The Viper's Nest Page 4

  “Those dimwits,” Isabel said with a calm smile, “may be good with a paraglider, but they will not stop us from isolating Dan and Amy here. And once we have them, we’ll have some fun with this.”

  She pulled out a glowing green vial from her shoulder bag.

  Ian swallowed hard.

  “It’s the liquid we snatched from the Cahills in Paris!” Natalie said. “Mother, you’ve made a mistake!”

  Isabel glared at her daughter. “As Ian no doubt realizes, this vial is a fake. Inside it is a poison. After we administer this, they will experience a slow deterioration of body function, culminating in a long hospital stay and then death.” Isabel opened her shoulder bag to reveal a collection of hypodermic needles.

  “I see,” Ian said. “We, erm, force-feed them, as it were.”

  Natalie’s face was turning green. “What if they … have an antidote?” she squeaked.

  “A good question — by God, was that Natalie speaking?” Isabel said. “Well, yes, one of the family branches is rumored to have developed antidotes to Kabra poisons over the years. I always suspected Grace of being behind this. But oh, dear, I do suppose it’s a bit too late for the children to run crying to her, isn’t it?”

  Ian flinched. He glanced toward his sister to see if she agreed, but she seemed intent on her mobile, as usual.

  “Okay, change of topic?” Natalie said, looking up. “Um, do either of you know what red snapper is?”

  “It’s what some people eat when there is no lobster or caviar,” Ian replied. “Why?”

  “My RSS feed on Dan Cahill’s name shows a request a few hours ago for … red snapper?” Natalie scratched her head. “For their cat!”

  Isabel grabbed the phone so quickly her hat went askew. “Natalie — where did that request come from?”

  “We are in Code Red.”

  The professor sat bolt upright. He had been only half awake when he’d answered the mobile.

  The call could mean only one thing. “They are here?”

  “I am not at liberty to say,” came a familiar gravelly voice. “But this is my final request of you.”

  With the phone tucked into his ear, the professor quickly, quietly dressed himself. “You know I cannot do as you wish. I am not one of your people.”

  “You have left the Tomas —”

  “I am an educator,” the professor said. “I believe in teaching. It is not necessary to cut each other’s throats. This kind of thinking has hurt my country, my people — and the family.”

  He knelt over his laptop and keyed in the network password. Running the cursor down the left side, he clicked on the FLIGHT PASSENGER INFORMATION nav bar.

  He scrolled through a list of flight rolls.

  There. Just as he suspected.

  Running out to the car, he kept his attention only half tuned to the voice at the other end. “… your goals are exactly the same as ours,” it said.

  “But our methods could not be more different.” The professor spoke loud as he started the car, to blot out the engine noise. “I do not take joy in being feared. As I recall, neither did you, years ago!”

  “Isabel Kabra has killed Spasky,” said the voice. “She is getting angry. And sloppy. I have picked up an intercept on her phone. We must close ranks. We need you.”

  The professor barreled through a red light. A horn blared in his ear and he slammed on his brakes. As he swerved through the intersection, the sounds of motorists’ curses rose up behind him like barking dogs. “How on earth — how did Irina die?” he shouted.

  “While saving the children’s lives!”

  “What?”

  “Where are you?” the other voice demanded.

  The professor closed the phone. Could it be?

  He pulled to the side of the road and let his breathing ease. Focus was necessary. For his own safety. For the safety of his fellow drivers. And, perhaps, for the peaceful end to a half millennium of needless violence.

  Irina came to her senses. Irina is dead.

  The chase was heating up. Loyalties were fraying.

  He reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a small framed photograph. It was a portrait of a man dressed in full Zulu war gear, white feathers at his arms and calves. He wore a black-and-white headdress and held a full-body shield and a bladed weapon that was neither sword nor knife. His face was gaunt and severe, his skin nearly as coal-black as the Macassar oil that slickened his hair.

  The professor placed the portrait on his seat. He drove on singing, as he always did to clear his mind. In twenty minutes he reached the airport. Flashing his badge to security, he entered the service road to the back of the terminal.

  They would be arriving in a matter of minutes.

  Changing travel plans was one thing. Entering an airport in a strange country with a wet backpack that smelled like dead possum was a whole other story.

