Death and Diamonds

  ATAC BRIEFING FOR AGENTS FRANK AND JOE HARDY

  MISSION:

  Attend fashion show and keep valuable selections of diamonds in sight at all times.

  LOCATION:

  Bayport.

  POTENTIAL VICTIMS:

  Jewelry model Naomi Dowd.

  SUSPECTS:

  Jewels worth millions—everyone’s a suspect.

  THIS MISSION REQUIRES YOUR IMMEDIATE ATTENTION.

  THIS MESSAGE WILL BE ERASED IN FIVE SECONDS.

  WATCH OUT FOR OUR NEXT CASE: #16: Bayport Buccaneers

  ALADDIN PAPERBACKS

  Simon & Schuster, New York

  Cover designed by Lisa Vega

  Cover photograph copyright © 2006 by

  Comstock/SuperStock

  Ages 8-12

  kids.simonandschuster.com

  0407

  A Sparkling New Case . . .

  “The International Diamond Jewelry Show and Auction is scheduled to run at the convention center this coming weekend,” Q explained. “It will feature several pieces valued at over ten million dollars apiece, with a total value upward of two hundred million. What’s more, the jewels will be worn by a pair of well-known supermodels whom . . . ahem . . . I’m sure you’ve heard of: Naomi Dowd and Shakira.”

  I looked over at Joe, who looked back at me with a smile so big you’d think he just won one of those diamonds.

  “The reason we’ve brought you in is that Interpol has intercepted some very troubling e-mail communications indicating that there may be an attempt to steal some, or even all, of the jewels at the show.”

  “And there’s our cue,” Joe said.

  #1 Extreme Danger

  #2 Running on Fumes

  #3 Boardwalk Bust

  #4 Thrill Ride

  #5 Rocky Road

  #6 Burned

  #7 Operation: Survival

  #8 Top Ten Ways to Die

  #9 Martial Law

  #10 Blown Away

  #11 Hurricane Joe

  #12 Trouble in Paradise

  #13 The Mummy’s Curse

  #14 Hazed

  #15 Death and Diamonds

  Available from Simon & Schuster

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ALADDIN PAPERBACKS

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster

  Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Copyright © 2007 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  THE HARDY BOYS MYSTERY STORIES and HARDY BOYS UNDERCOVER BROTHERS are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  ALADDIN PAPERBACKS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Designed by Lisa Vega

  The text of this book was set in Aldine 401BT.

  First Aladdin Paperbacks edition April 2007

  Library of Congress Control Number 2006934562

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4169-3402-8

  ISBN-10: 1-4169-3402-2

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4424-6534-3 (ebook)

  Chapter 1: April in Paris

  Chapter 2: Dream On

  Chapter 3: An Engraved Invitation

  Chapter 4: We Take the Grand Tour

  Chapter 5: Love at First Sight

  Chapter 6: Something Wicked This Way Comes

  Chapter 7: From the Frying Pan into the Fire

  Chapter 8: Zero Hour

  Chapter 9: The Heist

  Chapter 10: The Aftermath

  Chapter 11: Dead Men Tell No Tales

  Chapter 12: The Worm Turns

  Chapter 13: Diamonds Are Deceiving

  Chapter 14: Two Plus Two Is Sometimes Five

  Chapter 15: Down by the Bay

  Chapter 16: The Chase Is On

  Chapter 17: When Love Comes Calling

  1.

  April in Paris

  I’d seen Paris before, but only in postcards. This time I was getting a close-up view of the Eiffel Tower. Really close—I was dangling from it by my fingernails! Only a pair of high-tech gloves, with highly magnetized finger pads, kept me from falling four hundred feet to the ground.

  Climbing just above me were a couple of guys who’d stolen a pair of paintings from the Louvre, France’s most famous museum. Those priceless works of art were now rolled up inside cardboard tubes strapped to their backs—but my brother, Joe, and I were more worried about the semiautomatic pistols they were firing down at us.

  How did we wind up in this position?

  It’s a long story. I’ll just say that everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong. Still, we’d managed to catch up to these two guys. Now we were just about to bring them to justice—except they had guns, and we didn’t.

  On the other hand, we did have those excellent magnetized gloves. Very cutting edge. Joe and I were asked to try them out by ATAC (American Teens Against Crime), the top secret organization that was founded by our dad, Fenton Hardy, to catch criminals older crime fighters might not be able to get to.

  Anyway—back to dangling from the tower.

  “We’ve got ’em cornered now, Joe!” I shouted. “They’re running out of real estate.”

  “Frank!” Joe yelled back, staring past me. “Chopper at two o’clock!”

  I looked over my shoulder. Out of the clear night sky, the lights and noise of a helicopter were coming straight for us. I had the sinking feeling it wasn’t here to help us out.

  We had called the gendarmes—that’s the French police—earlier, while chasing our quarry through the streets of Paris’s Latin Quarter. But neither of us speaks French very well, and if the gendarmes spoke any English, they weren’t telling.

  By the time we’d started climbing the tower, it was too late. My cell phone batteries were dead. Joe had dropped his cell while putting on those magnetic gloves, and he hadn’t realized it until we were halfway up the tower.

