Addison Cooke and the Ring of Destiny Page 5

  Before Addison could thank her for the lift, a parade of black SUVs arrived on the tarmac. They were still several football fields away, but closing in fast.

  T.D. scowled. “The Collective.”

  “I thought we lost them!” said Molly. “How did they find us?”

  “They are infinitely resourceful,” said T.D. “They can track you through satellites, traffic cameras, and informants. They own police and politicians. They can enter any building—even an airport. Wherever you go in this world, assume the Collective are coming for you. Now hurry!”

  Addison’s group jumped out of the Mercedes. A uniformed flight attendant stood by the airstairs, a red carpet rolled out for them on the tarmac. The group bounded up the steps. Everything about the twin-engine private jet spelled speed: its snappy winglets, its sporty body, its nose cone tapered to a sharp point.

  T.D. shouted up to them over the roar of the engines. “Tell the pilot to fly you to Paris! Get to the Fortress—it’s our Paris safe house. There you will find a man who can give you more answers than I!”

  Addison cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, “Who is he?”

  “The Grand Master of the Templars.”

  The flight attendant rolled up the red carpet and jogged up the stairs.

  “Wait,” shouted Addison. “T.D., how do we find the Fortress?”

  T.D.’s voice was faint over the howl of the engines. “Are you Cookes or not?”

  The flight attendant herded Addison into the aircraft, sealing the hatch door. The plane began taxiing down the runway.

  Addison rushed to a window. He watched T.D. stare down the approaching SUVs. She took something long and skinny out of the trunk and rested it across the hood of the white Mercedes. He saw her lean close to it, cupping her cheek against the stock. Addison couldn’t hear anything over the blasting engines. He only saw each SUV’s front tires pop in quick succession, the wheels spitting sparks as their rims hit the tarmac.

  Addison blinked. His uncle Jasper had once taken him skeet shooting with an old, dusty flintlock rifle. They’d spent thirty dollars sending twenty clay pigeons into the air and hit two. If he’d seen what he thought he’d seen, T.D. was incredibly handy with a rifle.

  With the SUVs slowed down, she hopped back into her car and sped away.

  Only one SUV, grinding its wheel rims on its shredded tires, chased the airplane down the runway. But it was no match for the Learjet. The plane lifted off at a stomach-dropping angle, soaring high over the West London suburbs. It banked south over Sussex at five hundred miles per hour, pointing its nose for Paris.

  II

  THE

  TEMPLAR CODE

  Chapter Ten

  On the Run

  ADDISON EASED HIS TIRED feet out of his wingtips. He stalked the flight cabin in his stocking feet, taking stock of his surroundings. Strange decorative symbols and artistic artifacts cluttered the wood-paneled walls. A Crusader sword hung over a faux fireplace. An ancient Slovakian spear sat on the satinwood sideboard. The design was so rustic and old-fashioned, Addison briefly wondered if he had somehow stepped into a huntsman’s cottage.

  The private jet had an actual dining room, decked out with dinnerware, doled out on a dining room table. The only thing it lacked was an actual dinner, France being but a short flight away. Eddie scavenged some snacks from the sidebar: fresh fruit, potato chips, and even an elegant mahogany chest chock-full of chocolate. They had skipped their Indian lunch, and Eddie was ravenous. But to his chagrin, Raj insisted they ration their food for provisions, and Addison seconded the motion.

  When they touched down at Charles de Gaulle Airport, the winter sun was already setting, darkening the rain-soaked tarmac. Their flight attendant escorted them to the airport terminal under a giant umbrella and bid them a cheerful bonsoir.

  Addison strode to the main concourse and turned to his friends. “Eddie, Raj, you guys can catch a flight home to New York. Molly, you should go with them. Whatever this tablet is, it’s hazardous to the health. I’ve buried enough family members. I’m not losing any more.”

  Molly shook her head firmly. “Your odds of keeping the tablet safe are better with our help.”

