The 39 Clues Book 7: The Viper's Nest Read online

  The Viper's Nest (The 39 Clues #7)

  Peter Lerangis

  [proofreader's note:

  From pages 39 to 65, there are some dots and dashes at the side of each page. If you use the Morse Code, they spell out this phrase: THERE IS A MADRIGAL WATCHER]

  CHAPTER 1

  Amy Cahill didn't believe in omens. But black snow was falling, the earth was rumbling beneath her feet, her brother was meowing, and her uncle Alistair was prancing on the beach in pink pajamas.

  She had to admit, the signs were not promising.

  "Ahoy, Nellie!" Alistair shouted across the lava Sea, his hands cupped to his mouth. "Rescue us, dear girl!"

  Amy wiped a dark flake from her cheek. Ash.

  Could it be left over from the fire last night?

  Don't think of that. Not now.

  Out at sea, a distant engine noise grew louder. On a small launch, speeding toward the tiny Indonesian island where they were stranded, was Amy and Dan's au pair, Nellie Gomez. In the eerie morning darkness, sky and water merged into a blue-gray wall, and she seemed to be floating in midair.

  "Mrrrrrrrrrrp!" Dan wailed.

  "What are you doing?" Amy asked.

  "Imitating an Egyptian Mau." Dan gave Amy an exasperated look, as if what he had just said made

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  perfect sense. "Saladin hates the water. If he hears another Mau, maybe he'll come on deck with Nellie -- and we'll see him at least! Don't you miss him?"

  Amy sighed. "I do. But after last night ... I mean, I love Saladin, too, Dan, but honestly I haven't thought too much about him."

  She heard a distant rumble of thunder. As she glanced out to sea, her eyes stung. A tear washed a gray line down her cheek. How could a fire from last night still produce so much ash? It was only one building. A place where she and Dan and Alistair would have become charcoal if it weren't for ...

  Don't think of her. Think about normal things. Peanut butter. Homework. TV. Saladin.

  But images from last night were racing through her mind. The flames licking up the wall... Dan's expression, like a frightened toddler ... Alistair shouting to them ... the call from out the window, from the last person they'd wanted to see ... the woman who had almost murdered them in Russia.

  You thought she was trying to burn you alive last night. But she wasn't. It wasn't Irina.

  Isabel Kabra had done it. She had burned down their house in Massachusetts all those years ago, and Dan and Amy's parents hadn't been able to escape. Now Isabel was finishing the job. She was a murderer. A Lucian killing machine in pearls and perfume.

  Until last night, Isabel had been one of the two people Amy had feared most.

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  The other was the blond woman who had called up to them from below the ledge.

  Yesterday, if you'd asked Amy to list the Predictions Least Likely Ever to Come True in a Million Years, right up there with The world will turn into cheese and My brother Dan will say he loves me, would have been this:

  Irina Spasky will sacrifice herself-- for us.

  But Irina had leaped to the roof on a pole, into the flames. She had held that pole in front of their window so they could slide to safety. Then she had disappeared into the fire before Amy's eyes. Why?

  How could a person change so much?

  "Earth to Amy," Dan said. "Dude, can you hear what Nellie's saying?"

  Stop. Thinking.

  Amy's thoughts blew away into the smoky air. Out at sea, Nellie was waving frantically. Behind her, the sky was dark with ominous low clouds.

  "The dear girl looks frightened," Alistair said.

  "There's a storm coming," Amy said.

  "Maybe she just noticed your pjs, Uncle Alistair," Dan suggested. "They are kind of scary."

  Alistair glanced down. His silken sleepwear was tattered and sooty from the previous night's fire. "Oh, dear, would you pardon me while I change?"

  Now Nellie was gesturing to something behind her, toward an island called Rakata. Amy stiffened. In 1883, the Krakatau volcano had erupted there, one of the worst natural disasters in recorded history.

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  Amy remembered the words of the motorboat skipper who had taken them here.

  Not good today... very active.

  She felt the ash on her cheek and suddenly it made sense. She held out her blackened fingertips toward her brother. It wasn't only the storm Nellie was worried about. "I -- I think she's trying to tell us something about the volcano," Amy said.

