Wade and the Scorpion's Claw (10 page)

“Wow, thank you,” said Darrell.

“Tomb guardians are common in Ming art,” Tricia said. “As for the rest . . . well, I heard you talking before, so you might know better than I what it means. Is it really an old story you're working on?”

“Kind of,” said Becca. “Kind of history, too. But I don't know if we actually
do
know any more. The poem seems like a riddle.”

“Tricia, you said there was something else,” I said.

The curator shifted her computer screen so we could see it. “See this symbol at the very end of the poem?” She zoomed in on an ink block made up of two more or less vertical lines, each with a top branch that nearly touched the other. Inside it were several smaller strokes and a dot in the upper right corner.

“What does it mean?” I asked.

“Well, that's just it,” Tricia said. “This is not a Chinese character at all. It's not even ancient Chinese. I've emailed the image to my colleagues, but so far no one can identify it.”

I looked into her eyes as she said that. I didn't know if I was getting better—or worse—at reading people, but if Tricia Powell was keeping something from us, she was very good at concealing it. She seemed to be telling us the absolute truth.

“Of course, it's modern, too,” she said. “Not like the armillary sphere or the dish.”

“Hmm. Excuse me for a second. . . .” Becca walked back to the table with the diary lying on it and sat right down.

“Thanks,” I said to Dr. Powell, then joined the others at the table.

“Becca, you've just had a brainstorm,” Lily whispered.

Becca smiled. “The dish. I just realized something. If the Guardian is a Portuguese trader from Lisbon, and the dish represents him or his name, maybe it's a clue to the last part of the scorpion story in the diary. Wade, your dad told us about that code in Berlin when we found the dagger. It's called a rebus, remember? Where a picture represents a word or a name. If the dish represents the trader's name and it gives us a word, we can translate the final part. Lily, back to the computer.”

While Dr. Powell took more pictures of the spice box, Lily keyed in
plate
and
dish
, both of which translated into Portuguese as
prato
. The word meant nothing special and didn't make the code work.

“What's another word for what this looks like?” said Lily.

“Platter?”
said Darrell.
“Saucer?”

“It figures you'd know words that relate to food,” said Lily. She keyed both words into the dictionary. “‘Platter' is also
prato
, so no to ‘platter.' Hold on. ‘Saucer' is
pires
.” She typed in a flurry of letters, hit Enter, and waited for the search response. Three or four entries down she hit a link. “Aha! Check this out. There was a Portuguese merchant named Tomé Pires, who lived from 1465 to either 1524 or 1540. He was a major trader between Europe and the Far East. He lived in China for many years and even died there.”

“That's it! It has to be,” said Becca. “Oh, please work. . . .”

She moved her fingers over the cipher square again, making notations in her notebook. It was coming. Words and sentences collected. This time, she was really zipping along.

Finally she put down her pencil. “Whoa . . .”

“That's all,” Becca said quietly. “The next coded part doesn't use this keyword. It must be about another relic and another Guardian.”

I read the translation from her notebook again. “Copernicus had already hidden the Scorpio relic in lead,” I said, “but he wanted it also sealed in jade. He was afraid of its . . . ‘dark energy.' Guys, this sounds like some kind of radioactivity. But that can't be . . . can it?”

“Dad would know,” said Darrell. “And Becca, you know I usually reserve praise for myself, and sometimes for Lily and Ifgabood over here, but that translation was awesome. My mom would totally agree.”

We
were
good at figuring out stuff, but the mention of Sara and Dad made me realize that time was passing. We needed to put everything together, understand it, and get moving.

Tricia Powell received a phone call from her director. While she was talking, I quickly went over what we knew so far.

“Okay, look. In 1514, Copernicus and Hans Novak leave Poland for some island. There they find Ptolemy's wrecked time machine. Copernicus sees how to fix it and really make it work. He calls his brother to help. Andreas comes, taking over some of the relics. One of them represents the Scorpio constellation. Only there's something weird about it. The claws are razor-sharp, and they poison him.”

“Right,” said Lily. “They all think it's leprosy, but it's not.”

“It could be some kind of radium poisoning,” I guessed. “Don't ask me how or why the relic got radioactive, but people at that time didn't know anything about radium. Leprosy was what people used to get back then, so they said Andreas had leprosy.”

Becca nodded at that. “Fast-forward to when Copernicus decides to hide the relics. He remembers what he's heard about jade, this mysterious stone from the East. He thinks that jade can keep Scorpio from poisoning anyone else.”

“Enter the trade guy, Tomé Pires, who meets Copernicus in Portugal,” said Darrell. “He takes the scorpion in the lead box to China, where artists create a jade scorpion to hide it even better.”

“Somehow, the original lead-lined box ends up here,” I said. “But it's empty. So where's Scorpio now?”

Darrell's phone rang and he snapped it on speaker. “Dad? Where are you? We're in the conservation center with the tile. We found out so much. Did you track down the baby-laughing man?”

“His name is Feng Yi,” my dad whispered. “He was actually looking for us. Kids . . . he says he's a Guardian. He was working with Mr. Chen, and has information for us.”

The hairs on the back of my neck bristled. I didn't know how to take this. A pair of Guardians?