  So I could only assume that the chopper was here to evacuate those two cornered bad guys—and finish me and Joe off in the process.

  The thieves were nearing the top of the tower. True, they didn’t have our gloves, but they did have steel cables and carabiners—the same ones they’d used to rappel down through the skylights of the museum and steal the paintings. With the help of those cables, and the suction cups at the ends of them, they were climbing the steel beams one at a time, just fast enough to stay ahead of us.

  They’d already reached the observation deck—conveniently closed for renovations—and were making their way to the needle at the top of the tower. There, I could only assume that the helicopter would pick them up and scoot them off to safety.

  If their plan succeeded, those two precious paintings would never be seen again—except by whichever evil multimillionaire had paid for the heist.

  A bullet pinged off the beam just to the right of my head, sending sparks flying.

  Yikes!

  (Stupid. But what would you say if you were almost hit by a bullet?)

  I swung myself to the inside of the beam, where it was easier to hide—but harder to climb.

  Joe, younger than me by a year but stronger by a lot, was at least twenty feet above me by now. He was perched just under the observation deck, in even greater danger than I was.

  The helicopter had reached the tower and was now hovering only a few dozen feet over the needle. A cable was lowered slowly downward from the c
hopper, and the thieves started reaching out to grab it.

  I knew this was our last chance, and so did Joe. While their focus was on grabbing the cable, they wouldn’t be paying attention to us.

  Climbing as fast as I could, I closed the distance between us, catching up to Joe alongside the observation deck.

  “You still got that titanium apparatus?” he asked me.

  “Uh-huh.” I showed him the contraption strapped to my left forearm. It contained a spool of thin but superstrong titanium cable with a sharp grappling hook at the end.

  “Now would be an excellent time to use it.”

  Like I needed to be told.

  Aiming my arm at the narrow spot on the chopper—right behind the side opening, and just in front of the tail—I pressed the trigger and shot the bolt.

  With a soft whoosh, the cable rocketed outward. It wound itself around the chopper’s landing gear three or four times before the hook grabbed hold.

  I tugged on the cable to see if it was secure, then gave Joe a nod. He hooked both arms around me from behind. “Go! Go! Go!”

  We let go of the steel beams, swinging free just as the two bad guys were climbing into the chopper.

  Not a moment too soon, either. With the two men safely aboard, the helicopter banked hard right and flew off into the night—unknowingly trailing Joe and me behind it.

  I pushed the button on the cable apparatus. It started winding itself back up—and in the process, lifting us toward the helicopter. What with our combined weight and the pull from the speeding chopper, it felt like my left arm was being pulled out of its socket, but somehow I held on as we got in range of the chopper’s side opening.

  I pushed the cable’s stop button when we were close enough to the landing gear to grab hold of it.

  “Got it!” Joe yelled, and let go of me. I glanced over, just in time to see him disappear into the chopper.

  Good. He’d obviously taken them by surprise, or they would have tossed him right back overboard. Hopefully, he could keep them busy long enough for me to get on board as well.

  I hoisted myself up and rolled over into the chopper.

  Instantly I sized up the situation. Joe was on his back, with both bad guys standing over him. One was pointing a gun at his face. I grabbed that guy by the ankle and yanked him off his feet. Then I ducked the punch the other thug was throwing at me. He missed so badly he fell on the floor—and rolled right into his buddy, who was getting up. The impact sent the second guy stumbling. He reached for the wall of the chopper—but there was no wall. He was right at the opening. The next thing any of us knew, he was gone!

  All three of us stared at the opening where he’d disappeared. Then we looked at one another, knowing that one false move and we could easily follow him.

  Man, what a way to go. I sure hoped he didn’t hit anyone on the ground when he landed.

  Joe and I both jumped the remaining thug. With the two of us working together, it wasn’t much of a contest—Joe wound up knocking him out with his own pistol.

  “Nice work!” I said as he dragged the limp body out of harm’s way.

  A thought suddenly hit me. It was amazing that the pilot hadn’t yet realized what was going on behind him.

  Too amazing. Turning toward the cockpit, I saw him leveling a huge machine gun at us.

  “Duck!” Joe yelled.

  I hit the ground as the bullets flew. Luckily, the recoil pushed the pilot back into his instruments. That made the chopper start veering madly to the left, then right. All of us went tumbling back and forth, out of control.

  Joe dragged himself forward along the floor with the help of his magnetic gloves. Soon he and the pilot were locked in a death struggle, fighting over the machine gun between them.

  I had no gun, but with them fighting, and the other guy out cold, my path to the cockpit was clear.

  I’d never flown a chopper before, but I had flown several different kinds of small planes. With a little trial and error (well, more than a little) I was finally able to figure out the stabilizers and rotor controls and pull us out of our death spiral in time to save the day.

  I looked back into the cabin to see Joe, with the machine gun slung over his shoulder, standing over the unconscious pilot.

  “Got any twine up there?” he shouted over the noise. “I think I should tie these two together, just in case.”

  I smiled, and he smiled back. I didn’t have any twine, but it didn’t matter. The Eiffel Tower was just below us. I lowered the chopper onto the adjoining field, the Champ de Mars, and cut the engine.