  “Welcome to South Africa!” a flight attendant chirped.

  “Thank you!” Hoping the aroma wasn’t too noticeable, Amy raced out the door of the 767 and into the bustle of OR Tambo International Airport.

  A day ago she wouldn’t have dreamed they’d be here. But the library trip had set them straight.

  “You’d better be right about this,” Nellie muttered, grumpy after the uncomfortable night’s sleep.

  “Who farted?” Dan asked.

  “It’s our clothes,” Amy said.

  “Our clothes farted?” Dan asked.

  “I don’t know them, ladies and gentlemen,” Nellie said under her breath, “never saw them in my life …”

  Dan began sprinting off toward a sign that said CHECK YOUR E-MAIL/SURF THE WEB HERE! “Nellie, I’m going to use your MasterCard, okay?”

  “Sure, just call me Cash Machine Gomez!” Nellie took Amy’s arm. “Tell me again why you decided to come here? I remember it was smart, and I remember making the decoy reservations to Peoria, but we did it when I was in a state of almost-asleepness.”

  Amy pulled from her pocket a copy of the sheet music she had found in the library: “Marching to Pretoria.”

  “It’s a traditional song, performed by choruses all over the world,” Amy continued. “Including the Harvard Glee Club. That’s what Uncle Alistair was trying to tell us — the real lyric is Pretoria. In South Africa. It’s much more likely Irina knew the lyrics to the original. She was telling us to go here.”

  Nellie was keeping an eye on Dan, who was scrolling through a screen dense with text. “Don’t rack up too many minutes, little dude. I’m not rich, especially when you make me buy decoy tickets. And I’m about to buy you phones.”

  “Arrrghhhh!” Dan cried out, bouncing away from the computer. “No, no, no, no, no!”

  Amy nearly leaped into the air. She and Nellie bolted toward the web station.

  “What, Dan?” Amy called out. “What happened?”

  Dan sighed. “Just checked the listserv. No fresh red snapper in South Africa. Saladin’s going to kill me.”

  If there was anything worse than waiting for a pet carrier to appear, it was waiting for a pet carrier to appear while being lectured by a big sister about the history of South Africa. And Nellie was off buying cell phones and renting a car, so Dan was trapped.

  “ ‘… As gold and diamond deposits were found,’ ” Amy read from a pamphlet, “ ‘more and more English miners flooded into the Transvaal region, which was controlled by the Dutch. Tensions over this eventually led to the Boer War.’ Dan, that’s when ‘Marching to Pretoria’ was written — it was all about the Boer War!”

  “Hey,” Dan said, “any country that sings about hairy pigs can’t be all bad.”

  Amy groaned. “Not that kind of boar!”

  “Oh … Bore War!” Dan said. “That’s so you, Amy. What’d they do, read history to each other until one side went ‘GAAHHH!’ and surrendered?”

  “B-o-e-r,” Amy said. “It’s the Dutch word for farmer. Most of the original seventeenth-century settlers were Dutch, German, and Frenc
h Huguenot farmers and cattle herders. They also became known as Afrikaners.”

  Dan’s eyes started to glaze, and he ran right into an older man dressed in a shabby jacket and ripped pants. “Sorry,” he squeaked, bouncing quickly away.

  The man was giving him a quizzical smile. His skin was dark brown, with a curved scar running along his jawline, and his gray-green eyes seemed to dance in the fluorescent light.

  “Do you need a car service?” he asked. “Or can spirited young people like yourselves navigate South Africa on your own?” He handed Dan a postcard.

  “Uh, no thanks,” Dan said.

  “Keep it anyway,” the man said. “Just in case! You never know when you will need Slimgaard!”

  As the man left, Amy walked over. “What was that about?” she asked, an eye still on the conveyor belt.

  Dan glanced at the card:

  “ ‘The hope of mankind’?” Amy said. “A limo service with a handwritten card?”

