The Viper's Nest Page 2

  “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!”

  “Um, 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 contents, Dan noticed the tin’s label: GENUINE RUSSIAN SEVRUGA CAVIAR.

  Irina’s snack.

  Why did Russians like such disgusting food?

  Breathe. In. Out.

  You will not get sick.

  Dan opened the chest and found a stack of white towels, along with ropes, blankets, and notebooks. As he pulled out a towel, he stopped cold.

  Next to the stack was a leather shoulder bag engraved with the letters INS.

  Irina N. Spasky.

  Dan pulled it out and quietly shut the top.

  The door to the cabin flew open, startling Arif. Amy barged in, soaked and angry looking. “There you are! I thought you’d hurled too many chunks and fallen off the edge of the boat.”

  Glancing at Arif, Dan tucked the shoulder bag under his arm. He pulled Amy outside to a rain-sheltering overhang. “Before you say anything that makes me feel even more special, look at this,” Dan said.

  Amy gasped when she saw the bag. “It’s Irina’s!”

  Dan opened it and riffled through the contents — some makeup, a telescope shaped like a lipstick container, some suspicious-looking vials, a leather notebook …

  “What’s this?” Amy said, pulling out a thin leather wallet. Tucked inside was a stack of rubber-banded cards. Quickly, she unwrapped the bands and thumbed through. The top card made her flinch — a copy of her own United States Social Security card.

  Under it were copies of Ian’s and Natalie’s school IDs, an ID card for each Holt, a Burrit-Oh! business card with a photo of a much-younger Alistair…. “Dan, this is scary. She had IDs for everyone on the hunt!”

  From the bottom of the wallet, she pulled out three small ziplock plastic bags. Each contained thin plastic squares resembling microscope slides. “What the —?”

  But Dan was intent on the leather notebook. “Check this out!” he said, examining a page full of scribbled phone numbers, calculations, and notes in Russian.

  Amy repacked the wallet and stuffed it into her backpack. “I don’t understand a word of this….” She leafed through to the very last page and stopped.

  “We know what the ‘thirty-nine’ means,” Dan said. “She was collecting information about the clues. Maybe this involves our next destination. Maybe she was going to give this to us — to help us!”

  Amy’s eyes watered. “She was on our side, Dan. How is that fair? Why hadn’t she told us? Was she just pretending to be bad, or did she have a change of heart?”

  Dan tried to smile. “Typical Lucian, huh? Sneaky and unpredictable.”

  “I can’t believe you said that!” Amy snapped. “She saved our lives!”

  “Hey,” Dan said, “I was just kidding —”

  “Lucians are liars,” Amy went on in a mocking, singsong voice. “Tomas eat broken glass for breakfast, Ekaterinas are smart enough to build computers out of toe jam, Janus can write novels in their sleep, blah blah blah. Do you really think all of that is true, Dan? Then what about you and me? We’re not like any of those. But we are in one of the branches.”

  Amy was in a mood. She needed a dose of lighten-up. Dan picked up Saladin and turned his face toward her, imitating a cat voice. “And what branch am I, the brave Saladin?” Dan purred. “E-CAT-erina? To-MOUSE?”

  Amy turned away and began pacing, as if she hadn’t even heard him.

  The boat rode a steep swell again, and Dan felt his insides dance. He let out an involuntary glurp.

  “Whoaaaaa — AARRRGGGGGGGHHHH … shove two fingers down my throat and pull out my heart … to prove you love meeeee … !” Clutching her iPod, Nellie emerged from the hatch and lurched toward them, like a creature put together from spare parts — a motion that Dan and Amy recognized as dancing. Pulling out her earbuds, she raised her face to the sky and let the rain pelt her for a few seconds. “Woo-hoo, that is better than a facial!” she cried, running to join Dan and Amy under the overhang.

  “Stick around,” Dan said, “for a lava treatment.”

  Nellie shook her hair dry and leaned against the wall. “Are you guys okay? Down below, I had a long talk with your uncle. He filled me in on all the details. What happened last night … what you saw … that was a lot to handle for a kid.”