  Dan's eyes lit up. "Whoa. Are we going to be like Pompeii? Like, hmm-hmm, here we are, cleaning the kitchen -- whoa, zap! -- lavafied!"

  "This is no joke," Amy said. "For your information, the last time the volcano blew, there were tidal waves all over the South Seas. Thirty-six thousand people died."

  Dan took a deep breath. "Okay, Amy, let's chill. Nellie's almost here. In a few moments we'll be riding away, cuddling Saladin, everything situation normal...."

  "We have no lead, Dan," Amy said. "Even if we make it out of here, where do we go --back to Boston, so Social Services will take us to Aunt Beatrice?"

  Dan glanced over toward where Alistair had disappeared. "I bet he knows where to go next."

  "Great. After Alistair freshens up, we'll ask him," Amy said. "Do we have a lie detector handy? And where is he, anyway?"

  As far as Amy was concerned, Alistair was the Whac-A-Mole of reliability. One minute he'd pop up in your life as protector and best friend. The next minute he'd betray you, and you wanted to bonk him down again.

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  Where had he gone to change clothes? Did he have a secret hiding place here? Was he going to vanish now, the way he had after the cave-in in Seoul?

  The Ekaterinas had been on the Clues search for years. So had the other Cahill branches --the Tomas, the Lucians, and the Janus --all with money, experience, and the willingness to kill. The odds were so on their side. Grandmother Grace's will had raised the stakes by inviting handpicked Cahills to join a bizarre hunt to find 39 Clues that would lead to the greatest power ever known. But the will had given an out, too. Amy and Dan could have taken a million dollars each and forgotten about the hunt.

  That choice would have been normal.

  But Grace wanted them to find the Clues. And Amy couldn't imagine not doing what Grace wanted. Dan couldn't imagine not finding the greatest power ever known. Then there was the part about tracking hints left by famous ancestors, like Mozart and Ben Franklin. So here they were, four continents and six Clues later: a fourteen-year-old girl, her eleven-year-old brother, and an au pair whose main espionage training had involved downloading punk tunes and mastering tattoo pain --that is, unless she was really a master spy.

  In the 39 Clues search, Abnormal was the new Normal.

  Once again, Nellie's voice pierced the air. She was closer now, the launch's engine noise softening as it

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  prepared to dock. Now her cry was crystal clear.

  "POLICE!" She gestured over her shoulder. "POLICE!"

  "They're going to arrest the volcano?" Dan asked.

  "Come on!" Amy said, grabbing her brother's arm and heading toward Alistair. "A house burned down, Dan -- and somebody died! Police investigate stuff like that. Uncle Alistair! Nellie's being followed by the cops!"

  Alistair emerged from the nearby woods in a crisply pressed gray silk suit, his yellow shirt bright and clean, his bowler hat tilted just so. His face fell as he heard Nellie's cry. "Isabel ..." he murmured. "She must have told the police we're to blame. That's her modus operandi."

  Dan sighed. "You know, I follow you just fine and then bam! You stick in the vocabulary words."

  Alistair gently placed the tip
of his cane on Dan's foot, pinning him in place. He leaned into his nephew. "I know what you are doing. You believe that humor will lighten our load. But some things do not have a lighter side --like being thrown in jail in Jakarta. Because that, young man, is where we are all headed."

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  CHAPTER 2

  "Rock star do not jump!" The launch was cutting sharply, its skipper calling out a phrase that bore no relationship to the English language as Amy knew it.

  "Rock star in a hurry!" Nellie replied, one foot on the boat's gunwale. As the skipper docked next to a beat-up old fishing boat, Nellie tumbled out onto the soggy planks. She was dressed in a black jeans vest, shorts, striped knee socks, laceless red Converse, and a Mr. Bill T-shirt. Her spiky two-toned hair lay flat, making her head look from a distance like a wet skunk. As she ran to Dan and Amy, Saladin slinked along behind her. "Oh, my God, you guys!" Nellie cried out. "You're okay! I am so happy to see you!"

  "Saladin!" Dan cried out, running toward the Mau.

