still don't get where that cipher on the menu was trying to get us to go.”

“Could your decoding have been wrong?” Françoise put a couple of baskets back on the shelf.

“
Home sweet home
—there's nothing else it could be.” I pictured the menu inside my head. “The cipher circled the dessert menu, around and around.”

“Around and around,” Françoise mumbled, looking at the window display.

We looked at each other, and both yelled the answer at the same time, “The pie!” We rushed over to the display window, where the fake pie was still spinning on the turntable.

“So what's the story on this thing?” I asked. It looked just like a real apple pie. But when you stepped closer, you could see it was kind of shiny and waxy. Definitely a fake.

“Mama gave it to Papa as a birthday present. She had a local artist make it,” Françoise said. “It was one of the last things she did before she died. My parents met here in the bakery when Mama came in for an apple pie.” She lifted the pie, then showed the bottom to me with a triumphant smile. “Our next code!”

Here's what we saw:

BCOVUT

AKFAL

I studied the letters. “Yeah, this makes zero sense.”

Françoise pulled out
Codes and Ciphers
. “It could be a lot of different things.” She flipped the pages, shook her head a few times. “Wait—write the words on a piece of paper, one above the other, with more space between the letters.

“Now connect the letters, zigzagging from the top to the bottom, and back.” She showed me the codebook. “It's a rail fence cipher, see?”

I grabbed a notebook from the counter and did like she said. We found our next answer.

BCOVUT

AKFAL

“IT SAYS, ‘BACK OF VAULT.' BUT ISN'T IT
empty?” I looked at Françoise.

“Let's find out.” She put the pie back onto its carousel. Outside, Françoise's grandma was leaning on her broom, talking to another old lady.

We hurried downstairs, Françoise fumbling with her keys, both of us dying to know what was next. Could the evil
Mona Lisa
still be at the bakery?

A waft of cold air welcomed us to the Vault. We slowed, looking at the empty racks and the big wooden desk and the empty wooden bookcases behind it.

The desk looked the same, but I glanced underneath it, to see if maybe there was a piece of paper taped to the bottom. Or maybe there was a secret drawer, like you see in the movies. Then I started pushing the bookshelves to see if they'd move. “Help me,” I said to Françoise.

The empty bookcases were surprisingly easy to slide away. But behind them there was no wall, just a big, black hole.

“It's a tunnel,” I said.

“He did it! I can't believe it!” Françoise pushed ahead of me, crawling into the darkness.

I didn't share her excitement. I'm really not into darkness and closed-in spaces, and my time in that rental car trunk didn't help. “You have a flashlight?” I called from the tunnel opening. It was wide enough for a person, and definitely easy to crawl through, but it was pitch-dark.

Then I saw a light, coming from ten feet or so ahead.

“Come on!” Françoise called.

“All right.” The dirt was cold and wet, so I crawled fast, until the tunnel widened.

Into a cave that smelled like sulfur. Françoise was moving around in a hurry, lighting candles with matches that I guessed her father left behind. “Look!” she pointed to my left. The cave was still really dark and, from what I could tell, about the size of our house. It was hard to see in the flickering candlelight, but not so hard that I couldn't make out old crates, big and small, stacked along the wall. “So this is where your dad put the secret da Vinci collection? He dug a cave?”

“No, he just dug the tunnel to the Vault.” Françoise lit another candle, smiling. “He used to talk about it: digging to connect the Vault to the cave and the tunnel system. But then he stopped, and I thought he dropped the idea.”

“Apparently he bought a bigger shovel.” I moved around the da Vinci artifacts. It just looked like a heap of old crates that might be in someone's garage. “Is the Dangerous Double here?” I whispered.

“I don't see the box.” Françoise joined me near the collection, shaking her head. “And Papa wouldn't have taken it out of the box—it would be too dangerous.”

“So where is the evil
Mona Lisa
?” I was getting frustrated now—my grandpa's life was on the line, and this Mégère dude was having us play games to get the painting.

“Shhhh!” Françoise punched my arm and pointed to another very narrow tunnel on the other side. “It's illegal to come down here. The police arrest cataphiles on sight.”

“Great. The police here in Paris love me already. What are cataphiles?”

“Those who explore the catacombs,” she said with pride.

“Couldn't some cataphile take this da Vinci collection?”

“It doesn't look like much, and most people don't know where the tunnels are.” She continued lighting candles so we could see better.

“There are tunnels under all Paris? So that's how you kept disappearing.”

Françoise nodded. “The better part of the city is over the tunnels.”

“Who dug these, anyway?”

“These used to be quarries. It's where they got the stone to build Roman houses, and later, Nôtre Dame. The last time I came here was with my mother, before she died,” Françoise said, her voice trailing off. “Papa must've left a clue down here.”

Once all the candles were lit, I could see a giant mural on the walls. It looked like one of those creative interpretations of a map—like the kind they give you at Disneyland. There was the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, Nôtre Dame and Sacré Coeur, and some other buildings I didn't recognize. And the Mégère bakery, under a bright pink sky and a very big yellow sun. There was a dragon underneath the city with eyes like smoldering fire.

“My mother made this mural.” Françoise ran her hands along the brightly colored scene. “She let me paint the sun.” She stepped close to the wall of the cave, and pointed to a small drawing of a cat inside a big triangle of a building. “That's the pyramid part of the Louvre—my mother painted it. But this cat is not her work. The drawing is too simple.”

She was right. Whoever did it wasn't much of an artist, let me tell you. Here's what it looked like:

“It could be a message from your dad.” It looked like whoever painted the picture was four years old or in a hurry. “What is
NW
?”

Françoise pulled out her
Codes and Ciphers
book. It didn't take her long to find the answer. “The picture of the cat could be a hobo sign.”

“A what?”

“A hobo sign. Homeless people who used the railroads sent messages to each other with these. The signs would tell other hoboes if it was a good place to be, if there were cops around—that sort of thing.”

“So what—there's a cat in the Louvre?”