  Dan flipped it over. The other side had an image of a tall African man holding a shield, with what looked like an encyclopedia entry underneath:

  Shaka, 1787–1828. Founder of Zulu Nation. Son of a Zulu tribal king and a woman, Nandi, from another kraal. His birth was considered shameful; his name means “intestinal parasite.” Shaka and Nandi were exiled, only to be abused by other local tribes. At 16, Shaka turned his rage on an attacking leopard and killed it single-handedly. With brawn and cunning, he rose to power, fueled by vengeance. Shaka scorned tribal war tactics of the time, spear-throwing from long distances, and perfected close combat with short, large-bladed spears. His famed “buffalo horn” attack strategy helped build a military force that overtook local tribes and created one of the most powerful kingdoms ever known. Although many modern historians decry his violence, Shaka is considered the father of the united Zulu nation and a hero to South Africans.

  “Cool,” Dan murmured to himself, staring at the image of Shaka.

  “Woo-hoo — look! Saladin’s here!” Amy was now running over to the baggage claim conveyor belt. In a moment, she was walking back with the pet carrier. “Want to be the first to open it and say hi?”

  But Dan couldn’t take his eyes off the image of Shaka’s shield. “Amy,” he said, “what do you see here?”

  “Um … Saladin’s starving and you’re looking at a cheesy tourist postcard?” she replied.

  “His shield,” Dan said. “Take a look at his shield.”

  Amy nearly dropped the pet carrier to the floor—and Dan instantly knew he wasn’t seeing things.

  In the center of Shaka’s shield was the Tomas crest.

  Amy had come within an inch of being flattened by a subway train. She had escaped collapsing buildings and been trapped in airless tombs. But waiting for Dan outside a bookstore was a shock she never anticipated.

  “Maybe we should find a doctor,” Nellie murmured. She handed Amy a recycled cell phone she had bought at an airport shop.

  “Thanks—well, at least he’s interested in something,” Amy said, pocketing the phone.

  Dan was grinning as he left the airport bookshop with a biography of Shaka Zulu. “Thanks, guys, this is awesome. They didn’t have anything by the Gekks, but this one looked cool.”

  “The Gekks?” Amy asked.

  “The people who wrote the text on the Shaka card.” Dan flashed his postcard. “I can’t pronounce their first names, but I like their style. Hey, how’s Saladin?”

  Hearing his name, Saladin scratched the side of his pet carrier. It was amazing how much anger could be contained in a mrrp.

  As Dan knelt in front of the pet carrier, Nellie grabbed his arm. “Who-o-o-oa! The last time you did this, I ended up chasing that cat all over a library. Best behavior, guys. The rental-car clerk is eyeing me. It was hard enough convincing her to rent to me. I’m scared she’s going to change her mind. Oh, and here’s your phone, Dan. Don’t say I never gave you anything.”

  Nellie grabbed the carrier and headed down the corridor. Dan followed her, leafing through the Shaka biography. “Nothing Cahill-ish in the index. He’s got to be descended from Thomas, right?”

  Amy shook her head. “Thomas Cahill settled in Japan. Shaka’s parents were members of African tribes — and none of them had seen Europeans. Ever. Shaka didn’t meet any Europeans until, like, the 1800s. Right?”

  “Right …” He leafed through his Shaka book. “Some guy from a British delegation — Fynn — saves Shaka’s life. Heals a sword wound, gives him meds. Hair dye, too. When Shaka sees his gray hair disappear, he’s, like, whoa, they made me younger. It’s magic! Up till then, Shaka hasn’t liked the Europeans. Now he realizes, hey, they have something I need.”

  “The hair dye?” Nellie said.

  “The weapons,” Dan answered. “So now he’s, like, okay, I trust them. Which ends up being a bad call.”

  Nellie led them to an elevator. “The point is, if he wasn’t descended from a Cahill, he couldn’t be one,” Amy said. “So how did he get a shield with a Tomas crest?”

  “A certified pre-owned shield store?” Dan replied. “I don’t know. Let’s do some more research on him.”

  “I can’t believe you suggested that.”

  “Shaka’s fun, not boring,” Dan said. “The Zulus did this killing head-twist? Snnnap — dead. They impaled enemies on stakes, then planted them like trees! Shaka was a genius. He’s, like, what’s up with spear-throwing, dudes? It’s like throwing fly balls. The bad guys just step out of the way—plus, you lose the spear! So he teaches everyone to shish-kebob enemies with recyclable swords — green combat! His archrival, a dude named Zwide? Shaka fed his mother to the jackals. Who wouldn’t want to research someone like that?”

