Vespers Rising (The 39 Clues #11)(33)

She withdrew, feet dragging, the bag heavier than ever. Briefly, she considered using the money to buy a plane and trying to fly herself, but quickly abandoned the idea. She did not yet have her pilot’s license, and her navigation skills were as likely to take her to Sweden as North Africa.

A feeling of helplessness took hold in her gut. If no pilot would fly her, what could she do? She couldn’t pogo-stick across the Mediterranean!

She was climbing back on her bike when a low, heavily accented voice startled her.

“Why you want to go there?”

The dark, unshaven man who stood before Grace was built like a stone toad — short, with no neck and a torso so hulking it didn’t seem likely that he’d fit in a cockpit. Part of the problem might have been his voluminous ratty fur coat that looked like it had come from a woolly mammoth.

“Are you a pilot?” she asked.

“Is war in Casablanca,” he persisted. “Why you want to go?”

“That’s my business,” she told him sharply.

“My business is staying alive,” he told her evenly. “If I have brains, I don’t go there. If I have money, I don’t go there.”

“And do you have those things?” Grace asked, trying to hide her eagerness.

“It will cost much,” he warned.

“I’ll pay you ten thousand American dollars.”

The man’s bushy eyebrows jumped, but his voice remained impassive. “Twenty — in advance.”

“All right. Twenty — when we get there.”

“How I know you have this money?” he demanded.

Grace shrugged. “How do I know you have a plane?”

He grunted. “Come back — midnight. Wear black. You bring money. I bring plane. If anybody asks, you never spoke to Drago.”

Grace had the audacity to fly into a war zone in search of an invading general, but she lacked the courage to return to the villa. Once reunited with baby Fiske — and even disagreeable Beatrice — she was afraid she might never leave again.

At a store by the palace, she bought black slacks, a black blouse, black boots, and a black leather coat. The clothing was expensive, designed for hobnobbing with high society, not for a desperate night flight. Still, money was the one thing she had plenty of — as opposed to wisdom, or experience, or even a clear plan of what she was going to do once she got to Casablanca. If this was her first test as a Cahill, she was pretty sure she was failing miserably.

She toyed with the idea of renting a locker for her old clothes but ended up throwing them in the trash. This was no game. Operation Torch was an actual shooting battle. There was a very real chance that she might not survive this adventure. But even if she did somehow come through it all, she had a sense that she’d never be the same again. The Grace Cahill who wore frilly flower-print dresses and adored romantic novels and movies was gone forever.

As night fell, her thoughts returned to her family. Were they anxious about her back at the villa? Probably. She could only hope that Beatrice would hold off calling the police until Grace was airborne.

11:55. She pushed her bicycle into a drainage ditch, hefted the briefcase, and walked out onto the deserted airfield. All was dark except for a dim light coming from one low hangar. She made for it, heart pounding in her ears.

As she drew closer, the biplane came into focus — hulking, dilapidated, patched with tape and fabric. Crudely painted on the fuselage was a name: OLGA.

A gasp of dismay escaped Grace.

Drago loomed out of the shadows. “You were expecting brand-new B-29?”

“No — it’s just — can this thing make it to Casablanca?”

“No,” Drago replied.

“No?!”

“The fuel will take us as far as airstrip I know near Valencia, Spain. From there Olga can reach Casablanca.”

Grace regarded the aircraft. “It doesn’t look like Olga can get off the ground.”

Drago was insulted. “My Olga won the first Zurich-Mombasa air race. She dropped supplies to partisans in Seville. She landed in cyclone in Istanbul when it was still called Constantinople.”

She sighed. “I guess we’d better get going, then.” She reached into the briefcase and pulled out a fat bundle of bills. “Ten thousand. And another ten when we get there.”

He snatched up the money and stuffed it into the depths of his voluminous coat. “I am not greedy. Ten thousand is plenty if it means I don’t have to go to Casablanca and get killed. Farewell, foolish girl.”

Grace was outraged. “We had a deal!”

“Here is advice to pass to your grandchildren someday: Trust no one.”

In a rage, Grace brought the heel of one of her new boots down on his soft shoe. He howled in pain and reached for her, but she was already vaulting into the cockpit of his plane, pulling down the canopy as she dropped to the seat. In a flash, she had the engine running and was beginning to taxi out of the hangar.

He tried to block her way until the whirling propeller drove him back. He watched in astonishment as his beloved Olga rolled out onto the tarmac and headed for the runway. In a horrified instant, he realized that the plane was not stopping.

Drago sprinted headlong across the airfield and hurled himself onto the lower wing of the biplane. Undeterred, Grace began to taxi in a serpentine motion in an effort to shake him off. Hanging on for dear life, he crawled between the struts to the fuselage, reached up, and managed to flip open the canopy. “Stop!”