Passport to Danger Read online

  “Hi, Sylvio,” Frank said, spotting the man he’d talked to earlier. “Did you figure out what happened?”

  “No, no, no,” the man said. He was sitting at a small console with a computer and an electronic display monitor. “We don’t know,” Sylvio added. “We’re trying to find out.”

  Joe walked over to the console. It looked like the kind of sound equipment he’d seen at concerts. Frank wandered over to join him.

  “So you run this whole show with computers?” Joe said, surveying the setup. “Is that how you coordinate the launches?”

  “Si. Yes,” Sylvio answered, nodding. He seemed very nervous. “It’s all computers now. They say which fireworks we fire, when we fire them, how high they go, when they explode—everything. It’s all very… very… it’s precision, you know? So no accidents, no mistakes.”

  “Unless someone messes with the computer,” Joe said under his breath.

  “You better go,” Sylvio said. “Mr. Macri told us that no one should talk about this. I don’t want to be fired. I need my job.”

  “No problem,” Frank said. “It’s okay. We won’t tell anyone you talked to us.” He couldn’t shake the notion that Sylvio knew more than he was saying. Frank scribbled the phone number of the apartment where the Hardys were staying on a corner of paper he tore from his volunteer notebook. “If you get in trouble, just let us know. We’ll stand up for you. And feel free to call us if you find out anything more. We’ll never tell who told us.”

  Sylvio shook his head, but he pocketed the scrap of paper.

  As the Hardys left the Macri fireworks compound, Joe saw something in a short hedge, glinting in the sun. He reached under the green leaves and pulled out what looked like a small gold soccer ball. It was bigger than a charm—more like something hanging off a key chain. “Anybody drop this?” he called back to the crew, holding it up. No one stepped forward, so Joe dropped it in his pocket.

  The Hardys rejoined the volunteer squads and went back to work. “Okay, so we had a minor accident this morning with the unexploded firework canister,” the volunteer coordinator was saying as they walked up. “We’re lucky there wasn’t a big crowd here. But even if there had been, this stadium has a lot of features that can handle security problems.”

  He told them to open their security and evacuation guides. “Remember what you learned this morning. Although Le Stade can hold up to a hundred thousand spectators, they can all be evacuated in fifteen minutes because of the unique layout of the exits. If this incident had occurred when we had a full house, we would be counting on you to help with the safe and orderly removal of specatators. Okay, everybody, break into your individual teams and familiarize yourselves with your jobs.”

  Joe and Frank followed their team captain to the sidelines. When the captain called for someone to go to one of the locker rooms to gather more towels, Frank eagerly volunteered. “I’m going to take a detour through the fireworks setup,” he told Joe in a low voice. “Cover for me if the captain starts to wonder where I am.”

  When Frank reached the area that Macri Magnifico had staked out for their operations, most of the crew was gone. Frank was relieved to see that only Sylvio was still hanging around.

  “Oh no, oh no,” Sylvio said when he saw Frank walking toward him. “We’re not supposed to talk to anyone. Strict orders from Mr. Macri. No talking.”

  “Just tell me if they’ve found anything suspicious,” Frank said. “I won’t let anyone know how I found out.”

  “Ah, what difference does it make anyway?” Sylvio cried, throwing his hands up. “I’m probably going to be fired. It’s my program, so it’s my fault.”

  “Program?” Frank said, his attention focused. “Do you mean the computer program?”

  “Si,” Sylvio said. “Si, the program. They think it was my mistake, but it wasn’t. The program is different from what I created. It’s been changed. Someone has written in new trajectories—new flight plans for the effects.”

  “That throws off your whole plan, right?” Frank asked.

  “Si. That’s what happened on the field. The canister didn’t go high enough. It came down too soon, before it exploded in the air. It was like a bomb when it landed—like a grenade.” Sylvio closed his eyes and then looked back at Frank. “We don’t know how much damage is done to my program. We may have to cancel everything for tomorrow night. It’s terrible. Terrible!”

  “Who could have access to your program?” Frank asked.

