Hannah and the Magic Eye Read online

  “Can you make it?” Clooney asked, still uncertain what kind of girl he had along.

  “Yes,” Hannah replied, and she reached for the cable. But Clooney stopped her, insisting that he, as her brave hero, must cross the clothesline first to test its safety.

  He grabbed hold of the cable. Hand over hand, he began working his way across. Just before reaching the far side, they both heard an ominous creak, and one of the antennas began to tilt. Clooney completed the last few moves and dropped safely on the far side.

  “Quickly!” he yelled. “They are coming!”

  Hannah looked up at the cable. She tested the pole of the antenna, giving it a shake. It wobbled in its footing.

  At that moment, the four thugs topped the roof and skidded to a halt.

  “Now!” yelled Clooney.

  With no other choice, Hannah reached for the cable and started across. Midway, she paused and looked down. She saw the busy alley far below, people and carts going to and fro. In her hesitation, she heard another creak and felt the cable dip a few inches as the antenna’s weakened pole began to lean.

  “Hurry!” Clooney called. “The antenna is falling! Hurry!”

  Hannah reached for the next handhold and suddenly the antenna leaned further. And then her gut clenched as the antenna tipped completely and crashed against the side of the roof, the cable dropping another ten feet.

  Hannah swung precariously from the cable, struggling to keep her grip. Looking down, she saw a canvas awning slung from one wall of the alley.

  “Swing!” Clooney yelled, instructing her to swing toward the awning and drop onto it. Hannah tried, but she couldn’t. She could barely hold on. She knew, in that instant, she was going to fall.

  Clooney backed up on the opposing roof. He got a running start and then leapt over the edge, wrapping both arms around Hannah as they collided midair. The impact of his weight swung them both toward the awning, and together they dropped onto the soft fabric, cushioning their fall, before sliding safely to the street below.

  They faced each other, hands on their knees, panting with exhilaration.

  “Just like in the movies!” declared Clooney.

  “That was fantastic!” Hannah agreed, catching her breath.

  “Was I brave?”

  She smiled and nodded. “Very.”

  “Was I trustworthy?”

  Hannah stifled a laugh. “Perhaps you are pushing it.”

  “Perhaps,” he said, casually looking off to the left, which exposed his right cheek as he tapped it, “this is the part where the sad, lost French girl decides to kiss her brave hero…”

  Four angry faces suddenly appeared on the rooftop above, the thugs yelling threats and shaking their fists in the air.

  “Not yet it isn’t,” she said, and this time it was she who grabbed his wrist and yanked Clooney away as they escaped into the crowded labyrinth of old Jerusalem.

  r

  “Here we are,” said Clooney as they entered the Jewish Quarter. “Just as I promised. Is any of this familiar?”

  Hannah looked about. It was certainly the Jewish Quarter. She could tell in an instant because every single man was dressed identically in a black suit, black tie, black-brimmed hat, and forelocks. Forelocks were like long curls that were sometimes a foot or more long, hanging just in front of each ear.

  She had once asked Henri why all the men dressed the same in the Jewish Quarter. And Henri had answered in his most scholarly voice, “I have no idea, my dear. None at all. I am Jewish myself, and it is still a mystery. But where would we be without our mysteries?”

  After a brief laugh, he explained further. He said these men were called orthodox Jews. That meant they followed the Jewish religion according to its most ancient traditions and laws. The orthodox had dressed this way for hundreds of years, and for some people, Henri said, it was enough to do a thing because others had done it before. But most importantly, their unusual traditions added spice to Jerusalem, which Henri never opposed, and Hannah had since come to feel the same.

  As Hannah glanced about, she thought she recognized a nearby café. She headed in that direction, and then a bakery became familiar too. She knew where she was.

  “This way,” she said. “We are close. Henri’s home is just up here.”

  They climbed the road winding up a steep hill. The buildings on either side were slightly more modern. There were street lamps lighting the way. They came to Henri’s door and Hannah paused, suddenly anxious.

  This was it, Henri’s home. She looked for a light in the upstairs window, but saw none. She realized she had placed all hope in reaching this place, as if some magical safety were guaranteed. But the reality was nothing had gone right today, and there was no reason to believe this would be different. And if Henri wasn’t here, she really had no idea what to

  do next.

  “Look!” said Clooney, pointing to the front door. The jam was cracked, and the door hung askew from its hinges. It had been forced open.

  Hannah’s pulse raced. Her worst fears were confirmed.

  “Hannah, wait!” said Clooney. “Where are you going?”

  “I am going in.”

  “I don’t know, Hannah. Shouldn’t we—”

  Hannah shoved the broken door open and entered the apartment. Clooney hurried to catch up.

