Passport to Danger Read online

  The man started to the left, then suddenly ran to the right. But Joe was on to the plan. He cut off the thief and tackled him to the floor. They wrestled for a few minutes, each trying to get the advantage. At first Joe felt like he was in a fight for his life. Then the man seemed to weaken, and Joe was able to pin him.

  “Who are you?” Joe demanded. But there was no answer.

  “Comment vous appellez-vous?” Joe asked. “What’s your name?”

  The man struggled a little, but soon gave up completely. And he remained silent. Joe could tell he wasn’t going to get the man to talk, but he also knew the stranger had no power left in him to fight. He decided to release his hold and stood up. The man dashed off, leaving Joe’s unopened backpack crumpled against the wall.

  Joe checked the bag. The man apparently hadn’t had time during the chase even to open it. All the items were safe just where Joe had placed them. And the recorder was undamaged.

  With a sigh of relief and a moan of pain, Joe walked toward the spiral staircase leading up out of the dungeon.

  • • •

  While Joe was in the Conciergerie, Frank and Jacques mingled in the Victoire demonstration. Frank nudged closer and closer to the front of the rally. At one point in her speech, Isabelle Genet looked right at him, and her mouth twisted into a thin-lipped crooked smile.

  “Do you think she recognizes me somehow?” Frank murmured to Jacques. “She looks like she knows who I am.” Frank kept watching Isabelle, who was no longer looking at him. “Jacques,” Frank said in a low voice. “Jacques?”

  Frank looked around, but Jacques wasn’t there. He peered over the heads of some of the others at the rally. He could see Jacques at the fringe of the crowd, but decided not to join him. He wanted to keep his eyes on Isabelle. He had an idea for getting her to talk to him and maybe reveal more of her plans.

  When the rally ended, Frank closed in on Isabelle. “I remember you,” she said to him as he approached. She had a deeper voice when she talked in conversation. It wasn’t as shrill as the voice she used when she was marshaling her Victoire troops for battle against progress. Up close she looked a little younger than forty, the age Frank had guessed for her the day before. But she also looked tougher.

  “You were at Le Stade yesterday,” she continued, “with your friend, tomato-face.” She gave him that crooked smile again.

  “My brother,” Frank corrected her. “And you might be sorry you did that when you hear what I have to say.”

  “I’m listening,” Isabelle said, plopping down onto a bench near the quai.

  Frank sat next to her and began his story. “My brother and I believe in what you stand for,” he said. “In fact we’d like to organize a group like yours in America. Why don’t we go get some coffee and you could give me some tips on how to get started.” He pointed to a small café on the bank of the Seine near a bridge.

  She looked at him closely, studying him. Then her eyes narrowed, and he had the sudden feeling she could read his mind. Finally her eyes widened again and she spoke. “Hmmmmm,” she purred. “How do you Americans say it? Oh, yes… NO WAY!” She stood up and strode off, without a backward look.

  Frank talked to a few of the other Victoire members, but none of them seemed to be really clear about Isabelle’s plans. He checked his watch. It was two-thirty.

  “I hope we’ve got time to eat.” Joe was also checking his watch as he walked up to Frank.

  “Hey, there you are,” Frank said. “I’ve been wondering what happened to you. You sort of disappeared.” He noticed Joe seemed to be limping a little. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Joe answered. “Just a football head butt in the side, that’s all. I’ll tell you about it over lunch.”

  They went to the little café by the bridge and filled up on soup and sandwiches. Joe told Frank about his adventure in the dungeon of the Conciergerie and played the tape he’d made. “They’re definitely talking about the stadium and the spectators,” Frank agreed. “We need to get this translated. Do you know what happened to Jacques? He disappeared about the same time you did.”

  “Nope,” Joe answered. “We’ll hook up with him at Le Stade.”

  “Good,” Frank said. “Let’s stop at the hospital,” Frank said. “I want to check up on Coach Sant’Anna.” He told Joe about his brief talks with Isabelle Genet and a few of the Victoire conspirators. “I got the feeling she didn’t believe me. I wonder if she could have figured out who we are from the news.”

