Jake Ransom and the Skull King's Shadow (4 page)

He couldn’t keep the excitement from his voice.

“I don’t like this,” Uncle Edward said, deepening the
lines across his forehead. “Such short notice. Only two tickets. For you and your sister.”

“Kady and I are old enough to travel by ourselves. And aren’t you always telling me I should see the British Museum one day?”

Uncle Edward’s frown only grew larger. “Before we even consider it, I must make some calls. There are a thousand details to attend. We must address…”

Jake grew deaf to his uncle’s words. Instead his eyes fixed on one of the pictures on the unfolded brochure. He reached and slipped it from his uncle’s fingers. In the center of the page was a photograph of a gold snake decorated with jade and rubies. It was bunched up into a figure-eight, but at each end was sculpted a head, one with its jaws open, bearing fangs, and a second that was closed with a small forked tongue protruding.

Jake stared at the image. He felt the room tilt under his feet, and his breath grew shallow and fast.

He recognized the two-headed snake.

He had seen a drawing of it in his mother’s sketchbook, even read a detailed description of it in his father’s field notebook. Both books—two halves of their joint diary—had arrived with the broken gold coin. All were contained in the parcel addressed in his father’s handwriting. But the package had come with no note, no further explanation.

Jake finally lifted the brochure and pointed. “This is one of the artifacts from Mom and Dad’s dig.” He glanced through the brochure. Other items also looked familiar, but he wanted to compare them to the sketches in his mother’s sketchbook.

Uncle Edward moved closer. “I thought the artifacts were all locked up in some vault in Mexico City.”

Jake nodded. Shortly after the bandits had attacked his parents’ camp, the Mexican military had flown in and locked down the site. It was unknown how many items were stolen or what became of the bodies of Jake’s mother and father. Another colleague had also gone missing. Dr. Henry Bethel.

But the military did recover most of the Mayan artifacts. Due to their value as national treasures, they had never left Mexico.

Until now.

The London museum had them on loan for this exhibit.

“Mayan Treasures of the New World.”

“No wonder they invited you,” his uncle said at his side as he read over Jake’s shoulder. “The son and daughter of the team who discovered the artifacts.”

Jake could not take his eyes off the brochure. A finger traced the curves of the two-headed snake. Surely his parents had also touched it, unearthed it with their hands.

“I have to go,” Jake said with a fierce determination in his voice.

Uncle Edward placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

Who knew when he’d get another chance before the relics were all locked up again? Jake felt tears begin to well. To be that much closer to his parents.

The crunch and squeal of tires sounded from the front of the house. Laughter and shouted good-byes echoed to them. A moment later, the door swung open and Kady swept inside. She turned and waved to her departing ride, using her whole arm.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Randy!”

She came in and discovered Jake and Uncle Edward staring at her. Seeing the expressions on their faces, a single line of worry etched her perfect forehead.

“What?” she asked.

“Well, I’m not going,” Kady declared.

Jake watched her tick off her reasons on her fingers.

“I have Jeffrey’s pool party on Sunday. Then there’s cheer practice on Monday…followed by another
party. And that doesn’t even count the
two
parties on Tuesday.”

She finished with a slight stamp of her heel. “And I’m certainly not giving up all that just to babysit Jake at some boring museum.”

Jake felt his face growing hotter. She had hardly taken a breath to listen to them. His heart pounded. He knew that if Kady didn’t go
he
wouldn’t be going. Uncle Edward would not let him travel alone.

“Kady! It’s Mom and Dad’s artifacts!”

She swallowed. Her eyes darted to the brochure and away again. Kady was far better at drawing and art than Jake. She had studied their mother’s sketchbook at length. Or at least she had when the books first came in the mail. For the past two years, she hadn’t bothered to look at them again.

But Jake had noticed the slight tremble to Kady’s hands when she’d first looked at the brochure. She also had recognized the double-headed snake.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I still have too much to do.”

Jake turned to Uncle Edward with a pleading expression.

His uncle only shrugged. He plainly still questioned whether they should go. Especially without Kady’s cooperation.

“Are these
first
-class tickets?” Kady suddenly asked. She shifted the papers in her hands. “And a penthouse reserved at the Savoy?”

Sensing a chink in her armor, Jake changed his approach. In all his excitement, he’d forgotten with whom he was dealing here.