  The foyer was small, simply a place to enter Henri’s home and hang a coat or scarf on the rack by the staircase. It was very quiet. All appeared normal. Perhaps Hannah’s imagination had run away with her, and Henri was upstairs, waiting for her in his cozy Venetian chair, reading beside the fire. Hoping beyond hope, she raced up the stairs to the apartment’s main floor and halted with a gasp before the living room.

  It was destroyed. Everything was overturned. The shelves were ripped down. The television was in pieces. The red velvet couch was slashed open, its stuffing yanked out. The blinds hung in tatters. Henri’s chair, his special Venetian where he read, had been splintered like kindling before the fireplace.

  Hannah was horrified. Without thinking, she called Henri’s name, loudly, but no one responded. With her hand against her mouth, she knew, without even needing to search the other rooms, that Henri would not be inside

  this apartment.

  The Cancellarii had kidnapped her grandfather.

  But had they found the map? The treasure map Hannah was meant to protect?

  No, she realized. They hadn’t found it. That was why they took Henri away, and that was why they were following her. They must know Henri had given her secret instructions to find it.

  Frantically, Hannah began sifting through the debris, searching for some clue. Some hint Henri might have left for her to follow. Her grandfather often contrived complex riddles for her to solve, complete with messages hidden about the apartment, or written in code, or Egyptian hieroglyphs (which he taught her to read) or even ancient Sumerian (which she was still learning).

  She started down the hall.

  “Where are you going now? What are you looking for?” asked Clooney.

  Hannah stopped and looked at him. “Do you still wish to help me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you keep a secret?”

  He nodded.

  “I am searching for a map. A treasure map.”

  Clooney’s eyes went big. “What kind of treasure?”

  “I don’t know. A treasure. It does not matter. I just know it must be found, and my grandfather is in danger until I find the map.”

  They checked the bedroom. The mattress was flipped against the wall and slashed underneath, the sheets in a tangled ball. The closet had been ransacked, its boxes emptied and strewn about. She searched the den. Every book on every shelf had been tossed into a heap in the middle of the floor. The stereo was smashed. Pictures were torn from the wall. She picked one up, shaking the broke
n glass from

  the frame.

  “Is that your grandfather?” asked Clooney.

  Hannah nodded.

  In the photograph, she and Henri were squatting side-by-side at a dig site in Jerusalem. Henri’s white hair was blown across his eyes, his bushy white mustache arched in a grin. He was pointing out some detail in the layout of the foundation stones they were uncovering. Hannah was holding back her blonde hair with one hand, smiling as well. She remembered that day. It was only last year.

  Hannah carefully placed the ruined photo atop the stereo. She returned to the kitchen. There she found the cabinet doors hung open, the dishes shattered on the floor. Nothing seemed to have escaped the demolition. She pressed her palms to her cheeks, looking about at the mess. Her skin prickled with fear. Her whole body was trembling.

  She took three deep breaths, telling herself to calm down. To think. Next, she unzipped her backpack and took out the book. She opened the front cover and once again studied the note Henri had written.

  1.Keep the map safe

  2.Beware the Cancellarii

  –

  –

  5.Remember, Hannah, you have the magic eye!

  There was more to this message, she knew it. She started thinking about how Henri had removed numbers 3 and 4 from the list, not because they were hidden, but simply to draw her attention elsewhere. Was it possible the remaining numbers 1, 2, and 5, had meaning too? What might they lead to? Where would she even look? And what if…

  She put the numbers together: 125

  On impulse, she turned to page 125 of An Illustrated Guidebook To Israel’s Historic Sites. And there it was. The answer she was looking for.

  On a page describing the building materials used to make ancient homes, there was a picture of a stone hearth, or fireplace. And the picture was circled. Henri had circled it.

  “The fireplace!” she said.

  She and Clooney raced back to the living room. Going straight to the fireplace, Hannah reached up into the chimney and immediately felt a small nook cut into the stones. And there was something inside. She pulled it out and found herself holding a book in her hands. A very old book. The leather cover was battered and worn.

  “Is this what you were looking for?” asked Clooney.

  Hannah opened the cover. She looked at the first page. There was no doubt in her mind that Henri meant for her to find this. But if this was a map, thought Hannah, it was unlike any map she had ever seen before.

  r

  The book in Hannah’s hands was clearly a journal. It was written long ago by someone named Julien Dubuisson. An ancestor perhaps? Julien’s journal entries were all written in French. The first entry described a journey from France to Jerusalem and talked of sailing conditions, and the captain’s demeanor, and the poor quality of food on the ship.

  The second entry was entirely different. No longer a travel journal, it spoke of treasure. This journal, Julien said, could be used as a map to find the treasure.