  “No one!” Sylvio said. “It’s secure!” He was getting more agitated. “Go now,” he told Frank. “I am already in trouble. I will be in more trouble if they see me talking to you.”

  Frank backed out of the tent. “No problem,” he said. “Remember, I’m on your side. You have my number. Call me if you find out anything.” He couldn’t tell whether Sylvio trusted him enough to call or not. But he knew it was worth a try to encourage him to call.

  Frank hurried to the locker room to get the towels, which were kept in a corner linen closet. The room was quiet when Frank opened the door. Dim and shadowy, it was lit by only one small overhead security light that indicated the location of the exit.

  As Frank reached for the light switch, he noticed a bulky silhouette ahead. It looked like a figure kneeling near one of the benches in front of a bank of lockers. Without taking his eyes off the figure, Frank quietly closed the door behind him, but the click of the latch startled the kneeling figure. The person jumped up, and Frank slammed his hand into the light switch.

  As light bathed the room, a figure in bright red disappeared around the lockers toward another exit. Frank hurried to the bench where the person had been kneeling. His heart was pounding; he was sure he wasn’t going to like what he saw.

  He was right. There, sprawled on the floor next to the bench, was the Brazilian amateur soccer coach, Gabriel Sant’Anna.

  3 Foul Play

  * * *

  “Coach! Can you hear me?” Frank called to the still body on the floor. He checked the man’s pulse. “Whew.” Frank let out a breath of relief. “His pulse isn’t very strong,” he said to himself, “but at least he’s got one.”

  As Frank was checking the coach, the door behind him opened. “Hey,” Frank said, getting to his feet. “I need some help. Coach Sant—”

  The slamming door interrupted Frank’s words. He rushed to see who’d been there, but the hall outside was empty. Whoever had rushed out the door was gone.

  Frank ran to the security phone on the wall and called for help. Then he went back to the unconscious coach. He knew better than to move the man or try to revive him with water. But he also knew that sometimes even unconscious people can hear. So he continued to talk to Coach Sant’Anna and assure him that help was on the way.

  As Frank talked, he looked around. The coach’s left hand was twisted awkwardly under his leg. Lying under a nearby bench was a blue pen.

  The paramedics and a stadium security officer arrived quickly. Frank told the security officer what had happened and about the figure he’d seen running out of the locker room. The officer called the Paris police, then took off along the the path the mysterious person had taken.

  The paramedics administered an IV of fluids and medicines to Coach Sant’Anna and loaded him onto a gurney. When they lifted the coach’s body, Frank spotted a faint blue line on the floor. As the medics wheeled the gurney to the ambulance waiting outside, Frank knelt back down next to the bench.

  Three more blue lines were scratched on the floor under where the coach’s hand had been twisted. Together the lines formed a capital M.

  “Frank!” Joe’s voice echoed around the banks of lockers. “Frank! You in here?”

  “Over here,” Frank called out. He stood to greet his brother, Jacques, and a few other volunteers.

  “Are you all right?” Jacques asked. “We saw the medics come in, then roll someone out.”

  “It was Coach Sant’Anna,” Frank said. He decided to keep all the details to himself f
or the moment. “I found him unconscious,” he said. “I don’t know what happened.”

  “This day has been one of calamity,” Jacques observed, running his hand through his hair. “You Americans say it well: It has been unreal. Come on. We have to tell the rest of the crew what happened.”

  “You all go ahead,” Joe said. “I’ll help Frank get the towels.”

  Jacques and the others returned to the field. Frank gathered the towels he’d come to get and filled in Joe on the details of what had happened.

  “Do you think this means anything?” Joe asked, looking at the faint blue M on the floor.

  “Maybe,” Frank answered. “His hand was twisted under his body pretty near that spot, and the blue pen is under the bench.”

  “Yeah, but coaches use those markers all the time to set up plays on their clipboards. That pen could have been dropped by anyone at any time. And that looks like an M, but it could be just four scratchy lines. Maybe somebody stepped on the open pen and skidded it back and forth across the floor.”

