The 39 Clues Book 7: The Viper's Nest (5 page)

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"Remember who is leading them," Isabel replied. "That nose-ringed nanny grafted to an iPod. It's a wonder they ever make a flight on time. No, Ian, we will not panic. They will be on the next flight they can manage to book. Remember, by our little arrangement with Bae Oh, we have taken out Alistair. Here in Peoria, they will be alone. To eliminate them, there must be no variables --
that
is the lesson of Indonesia."

Ian nodded.
Do not question her,
he told himself.
Not when she is in a state like this.

Still, it was a pity to attack them with such force. Especially the girl, Amy. He'd never met anyone like her. Shy. Gentle. With an exciting edge of hostility. So unlike the girls back home, who flung themselves at him so often that his chauffeurs traveled with first-aid kits.

Doesn't she know better? Isn't she smart enough to stop the hunt?

It was the boy and the au pair. He was a pint-sized hothead. She was a collection of piercings and piggish-ness. If only Amy and Dan had stayed trapped in the cave in Seoul, at least long enough to get discouraged. Why did they antagonize Mother?

They don't know what it's like to live with her.

"Right you are," Ian said. "They're asking for it. Heaven forbid they listen to the brains of the outfit."

"And that would be --?" Isabel said

Ian looked away. "Well, the sister, I'd say. Amy."

He felt a smile inching across his face.

"Ian?" His mother grabbed his wrist. "If you are

41

having the inkling of a shadow of a thought..."

"Mother!" Ian could feel the blood rushing to his face. "How could you suspect for a moment...?"

"Mother! Ian!"
Natalie was racing out of the bathroom now. She looked even sicker than before. "I just got a text message from Reagan Holt!"

Isabel Kabra looked aghast. "You texted a Tomas?"

"No! She hacked into my mobile." Dismayed, Natalie looked at the screen in her hand and began reading. "Thanks, Nat. We managed to pick up Dan and Amy's next loction from your phine' -- oh, good grief, the spelling! --
'location
from your
phone.
We are on their tail, and if we smell a Lucian, WATCH OUT. ttfn, Reagan.'"

Ian groaned. The Holts were one of the more unpleasant aspects of this hunt--nasty, brutish, and dull. "So much for the Cahills being
alone."

"Perhaps we can put a 'Tomas-Free Zone' sign on the landing strip," Natalie said. "That will confuse the dolts --sorry,
Holts --
for a day or so."

"Those dimwits," Isabel said with a calm smile, "may be good with a paraglider, but they will not stop us from isolating Dan and Amy here. And once we have them, we'll have some fun with this."

She pulled out a glowing green vial from her shoulder bag.

Ian swallowed hard.

"It's the liquid we snatched from the Cahills in Paris!" Natalie said. "Mother, you've made a mistake!"

Isabel glared at her daughter. "As
Ian
no doubt realizes,

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this vial is a fake. Inside it is a poison. After we administer this, they will experience a slow deterioration of body function, culminating in a long hospital stay and then death." Isabel opened her shoulder bag to reveal a collection of hypodermic needles.

"I see," Ian said. "We, erm, force-feed them, as it were."

Natalie's face was turning green. "What if they ... have an antidote?" she squeaked.

"A good question -- by God, was that Natalie speaking?" Isabel said. "Well, yes, one of the family branches is rumored to have developed antidotes to Kabra poisons over the years. I always suspected Grace of being behind this. But oh, dear, I do suppose it's a bit too late for the children to run crying to her, isn't it?"

Ian flinched. He glanced toward his sister to see if she agreed, but she seemed intent on her mobile, as usual.

"Okay, change of topic?" Natalie said, looking up. "Um, do either of you know what red snapper is?"

"It's what some people eat when there is no lobster or caviar," Ian replied. "Why?"

"My RSS feed on Dan Cahill's name shows a request a few hours ago for... red snapper?" Natalie scratched her head. "For their cat!"

Isabel grabbed the phone so quickly her hat went askew. "Natalie --where
did that request come from?"

* * *

"We are in Code Red."

The professor sat bolt upright. He had been only

43

half awake when he'd answered the mobile.

The call could mean only one thing. "They are here?"

"I am not at liberty to say," came a familiar gravelly voice. "But this is my final request of you."

With the phone tucked into his ear, the professor quickly, quietly dressed himself. "You know I cannot do as you wish. I am not one of your people."

"You have left the Tomas--"

"I am an educator," the professor said. "I believe in teaching. It is not necessary to cut each other's throats. This kind of thinking has hurt my country, my people--and the family."

He knelt over his laptop and keyed in the network password. Running the cursor down the left side, he clicked on the flight passenger information nav bar.

He scrolled through a list of flight rolls.

There. Just as he suspected.

Running out to the car, he kept his attention only half tuned to the voice at the other end. "... your goals are exactly the same as ours," it said.

"But our methods could not be more different." The professor spoke loud as he started the car, to blot out the engine noise. "I do not take joy in being feared. As I recall, neither did you, years ago!"

"Isabel Kabra has killed Spasky," said the voice. "She is getting angry. And sloppy. I have picked up an intercept on her phone. We must close ranks. We need you."

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The professor barreled through a red light. A horn blared in his ear and he slammed on his brakes. As he swerved through the intersection, the sounds of motorists' curses rose up behind him like barking dogs. "How on earth --how did Irina die?" he shouted.

"While saving the children's lives!"

"What?"

"Where are you?"
the other voice demanded.

The professor closed the phone.
Could it be?