  We stepped out of the helicopter to find a squadron of gendarmes waiting for us. I handed them the tubes containing the two priceless paintings, saying a few of the French words I knew: “Bonsoir, mes amis.” Hey, I try.

  One of them said something in French that I couldn’t understand, shook our hands, and ordered the others to take the bad guys into custody. They shoved them into a paddy wagon and took off, waving good-bye and leaving us standing there like a couple of beat-up morons.

  “That’s all the thanks we get?” Joe asked, amazed.

  “Hey,” I said, “I’m sure they’re grateful—they’re just . . . busy.”

  “Man,” Joe said, shaking his head, “I could use a hot bath and a good hot meal. How ’bout you?”

  “Oui, oui,” I said, working my French a little more to make the most of my last hours in the country. “And as you know, mon frère, this town has the best food in the entire universe.”

  “Uh-huh,” Joe said, clearly more interested in food than in French. “Let’s do it.”

  2.

  Dream On

  It was wicked hot for late April, almost like summer—which only added to our lazy attitudes. I had a bad case of jet lag, but Frank’s was even worse.

  We were both sitting out in our backyard, back in Bayport, USA, sipping cold lemonades brought to us by good old Aunt Trudy.

  “I hope you boys realize school starts up again on Monday,” Trudy said.

  “Aaark! School boys! School boys!” This from Playback, our pet parrot—or should I say Aunt Trudy’s pet parrot. He’s never far from her shoulder, and he’s always got something to say—usually something annoying.

  “What day is it?” Frank asked, shielding his face from the sun with the newspaper.

  “It’s Saturday, of course,” said Aunt Trudy, clucking her tongue. “You two act as if you’d been running a marathon, not spending a week’s vacation in Paris.”

  “Some vacation,” Frank muttered, and I had to agree. I was sore from head to toe, even after a last-minute visit to the hot tub in our Paris hotel.

  “I declare,” said Trudy, grabbing the tray and starting back toward the kitchen, “you boys are the laziest people I know.”

  “Lazy! Lazy!” Playback screeched.

  I thought about dousing Playback with my lemonade, but I didn’t want to get Aunt Trudy wet.

  “Joe?” Frank said when Trudy and Playback were gone. “Did you check out this headline?”

  “What headline?”

  He showed me as he read, “‘French Police Nab Notorious Art Theft Ring.’”

  “Does it mention us?” I asked.

  “Of course not. And don’t go blaming the gendarmes. You know ATAC is allergic to publicity. If we cared about getting famous, we should have set up in business for ourselves.”

  “Hmmm,” I said. “Sounds good to me. I’m sick of other people taking all the credit.”

  “You know, Joe, fame’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” Frank said. “Look at how miserable all those movie stars, famous athletes, and supermodels are.”

  “According to whom?”

  “According to all those magazines you like to look at in the supermarket checkout line.”

  I just rolled my eyes.

  “Hey, speaking of supermodels, here’s something closer to home,” Frank said, suddenly sitting up and looking more awake than he had in the past three days. “Get this: ‘Big
Diamond Jewelry Show and Auction at New Bayport Convention Center Will Feature Naomi Dowd.’”

  “Naomi Dowd? In Bayport?” I said, getting to my feet.

  In case you just arrived from Mars, Naomi Dowd is possibly the hottest supermodel alive. Blond, blue eyes, full lips . . .

  “We are so there, dude,” I said.

  “I’m afraid not,” Frank said. “Cool your jets, Joe—this show’s by invitation only.”

  “So how do we get an invite?”

  “We don’t—it’s for industry reps, buyers, jewelers—you know. And it says here that the jewelry on display—diamonds, mostly—is expected to fetch over twenty million dollars.”

  “Let me see that.” I grabbed the paper from him.

  “Hey!”

  “Let’s see . . . ah, here we go . . . ‘Up-and-coming supermodel Shakira will also be wearing the fabulous creations by world-class jewelry designers.’” I thought for a second. “Shakira—isn’t she the one who was on the cover of the swimsuit issue?”

  “Yeah. There’s a picture of her on the other page.”

  I turned the page, and sure enough, it was her—dark hair, copper skin, exotic as they come. “Man, she’s even more gorgeous than Naomi!”

  Just my type.

  Okay, Naomi Dowd is also my type. When it comes to supermodels, I’m not picky.

  “We’ve got to get an invitation, Frank,” I said. “This is too good, and too close to home to miss!”

  “Dream on,” he said. “Me, I’m going upstairs to take a nap.”

  He left me there with the Bayport Times and my lemonade. I sat back in my lounge chair, thinking about whom I’d rather date—Naomi Dowd or Shakira. It was a hard choice.

  I was just going over the two of them in my mind’s eye, when I heard the window above me shatter.

  I immediately covered my face with the paper to protect it from any falling shards of glass. “What the—?”

  I ran to the garden fence, just in time to see the bratty kid who’d thrown the rock jumping over the neighbor’s fence, and racing off on his bicycle.

  I made it to the garage in no time flat, revved up my motorcycle, and started muttering under my breath. “That kid is going to pay! Who does he think he is?”