“It’s…I’m sure, a big deal,” Jake said cautiously. He waved to the tickets. “Look at the expense. And they even timed it to the solar eclipse. I guess it’s all just a stupid publicity stunt. Still…”

He noted how her shoulders twitched at the word
publicity
.

“I’m sure there will be cameras,” he pressed. “News crews, television stations, possibly celebrities.”

Her eyes grew brighter. She took another look down at the invitation.

As Kady took the bait, Jake set the hook. “Besides,” he said, “think of all the shopping…all the newest European fashions that haven’t reached the North Hampshire Mall. You’ll be the first to wear them.”

Kady glanced down to her shoes. “Wellllll, maybe a short trip. It might not be
that
bad.”

Jake glanced at Uncle Edward.

The man shook his head. Uncle Edward knew when he was defeated. He might succeed in stopping Jake, but he’d never be able to come between Kady and a camera.

“Then I guess I’ll have to check into the arrangements,” he said.

Kady nodded, and Jake sighed with relief.

There remained only one last holdout.

Watson still sat near their father’s desk with his hackles raised. The basset hound’s eyes remained fixed on the discarded yellow envelope. From the old dog’s throat a low growl still flowed.

Jake had never been in a limousine before. He never imagined the sheer size inside. It felt like he was in the belly of a black jetliner, flying low over the ground.

The limousine whipped through the narrow avenues and confusing roundabouts of London. Car horns blared and a few pedestrians shook fists at the massive vehicle. They were running late.

Jake pressed his cheek against the darkly tinted window. He tried to get a peek at the sky.

“Don’t worry,” Kady said next to him. With her iPod’s earbuds in place, she shouted a bit to be heard. “You won’t miss the eclipse.”

Kady returned her attention to the tiny compact mirror in her hand. She was checking her face again after an entire morning in their suite’s bathroom, performing unfathomable experiments with lip gloss, moisturizers, hair gels, eye shadow, lash curler, and a blow dryer—and
even something that left glittering dust on the bathroom’s marble counter. Still, like any good scientist, Kady was never done tinkering with her work.

Jake ignored her and searched the blue sky. The sun shone like a yellow bruise through the tinted window. The moon waited, ready to begin its inevitable sweep across the sun’s face, turning day into night.

Jake’s left knee jumped up and down with excitement.

Also a little worry.

There was another force just as unstoppable as his sister.

Near the horizon, black clouds stacked high into the sky. Flashes of lightning sparked deep within the heart of an approaching thunderstorm. It was a race against time. If the storm blotted out the view of the eclipse, Jake would be crushed.

The limousine bumped around an especially sharp turn. Tires squealed. Jake was thrown away from the window. Ice clinked in a crystal glass. A huge hand caught Jake and righted him in his seat.

A rumbling voice scolded with a clipped English accent. “Young sir, if you’d like to see the sky, perhaps I can assist you before you break your neck.”

Jake had almost forgotten Morgan Drummond shared their limousine, which was surprising considering the man’s size. His body filled the entire front half of the limousine’s passenger cabin. He was all muscle with craggy features. He wore a double-breasted black pinstripe suit, a
veritable
tent
of a suit, but still his biceps strained the fabric with every motion. He looked more like a drill sergeant than the head of security for Bledsworth Sundries and Industries, Inc., the sole sponsor for the Mayan exhibit.

Drummond tilted toward Jake. He reached a thick finger to a row of buttons near Jake’s elbow and pressed one. The limousine’s moonroof glided open. Through the glass, the sky appeared.

As the limousine barreled past a double-decker bus, the passengers on the upper deck glanced down over the top rail and into the limousine below. Jake found himself staring up at the faces like a goldfish in a fishbowl. Hands pointed. Jake waved back, but there was no response.

“Privacy glass,” Morgan Drummond explained. “They can’t see you.”

The large man settled back into the shadows of his seat. For someone so mountainous, he had a strange ability to fade into the background. Jake did note a tiny flash out of the darkness as Drummond leaned back. It came from the man’s tie tack. It was a chunk of polished gunmetal steel fashioned into the symbol for Bledsworth Sundries and Industries Inc.

A griffin.