He pulled to the side of the road and let his breathing ease. Focus was necessary. For his own safety. For the safety of his fellow drivers. And, perhaps, for the peaceful end to a half millennium of needless violence.

Irina came to her senses. Irina is dead.

The chase was heating up. Loyalties were fraying.

He reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a small framed photograph. It was a portrait of a man dressed in full Zulu war gear, white feathers at his arms and calves. He wore a black-and-white headdress and held a full-body shield and a bladed weapon that was neither sword nor knife. His face was gaunt and severe, his skin nearly as coal-black as the Macassar oil that slickened his hair.

The professor placed the portrait on his seat. He drove on singing, as he always did to clear his mind. In twenty minutes he reached the airport. Flashing his badge to security, he entered the service road to the back of the terminal.

They would be arriving in a matter of minutes.

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CHAPTER 8

Changing travel plans was one thing. Entering an airport in a strange country with a wet backpack that smelled like dead possum was a whole other story.

"Welcome to South Africa!" a flight attendant chirped.

"Thank you!" Hoping the aroma wasn't too noticeable, Amy raced out the door of the 767 and into the bustle of OR Tambo International Airport.

A day ago she wouldn't have dreamed they'd be here. But the library trip had set them straight.

"You'd better be right about this," Nellie muttered, grumpy after the uncomfortable night's sleep.

"Who farted?" Dan asked.

"It's our clothes," Amy said.

"Our clothes farted?" Dan asked.

"I don't know them, ladies and gentlemen," Nellie said under her breath, "never saw them in my life ..."

Dan began sprinting off toward a sign that said CHECK YOUR E-MAIL / SURF THE WEB HERE! "Nellie, I'm going to use your MasterCard, okay?"

"Sure, just call me Cash Machine Gomez!" Nellie

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took Amy's arm. "Tell me again why you decided to come here? I remember it was smart, and I remember making the decoy reservations to Peoria, but we did it when I was in a state of almost-asleepness."

Amy pulled from her pocket a copy of the sheet music she had found in the library: "Marching to Pretoria."

"It's a traditional song, performed by choruses all over the world," Amy continued. "Including the Harvard Glee Club. That's what Uncle Alistair was trying to tell us --the real lyric is
Pretoria.
In South Africa. It's much more likely Irina knew the lyrics to the original. She was telling us to go
here."

Nellie was keeping an eye on Dan, who was scrolling through a screen dense with text. "Don't rack up too many minutes, little dude. I'm not rich, especially when you make me buy decoy tickets. And I'm about to buy you phones."

"Arrrghhhh!"
Dan cried out, bouncing away from the computer. "No, no, no, no, no!"

Amy nearly leaped into the air. She and Nellie bolted toward the web station.

"What, Dan?" Amy called out. "What happened?"

Dan sighed. "Just checked the listserv. No fresh red snapper in South Africa. Saladin's going to kill me."

* * *

If there was anything worse than waiting for a pet carrier to appear, it was waiting for a pet carrier to appear while being lectured by a big sister about the history

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of South Africa. And Nellie was off buying cell phones and renting a car, so Dan was trapped.

"'... As gold and diamond deposits were found,'" Amy read from a pamphlet, '"more and more English miners flooded into the Transvaal region, which was controlled by the Dutch. Tensions over this eventually led to the Boer War.' Dan, that's when 'Marching to Pretoria' was written -- it was all about the Boer War!"

"Hey," Dan said, "any country that sings about hairy pigs can't be all bad."

Amy groaned. "Not
that
kind of boar!"

"Oh ...
Bore
War!" Dan said. "That's so you, Amy. What'd they do, read history to each other until one side went
'GAAHHH!'
and surrendered?"

"B-o-e-r,"
Amy said. "It's the Dutch word for
farmer.
Most of the original seventeenth-century settlers were Dutch, German, and French Huguenot farmers and cattle herders. They also became known as Afrikaners."

Dan's eyes started to glaze, and he ran right into an older man dressed in a shabby jacket and ripped pants. "Sorry," he squeaked, bouncing quickly away.

The man was giving him a quizzical smile. His skin was dark brown, with a curved scar running along his jawline, and his gray-green eyes seemed to dance in the fluorescent light.

"Do you need a car service?" he asked. "Or can spirited young people like yourselves navigate South Africa on your own?" He handed Dan a postcard.

"Uh, no thanks," Dan said.

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"Keep it anyway," the man said. "Just in case! You never know when you will need Slimgaard!"

As the man left, Amy walked over. "What was that about?" she asked, an eye still on the conveyor belt.

Dan glanced at the card:

[proofreader's note:

The postcard has POSKAART with POSTCARD underneath it in the upper right corner. Below those two lines are SLEGSVIR ADRES and below it, FOR ADDRESS ONLY. The left side reads:

SLIMGAARD

LIMOS

THE ART OF SERVICE,

THE HOPE OF MANKIND.

WE ARE
ALWAYS
WITH YOU!

Bimrsesoseim Gekk #4

Bgiqbg Gekk

ALPHA > 1

End note on postcard]

"The hope of mankind'?" Amy said. "A limo service with a handwritten card?"

Dan flipped it over. The other side had an image of a tall African man holding a shield, with what looked like an encyclopedia entry underneath:

Shaka, 1787-1828. Founder of Zulu Nation. Son of a Zulu tribal king and a woman, Nandi, from another kraal. His birth was considered shameful; his name means "intestinal parasite." Shaka and Nandi were exiled, only to be abused by other local tribes. At 16, Shaka turned his rage on an attacking leopard and killed it single-handedly. With brawn and cunning, he rose to power, fueled by