  “Well, I don’t know about you,” Joe said, “but these Victoire guys smell like prime suspects to me.” He checked his watch. “Come on—let’s get to the hospital.”

  The Hardys took the Metro to the small private hospital where the coach was staying. Coach Sant’Anna had a room to himself on the third floor. As they started down the hall, they saw a guard posted at the coach’s door.

  “Can you distract him so I can sneak inside the room?” Frank whispered to his brother.

  “I’ve got just the stuff for the job,” Joe said with a grin. “Leave it to me.”

  Frank watched from his vantage point at the end of the hall. Joe sauntered down to where the guard stood and began talking to him. Frank watched as the guard responded by shaking his head. It looked as if Joe and the guard were having language problems, with Joe not understanding a lot of French and the guard not understanding a lot of English.

  Then Joe swung his backpack around and reached in to pull out the microphone/recorder. The guard plugged in the earpiece and held the recorder, and Joe disappeared around the far corner. Frank saw the guard nod his head, so he could tell that the guard heard what Joe was saying even though he was out of sight.

  When the guard started to wander away in Joe’s direction, Frank moved quickly down the hall. The guard disappeared around the corner, and Frank slipped into Coach Sant’Anna’s room.

  An acrid medicinal smell filled Frank’s nose. He walked quietly to the bed and peered down at the patient. The coach’s eyes fluttered open, and he gave Frank a weak smile and a nod. He seemed happy to have company.

  “Do you remember what happened to you?” Frank asked. The coach nodded his head.

  “Can you tell me?” Frank asked.

  Coach Sant’Anna shook his head and pointed to his mouth. Then he pointed to a pad and pen on the bedside table. Frank realized that the coach was unable to talk. He handed the paper and pen to him and waited.

  The coach scribbled a little on the top page of the pad. But he was interrupted by the shrieking voice from the doorway. “Non! Non!” a nurse cried. Frank wheeled around, but she was already gone. To get the troops, I’ll bet, Frank told himself.

  The coach tossed the notepad to Frank and nodded. Frank left the top page intact—for the police to find—and tore out the second page. He jammed it in his pocket, thanked Coach Sant’Anna, and rushed to the door in two long strides.

  He could hear people people running in the hall and their excited chatter. He checked the room for another exit, but there was nothing—not even a railing outside the window. The thumping in his chest completely drowned out the scratchy creak of the turning doorknob. Finally the door clicked open and inched toward him.

  7 Gimme a W?

  * * *

  Trapped in Coach Sant’Anna’s hospital room with no place to hide, Frank decided to take the offensive. He took a deep breath, and as the door opened, he strode toward it.

  The door swung open all the way, and the opening was filled with the large body of a police guard. His hand rested on the holster that hung from his hip. The room was dimly lit, but he glowed with the brightness in the hall. He had an odd sort of halo all around his body. Frank couldn’t see his face clearly, but he was sure the man wasn’t happy.

  “Halte!” the guard said in a deep loud voice.

  Frank stopped moving. “Pardon, pardon. Je suis Frank Hardy.”

  “Hardy?” the guard repeated, stepping into the room. He turned slightly, and Frank could see
his face better. He was a little flushed, and his eyes narrowed as he scrutinized Frank closely. “You are Frank Hardy?” he asked in English. “The one who discovered this patient at Le Stade?”

  “Yes,” Frank answered quickly. He talked very fast, hoping to convince the guard to overlook his secret visit. “I’m sorry to have intruded here. I just wanted to see Coach Sant’Anna and make sure he was okay.” He gave the guard his biggest, brightest smile.

  The guard did not smile back, but he took his hand off his holster. Then he walked over to the bed and spoke a few words to the patient. Frank watched as the coach nodded his head.

  The guard returned to Frank, took his arm above the elbow, and firmly walked him to the door. “I know who you are and what you did yesterday,” he said. “I also know you were the victim of an attack yourself last night. We are sorry you suffered such an experience in our beautiful city. And we are all grateful for your help. Now you must let us be. Do not trouble yourself any longer. Let us do our job, s’il vous plâit—please. You must take off your detective hat now and enjoy Paris. Merci. Au revoir. Thank you very much and good-bye.”

