The 39 Clues [Cahills vs. Vespers] 05 - Trust No One (11 page)

The text message had been brief in the extreme:

AS DISCUSSED.

It meant that the plan was a go.

Vesper Two peered out of the hotel room window. The hotel itself was acceptable. The city in which it was located was not. Of course, very few cities met Vesper Two’s standards for luxury, convenience, and culture. London, of course. Paris, if it weren’t for all those French people. New York, ditto Americans.

This city was none of the above, and Vesper Two could hardly wait to leave it.

A most excellent plan.
V-1 should have credited my genius for more. As if calling me his little scorpion is enough.

Vesper Two’s jaw clenched, and it took a few deep breaths before calm returned.

Yes . . . calm. A cool head.

Just another couple of days, and I’ll be able to make my move. Once this task is accomplished, the rest of the Vespers will all fall in behind me. Take care of the Cahills, and V-1 will go down with them.

And the new V-1? That would be
moi,
of course.

Vesper Two opened a suitcase and began packing.

Iguazu. Iguaçu. Iguassu.

The name was spelled several different ways, but all the Internet sources agreed on one thing: Iguazu had spectacular waterfalls.
Foz do Iguazu,
the falls of Iguazu.

IGUAZU. VOY. FALLS. POOLS.

It was a long trip: First the drive back to New York, then a flight to São Paulo, and finally a puddle-jumper from São Paulo to Foz do Iguazu.

On the last flight, Amy sat next to Jake, with Dan and Atticus a few rows ahead of them. As they took their seats, Amy reminded herself firmly to keep her mind on the mission — not on the fact that Jake was sitting only inches away from her.

Jake started talking about Dr. Siffright’s message. “The P.S. to the second e-mail — we still haven’t figured that out,” he said. “‘Lucky horsemen.’ It has to mean something. Champion jockeys?”

“Fortunate ranchers,” Amy responded, relieved to have something to focus on.

“Cowboys who win the lottery?”

They smiled at each other, but only briefly.

“Okay, so let’s try another approach,” Amy suggested. “Break it down. Start with ‘lucky.’ Four-leaf clovers.”

“Rabbit’s foot.”

“Horseshoe.”

“The number seven —” Jake’s eyes widened.

“Seven,” she echoed. “So we would need a four —”

He was right there with her. “To make seven-four, seventy-four.”

“Horsemen . . . and the number four —”

It hit them both at the same time.

“The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse!” they said together.

Amy held up her hand for a high five. Jake slapped it, then turned the slap into an awkward handshake that lasted a whole lot longer than normal.

Is he trying to hold my hand?

Amy’s heart sped up a little as she pulled her hand away and pretended to fiddle with her seat belt.

Disembarking, Jake and Amy told the younger boys about their discovery.

“Wow,” Atticus said. “That confirms it. She was really smart about it. Even if you decoded the message, it still only says ‘VOY,’ not Voynich. And then she made the clue about Folio Seventy-four separate. So someone would have to know exactly what she was talking about to figure out the whole thing.”

For the first time since Alistair’s death, Amy’s spirits lifted a little.

Brave — Dan was right. He was proud of us for being brave, but he was also telling us to keep being brave. I’ll try, Uncle Alistair, I really will. . . .

The Iguazu airport was a small one. The arrivals hall was lined with booths offering tourist services — hotels, taxis, tours. At a currency exchange booth, Amy changed dollars into Brazilian
reais
;
the clerk told her it was pronounced something like “hey-ice.”

That’ll take some practice,
she thought, and repeated the word a couple of times. The word for the local currency was an important one to know.

They headed outside to catch a taxi. About a dozen people were standing in line.

To the right of the line was an empty stretch of pavement. Two young men and a woman emerged from the arrivals hall; they were dressed all in white, loose trousers and T-shirts. Amy recognized the pants as martial-arts gear, similar to what Sensei Takamoto wore for lessons. The two men were shaved bald; the woman had her dark hair in a braid down her back.

One of them set up a boom box on the pavement, and Latin-sounding music with a syncopated drumbeat blared from the speakers. Taking up positions in a triangle, the threesome began an impressive display.

They kicked and twirled in a mock fight, using techniques that seemed drawn from every kind of martial art: kickboxing, tae kwon do, karate. Mixed in were acrobatics and hip-hop-type dance moves.

It was amazing. At one point, one of the men did a handstand and held it for at least a minute, changing the position of his legs, hopping around on his hands, piking so his shoulders almost turned inside out, then straightening again into a perfect vertical.

Meanwhile, the other two went into a series of butterflies — like sideways no-handed cartwheels. The woman would do a butterfly, legs kicking right at her partner’s face; the man would duck at the last moment and spin into a butterfly of his own, almost kicking
her
in the face. If either had been a split second off in the timing, there could have been a nasty collision.

The whole taxi line was mesmerized. The man standing next to them nudged Jake. “That’s capoeira,” he said. “Brazilian martial art. Cool, isn’t it?”