  “Maybe,” Frank said with a nod.

  When the stadium security officer returned, Frank showed him the pen and the marks on the floor. The officer carefully picked up the pen, looked at the blue marks, and shrugged. Then he escorted Frank and Joe out of the room and closed the door.

  “Okay,” Joe said, as they walked along the hall toward the tunnel leading to the field. “So you see somebody with kind of a stocky figure, wearing a red jacket, and in the same room as Coach Sant’Anna’s unconscious body. Then you find an M scratched on the floor. So we’re thinking Sant’Anna might have been scratching out M for ‘Montie,’ right? Big, red-jacket-wearing Coach Montie Roberts?”

  “It adds up so far, but we still don’t have enough information,” Frank said. “At this point, it’s just a good guess.”

  “We need more facts,” Joe agreed.

  “And I’d like to know who popped in the door and ran back out so fast without a word,” Frank added. “That was definitely weird.”

  Back on the field, they had little time for more speculation. So much time had been lost by the incidents with the fireworks and Coach Sant’Anna, the volunteers had to work fast to finish their orientation and instructions. While they were completing their tour of the facility, Coach Roberts stomped across the field. Could he have been the one I saw in the locker room? Frank wondered. Did he have something to do with Coach Sant’Anna’s collapse?

  The team captains passed out assignments. Frank was asked to help manage the equipment for the American team. Joe was assigned to the referee squad. He would keep track of the red cards and yellow cards that referees hold up to indicate fouls and misconduct.

  It was a long but exciting work day. At the end of the afternoon, the volunteers were given T-shirts, shorts, and cool blue jackets with the logo of the tournament printed on them. They were also each assigned lockers in the equipment room so they could stash some their uniforms and anything else they didn’t want to cart back and forth to the field.

  “So, you guys have plans for dinner?” Jacques asked the Hardys as they left the stadium. They were in an old industrial part of the city outskirts that was sprinkled with factories and warehouses.

  “I don’t care where we eat, as long as it’s soon,” Joe said. “I’m totally starved.”

  “There’s some good burger places on the Champs,” Jacques said. “Even some that’ll be familiar to you.”

  They took the Metro, Paris’s subway system, to the Champs-Elysées, the grand avenue in the center of Paris that led to the Arc de Triomphe. Frank and Joe had each bought a Paris Visite card, which gave them discount rides on the Metro and city buses for five days. In a short time they were in a restaurant filled with smells of crispy pommes frites and burgers.

  “So did you hear all the rumors about Coach Sant’Anna?” Jacques asked the Hardys as they finished ordering. They took their burgers, pommes frites, and sodas to a table by the window. There they could see the constant parade of people along the Champs as they talked.

  “He didn’t just collapse or have a heart attack,” Jacques continued, stuffing French fries in his mouth. “They think someone actually attacked him.”

  Frank and Joe exchanged looks. “Who told you that?” Frank asked, chomping a bite of his burger.

  “Everyone’s talking about it,” Jacques answered. “They’re just rumors now, but I hear it’s going to be on the television news tonight.”

  “But who would attack Coach Sant’Anna?” Joe asked.

  “And why?” Frank added.

  “Well, most of the players think it was Montie Roberts,” Jacques told them. Joe coughed as he swallowed a gulp of soda.

  “It makes sense, really,” Jacques pointed out. “The amateurs from Brazil—Coach Sant’Anna’s team—are really great, and the British team’s been having problems. Everyone’s heard Monster Montie rip into opposing players and coaches.”

  “Yeah, but there’s a difference between threats and actual physical violence,” Joe pointed out. “Has he ever really hurt anyone?”

  “Only his own players,” Jacques said with a chuckle. “I’ve seen him yank some of them around pretty good.”

  Frank had a sudden vision of the figure in the locker room with Coach Sant’Anna. In his mind, he superimposed Coach Roberts’s face on the shadowy figure. “Hmm… his face would fit on the body I saw,” he whispered to himself. Then he turned back to Jacques. “I wonder how Coach Sant’Anna is. Have you heard anything about his condition?”