  The guard swiftly hustled Frank out the door. The teen started to say something more, but the guard turned his back and fiddled with the doorknob. Frank could tell the conversation was over, so he walked around the corner. Joe was there, waiting.

  “So?” Joe asked. “What happened? How’s the coach?”

  “Okay, I guess,” Frank answered. “He’s pretty weak and couldn’t talk. But he did give me something.” He took out the blank piece of paper he’d ripped from the coach’s notepad. “Oh, and he’s left-handed.”

  “Which means ... ?” Joe asked.

  “Well, based on how he was lying, it was his left hand that was closest to that letter on the floor. So he actually could have drawn that M with the blue marker.”

  “You don’t believe Montie’s story, then?” Joe said. “That he was set up?”

  “I’m not ruling anything out yet,” Frank declared. “It is definitely possible that someone tried to implicate Montie by knocking out Coach Sant’Anna, writing the incriminating M, then calling Montie to the scene to be discovered.”

  “Don’t forget the person who arrived just after you did and slammed the door—probably because he or she saw you. If Montie was set up, that could have been the person who did it… and then showed up so they could claim to catch Montie in the act.”

  “Or maybe to blackmail him,” Frank said, “to keep quiet about finding him there if Montie paid him. No question—that’s all possible.” Frank looked at the paper in his hand. “But it’s also possible that Coach Sant’Anna marked out that initial himself. Maybe we’ll find an answer in this note.”

  When they got outside the hospital, Frank walked over to a bench and sat down. He held up the paper to the sun and found what he was looking for. “Cool,” he murmured. “Coach Sant’Anna was strong enough to push down on the pen. I had to leave the page he wrote on in the hospital for the police.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Joe agreed. “It’s real evidence; they should have it.”

  “But he wrote hard enough that it imprinted the next page,” Frank said. He took a pencil and gently rubbed the side of the lead against the blank paper. Little by little, white lines appeared in the middle of the pencil lead smudges.

  “‘Not Mon, W,’” Frank read. The rest of the marks were just scribbles and didn’t seem to make sense.

  “‘Not Mon’ could be ‘Not Montie,’” Joe guessed. “Or ‘Not Money’? Maybe it means ‘Not Monday’? What do you think the W means?”

  Frank looked at the letters closely. “It might not be a W,” he said. “It might be two Vs instead. I thought those were just scribbles at the end, but now I’m not sure. I wish I could make them out. They might tell us whether we’ve got a W or a double V here.”

  Frank slowly turned the note around, squinting his eyes as he stared at the pale white letters. He hoped that looking at it from different angles might help him decipher the extra scribbles. When the note was completely upside down, he remembered something. “Wait a minute!” he said. “The M on the floor in the locker room—maybe that wasn’t an M. Maybe it was a W or a double V.”

  Ignoring a couple of weird looks from passersby, Frank lay down on his side on the bench in the same position that Coach Sant’Anna had been in when he found him. With the pencil, he marked the letter on the bench the way it was on the locker room floor.

  “Hey, you’re on to something here,” Joe said. “From the coach’s viewpoint on the floor, it would have to be a W—an M upside down.”

  “Or two Vs,” Frank said, sitting up. He erased the mark he’d made on the bench. “If Coach Sant’Anna wrote it with his left hand, it was definitely not an M.”

  “So what would the W be for?” Joe wondered.

  “I can’t think of anything offhand,” Frank said. “But the V sure brings something to mind.”

  “Victoire,” Joe said, putting his hand on his bruised side.

  “Let’s keep this to ourselves for a while,” Frank said, “and see what we can find out on our own.”

  Frank and Joe headed for Le Stade and arrived at about 3:45 P.M. Considering the headlines that morning, their reception wasn’t too bad. Some of the local volunteers sneered a little, making cracks about foreigners butting in where they’re not needed, and some of the others treated them like minor celebrities. But for most of the people, it was business as usual. Everyone seemed to realize how important it was to get all the kinks out of the procedures before the opening ceremonies that evening.