  “Sounds like a real laugh riot,” Amy said flatly.

  The elevator door opened, and Nellie stepped into the car-rental lot. “The chariot waits, kids. We’re looking for slot thirty-seven K.”

  Dan followed her into the lot and scanned the area. “Whoa … you ordered a Hummer? WOO-HOO!”

  Yipping with glee, he sprinted toward an enormous black Hummer near a post labeled 37K.

  Nellie examined her receipt. “I said the cheapest car. Even one with holes in the floor, like the Flintstones.”

  Amy counted to seven before she heard what she expected — a devastated “AAGHHHH!” from Dan. They found him slumped against a yellow two-door Yugo, looking forlornly to his right, where the Hummer sat in the slot marked 38K. “I was off by one.”

  Nellie looked inside. “Sweet. A stick shift!”

  “I think you should demand an upgrade,” Dan said. “Look at this hunk of junk. The steering wheel in on the wrong side!”

  “They’re all like that,” Nellie said. “They drive on the wrong side of the road here.”

  “The rental clerk insulted your honor!” Dan pressed. “Shaka Zulu would not have settled for a Yugo.”

  “Dude, this was hard enough to get,” Nellie said.

  Amy backed away from her brother and au pair, leaving them to their argument. She crept around to the other side of the Hummer. There was something strange about it. The windows were dark, a dusky black. But they were also fogged.

  She leaned in to the driver’s side, peering through the window. She couldn’t see much, but the front seat seemed to be shaped funny—lumpy, not straight across.

  Then the lump moved.

  Dan reluctantly settled into the front seat of the Yugo, putting Saladin’s carrier on his lap. The seats were hard. “Smells like fish in here,” Dan said.

  “At least Saladin will like it,” Nellie replied.

  “Now can I let him out?” Dan said, beginning to unlatch the pet carrier straps.

  But Amy was flinging open the passenger door, diving into the backseat. “Go! Go!”

  Next to them, the Hummer began to bounce. From inside came the sound of shouting voices.

  “Someone’s in there?” Dan said.

  “They were waiting for us!” Amy shouted.

 
; “I thought they were all in Illinois!” Nellie slammed on the gas and threw the stick shift into reverse. The car jumped off the ground and jolted backward.

  EEEEEEEEEE …

  “You’re right, this is a piece of junk,” Nellie said.

  Dan felt Amy’s arm reach over his shoulder and grab the pet carrier. “Give me this before Saladin goes flying out the window!”

  With a screech of tires, the Yugo peeled backward out of slot 37K. Nellie yanked the steering wheel to the right and the car did a ninety-degree turn. “Yee-hah!” she screamed, throwing the car into first gear.

  Dan was looking over their shoulders. “Um, Amy, they’re not following us.”

  “That’s because I took these.” Amy held up a set of keys. “The front door was open and I reached in.”

  “Whoa, snnnap!” Dan said. His sister was all grinning and proud of herself. “You took your Cahill pills!”

  THUNK. The car jounced over a traffic barrier and into the streets. Dan didn’t know what to expect of Johannesburg, but he didn’t see much of anything here, just dry fields stretching out in all directions.

  “Guys? How do we get to Pretoria?” Nellie asked.

  “Northeast,” Amy said, leafing through a pamphlet. “Ought to be about a half hour. There’s a major library, the State Library. Also the government archives, the University of South Africa, the National Cultural History Museum. We ought to be able to find some connection between Shaka and the Cahills.”

  “Northeast …” Nellie said, peering out the window to her left. “Let’s see. The sun is rising in the east …”

  “Watch it!” Dan shouted.

  The Hummer zoomed around them from the left, cutting sharply in front.

  “How’d they get a set of keys so fast?” Nellie said.

  “Now you did it,” Dan shouted. “They’re mad!”

  “Hurry!” Amy said.

  “I’m going as fast as I can!” Nellie yelled.

  She wove in and out of traffic, whizzing past a sharp right-hand exit. “Nellie, get off this road!” Dan said.