The mythological monster had the head, wings, and claws of an eagle with the body, hind legs, and tail of a lion. With a black jewel for an eye, it was shown reared up as if ready to tear into some cowering prey. Some said
it also represented the corporation’s business practices: attacking the weak and devouring them whole.

Jake had read up on the corporation during the flight from Connecticut to London. No one could quite say where or when the company had first started. It was hinted that its “sundries and industries” stretched back to medieval times. There were rumors that the Bledsworth family made their first fortune by selling false potions to protect against the Black Plague. They were also the ones who collected the dead bodies of the victims, piling them up on carts and selling off body parts for medical research. Truth or not, the Bledsworths came out of the Dark Ages with more gold than the king of England. Now considered fairly reputable, they owned an entire block in the financial center of Blackfriars.

Jake sat straighter and cleared his throat. He asked the question that had been nagging him since he landed in London. “Mr. Drummond, sir, why is your company sponsoring the museum exhibit?”

A heavy grumble answered him. It sounded little
pleased with his question. But even Kady lowered her compact mirror and removed one of her iPod’s earbuds to hear his answer.

Morgan Drummond sighed. “It’s very expensive to put on this show. The extra guards, the electronic security…it cost the corporation a fortune just to convince the Mexican government to allow these national treasures to be taken out of the country.”

From the tone of his voice, the man was not happy that his company was spending so much money on something so frivolous.

“Then why is the corporation doing it?” Jake asked.

Drummond leaned closer. “Mr. Bledsworth insisted. And no one goes against Mr. Bledsworth.”

Jake frowned. He had read all about the reclusive head of the corporation: Sigismund Oliphant Bledsworth IX.

In his nineties, the man represented the ninth generation to carry the Bledsworth family name—but unmarried with no children, he would be the last. Only a few photographs existed of Sigismund Oliphant Bledsworth IX. Jake could find only one on the computer, taken when Bledsworth was a much younger man: a stick of a man in a British military uniform. Like his medieval ancestors, his past was clouded with rumors of misdeeds—stories of stealing art treasures from France and Germany during the confusion of war. He had also been stationed in Egypt.

But after World War II, all sightings of the head of Bledsworth Sundries and Industries dried up. He had become more ghost than man.

Jake’s brows pinched. “But what’s Mr. Bledsworth’s interest in putting on this show?”

“You truly don’t know?” Morgan Drummond asked.

Jake shrugged, turned to his sister, then back to the large man. “No.”

“Mr. Bledsworth felt obligated. A debt to be paid.”

“A debt?”

“To your parents.”

The air suddenly grew heavier in the limousine. Jake found it harder to breathe.

Drummond leaned back in his seat and dissolved back into the shadows. “Who do you think financed your parents’ Mayan dig? Who do you think sent them in the first place?”

Jake frowned.
Mr. Bledsworth?
Could it be true? Had the mysterious head of Bledsworth Sundries and Industries paid to have his mother and father explore the Mayan peak known as the Mountain of Bones?

Why?

The chauffeur called from the front as the limousine slowed.

“We’ve reached the museum, sir.”

Flashes and camera lights blinded as Jake and Kady exited the dark interior of the stretch limo. Jake took a step back
in shock, but he had nowhere to retreat. Behind him, Morgan Drummond unfolded his large bulk and rose up like a wall.

“Just keep moving,” he muttered under his breath.

Drummond herded them forward through a crush of reporters on the sidewalk in front of the museum. The news crews and onlookers were held back behind two black velvet ropes that framed a red carpet. Ahead, the British Museum towered behind marble pillars, looking like a massive bank vault. A giant banner hung across the pillars and boldly announced the exhibit.

Mayan Treasures of the New World

Jake noticed many people wore special goggles to view the coming eclipse.

He looked up to the sky. Of course, he should’ve known better. The moon was already beginning to cross the sun’s face. The blinding corona stung his eyes. He glanced away before it could damage his sight. To the south, a spate of lightning flashed, followed by a rumble of thunder. The storm was still blowing up along the Thames River and threatened to wipe out the rare sight.

“Aren’t they darlings?” a matronly woman called out.

“Spittin’ images of their mum and da.”

“And look at those cute outfits.”

“Regular little explorers, they are,” another chuckled.

