Addison Cooke and the Treasure of the Incas (2 page)

“I do listen. I just never follow instructions,” Addison corrected.

Aunt Delia held up one palm, silencing Addison. “I don't want to hear it.”

Addison pursed his lips and did his best to hold his peace.

“You're grounded,” said Aunt Delia. “Again,” she added. “No television, no sleepovers . . .” Aunt Delia wound up for her knockout punch. “And, Addison—no visits to Bruno's Fossil Emporium for a month.”

“Oh, c'mon!”

“No lip, Addison. This is about more than following instructions. When you give me your word, I need to know
I can trust you. You need to start accepting some responsibility. Traveling the city by yourself—what if something had happened to you?”

“I
wish
something would happen to me,” Addison blurted out. “School is unimaginably, inconceivably, impossibly boring. You and Uncle Nigel are always leaving the country. Flying to excavations. Seeing the world. If I could leave school, I might actually learn something.”

“Is that why you keep getting into trouble? Because your uncle and I have to work?”

“Every time you fly out of the country, you leave Molly and me behind.”

“Only during the school year,” Aunt Delia countered.

“Well, I'm ready for more. I'm almost thirteen. In some countries, I'd be married by now!”

“Addison missed all his afternoon classes to hide in the library and read about Incan treasure,” Molly put in helpfully.

“Molly!” hissed Addison.

“Incan treasure?” cried Aunt Delia.

“Molly wants to get out of here, too. We're tired of being cooped up in school while you and Uncle Nigel trot around the globe.”

“Don't drag your sister into this, Addison. Molly—unlike you—has never broken a rule in her life. I refuse to believe she is longing for a life of adventure, when
she can't even take the garbage down to the trash chute by herself.”

“Can't, or won't?” Addison replied.

Aunt Delia stepped out of her high heels, hung her coat in the closet, and set her briefcase down on the table with a clatter. She took a deep breath and ran a hand across her forehead. “Addison, I will spend more time with you when the museum gets back on its feet. Until then, your uncle and I need to work hard so you and Molly have a roof to eat and food to sleep under.”

“I think you got that backward,” Molly suggested.

Aunt Delia rubbed the dark bags under her eyes and sighed, exhausted. “Addison, I don't have time to pick you up from after-school detentions. I don't have time for more soul-draining teacher meetings about you getting into trouble with Eddie and Raj.”

Aunt Delia took Addison by his wrists and looked him in the eyes. “There is only one of you, and only one of Molly. That makes each of you more rare and valuable than Incan gold. Do you understand why I'm upset?”

Addison nodded.

“I don't make rules just to be mean. I make rules to prevent you from being—I don't know—kidnapped.”

Addison nodded again, seeing the sense in this.

“We have to stick together, all right?”

“All right,” said Addison. “Stick together. I promise.”

•   •   •

Addison and Molly shared a bunk bed in their room of Aunt Delia's two-bedroom apartment. Molly's half of the room was strewn with mismatched socks, grass-stained soccer shorts, and mud-caked sports jerseys. Addison's half of the room was as pristine and immaculate as a NASA science lab.

Roosting pigeons cooed on the window ledge, watching the afternoon descend into night. Rising wind and brooding gray clouds betrayed a gathering storm.

“Why do we have to stay with Uncle Nigel this weekend?” Molly asked.

Addison packed clothes and books into his backpack. “Because Aunt Delia's working.”

“But why do we have to stay with Uncle Nigel at the museum?”

“Because Uncle Nigel's working.”

“Why are they always working?”

“Like Aunt Delia said—to take care of us.”

“By ignoring us?”

“More or less,” said Addison.

He carefully packed his microscope and calligraphy pens. He swiped a pocket notebook off his desk and tucked it in his jacket. His notebooks contained sketches of birds and mammals he observed in the park, as well as pressed
leaves and beetles. Addison's uncle always needled him on the first rule of archaeology: record everything.