  “Whoa, there he is,” Joe said, pointing out Montie Roberts, who was coaching his team on the field.

  “I’m not surprised he’s here,” Frank said. “Unless I press charges for assault, that scene with him last night will be considered just a street fight.”

  “You’re talking about Montie, I’ll bet,” Jacques said, walking up to the Hardys and following Frank’s gaze. “He was bailed out last night. And he’s barred from any contact with either of you guys.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Frank said. His mind flashed to Montie’s powerful punch.

  “Plus he’s restricted from leaving the city. That’s got to be because of the suspicion that he had something to do with Coach Sant’Anna’s assault.”

  But if we’re right about the message Sant’Anna left, Frank thought, Montie might be innocent after all.

  “When the judge told him he had to stay in Paris,” Jacques added, “Montie was his usual self. He told the judge he had no intention of leaving; he had a tournament to win!”

  “Sounds like him,” Joe said, nodding his head.

  Frank felt the gold walnut in his pocket. But what about the fireworks sabotage? he thought. I’ve got to check this out.

  “Oh, by the way,” Jacques said, as if reading Frank’s mind. “They’re going ahead with the fireworks after all.”

  “They are?” Joe exclaimed. “So they must have figured out how the accident happened. Maybe it was just a fluke occurrence.”

  “Hey, guys,” Jacques said. “I have a proposal for the two of you.” He hesitated a few minutes, then began again. “I didn’t really know who you were until I heard the news. I’ll bet you’re working on both these incidents—the attack on Sant’Anna and the fireworks incident.”

  “Which might be nothing,” Joe reminded him.

  “Right,” Jacques said. “Well, I want to join up with you. The three of us will make a great team. And if I’m in on the case, I’ll be able to beat the other reporters to the story. We solve the case, and I’ll have the lead byline in every paper in Paris. And I really can help, too. I’m familiar with the local scene and have had a lot of experience as an investigative reporter. I can cut some corners for you and maybe even open some doors.”

  “At this point you already know everything we do,” Frank said. “So it looks like we’re already working together.”

  “Is your dad
in Paris?” Jacques asked. “Is he working on the case too?”

  “Actually he might be coming in for the tournament,” Joe said. If Jacques is going to be hanging around, he thought, he might run into Dad, so I’d better set it up so it makes sense.

  “Great!” Jacques said. “But for now, it’ll be just the three of us—saving Paris from the saboteurs!”

  All the final walk-throughs and rehearsals went really well, and the volunteer coordinators finally declared that the crew was ready. During the dinner break, Montie Roberts definitely went out of his way to avoid getting too close to the Hardys. Several people commented to Frank about the fight, but he downplayed the whole thing.

  When the specatators started filing in, Frank slipped away from the others and headed for the small compound where the Macri Magnifico employees were setting up the fireworks display. He wanted to ask Sylvio about his computer program and whether it really had been tampered with. But the area was completely roped off, and several guards were posted along the ropes. Frank had to leave without even seeing Sylvio.

  Le Stade filled quickly for the opening ceremonies. The spectators had come from all over Europe and South America, and there was a large crowd from the United States to support its team too.

  “I’m starting to get pumped,” Joe told his brother. They were standing on the sidelines with the rest of the equipment squad volunteers watching a marching band lead the parade of teams onto the field.

  “Me too,” Frank agreed. “But I wish I’d talked to Sylvio.” He couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right. He looked around the stands, scanning the exits. All he could see were at least a hundred thousand people yelling, colorful banners waving, groups holding up signs in different languages, and uniformed guards, who were also scanning the crowd.

  Down on the field the marching band stood at attention at one end, but a rock band held center stage. The spectators first cheered for their teams as they were introduced. Then they screamed and applauded for the singers, dancers, and musicians that performed. The music roared from the speakers, and a young French singer held her own over the crashing chords.