Amy made a mental note to add capoeira to the Cahill training regimen.
With moves like that, I could have kicked Sinead’s butt!

The music came to an end. The woman, still panting from exertion, picked up a baseball cap and went down the line. Amy threw in a lavender five-
reais
note, worth around three dollars.

The woman bowed and set the cap down. The three capoeiristas took long drinks from their water bottles. Then the woman walked over to the boom box to start the music again.

Amy was glad; she wanted to see more. Atticus moved over a few steps to get a better view. Another incredible display: flips and floor moves, each step precise but relaxed at the same time, the discipline of Asian martial arts infused with a laid-back Brazilian attitude.

Then there was a little break in the action: The woman gestured to Atticus.

“Who, me?” he said, startled.

She smiled and took him by the arm to the middle of the pavement. The trio began doing their moves in a circle, with Atticus in the center.

“Cool!” he said.

The athletes continued their display. Atticus grinned at the others self-consciously. “Watch,” he said. “I’m not gonna flinch, no matter how close they get.” He crossed his arms and took on an unblinking expression.

Twirl, flip, spin, kick. The circle seemed to be tightening.
They
are
getting a little close,
Amy thought. Beside her, Jake shifted uncomfortably.

Atticus seemed unfazed, or at least was pretending to be. The music increased in speed, the drumbeats almost frenzied now.

Then the woman whirled and jumped into the air doing a scissors kick. She caught Atticus behind the knees and with a cry of alarm, he went down in a heap.

The capoeiristas stopped abruptly as Amy, Jake, and Dan rushed toward Atticus.

“
Tenho pena
— sorry, sorry!” the woman said and bent over Atticus as he lay sprawled on the pavement.

“Atticus!” Jake dropped to one knee beside his brother.

Atticus gasped and coughed, but at the same time, he held up a finger to let everyone know he was okay.

“Wind knocked out of me,” he wheezed.

“You’re bleeding, too,” Dan pointed out.

Atticus looked at his wrist, which was bleeding from a pavement burn. “Ouch,” he said, a little belatedly.

Amy burrowed through her bag for a tissue and hand sanitizer. “Here,” she said. “Put some of this on it.”

“Sorry, so sorry,” the female capoeirista said again. She stopped the music and picked up the boom box at Amy’s feet. Suddenly, she turned toward Amy with her eyes narrowed.

“Um, dois, três,”
she said.

“Pardon?” Amy asked.

The capoeirista looked at her coldly.
“Um, dois, três,”
she repeated. Then she muttered something that sounded like “more” and “a little less” and “a bell,” and pushed past Amy to rejoin her companions.

What was that all about?
“Um, dois, três” —
that must be “one, two, three” in Portuguese. And the rest didn’t make any sense, so it was probably Portuguese, too. But why did she give me that nasty look?

As they got into a taxi, Amy decided she was imagining things. If it had been a deliberate attack — a far-fetched idea to begin with — it wasn’t a very good one: Atticus was nearly unscathed.

Just now he was asking Dan a typical Atticus question: “Do you think they say ‘ouch’ here in Brazil? Or do they have a whole different word for it?”

Dan had never seen anything like it.

It wasn’t just one waterfall, or a central waterfall with a sideshow or two. Iguazu Falls was
hundreds
of waterfalls, spilling over the rim of a huge horseshoe-shaped plateau.

Magical,
Dan thought.
That might be the only word for it.

“Two hundred seventy-four waterfalls,” Amy said, reading from the brochure she had picked up at the ticket counter. Among the tourists, camera shutters were clicking so furiously that they sounded like a horde of strange mechanical insects.

Dan put his backpack down on the ground and took out his cell phone so he could take some photos, too.

“Dan!” Atticus tugged on Dan’s arm. “Quick, get a photo of THEM!”

Turning away from the rail, Dan saw half a dozen animals approaching. They looked like big raccoons. Except they were mostly tan, instead of gray. And had long snouts instead of bandit masks. Their tails were striped like a raccoon’s, but were much longer and thinner. And they weren’t the least bit afraid of humans, coming within an arm’s length of the group.

Dan began snapping photos from every angle.

“What are they?” Jake asked.

“Coatis,” Amy said, reading from the brochure again.

“Co-whattees?” Dan said.

“Coatimundis,” Amy said. “It says, ‘Please do not feed or touch them.’ It also says they’re very curious —”

Atticus laughed. “Look at that one!”

A coati was investigating Dan’s backpack. It had managed to undo a couple of the Velcro flaps and was busy emptying a compartment. It pulled out a few small plastic vials, then a ziplock bag, and began pawing at them.

The serum ingredients!

“HEY!” Dan shouted and rushed toward the coati.

He grabbed the pack and tried to shoo the coati away. Hastily he picked up the items and put them back into the compartment. Then he searched the ground to make sure nothing else had been pulled out.

“Get out of here, you stupid co-whatever-you-are,” he said angrily.

The coati stood up on its hind legs in front of Dan, as if it were begging.

Atticus giggled. “I don’t think it understood you. Maybe if you spoke to it in Portuguese —”