  "Saladin? What am I, chopped liver?" Nellie scooped both Dan and Saladin into a big hug as she walked. "Okay, listen up, dudes. We have to book. Yesterday, when I find you guys are, like, AWOL? I, like, freak. Yelling at everybody-- where are they, why did you let them leave-- the hotel people are, like, whaaaa? Anyway,

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  I pock up all your stuff, figuring I may never see the place again, and down in the lobby I find my man Arif. I'm, like, help me, and he takes all our stuff to this launch -- and then we're halfway across the sea when Arif gets this radio message, and he's all excited, but I don't know what he's saying until he's, like, 'POLICE!' in English. And we see these cop cars and somebody's getting a big old boat, so we're, like, sayonara, only in Indonesian, and we tool out into this boat-traffic jam to try to lose them, and I'm hearing these radio reports that are half English--there's been a fire and somebody's dead, yada yada, and I'm totally wigging out-- Why did you do that? Why did you and your sister leave me in the hotel without even a note?"

  "Sorry," Dan began. "But you were sleeping --"

  He glanced quickly at Amy. All their lives they had been able to communicate so much with just a look, and Amy silently gave him everything she could:

  ... and also, Nellie, we saw that you were receiving coded e-mails from someone...

  ... and back in Russia you also got a voicemail that said "Call in for a status report"...

  ... plus, you just happen to be able to fly a plane ...

  ... and we hate to be paranoid, but one thing we learned on this clue hunt is "Trust no one."

  "Dang! Do they do this in front of you, too, Al?" Nellie said, throwing Dan and Amy each a huge backpack. "Mind-melding?"

  Alistair looked flummoxed. "Do they ... pardon?"

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  Nellie handed Saladin's cat carrier to Arif. She took Alistair's and Arifs arms and headed for the woods. "Don't mind us, kiddos. We're just going to hide in the trees. You can send us mental tweets from jail. Just include an explanation about why you betrayed your loyal babysitter."

  "Wait, we're coming!" Dan said, donning his backpack as he ran after her. "And you're an au pair!"

  As they neared the woods, Amy glimpsed the smoldering remains of the house. She turned away, not wanting to see. Not wanting to think about Irina.

  Irina's visit to the island would not be round-trip.

  The thought made Amy stop in her tracks. "Why don't we use Irina's fishing boat?" she called out. "The police won't recognize it."

  "Far too small," Alistair said. "And I was the one who arrived on that boat, not Irina."

  "Then how--" Dan said. "Uncle Alistair, is there another dock on this island?"

  "Well, now that you mention it..." Alistair stopped, catching his breath. "Many years ago I found the remnants of a small sailing vessel in a tiny cove to the north. Why do you ask?"

  "We may find our escape vessel there!" Amy blurted out. "If Irina didn't dock here, she may have pulled into that cove!"

  "Brilliant, dear girl!" Alistair said.

  "I was the one who thought of it," Dan grumbled.

  Pulling free of Nellie, Alistair pointed his cane

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  confidently toward a distant tree. "Do you see that yellow mark high on the tree? It's a trail blaze. If we follow the trees marked in yellow, we will reach the cove. But the marks are quite faded, so we must proceed carefully. I shall bushwhack." He removed his jacket, placing it over his left arm, then held the arm out to Nellie. "Would you give me some support, dear girl?"

  Nellie held on firmly to Alistair's jacket-draped arm. Alistair was walking fast, whacking at vines and branches with his cane. Arif followed behind, muttering. Before long, the contents of one of Alistair's jacket pockets began to spill.

  "You're dropping things!" Dan scooped up a comb, mints, a handkerchief, and a small blue felt pouch.

  The pouch had Russian writing on it.

  "Whoa... is this Irina's?" Dan reached in and lifted out a vial of bluish liquid.

  Alistair turned, mopping his brow with his sleeve. "Er, well, I saw something on the ground last night. Outside the house. I wasn't sure what it was, so ..."

  Irina's poisons, Amy thought.

  Alistair took the pouch and walked away, tucking it into his pocket. He was so calm. So logical.

  But ... she died. These were her things. This is stealing.

  Amy looked at Dan, but he was already running ahead, following the trail marks.

  "Dan?" Nellie yelled. "Yo, Indiana Jones, sound off so we know you're alive!"

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  They stopped. A few seconds of tense silence were followed by a shriek.

  "AAAAAAGGHHHH! SNAKES! GET OFF ME!"

  Amy raced ahead. Her ankle caught on a rain-slickened vine and she tumbled over a bush and down a steep, sandy decline.