Molly collected socks from the floor and tossed them across the room, making three-point shots into her laundry hamper. “I don't want them to get divorced. It will be like losing our parents a second time.”

“It's just a trial separation.” This was not Addison's favorite topic. “We've never counted on adults before. We take care of ourselves, right?”

Molly zipped up her backpack and sat on her bed. “Why is our family so weird?”

“Because being weird is better than being ordinary.”

Molly looked at Addison and frowned. She blew a wisp of hair from her eyes. Somehow, there was always one wisp that managed to escape her ponytail.

Addison wedged a few more Incan books into his backpack, struggling to close the zipper. “Listen, Mo. What's the most important thing in the world?”

“Frank's Pizza on 23rd and Lexington.”

“True,” Addison admitted. “But the second-most important thing is a good attitude. We can't control what happens to us. But we can control how we feel about it.”

Molly considered this. Outside, the clouds burst. She looked out at the first rivulets of rain, tracing tracks down the window, dividing the world into pieces. The tapping drops grew to a drumroll, announcing the storm's arrival with a crashing timpani of thunder.

Atahualpa

A
UNT DELIA DROPPED ADDISON
and M
olly off in front of the New York Museum of Archaeology. It was a sprawling marble building, backlit by lightning strikes in the glowering night sky. Trees bent under the lash of a whipping wind. Addison and Molly dashed through the heavy raindrops of the growing storm, splashing their way through puddles to the basement entrance.

Aunt Delia and Uncle Nigel were museum curators, so Addison and Molly knew the wooded grounds by heart. They cut through a maze of hedges and ducked under an arched portico. Skimming rainwater from his face, Addison found the basement key hidden in a crack
of loose mortar. He unlocked the creaking iron door and hauled it open with all his strength. He and Molly slipped inside from the howling rainstorm, the great door booming shut behind them.

The New York Museum of Archaeology was Addison's favorite place in the world. Great echoing halls filled with Egyptian mummies, Mongolian battle armor, a Viking warship, and the eastern wing of an Aztec temple. Deep down in the musty, snaking passageways of the basement archives was a secret underground world the public never saw. A labyrinth of vaults where millions of specimens were filed and stored. This was their uncle's workplace.

Addison and Molly trotted through the dark corridors by feel, listening to the rising thunder rattling the cement walls above. They passed a long hallway crammed with crates of Ice Age bones for the Hall of Paleontology: saber-toothed tiger skulls with teeth curved like Arabian sickle swords, giant sloth femurs heavy as tree limbs, dire wolf claws sharp as switchblades. At last they spotted a light glowing from an office at the end of a dark passage.

“Uncle Nigel, we're here!” Molly called.

•   •   •

Professor Nigel Cooke chewed on the stem of his antique calabash pipe, curved like a bull's horn. His eyes gleamed behind polished spectacles as he considered Addison and
Molly. He was the sort of man who knew almost everything about the year 1493, and almost nothing about the year he was currently living in. Today he greeted Addison and Molly in ancient Greek.

“Aspádzomai!”

“Khaíre,”
said Addison and Molly, heaving aside an elephant tusk so they could sit on the tattered leather couch by the filing cabinet.

“Ti práttete?”
Uncle Nigel asked.

“Pretty good,” said Molly. “Although Addison made us miss the bus again.”

“Molly!”

“I bet your aunt was ecstatic.” Uncle Nigel laughed gently. Like Addison's father, Uncle Nigel was from Surrey, England. He was Oxford-educated and spoke with a proper British accent. Addison loved his uncle's speech, each word so crisp it was like biting off a piece of fresh celery.

“‘Ecstatic' is not the first word I would use to describe Aunt Delia,” said Addison.

“Your aunt has a lot to worry about right now,” explained Uncle Nigel. “People don't visit museums as often as they used to. So your aunt and I have to work incessantly, like Slinkies on an escalator. If we don't find a great exhibit that will draw visitors back to the museum, our funding will be slashed and . . .” Uncle Nigel trailed off. Then, looking hard at Addison and Molly, he seemed to decide
that honesty was the best policy. “Well, we could lose our jobs.”

