Open it up."Dan removed the lid, riffled through the contents, and then busted out laughing."Check me out! I'm a nineteen-year-old beatnik from San Francisco!"17Dan held out the first of two passports, expertly forged with Dan's name. The photo showed Dan with a goatee and mustache, along with John Lennon glasses."Let me see the other one,"
Amy said. Dan flipped open the second passport and nearly fell over."You really need to fire whoever's cutting your hair."Amy grabbed the passport from Dan. In it, she was wearing a short black wig and stylish red-rimmed glasses.
'I’m twenty!"Dan had already pulled out each of the parts to make his disguise and begun putting them on, setting Amy's wig and glasses aside as he went.At the bottom of the box, under the wig, Amy spied an inch-thick paperback. Dan knew it was love at first sight.
"A Russian guidebook! And it's well worn, like someone already used it on a long trip," Amy exclaimed. "Looks like dullsville to me.""What if it's another guidebook Grace used?" Dan knew better than to get his hopes up.
"Still dullsville."But Amy was instantly captivated. It was her favorite kind of book: weathered so she didn't need to take special care of it, with a story of its own because it had been in the possession of who knew how many travelers before her. As she flipped through, she came upon two tickets tucked between the pages about a certain city.
"Two airline tickets for Volgograd, Russia, with our names on them," she said. Amy looked at her watch. "Leaving in one hour. Why would anyone think we're stupid enough just to hop on a plane to Russia?""Check this out!" said Dan. There was one more thing at the bottom of the box, and as far as Dan was concerned, it was the best item of all.He held up a shiny new Visa gold card with his name on it."Peace, love, and a Visa card! YES! It's GOLD! Let's go get some doughnuts! Let's go get some video games! Let's go get some computers!"
"Calm down, Dan! You're scaring me."Amy put on her dark wig and tucked in her natural reddish-brown hair. She stuck out her tongue. With the red glasses on, she was virtually unrecognizable."You look weird," said Dan."Speak for yourself." Amy laughed.
"You've achieved total dweebdom in that getup." "Thank you."Dan had the piece of parchment in his hand and turned it over. His heart flipped. He looked up, no longer goofy and excited."Amy...""Dan? What is it?"Amy reached for the parchment, but Dan instinctively pulled it close. This was a treasure he never intended to let go. He looked at his sister."We have to catch that plane."
CHAPTER 3
When Amy Cahill dreamed of traveling the world, she'd never pictured herself sitting next to a pint-sized John Lennon."I don't think we're going to find doughnuts in Russia," she muttered, staring at her brother's goofy round glasses.
"Not to worry! We're covered,"
Dan answered. He was staring into a bottomless pit of snacks. Their backpack was loaded down with candy bars and bags of chips, purchased by Dan with help from his new best friend, the Visa gold card. Dan opened a bag of Doritos and leaned back in his seat.
Amy was more focused on what they should be doing than stuffing her face with junk food. She'd finally convinced Dan to let her hold the parchment so he wouldn't cover it in Doritos dust, but staring at it only heightened her concern. The telegram they'd gotten that morning was from someone who called himself NRR, which meant nothing to Amy or Dan.
Worse was the fact that Nellie's phone was dead, so they couldn't reach her."Do you think we can trust NRR? I mean, we're on our own here. Nellie can't protect us this time. This whole thing could be an elaborate setup.""All I know is four hours on a plane with this mustache is going to kill me. It itches like crazy."
"Can't you be serious for one minute? We're on our way to Russia. Russia, Dan. Do you get that? Without Nellie or Saladin.
"Amy knew Dan loved Saladin and couldn't bear the idea of being away from him for very long. And no Nellie? She wasn't their mom, not even close, but she was a pretty good stand-in given the crazy situation they were in."Let me see that thing again," said Dan, snatching the note from Amy's fingers.
He held the parchment in his hand and looked at the scrambled letters, then he reverently turned it over. Amy knew it was the photo on that side that most intrigued him. She watched as he looked at it, his attention riveted on the black-and-white image of a couple, young and clearly in love, standing in front of the American embassy in Russia.
"It's really them, isn't it?" asked Dan.
"You bet it is," Amy answered.In Paris, Dan had lost his only picture of their parents and Amy knew what having a new one meant to him. But it had also sent them both into a tailspin.
Mom, Dad, what were you doing in Russia?
Amy hesitated. "It's amazing seeing them like this, so young and happy. I mean, it's the perfect bait. How horrible would it be if someone was using this picture to manipulate us?"
"I get what you're saying," said Dan. He ran his finger along the edge of the photo, touched his mom's face, gazed into the eyes of a dad he could barely remember. "But if there's a chance to find something out..."Amy knew how Dan felt because she felt exactly the same way.
There was a message in script below the picture, and Dan read it aloud for about the hundredth time, trying to make sense of it:
The clock is ticking. Find me in thirty-six hours or the door to the room closes forever. Come alone, as your parents did, or don't come at all. Trust no one. Dan flipped over the parchment to look at the scrambled letters again. He stared at them all the way through takeoff while he munched through a second monster bag of Doritos. It wasn't until the beverage cart arrived and he guzzled an entire Coke that Amy could see things were starting to click.
"Where did you say we were flying to again? Volvoflurb?""Volgograd," Amy replied."Riiiiight.
Give me that envelope the bellboy handed you this morning. I have an idea."Amy was using the envelope as a bookmark. She pulled it out and gave it to Dan, curious about what he was up to.
"This should do it," said Dan. He ripped a page out of an in-flight magazine and pulled out a pen, writing down one of the word combinations.RGOLGOVAD"That was the problem, the missing letters. It was confusing me. But they come from the envelope -- this one's VOLGOGRAD, see?"Dan took the underlined L from the envelope into the mix and unscrambled all the letters.
Amy flipped to a page in the guidebook listing cities in Russia, and a few minutes later Dan and Amy were staring at a list of six.
RGOLGOVAO Volgograd
OCOSWM Moscow
ENBIRGKRUYEAT Yekaterinburg
GBSUXRTEPRETS2 St. Petersburg X 2
DNAGABERSAMIAI Magadan,
SiberiaBAERMKSISOI
Omsk, Siberia"Yekaterinburg," said Dan. "Sounds like a place where they throw up a lot. Can we skip that one?"23Amy didn't bother commenting. She had already figured out something else.
"We have a leftover X and a 2 with the St. Petersburg one," said Amy. "I bet that means X2. St. Petersburg, times two. It must mean there are two things we have to discover there."Dan nodded. "Now we just have to figure out what we're supposed to do in all these places."
"Volgograd is where this plane is headed, so it has to be the first place we're supposed to search. It's also shown in this paperweight," said Amy."How do you figure?" asked Dan.
She held the heavy glass ball out where Dan could better see it.
"The letters on the wall TSV those stand for Tsaritsyn, Stalingrad, and Volgograd. According to the guidebook, they've renamed the city twice.""The Russians can't make up their minds?" asked Dan.
Amy ignored her brother's question and leaned in closer. "I think I know what we're looking for once we land."
"You've been holding out on me!" said Dan, wiping his salty fingers on his goatee.