“He came to warn us,” Dad said. “There's a group working with the German. They're called . . . Star Warriors. I know it sounds crazy, but they're onto us now and they have razor weapons or something—”

There was a crash on the other end of the phone.

“Dad?” I said. “Dad!” The phone went dead.

Tricia Powell instantly ended her own call. “There's something going on downstairs. A security guard has been wounded. The museum is in lockdown!”

C
hain walls fell quickly over the doors to the conservation lab and hit the floor with a clank. Bolts slid instantly inside the door frames.

“Shh,” Tricia said. I didn't hear anything except an alarm sounding on another floor, but she did. “Someone's coming. . . .”

“Grab your stuff,” Becca whispered, quickly gathering her notebook and the diary and shoving them into her bag. I wanted to take the box, or at least the tile, but Tricia stowed the mechanical box in a safe under one of the work counters. Then she pulled out a key card. Placing her finger on a pad and simultaneously sliding the card opened a locked door at the back of the room. “Everyone out, quietly.”

She hustled us down a narrow hallway along the rear of the lab. It connected with a second hall that split off to both the front and the back of the building. A new alarm sounded from the direction we'd come from. “Is this about the ‘story' you're working on?” she said, her face strained. When we didn't answer, she just said, “Follow me.”

We'd gone through passages before, and I was sure we would again, but then we'd been escaping from the Order. Who was coming this time? Star Warriors? What in the world were they? More alarms started up, and we heard the sound of feet running behind us.

Tricia pushed on toward the end of the hall, where she unlocked the door with another fingerprint. It led into a small office. We paused for a moment to catch our breath, but my heart pounded so quickly I could barely get any air in my lungs.

Tricia's phone buzzed. “A text from the director. There are ten intruders, maybe more, some on each floor. The police are outside the building.”

Another alarm sounded. “We have to get out of here,” I said.

“Tricia, tell us where to go,” said Becca.

The curator moved across the office to a back door. That required her key card, too. It led into a short passage, through another bolted door that she unlocked, and finally into a dim gallery. The chain wall closed behind us. There was a bank of shaded windows running along one side of the room, and I was stunned to see streetlights and car headlights blazing outside the museum. We had spent hours studying the box and translating the diary, and it was already evening.

As much as I wanted Dad to come for us, when I heard a small explosion behind us, I hoped even more that he was okay.

We hurried across the floorboards when there was a second muffled blast, and the chain wall blocking the entrance to the last gallery crashed to the floor. The opening darkened suddenly, and we crouched. But it was neither Leathercoat nor any alien star man. It was the guy Dad had told us about. The second Guardian. Feng Yi.

He approached us on tiptoe as if he was sliding across the floor. His slender finger was at his lips. “Children, your father sent me. Tell me yes or no. Do you have the scorpion box with you?”

Tricia gave him a worried look. “It's in the safe.”

Feng Yi nodded once. “Good. Markus Wolff has sent the Star Warriors for it, but you have foiled them for now. Please follow me—”

Before we could move or ask who Markus was, a bunch of figures in sleek black jumpsuits flew into the room, completely blocking the exit. Their heads and faces were obscured by scarves, their hands by black gloves. Then we heard the sound of clinking metal as they lunged forward.

“Throwing stars! Down!” Feng Yi shouted. We hit the floor as tiny sparks of light whooshed across the room at us. Glass shattered all around, setting off more alarms.

“Are you hurt?” Feng Yi whispered, his cheek red and wet.

“No, but—” Tricia started as he crept away, and more glittering flashes—stars with razor-sharp edges—ripped across the open space, clattering to the floorboards amid the broken glass and shards of ancient pottery.

The black-clad men raised their hands. “Come out,” one said.

“Stop! Please stop!” Tricia cried.

The metal stars flew at the sound of her voice. Glass exploded on the far side of the room. Tricia dropped to the floor unhurt, then rolled behind the display case near Darrell and Lily.

“Give us what we want,” the Star Warrior said in robotic English.

Meanwhile, Feng Yi had slithered across the floor like a snake, and he now emerged behind the bulk of the black-uniformed warriors.

As if he were on springs, he leaped up. With a series of amazingly high jumps across the room—half circus act, half martial arts movie—he tossed his own gold stars like a machine gun. Most of the scarfed men scattered for cover, but three went ahead and charged us.

Feng Yi shot more metal stars. The three fell back, groaning. “Dr. Powell,” he yelled, “take them out of here now!”

She rushed ahead, unlocking the far door and shouting into her phone, while Darrell and Lily bounced to their feet and hurried after her.

“Becca, let's go!” I slung her bag over my shoulder and pulled her up by the hand of her good arm.

Feng Yi threw himself between us and the men, hurling another barrage at the attackers, and we raced out of the dark room to the clatter of metal stars.

T
ricia hurried Lily and Darrell down a silver-walled hallway. Becca and I ran to catch up. Suddenly the yells from the gallery behind us stopped.

Darrell blew out a breath. “Oh, no, they got him. . . .”

There was the thump of another muffled blast; then Feng Yi jogged down the hall toward us, trailing a cloud of white. “A smoke bomb will confuse them,” he said. “Ah, look down there—” He pointed out the windows. My dad was on the sidewalk below, speaking with a suited woman who I assumed was the museum director. Then he hurried off down the street, looking back over his shoulder at the museum.