Jake became conscious of his clothes. Courtesy of the
Bledsworth corporation, the pair had been tailor-fitted at an expensive shop on Savile Row, famous for its custom clothiers. Jake wore safari pants and a long-sleeved shirt, both khaki in color, along with a vest (with pockets everywhere, some zippered, some buttoned, some pockets inside other pockets). He also had a pair of hiking boots made of waterproof GORE-TEX and a matching backpack. They’d wanted him to wear a safari hat, too, but he refused.

Kady loved the hat. It sat jauntily on her head. More cameras flashed. She tilted on a hip and coyly twined a finger in one of her hat’s ties.

Jake rolled his eyes and continued toward the museum.

The shouts and calls became a wordless blur. He just wanted to get inside, away from all the commotion. Bledsworth Sundries and Industries, along with the museum, had organized a media blitz: newspapers, television, even posters on the sides of buses and subways. All to promote the exhibit. The story of the disappearance of Jake’s parents had been big news when it had first occurred, a story of gold and bandits and murdered archaeologists. The papers pumped it up again. Everyone had soon learned of the orphaned Ransoms. And now to have the kids here, for the opening of the exhibit, had brought out everyone with a camera.

Morgan Drummond kept close to Jake’s shoulders and
encouraged Kady to keep moving with the flat of his hand at her back. His voice boomed to the crowd. “We’re running late! There’ll be time for more photos after the event!”

Murmurs of disappointment dogged their steps.

But Jake noted how Drummond glanced to one member of the audience, fixing him with a stare. At the ropes stood a toad of a man, squat and dressed all in green, munching on a doughnut. His eyes were buried under bushy eyebrows. His lips were puffy and dusted with powdered sugar. He also had a camera around his neck, but it just hung loose. He didn’t bother raising it as they passed.

He only gave the smallest nod toward Drummond, who hurried them faster.

At long last, Jake and Kady crossed under the banner and into the museum’s interior. Apart from the guards in blue uniforms, the lobby was deliciously empty. Kady glanced outside with a longing look.

“There’s a ribbon-cutting ceremony in the Queen Elizabeth Court,” Morgan Drummond said as he led them past a gift shop and across the polished marble floor.

“Will there be more cameras?” Kady asked, flipping open her compact mirror with the skill of a knife thrower.

“Just the television news and the London
Times
,” Drummond said. “The museum is hosting an exclusive event,
limited to the largest contributors. And even they had to pay a hefty fee to attend the ribbon cutting.”

“Does your company get a cut from that extra fee?”

Drummond frowned down at Jake as if he had asked a rudely stupid question. “Of course we do. We’ll have to collect a small fortune just to break even on this exhibit.” A certain huffiness entered his voice. “Why do you think you two were invited here? It’s not dusty artifacts that draw a good crowd. Stories get people in the door. Like your…well, the tragedy surrounding…” The large man suddenly seemed to realize to whom he was talking. He became a tad tongue-tied. He had the decency to blush around his collar and rub at his neck.

Jake’s own face heated up, but not with embarrassment. One hand balled up into a fist as the full realization struck him. The invitation to come here wasn’t to publicize and celebrate their parents’ achievements, but to take
advantage
of their tragedy: to turn their loss into cold, hard cash for Bledsworth Sundries and Industries. Jake suddenly felt both foolish and angry. He and his sister had been flown all the way to London to dance like puppets for the crowd, to sell more tickets.

Kady seemed unfazed by the revelation. She pranced onward, eager for the next dazzle of flashbulbs and attention.

“Through here,” Drummond said, and held a door for them.

As Jake stepped through, an amazing sight opened. A giant inner atrium stretched a full two acres, all paved in marble.

“The Great Court,” Drummond declared. He reached into a pocket and handed out glasses with black lenses. “Eclipse goggles. You’d better wear these.”

As Jake put on the goggles, he continued across the floor. The wings of the museum surrounded the vast courtyard on all four sides. Sweeping staircases led up to other levels. But what truly captured Jake’s attention was the roof that enclosed the courtyard itself. It was composed of triangular sections of clear glass that seemed to float above their heads, weightless and bright with sunlight.

Jake craned his neck and stared up through the glass roof.

The tinted goggles allowed him to stare into the full face of the eclipse without fear of being blinded. Already the moon half covered the sun. The total eclipse was not far off.