Addison and Molly weren't sure how to respond. Molly busied herself picking bits of turf from her cleats. Addison drew in his notebook, sketching the Cherokee headdress he saw draped over the filing cabinet.

“The point is,” continued Uncle Nigel, “your aunt is on a short fuse. And you'd be wise to be model children for her until we sail through this rough patch.”

“I take your point,” said Addison.

“Model children,” agreed Molly. A waft of Uncle Nigel's tobacco smoke made her crinkle up her eyes and sneeze loudly.

“Benedicite!”
said Uncle Nigel, excusing her in Latin.

“Gratias tibi,”
said Molly, thanking him automatically.

“Well, that's enough serious talk,” said Uncle Nigel. “I just returned from a dig in the jungles of Bolivia and found the most improbable relic. An artifact that's not even supposed to exist! I don't suppose you'd like to see it?”

“I don't see why not,” said Addison, who could think of nothing better than a strange relic from a distant country.

Uncle Nigel carefully repacked his pipe, using the desk magnifying glass he usually reserved for archeological specimens. As a professor he was absentminded in many tasks, but packing a pipe he treated with surgical precision. “You're familiar with Incan history?”

“That's all Addison's been reading about since you left for Bolivia,” answered Molly.

“Then you must know how the Incan Empire fell.”

“A bit,” said Addison.

“I'd like to hear it,” said Molly.

Uncle Nigel struck a match and carefully puffed his antique pipe to life. Aside from his clothes and spectacles, he really owned very little from this century. With thunder rumbling outside like a distant cannonade, Uncle Nigel cleared his throat and began.

“Five hundred years ago, there lived the last king of the Incas . . .”

“King Atahualpa,” Addison piped in.

“Precisely,” Uncle Nigel nodded. “King Atahualpa battled with his own family for the right to his throne. It was a destructive war. By the time the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro invaded Peru, Atahualpa's army was exhausted. Atahualpa tried to fight Pizarro alone, without the help of his family's armies. But Pizarro easily conquered the divided Incas and threw Atahualpa in a great dungeon . . .”

As Uncle Nigel talked, Addison's eyes darted to the shadowy corners of the office, containing relics from every era of history. Ancient maps, papyrus scrolls, and decaying mummies. Blood-encrusted samurai swords from feudal Japan. Maasai spears decorated in ostrich feathers.
The fossil skeleton of an extinct dodo bird. Even the ten-foot tusk of a narwhal, spiraled like a unicorn's horn.

“King Atahualpa bargained with Pizarro,” continued Uncle Nigel. “The king offered to fill his dungeon once over with gold, and twice over with silver, if Pizarro would set him free. Pizarro only wanted treasure, and so immediately agreed. The Incas prepared the enormous ransom: gold vases filled with emeralds, silver chalices overflowing with rubies, and intricately carved golden statues of animals, birds, and the Incan gods. It took sixty thousand Incas to haul the seven hundred and fifty tons of gold across the empire and into Peru.”

“How much is seven hundred and fifty tons of gold?” asked Molly.

Uncle Nigel drew on his pipe so the embers glowed. “Picture a hundred and fifty school buses filled with treasure.”

PS 141 only had ten school buses. So Addison pictured a nearly endless line of school buses, heavy laden with gold, parked down the entire length of Central Park.

“At the last moment,” Uncle Nigel went on, “Atahualpa's bickering family failed him one more time. His brother's army attacked Pizarro before the ransom could be delivered. So the Spanish conquistadors sacked the Incan army and called off the deal. Pizarro burned Atahualpa alive at the stake.”

Molly grimaced. Then crinkled up her nose and sneezed again.

“Lots of people were burned at the stake, Mo,” said Addison. “It was a popular way to kill people during the Spanish Inquisition.”