  Raj stepped forward, standing resolutely at Molly’s side. “Addison, I live and die for life-or-death situations. It’s what I spend my life training for!”

  Eddie shrugged in reluctant agreement. “My parents are on vacation. I have nowhere to fly home to. Besides, how could we afford last-minute flights?”

  Addison could see he was on the losing end of this argument.

  “I want to see Paris,” Molly declared. “Provided you don’t find a way to burn it to the ground.”

  “Well, for Paris’s sake, let’s hope for the best,” said Addison. He was already scanning the airport crowds for any sign of the Collective. A few men in suits perched on a shoeshine stand were eyeing him suspiciously. “If we’re going to keep this tablet safe, we need to figure out a way to get to this Templar safe house.”

  “The Fortress,” said Molly. “What is it and how do we get there?”

  “Let’s see what Fiddleton’s World Atlas has to say on the subject.” Addison flipped through the index of the Paris map. He was pleased to see that T.D. had not been speaking in riddles: there was an actual castle in the heart of Paris that was simply named “the Fortress.”

  “Are we positive it’s the same fortress we’re looking for?” asked Molly.

  “According to Mr. Roland J. Fiddleton,” said Addison, “the Fortress was built in the 1200s by none other than the Knights Templar.”

  Molly nodded. “Works for me.”

  * * *

  • • • • • •

  Addison followed signs through the airport to ground transportation. His group reached the Réseau Express Régional train that could take them the fifteen miles to downtown Paris.

  “Addison, we don’t have any French money,” said Molly.

  “We don’t have any money, period,” said Eddie.

  Addison eyed the train ticket clerk, sizing her up. Scowling and flinty eyed, she didn’t look like an easy mark. He wasn’t willing to wager he could sweet-talk her, particularly when he spoke no French. “Eddie, you still haven’t learned French, have you?”

  “I’ve been busy!”

  Addison spotted the same three men from the shoe-shine stand, stalking toward him across the station. Their shoes were beaming; their faces were not. Two airport police seemed to be eyeing him as well.

  The RER train to Paris was idling just a few feet away, commuters sardining themselves aboard. It was so close and yet so far. Addison knew they could not just traipse through the turnstiles without a ticket. Nor could they jump the turnstiles with police watching. Addison needed another solution.

  The three menacing men marched close. Dark glasses hid their eyes, but their dark suits did little to hide the bulges of their gun holsters.

  Pressurized air hissed out of the train’s brakes. Time was running out. Addison surveyed the layout of the station. “C’mon.” He jogged up a flight of steps, two at time. He crossed the overpass—a footbridge directly over the waiting train.

  Eddie scurried nervously after him. A growing knot in his gut told him that Addison was hatching something. “Talk to me, Addison. What are you thinking?”

  “Eddie, what’s the worst idea I’ve ever had?”

  “The time we tried swimming across an alligator-infested river in Colombia?” guessed Eddie.

  “The time we stole Colonel Ragar’s limousine in Ecuador?” tried Raj.

  “The time you entered us in the Mongolian national horse race with four stolen horses?” Molly volunteered.

  “Right, well . . .” said Addison. “This idea is worse than all those.”

  Two of the armed men hustled up the steps behind them on the walkway. The other man dashe
d up the far side, shutting off any escape.

  Addison looked down on the RER train. He swung one leg, and then the other, over the metal railing of the footbridge. He judged the drop to be a good eight feet, but then again, he had never been particularly good at judging distances. He heard the train doors hiss closed. The dark-suited men, sensing his purpose, sprang toward him.

  There was nothing for it but to jump.

  * * *

  • • • • • •

  Addison landed hard on the metal roof of the train. Molly and Raj clanged down next to him. The train was already moving by the time Eddie screwed up the courage to leap, foiling the black-suited man lunging to catch him by the collar.

  The train quickly poured on speed. Soon, howling wind lashed their hair and whipped tears from their eyes. It threatened to yank them off the roof of the train.

