Addison Cooke and the Ring of Destiny Read online

  The Addison Cooke Series

  Addison Cooke and the Treasure of the Incas

  Addison Cooke and the Tomb of the Khan

  Addison Cooke and the Ring of Destiny

  Also by Jonathan W. Stokes

  The Thrifty Guide to Ancient Greece

  The Thrifty Guide to Ancient Rome

  The Thrifty Guide to the American Revolution

  PHILOMEL BOOKS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  Copyright © 2019 by Jonathan W. Stokes.

  Map and chapter opener illustration copyright © 2019 by David Elliot.

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  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE.

  Ebook ISBN 9780698189300

  Edited by Cheryl Eissing.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For my father

  Contents

  Also by Jonathan W. Stokes

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Addison's Notebook

  I: The Templar KeyChapter One: The Ferret and the Yorker

  Chapter Two: The Earl of Runnymede

  Chapter Three: The Merchant of Baghdad

  Chapter Four: The Secret Will

  Chapter Five: The Bank Vault

  Chapter Six: The Ambush

  Chapter Seven: Panic

  Chapter Eight: D’Anger

  Chapter Nine: The Knight

  II: The Templar CodeChapter Ten: On the Run

  Chapter Eleven: The Fortress

  Chapter Twelve: The Dungeon Tower

  Chapter Thirteen: The Last Grand Master

  Chapter Fourteen: The Paris Sewer

  Chapter Fifteen: Ivan the Terrible

  Chapter Sixteen: The City of Light

  Chapter Seventeen: To Catch a Flight

  Chapter Eighteen: Stowaways

  Chapter Nineteen: Istanbul

  Chapter Twenty: The Secret Rune

  Chapter Twenty-One: The Hidden Headquarters

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Ivan the Absolute Worst

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Shrimp Cocktail

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Baby Bird and Dolphin

  Chapter Twenty-Five: The Competition

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Roland J. Fiddleton

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Rusted Dagger

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Crash

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Cyprus

  Chapter Thirty: The Break-In

  Chapter Thirty-One: The Castle Tower

  Chapter Thirty-Two: The Theft

  Chapter Thirty-Three: The Secret of the Tablet

  Chapter Thirty-Four: The Firing Squad

  Chapter Thirty-Five: The Hidden Map

  III: Ring Of DestinyChapter Thirty-Six: The Chase

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Road to Aqaba

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Arabah

  Chapter Thirty-Nine: King Solomon’s Mines

  Chapter Forty: The Dark Spring

  Chapter Forty-One: The Pendulum

  Chapter Forty-Two: The Treasure Chamber

  Chapter Forty-Three: Demons and Angels

  Chapter Forty-Four: The Assassin

  Chapter Forty-Five: Hope

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  I

  THE

  TEMPLAR KEY

  Chapter One

  The Ferret and the Yorker

  ADDISON COOKE WAS DOWN on his luck. Rain clouds had been following him around for months, though to be fair, he was in England. Whatever switch controlled the British weather was permanently stuck on Rain. Addison imagined that if archaeology didn’t work out for him, he could always enjoy an extremely easy career as an English weatherman.

  Today’s weather was even more dismal than normal, and the same could safely be said for Addison’s mood. He was, in a word, miffed.

  His troubles had begun, as troubles often do, when his aunt and uncle were thrown from a cliff in Outer Mongolia. This unfortunate act had been perpetrated by a dangerous man named Vrolok Malazar, known in criminal circles as the Shadow.

  Fearing for Addison’s life, Addison’s uncle Jasper had sent him into hiding at the Dimpleforth School in the town of Weebly-on-Hammerstead. The boarding school was founded by King Edward III more than six hundred years ago, and as far as Addison could tell, no one had yet updated the plumbing.

  Dimpleforth was a rambling estate filled with rambling professors and blue-eyed, blue-blooded students with family names older than the ivy-covered buildings. The daily dress code at Dimpleforth was a black tailcoat, a starched white collar, and pinstripe trousers. “Trousers,” Addison had discovered, was the British word for pants, and “pants” was the British word for underwear. Addison learned this the hard way on his first day of school, when he innocently asked his professor if the dress code required him to wear pants to lunch.

  This mistake earned Addison his first trip to the headmaster’s office, where he was sentenced to sit quietly for two hours after dinner. And this, in turn, was how Addison learned that “dinner” was in fact the British word for lunch, and “tea” was the British word for dinner. Thus, Addison showed up for his detention at dinnertime, or rather teatime, and missed lunch, that is to say, dinner, entirely. And so Addison earned his second detention right on top of the first. Try as he might, Addison could not seem to get the hang of England.

  Now here he was, stuck playing a game of cricket in a spitting drizzle. The two team captains happened to be the two meanest boys at Dimpleforth: Weston Whitley from Upper Nobbly, and Randall Twigg, a scholarship student from Lower Nobbly. They took infinite pleasure in teasing Addison for his complete lack of understanding of the British game.