  She landed in mud at the bottom, stopped by Dan's filthy Converse sneakers. He loomed above her, grinning, leaning against the prow of a large, two-level motorboat. "Found it first."

  Amy scrambled to her feet. "I thought you were being attacked!"

  "That was my Indy imitation. Good, huh?"

  Amy smiled and then shoved Dan backward into the water. "That," she said, "was my Darth Vader."

  12

  CHAPTER 3

  Standing at the rail, Dan Cahill looked over the roiling sea and thought: He who is responsible for the fate of the world does not lose his lunch.

  He held tight, feeling like the time Aunt Beatrice had let him ride the Whirl-a-Cup after three helpings of French fries. The results weren't pretty.

  The boat lurched on giant swells. The rain had let up, but that just made the volcanic ash worse. Between the ash and fog, Dan couldn't see the island where last night he and Amy almost became roast sibling stew. Arif had evaded the police by finding a channel behind the island. After circling south, he was now heading back to Jakarta. Well, bouncing back was more like it. The trip would take three hours. Which meant three hours of Radio Silence between Dan and his sister. Amy was mad at him.

  He who is responsible for the fate of the world does not think about his sister while trying not to lose his lunch.

  Usually, you could count to ten and Amy would start jabbering about some fascinating topic like the growth rate of flax in Uruguay. But this anger was different.

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  Sticky. Amy was mad at everybody--Alistair, Nellie, him.

  Not that he blamed her. Everything was confusing, and confusion made Amy mad. Even their motto -- Trust no one -- couldn't be trusted. Irina was bad, then good. Nellie was good, then (maybe) bad. Alistair was in a class by himself. Plus, they didn't know where they were going next. And the ride was nauseating.

  Take deep breaths. Think cheerful. Think funny.

  A lot of help that strategy had been. No one was laughing at his jokes. But jokes were the only way to get relief from yesterday. From the memory of Irina.

  He couldn't stop hearing her last words -- "Everything is up to you and Dan. Go
!"-- or seeing her face. She was reaching up from under the sea, staring down from the storm clouds, crying on the wind.

  Tickling his ankle.

  "GAHH!" Dan gasped, jumping away.

  "Mrrp?" said Saladin, looking as confused as he felt.

  "Didn't mean to scare you, little guy," Dan said, lifting the Mau into his arms. He felt Saladin's heart beat against his own chest. "How do you do it? How do you make me feel so much better? I try to make everyone feel good, and I just get them mad. With you, it's like, hey, everything's situation normal."

  Dan smiled. Situation normal was his dad's expression--one of the few things he remembered.

  "Dude, I have someone I want you to meet," Dan said. He reached into his pocket and took out his father's old Australian passport. It had a faint musty,

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  sweet smell. Dan imagined the smell was his dad's cologne, but Amy claimed it was just passport paper. Flipping open the blue cover, he looked at the photo and the fake name beneath: ROGER NUDELMAN. Dad had hidden his identity, probably to deceive rivals in the hunt. But the goofiness of the name always made Dan smile.

  "Say hi, Rog!" he said softly. "He was a jokester, too, Saladin --I know it. Like me. Family tradition."

  The boat lifted sharply up on a wave and then slapped down. Rain was beginning to fall again, so Dan quickly slipped the passport back into his pocket.

  With a crack of thunder, the skies emptied hard. Dan cowered. Saladin jumped away and scampered toward a small glassed-in cabin. Dan followed, the rain so thick he could barely breathe.

  "Ya, saya mendengar mereka --" Inside, the skipper, Arif, was shouting into a cell phone while at the wheel. He spun around suddenly. "No come in!"

  "Urn, rain?" Dan gestured outside. "Wet?" He shook his head, spraying water on the floor. "Towels?"

  Arif muttered something into the phone in Indonesian, then pointed toward a hinged wooden chest that ran the length of the cabin's back wall.

  Saladin was already scratching at something in the space between the chest and the wall. He managed to slide out a small oval-shaped tin. A rancid, fishy smell wafted upward and Dan felt his stomach lurch. As Saladin eagerly began licking out the slimy black

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  contents, Dan noticed the tin's label: Genuine Russian Sevruga Caviar.