  Dan nodded. “For anybody.”

  Amy wandered by, barely acknowledging Nellie. “I’m with you and you’re with me and so we are all together …” she murmured under her breath.

  Nellie burst out laughing. “What did you just say?”

  “Some weird note,” Dan began. “It was in —”

  “Nothing!” Amy interrupted, whirling around. She was staring at Dan, the look in her eyes unmistakable: We can’t tell her. We can’t trust her anymore.

  Dan glanced back helplessly. If we don’t trust Nellie, he said with his eyes, how will we get around? Who’ll drive us — and pay for food and flights, and cover for the fact that we are two underage people traveling the world by ourselves? We have to tell her!

  Dan took a deep breath and looked away from his sister’s piercing glance. “Okay. We saw that you had a bunch of coded e-mail messages.”

  “Dan!” Amy blurted.

  “They were from someone named clashgrrl,” Dan barged on. “The subject line said ‘Status report’ or something. And we also saw a text message. ‘Keep them close.’ Plus, we think it’s weird that someone who can fly a plane has to work as an au pair.”

  “Whoa. You spied on me?” Nellie said.

  “It wasn’t like that —” Amy began.

  Thunder echoed again. The boat tilted. Dan, Amy, and Nellie grabbed on to the metal poles that supported the overhang.

  “You little sneaks!” Nellie practically had to shout to be heard over the rain. She shook her head and shrugged. “Well, at least you’re honest. Okay, you really want to know? Clashgrrl? That’s my homey from high school. We, like, talk about everything? Like, stuff that shouldn’t be read by nosy little kids? Plus, she’s an IT manager—total geek. She knows how to code messages and she does it with everyone. And FYI, she thinks I’m in the States, and ‘keep them close’ means two CDs of photos she gave me, to keep from her boyfriend, for reasons I don’t want to tell you, thank you very much. And why I’m not, like, a real pilot yet is because my dad has this crazy idea I should be twenty-five before I even think of flying commercially. And that’s why you got so lucky to have me. Any other questions?”

  Dan felt like a total idiot. Amy was shuffling her feet, looking at the deck. “Sorry,” Dan squeaked.

  “Trust issues,” Amy said.

  “Apology accepted,” Nellie said, glancing at Dan expectantly. “Your turn.”

  “Okay,” Dan said, “the thing Amy said — ‘I’m with you and you’re with me’ — it was a message Irina left. Probably a code, I’m thinking.”

  Nellie laughed. “Shut up! Irina said that?” She began flipping through her iPod playlists.


  “You know it?” Amy asked incredulously.

  “Voilà!” Nellie said, holding out the iPod screen.

  Dan squinted at the album. “Velvet Cesspool …?”

  “The best. Band. Ever!” Nellie contorted her face into a pained expression and began to sing:

  “I’m with you and you’re with me!

  And so we are all together!

  So we are all together! So we are all together!

  We are marching to Peoria! Peoria! Peoria!

  We are marching to Peoria!

  Peoria, hoo-RARRRRRAAAGGGHHHHHHHHH!”

  “Huh?” Dan scratched his head. “I’m thinking Irina was more into, like, gloomy Russian church music.”

  Nellie held out the iPod toward Amy. “It’s the album Amputation for Beginners,” she said. “Third song, ‘The Tracks of My Spit.’ Go ahead, listen.”

  Amy inserted the earbuds. For a moment, her face got all lemony and puckered, which Dan found fun to watch. But soon she grinned and said, “Dan, don’t you see? Our next destination is in the lyric! That’s what Irina was trying to tell us, but she didn’t have the chance to finish. It’s right there at the end of the verse — the place they’re marching to in the song!”

  Dan pumped his fist in the air. “Woo-HOO! Bye-bye, Jakarta, hello …” His voice trailed off, his expression suddenly slack. “Peoria? As in, Illinois?”

  “Well, no one said all Cahill ancestors had to live in exotic places,” Amy said. “I’ll bet Peoria is nice.”