  Cricket, Addison had discovered, was much like baseball, if baseball had been designed by a vast committee of bureaucrats paid by the hour. The game of cricket was four hundred years old, and no wonder: a single match lasted thirty hours over the course of an entire week. Weston Whitley’s team was currently beating Addison’s team by a staggering three hundred points.

  Addison trudged across the muddy grass to take his place in the outfield. He had no idea which position to play. “Where should I stand?”

  Randall Twigg squinted at Addison in disgust. “Just stand at cow corner so the ball will never co
me to you.”

  “Which way is cow corner?”

  “It’s next to deep midwicket, you grotty ferret. Unless . . .” Randall added thoughtfully, “unless we move to attacking field, in which case you’ll move up to midwicket.”

  Addison shook his head and sighed. He trotted to the farthest corner of the playing field and stood next to his roommate, Wilberforce Sinclair, the one person in school who would bother to answer his questions. Addison had no friends to turn to. “Wilber, why do they call me a ferret?”

  Wilberforce pushed his foggy glasses higher on his narrow nose. “Because a ferret is a rabbit, you see.”

  “How,” asked Addison as patiently as he could, “is a ferret a rabbit?”

  “In cricket they’re much the same thing. A rabbit is someone who scores zero points. And in cricket, zero points is called a duck.”

  “So a ferret is a rabbit with a duck.”

  Wilberforce clapped Addison on the shoulder. “Now you’re getting it.”

  Addison found this all so dumb that he found he was dumbfounded. It was one thing to have a nickname. But it was another thing to have a nickname that made no earthly sense.

  After watching the grass grow in the outfield for a good half hour, it was finally Addison’s turn to go to bat. “Any advice?” he asked Wilberforce.

  Wilberforce polished his glasses on his white cable-knit sweater. “It’s easy, really. Don’t swing at anything off stump, block any yorkers, and cut the bouncers. Unless . . .” he added helpfully, “unless you play off the back foot, in which case pull the bouncers.”

  “Thanks,” said Addison, thoroughly confused. He trotted to the stump, hefted the cricket bat over his shoulder, and wound up like a baseball player. This resulted in Weston Whitley toppling to the ground in laughter. Addison gripped his bat, unsure whether he wanted to hit the ball or just take a run at Weston’s kneecaps.

  “Ferret,” said Weston, “in cricket, we bat underhanded, like swinging a golf club.”

  Addison adjusted his grip accordingly. “Just pitch me the ball.” He wanted to get this over with.

  “Oh, ferret,” Weston guffawed again. “You don’t ‘pitch’ a cricket ball, you bowl it.”

  Addison was bowled over. To him, bowling involved wooden lanes, rented shoes, and a loose acquaintance’s interminable birthday party. “Fine, just throw it to me.”

  Weston Whitley wound up and pitched the ball directly at Addison’s head. It smacked into Addison’s jaw, sending stars across his vision. Addison took two dizzy steps backward and crumpled to a seat in the wet grass.

  Randall Twigg, Addison’s team captain, was furious. He marched to stand chest to chest with Weston Whitley. “You can’t bowl a beamer at a bloke! That was a bean ball bowled at the batsman’s brains!”

  “It weren’t never a beamer,” Weston retorted. “It was a fine googly, and a dibbly-dobbly at that.”

  Addison tuned them out. When he had lived in a cramped apartment in New York City, he had often grown quite sick of it. But now he found he was homesick for the very home he was once sick of. He loved England’s history, he loved England’s culture, but he could not seem to fit in at Dimpleforth.

  While the boys argued, Addison stood up and left the field. The patting drizzle turned to a pelting downpour. He had never felt so alone. Addison limped back to his dormitory, feeling every bit like a ferret who’d been beamed by a yorker.

  Chapter Two

  The Earl of Runnymede

  IT WAS LATE DECEMBER, and the students were packing up to leave for the winter holiday. Already, there was an abandoned feel to the dorms. Addison, drenched from the rain, dragged himself up the steps of his dormitory, Talfryn Brimble Hall. For centuries the famous hall had produced prime ministers and captains of industry, though primarily, Addison noticed, the aging hall produced mold, moths, and mice.

  Addison’s roommate, the aforementioned Wilberforce Sinclair, held an unofficial school record for consecutive days without showering. Wilberforce seemed to be dedicated to several hobbies with a fervor that bordered on mania. These included pressing spiderwebs in a photo album, cutting his toenails in the common area, and feeding the pet garter snake he stowed in a shoebox under his bed. The garter snake, Teddy, required a steady diet of earthworms that Wilberforce purchased from a local pet store. Addison had no great love for the garter snake, though at least it had the decency to chew with its mouth closed and didn’t constantly borrow Addison’s hairbrush without asking. Addison had endured poison ivy rashes that were better company than Wilberforce.