  Eddie hugged the roof like a dear friend. “Addison, you were right!” he called.

  These words were always music to Addison’s ears.

  “This,” Eddie continued, “is your worst idea ever!”

  Raj, ten feet upwind, couldn’t hear Eddie’s complaints. He smiled rapturously as Paris clattered past at blistering speeds. “Addison, this is your best idea ever!”

  The sharp turns in the tracks made Addison feel like he was riding on the back of a dragon. They rumbled past ragged industrial sites and tattered tenements gutted with garbled graffiti. “Stay low!” Addison called as they passed under a concrete overpass.

  Eddie inched his body closer to the group, his eyes tearing in the gale. “Could this be any colder?”

  Raj shouted over the bellowing train whistle. “When Admiral Peary explored the North Pole, the temperatures dropped to fifty below zero.”

  “Raj, remember,” said Addison, between chattering teeth. “We talked about rhetorical questions.”

  Squinting into the icy wind, Addison saw they were approaching a tunnel. “This train’s going underground! Hurry!”

  The group crawled along the roof toward the head of the train car, careful not to touch the circuit breakers, converters, and couplings that drew electricity from the overhead power lines. They reached the iron ladder and scrambled down between the train cars just as the rails reached the tunnel and plunged them into total darkness.

  Addison wrenched open the train door against the rushing wind and stumbled into the train car. His team followed, their hair windswept as if they’d just used a jet engine for a hair dryer. Caked in dust and grime, Addison was amazed at how filthy they were. The bewildered train passengers seemed to be pretty amazed to see them as well.

  The group staggered off the train at the Gare du Nord station in the tenth arrondissement neighborhood of Paris. Addison proposed transferring to the Paris Métro, but Eddie—still catching his breath with his hands on his knees—refused to set foot on another train.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Fortress

  KEEPING THEIR PROFILE AT limbo-champion lows, they trickled through the Paris streets, following Addison’s map toward the Templar Fortress. Despite hunger, cold, and fear, Addison couldn’t help but marvel at the beauty of the city. According to Mr. Fiddleton, Paris was one of the first cities to line its avenues with streetlamps, earning it the nickname the City of Light. With the holiday season in full bloom, there were even more lights than usual, glowing and blinking in every color.

  They strolled south on the Boulevard de Magenta, winding ever closer to the Seine, that fabled river that meandered through Paris’s heart and into Addison’s. They passed the former home of post-Impressionist pointillist painter Georges Seurat, Addison noting with surprise that the house was not painted with tiny dots. The group dodged traffic crossing the Rue Saint-Denis, which was built by the Romans in the first century. They passed theaters and coffee shops and glimpsed the famous Canal Saint-Martin, ordered built by Napoleon in 1802. Eddie was hungry and longing for French cooking; he was tantalized by the smells of rich food wafting from the shops.

  After twenty-seven minutes of tooth-grinding cold, they reached the Templar Fortress. The main tower of the castle spread its dark shadow over the old Paris neighborhood. The castle was surrounded by a twenty-four-foot wall, spiked with crenellations like the spine of a monster. The turrets were built of brown stones the color of rotting bones. These were pierced by narrow arrow slits that seemed to peer down at Addison’s team with a malevolent gaze. The clouds broke with a peal of thunder, and fresh rain drenched the team.

  “Well,” said Eddie. “Should we find a door and knock?”

  Addison quickly shook his head. “If the Collective can stake out Blandfordshire Bank, they can certainly stake out a Templar safe house. Let’s scout it first.”

  Clinging to the shadows of the alleys and shrouded by the hissing rain, Addison’s group circled the perimeter walls.

  “That black SUV,” said Molly, pointing to a car parked down a side street. “It’s the same model as the ones that chased us in London.” The group squinted through the rain-speckled windshield at the shapes of four large men inside the car. The men appeared to be watching the front gate of the Fortress.

  “It could just be a coincidence,” said Eddie hopefully.