  “My contacts say he’s still unconscious,” Jacques answered.

  “Man, that’s rough,” Joe said, shaking his head. He took a long drink of soda.

  “I won’t be surprised if they find out that the fireworks incident wasn’t an accident either,” Jacques said.

  “So are there rumors about that, too?” Joe asked. “Does everyone think Montie had his fingers in that?”

  “Haven’t heard anything so far,” Jacques said. “The authorities seem to be holding that case a little closer to the vest, as they say. No one’s talking much about it. But if Montie’s gone beyond just bullying the opposition… ,” Jacques said, gazing out the window. “If he’s trying to sabotage the whole tournament…”

  Frank and Joe followed his gaze to the steady stream of characters walking by the window. No one spoke for a minute or two. “Maybe there’ll be more about the fireworks incident on the news tonight too,” Frank said finally, checking his watch.

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you the best part,” Jacques said. “My contacts told me that you’re going to be famous by the time the newscast is over, Frank.”

  “Me?” Frank exclaimed.

  “You bet,” Jacques said. “First, you and Joe got everyone out of the way of the unexploded firework canister; that could have been a lot worse without your heads-up. Then Frank’s the one who found Sant’Anna. You are going to be celebrities in Paris!”

  “That’s all we need,” Joe said with a grin.

  “Tell me more about Isabelle Genet and her group, Victoire,” Frank said. He wanted to change the subject. “Have they ever done anything more dangerous than lobbing tomatoes into people’s faces?”

  Joe’s grin faded. “Good question,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, that group is a prime suspect for the fireworks accident—if it was sabotage.”

  “They’ve pulled off some minor capers here and there, but nothing really life-threatening that I know of,” Jacques answered. “No one knows where their headquarters are. They just sort of materialize for their rallies and protests. I know where Isabelle lives, though. It’s in Montmartre.” He wrote down her address and drew a simple map to her house. “I’d be glad to run you by there any time. I heard she’s organized a demonstration for tomorrow morning at the Conciergerie.”

  “That’s the old prison,” Frank said. “Where Marie Antoinette was held until she went to the guillotine.”

  “That’s it,” Jacques said. “It was origin
ally a palace. But from the late fourteenth century to 1914, it was used as a prison and a torture chamber. We Parisians say that the gloomy air inside the structure is filled with the ghosts of Robespierre, Marie Antoinette, and others. Isabelle holds her rallies there often.”

  “We don’t have to report to the stadium until four,” Joe said. “Let’s go to the demonstration.”

  “Absolutely,” Frank said.

  “Good,” Jacques agreed. “I’ll meet you at ten A.M. outside the Conciergerie. See you then.”

  Jacques left, and the Hardys followed soon after. Their Metro stop was just four blocks from the apartment where they were staying. It was a quiet neighborhood with lots of leafy trees and winding streets and with very little traffic.

  “I can’t wait to tell Dad about what happened at the stadium today,” Joe said. “I hope he’s back at the apartment.”

  “He’s probably already heard about it,” Frank said. “I figure the security conference got word before anyone else. But he might not know how much we—”

  Frank never heard it coming. Like a flash of fire, a large man flew out from behind the tree. One hefty arm in a bright red sleeve shoved through the air and straight at Frank’s stomach.

  4 A Clue of Gold

  * * *

  “Ooooshhh!” When Montie Roberts’s fist slammed into his stomach, the breathy groan wheezed out of Frank’s mouth like air from a stabbed balloon. His eyes squinted shut, but he still saw bolts of electric blue and neon green behind his eyelids. The pain that started in his gut quickly shot through his arms and legs. Before he could catch himself, he dropped to his knees.

  “Hey, you maniac!” Joe yelled. He moved fast to confront Coach Roberts.

  Frank shook his head until all the colored lights and fuzzy sounds stopped. Then he stood up. Coach Roberts and Joe were sparring under the streetlight. The coach was heavier and his fists were twice the size of Joe’s, but Joe was quicker on his feet. He was able to dodge the coach’s blows and land a few of his own.