Uncle Nigel nodded and wound up his tale. “The Incas never delivered their treasure. Instead, they locked it away in a secret chamber and hid three keys across the Incan Empire. Each key contains a clue leading to the next. Locals believe Atahualpa's treasure is cursed . . . Fortune hunters have searched for it over the centuries, and none have returned alive. Legends say the treasure vault will open only for someone who has learned from King Atahualpa's mistakes.”

Uncle Nigel gazed pensively at the red glow of his pipe. He blew thin curls of blue smoke from his nostrils that wafted slowly up to the shadowed recesses of the ceiling rafters.

“So what did you find on your dig in Bolivia?” Addison asked quietly.

“Oh, only this,” replied Uncle Nigel, unlocking the safe behind his desk and removing a fragile wooden box. He pried open the mildewed lid and tilted it to the light.

Addison's jaw dropped in amazement. Molly's followed suit. Inside the box lay an intricately carved stone, roughly the size of a large chess piece.

“One of the three keys!” cried Addison.

More thunder broke outside the museum. It shook the walls, as if giants upstairs were rearranging their furniture, and repeatedly changing their minds on where to set the couch.

The wind howled so fiercely it could be heard even in the basement. Molly shivered. “Is it real?”

Uncle Nigel allowed himself a smile. “I'm pretty sure it is Atahualpa's first key,” he replied, his precise Oxford accent elegantly slicing the words into perfect squares. “Though the key is made of stone, so we can't carbon-date it.”

“More's the pity,” said Addison.

“Luckily,” continued Uncle Nigel, “whoever created the key dated it for us. The Spanish inscription says AD 1533 . . . the same year Atahualpa was murdered.”

Addison flipped open his notebook. Using a method Uncle Nigel had taught him, he delicately flattened a blank page over the stone key and rubbed with the side of his pencil to trace an exact copy.

“If the legend is true,” Uncle Nigel went on, “the riddle engraved on this first key leads to the second key. The second key leads to the third key. And the third key leads—”

“To the lost treasure of the Incas.” Addison's mind reeled, dizzy with the thought. Never in his life had he wanted his uncle's job so badly.

Uncle Nigel carefully retrieved the key from Addison's
grasp, cleaning it with a special brush from his desk. “Treasure hunters have searched in vain for the key for five hundred years,” he said. “If the legends are true, the remaining clues to the treasure are still undisturbed, and, well, now you can understand why I have so much work to do. Archaeology is five percent field research and ninety-five percent paperwork. I need to get back to my reports.”

“But it's dinnertime,” Molly protested. “And we're starving.”

“Plus, you deserve a celebration!” cried Addison. “Can we eat dinner in the prehistoric man diorama?”

“Maybe a picnic in the Roman court?” suggested Molly.

“Then we could watch the rainstorm from the greenhouse in the rooftop garden,” offered Addison.

“Or go Rollerblading in the Chinese pagoda!”

“You know there's no Rollerblading in the pagoda,” said Uncle Nigel, his eyes already fixed on his field notes. “And I'm sorry, guys, but I have too much work to have dinner with you.” He tossed his wallet to Addison, who caught it one-handed. “Go grab yourselves some food from the vending machine down the hallway.”

“But, Uncle Nigel—”

“I'm sorry. That's final.”

Molly and Addison shared a look. Addison shrugged, and they shuffled out.

“You know the drill,” called Uncle Nigel. “Don't visit
the museum exhibits after dark. And whatever you do, don't touch anything!”

•   •   •

Molly and Addison took their time at the vending machine, debating which snacks might possibly fill them up for dinner. All at once, the lights flickered out, plunging the museum into darkness.

“I guess the storm knocked out the power,” said Addison, invisible in the blackened corridor.

“You're a regular Sherlock Holmes,” said Molly.

“If I could see you, I'd smack you.”

“You wouldn't dare.”

“That's true,” admitted Addison.

Molly punched a few buttons on the dead vending machine. “Great. Now the vending machine doesn't work. We're going to starve to death in this museum. In a few days, they can add us to the mummy exhibit.”