  “There’s another SUV down that other side street,” said Raj, pointing to a second black SUV fifty yards away. “Two men in the front seats and two in the back.”

  Eddie sighed.

  “I would never presume to tell someone how to run their criminal organization,” said Addison, “but if I had to offer a word of advice, I would tell the Collective not to buy an entire fleet of the exact same car.”

  “Maybe they get a bulk discount,” Eddie reasoned.

  “I still wonder how they knew to stake out that bank in London,” said Molly. “And I wonder how they knew we’d go to this exact fortress.”

  “I wonder why after you shut the freezer door, it’s so hard to open the fridge,” said Addison, ducking down a fresh alleyway, “but that’s not important right now. What’s important is, we need to find a way inside without attracting attention.”

  “Wait,” said Raj, his face radiant with excitement. “Are you saying we need to break into a castle?”

  Addison nodded.

  “I would just like to remind you people,” said Eddie, “that this heavy hunk of bronze we are lugging around seems to be important. And our job is to keep it away from those SUVs. Maybe we should try breaking into a building that isn’t surrounded by armed criminals.”

  “Tilda d’Anger said we’d find answers inside this building,” said Addison. “Answers from the Grand Master of the Templars—a group that went extinct seven hundred years ago. Now, we can spend your winter vacation playing hide-and-seek across Europe, or we can go get some answers.”

  “Hide-and-seek across Europe sounds pretty good actually,” said Eddie. But the group had already followed Addison down the narrow lane.

  They snaked along the alley, keeping clear of the glow of the lamplights, until they reached an oblong section of wall beyond the sight line of any of the SUVs. Addison sucked his teeth and considered the twenty-four-foot wall looming over their heads. “Raj, how did people get over castle walls in the Middle Ages?”

  “Lots of ways! They’d build mines, tunneling under the wall.”

  “I don’t think we have the time.”

  “They’d build catapults,” Raj offered.

  “You want to fling us over the wall?” asked Molly.

  “Sometimes they’d build a battering ram and attack the main gate.”

  Addison tried to imagine four middle-schoolers charging through the streets of modern Paris with a battering ram. He couldn’t quite picture them pulling it off. For one thing, where would they find a tree to saw down? Or a saw, for that matter. Besides, smashing a castle gate in downtown Paris might raise a few eyebrows with the local gendarmes. “Any other
ideas?”

  Raj frowned at the high wall and shook his head. “It’s completely impossible,” he conceded. “I mean, if we had a grappling hook, maybe.”

  “You mean like this one?” said Molly, opening her satchel and producing a twenty-five-foot coil of nylon rope, tipped with four iron claws.

  “Wow,” said Raj. “What don’t you have in that bag? It’s like Mary Poppins’s purse.”

  “My dad gave her that survival satchel,” said Addison morosely, “and all I got was his book on Genghis Khan.”

  “Which you left in Genghis Khan’s tomb,” Molly reminded him.

  “I was being sentimental.”

  Molly sighed. “Sometimes, Addison, you put the ‘mental’ in sentimental.”

  Addison frowned but decided she had a point.

  Eddie poked at Molly’s satchel with a tentative finger. “Do you have any snacks in there?” he asked.

  “First things first,” said Molly, twirling the grappling hook. Each of its claws was tipped with rubber for silence. Her first two throws fell short of the battlement. Her third caught the lip of the wall. Molly tugged the rope, testing its strength. It held firm. “All right. The faster we do this, the less likely we are to go to jail.”

  * * *

  • • • • • •

  Addison was dreading the climb. He was no great fan of heights and he had utterly failed the rope climb test every year in gym. But to his surprise and pleasure he found that Molly’s rope had knots tied every foot or so, making it much easier to scale.

  One by one they reached the top and clambered over the battlement. Addison had never stormed a castle before, and he found it quite suited him. Gazing out through an arrow slit, he could picture how just fifty archers could hold this fortress against the world.