  Despite all this, it was Addison, and not Wilberforce, who was the least popular kid in his grade. Ever since his aunt and uncle had gone missing, Addison could not seem to pull his life together. He was tortured by guilt, wondering if there was anything he could have done to help them. At night, he couldn’t sleep. During the day, he couldn’t stay awake.

  Since he could not bury his aunt and uncle, Addison buried himself in his studies. He considered history to be his strong suit, but all the other students knew more than he did about British history. Addison needed a tutor to teach him about the Tudors. His crusty Greek and Latin teachers seemed older than the languages they taught. The one course Addison enjoyed was ancient history, where he devoured tales about the Assyrian Empire, the Queen of Sheba, and the kingdom of Solomon.

  His exams done, Addison now packed up his suitcase to go home to Uncle Jasper’s for the winter holiday.

  Wilberforce looked up from feeding his garter snake. “Addison, I hope your holiday is wickedly good fun.”

  Addison had noticed that British people often spiced up their sentences by saying, “It’s awfully good to meet you,” “It’s terribly nice of you,” or “This is frightfully decent pudding.” Addison had tried to get the hang of this, telling the dining hall cook that his jellied eels were disgustingly tasty and nauseatingly appetizing. It had earned him another trip to the headmaster. All in all, Addison was glad to be rid of the school, rid of Wilberforce, and rid of everything in between.

  “Wilberforce,” he said, by way of goodbye, “I shall miss you. Terribly.”

  * * *

  • • • • • •

  Addison took the two-hour train ride back to Surrey and walked the last half mile to his uncle’s manor house, a sprawling estate called Runnymede Hall. It was only a few months earlier that Addison had discovered that his eccentric, gambling-obsessed uncle Jasper was, of all things, the Seventeenth Earl of Runnymede. Uncle Jasper insisted this title was nothing special, there being no fewer than 212 earls in the country of England, not to mention all the dukes, marquesses, viscounts, and barons. “All nobility means,” his uncle had explained, “is that if you break the law, you have the right to be hanged by a silk rope.”

  Addison left his bags with the butler, Jennings, in the grand entrance hall of the manor house. He changed into his gym clothes, grabbed a snack from the kitchen, and headed for the secret bookcase in the library. The swiveling bookcase opened to a spiral stone passage that led down to a basement among the Saxon roots of the original castle.

  Here, Uncle Jasper kept a hidden training facility. He insisted that on weekends and school vacations, Addison and his little sister, Molly, learn the skills of gentlemen: horseback riding, shooting, boxing, and even swordsmanship. Generally, Addison was a bookish type who endorsed being indoors. But after nearly being killed on several continents in the past year, he saw the value in learning to defend himself.

  Addison crossed behind the balance beam, the sword rack, and the practice dummies pricked full of knife wounds. He ducked under the rope-climbing course where he worked on overcoming his fear of heights. Addison reached his locker and began strapping on his sparring gear: a mask and protective padding.

  Molly was already warming up on a punching bag, riddling it with roundhouse kicks.

  Her short hair had recently grown
long enough to be swept back in a ponytail, so it no longer fell in her eyes. She was twelve now, and attended the Wyckingham Swithy School for Girls. Molly had a natural knack for the martial arts, and had skyrocketed through the sparring ranks of her local dojo. Since the disappearance of Aunt Delia and Uncle Nigel, Molly had poured all of her energy into training. If Addison buried his grief in his studies, Molly buried her feelings in the faces of her opponents.

  Uncle Jasper spotted Addison and clasped his hands together. “You’ve joined us at last. Addison, choose your weapon and meet Molly on the sparring mat.”

  Addison crossed to the weapons rack and picked out his favorite wooden practice knife.

  Molly’s weapon of choice was her sling. She unwrapped the leather pouch and stuffed it with a wooden peg that was only slightly less lethal than its normal lead slug.

  The siblings took off their shoes, squared off on the practice mat, and bowed.

  Molly was Addison’s partner for everything. When they weren’t sparring, they even had to take ballroom dance lessons together. Uncle Jasper insisted that the foxtrot would help with their balance for fencing and fighting.

  Molly started her sling swinging and charged Addison, walloping him on the upper arm.

  He yelped in pain and dug the flat edge of his wooden practice knife into the side of his sister’s neck. This, for Addison, was a typical Friday.

  Uncle Jasper clapped his hands once, stopping the match. “What went wrong there?”

  “He got lucky,” said Molly.

  “No, you chose the wrong weapon.” Uncle Jasper crossed the mat and took a knee between Molly and Addison. “Molly, I know you love your sling, but it’s not a weapon for close quarters. You’ll barely get it spinning before an attacker has you on the ground. Besides,” he added, “it is not a gentleman’s weapon.”