  Behind them the hatch smacked open, and Uncle Alistair staggered up into the rain. He was hunched and sleepy, and he carried an umbrella along with his cane. “My goodness, what a storm,” he said, rushing to the overhang. “I confess I slept through most of it, until I heard this dreadful screaming —”

  “That was singing, Al,” Nellie shot back.

  “Yes, well, I’m not exactly hep to the new styles,” Alistair continued. “But, erm, those lyrics —There is a song I remember from the Harvard Glee Club. The song was brought to us, interestingly, by a bright young grad student from —”

  Another bolt of lightning washed the eerily darkened sky in bluish white. As if on cue, the sea began to rise to the starboard side. Inside the cabin, Arif was shouting, his voice muffled by the sound of pelting rain.

  “What’s he saying?” Dan shouted.

  Alistair was staring out into the fog. “Perhaps it is Indonesian for we have company!”

  A red light was pulsing toward them.

  “The police …” Dan said.

  “Why would they suspect this boat?” Amy asked. “They’re looking for the launch Nellie took!”

  The boat’s motor, which had been roaring against the force of the storm, now began to power down. Arif was heading out the cabin door, his arms in the air.

  “He’s giving us up!” Dan shouted.

  “Of course,” Alistair said. “If they catch us, he’s an accomplice to a getaway. If he gives us up, he’s a hero.”

  Nellie ran through the cabin door. “Get belowdecks, right away!” she shouted over her shoulder. “Go!”

  Before they could react, Nellie was sitting at the controls. The motor revved.

  The bow rose up and the boat veered to the right. Alistair grabbed a pile of life vests. “Put these on!” he shouted, throwing vests to Dan, Amy, and Nellie.

  Dan quickly donned his vest and scooped Saladin into his arms. He tried to get to the hatch, but Nellie was swinging the boat too sharply. He, Amy, and Alistair stumbled toward the stern.

  Nellie had managed to slam the cabin door shut. Arif was banging on it, shouting.

  “Hard to port, Nellie—that’s the wrong side!” Alistair shouted through the cabin window. “It will be too shallow!”

  The side of the boat now rose to starboard, and Dan’s knees buckled. He slid across the deck, holding tight to Saladin. Alistair, trying to stand, lost his balance. Windmilling his arms, he staggered toward the side of the boat. Amy grabbed his arm, but the combined weight just gave him more momentum.

  The deck angled higher. Dan reached out to brace himself against the gunwale, which was slanting ever closer to the water.

  Alistair and Amy slammed into his side. He let go of Saladin.

  The cat’s scream was the last thing Dan heard before he and Saladin plunged into the Java Sea.

  “Saladin!” Dan screamed as his head popped above the water’s surface.

  Saladin was paddling, his wet fur matted to his face. He was all eyes, as if they’d grown twice their normal size. He seemed frightened to death.

  “Dan … swim to shore!” cried Amy. She was to his right, treading water. “I see it. We’re not that far!”

  “Saladin!” Dan repeated.

  “For heaven’s sake, let the cat go!” Alistair cried out. “It’s only an animal!”

  Lightning flashed nearby, and Dan could hear a tree branch crack.

  Dan could see two shapes converging toward him, large and small. One was the boat, tacking left and right as Nellie strained to see him over the steering wheel. The other was Alistair, swimming with slow, even strokes, somehow managing to keep hold of his cane.

  Dan swam faster. He did not want to be grabbed in the water by anyone. Not before reaching Saladin.

  “Gotcha!” As he grabbed the Mau and drew him close, Saladin yelped and scratched. “Easy, now …”

  A wave slapped his face. He let himself rise with it, trying not to swallow. Trying not to let go of Saladin.

  Where was the shore?

  On the downwash of the wave, Dan looked desperately around for some sense of direction. Through the rain he could see a small flashing light. He began swimming, holding tight to Saladin. Alistair was soon by Dan’s side. “Good, Daniel!” he cried.

  “Mrrrrrooooowwwwwrr!” Saladin whined.

  Amy was just ahead of him. The boat had stalled. Nellie and Arif were now by the railing, arguing in two different languages. Nellie was strapping on a life jacket and preparing to jump.

  A wave broke over Dan’s head and he gulped seawater. He could feel it filling up his lungs. Swimming with one hand was exhausting, even with a life jacket. The spray from the sea’s surface blinded him….

  And then his head bashed into Amy’s knee.

  “REEOOOW!” screeched Saladin.

  Dan’s feet dropped — and he felt sand beneath him.

  Saladin shivered, his chest pounding fast and hard. Dan stood, cradling the Mau in his arms. He glanced behind him for the police boat but could see nothing through the fog and rain. Swimming against the rough surf, Nellie shouted, “I’m at your back!”

  “Are you okay?” Amy asked Dan.

  Dan nodded. “I’m good. Thanks. Saladin, too.”

  As he watched Nellie stand in the shallows, a white light from the shore momentarily blinded him. Dan shielded Saladin’s eyes as the light traveled to Amy, then Nellie. Finally, it settled on Alistair.

  A hand came out of the mist, grabbing Dan and pulling him onto the sand. A couple of others reached out for Nellie and Amy.

  “Itu dia!” a voice called out.

  Alistair’s voice, muffled but agitated, came through the pattering of the rain. “I beg your pardon, officers, unhand me! This is a mistake!”

  “Ikuti kami!” the voice snapped back.

  Dan turned to see one of the cops slapping a pair of handcuffs on Alistair and dragging him toward a van. Dan shook loose and ran toward them.

  “Stay back, Dan!” Alistair shouted over his shoulder. “Isabel must have pinned the fire on me! I may be able to turn this to our advantage — but only if you don’t make trouble! I can handle this.”

  “But — but they can’t do this!” Dan shouted back.

  One of the cops turned toward Dan.

  Glorp. Dan swallowed his next words of protest. He sheltered Saladin in his chest and shrank back.

  “Dan, stand still,” Nellie commanded. “Both of you, be safe!”

  Out of the corner of his eye
, Dan could see the boat floating just offshore. Arif was still aboard, talking quietly into his cell phone.

  The cop glowered at each of them and began pointing. “Tetap di situ! You, you, you, you … stay!”

  Then, barking a command, he shoved Alistair into the van and shut the door. He slid into the driver’s seat, and the van slipped away into the fog.

  “It’s a trumped-up charge,” Nellie said. “It can’t stick. He’ll be out in no time.”

  “Why would Isabel pin it on him?” Amy asked.

  Dan nodded, shifting the pet carrier from his right hand to his left. “We were the ones she wanted to kill. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “I guess he took the hit for you,” Nellie said. “You owe him, big-time.”

  Amy’s shoes squished loudly as they all trudged into town from the dock. The rain had stopped as suddenly as it had started, and the late morning had a crisp feeling. After Alistair had been carted away, they’d retrieved their stuff from the boat, but everything was drenched—except for Dan’s computer, which he had wrapped in plastic, in true Dan style. Alistair had been on Amy’s mind a lot, but she didn’t want to admit what she was thinking — that it wouldn’t bother her a bit if he were jailed in Indonesia for a long, long time.

  Owe him? For all Amy knew, Alistair could have staged the whole thing. To slip away again.

  We gave him the clue. We trusted him.

  How did he do it? And how did they end up trusting a guy …

  A guy who was at our house the night of the fire and didn’t do a thing to stop it.

  “We don’t owe him anything,” Amy growled.

  Dan looked at her, startled. “Hey, Alistair was ready to die for us last night.”

  “I think he’s up to something,” Amy said, “and Isabel may still be after us.” The sun hit her eyes. It was peeking through trees now, dappling the water-darkened sidewalks, as if they’d already been through nighttime and fast-forwarded to another day. Just ahead, she could see taxicabs whizzing across a busy street. “Let’s book a flight and get out of here.”