  Whereas most maps showed streets and avenues and highways, Julien’s map consisted of seven hand-drawn illustrations. He had sketched them with pencil, and they were spread all throughout the journal. Each illustration was of an actual location in Israel, though exactly where in Israel, Hannah couldn’t tell. Most unusual of all, Julien had drawn all seven illustrations upside down.

  Clooney was at this point unable to contain himself. “What does it say, Hannah? Is this the map?”

  “It is,” she said. “But I still have no idea what it leads to. Look, you see these illustrations?”

  Clooney nodded. “Why are they upside down?”

  “I don’t know. But they were drawn by someone named Julien Dubuisson, and they are like a code. Once you crack the code, these illustrations will lead you to the treasure.”

  They studied the first illustration together. Julien had drawn a large body of water, like a sea, with smoky mountains in the background.

  “It’s the Dead Sea,” she said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because it’s written right here. And that’s my grandfather’s writing. His notes are everywhere.”

  All through the journal, Hannah recognized her grandfather’s neat hand. He had packed his comments into the margins, between paragraphs, going sideways up the spine, just about anywhere he could find space to write. And right there, just beneath the illustration, Henri had written “the Dead Sea.” The illustration was upside down, which was strange in itself. But most unusual of all, her grandfather had also written three numbers.

  f.4 18 400

  As an archaeologist, Henri loved anything to do with codes, hieroglyphs, ancient symbols.

  “And what do you think those numbers mean?” asked Clooney.

  She shut the journal, considering what this meant. “I think Henri cracked the code, and these numbers are the key,” she said. “I think he solved the map. He knows where the treasure is hidden. And that’s why the Cancellarii have finally made their move.”

  “But you have the map now,” said Clooney, pointing worriedly at the journal. “Which means the people who took your grandfather… they will now be after you.”

  “They already are. Listen, I need more time here. There are more clues, and I must find them before the Cancellarii return. But I need you to get the police. They can help.”

  Clooney agreed. He sprinted off to fetch help, while Hannah gazed around at the wreckage of the apartment. When she said there were more clues here, she meant it. Clues were Henri’s specialty.

  She wandered slowly back through the house, going room to room, reexamining all she saw. This delicate glass sculpture that lay unbroken on its side—did that mean something? And over here, by the telephone, a notepad with scribbles—a secret message? A hint? Anything and everything was potentially a clue, but which ones really mattered? A detective would know the answer. So would an archaeologist.

  Hannah hopped up onto the kitchen counter and just sat for a moment. She needed to slow down. So much was happening. A part of her wanted to pound her fists on the counter and scream like a child, and she was sincerely considering this option when she noticed a box on the floor. It was a pastry box. The box was pink with black writing on the lid, and it was half-buried beneath the skillets and broken dishes and utensils on the kitchen floor.

  The thing was, Hannah already knew what was inside the box. It could only be one thing: Baklava. The honey-drizzled pastry she loved so much. It was unspoken tradition that Henri always had a box of Baklava waiting for Hannah when she arrived.

  Hannah hopped back down from the counter and carefully dug the box out. She opened it. Among the gooey pastries, covered in shaved almonds and pistachios and sprinkles of chocolate, she saw the oddest thing.

  Coiled like a serpent in the middle of the pastries was a belt. It was Henri’s belt.

  Why would Henri hide his belt in a box of pastries?

  On closer inspection she noticed writing on the belt. It was written with a thick black marker, and hurriedly by the look of it, for none of the letters were straight. Looking closer still, Hannah realized no matter how hurriedly Henri had written those letters, haste couldn’t explain why they rested at such odd angles.

  Hannah wracked her memory, running through every cipher Henri had taught her, until she recalled one of the first codes she ever learned. When Henri had shown her, he had used a ribbon in his example, but a belt would work exactly the same. The code required that the ribbon be wrapped around a cylinder, like the leg of a table for instance, and then the message was written vertically upon the wrapping.

  To make the letters on the belt line up, Hannah would need to find the same cylinder Henri had used to write the message. She tried the bannister of the stairs. After winding the belt three or four times around, she could already see it was wrong. None of the letters lined up.
/>   Hannah dug out the leg of his Venetian chair from the wreckage by the fireplace. She wrapped the belt. Again, wrong. She tried the table. She tried the pole of the coat rack in the foyer. She tried the rod from the blinds which had been ripped down from the window. Nothing worked. The letters wouldn’t line up. She tried every cylindrical item she could find in the house and then…

  Henri’s nightcane! That’s what he called the cane he used for his special walks at night. Though her grandfather was fit from all his years of working outdoors, walking alone at night through the lightless alleys of the Old City of Jerusalem was not for the faint of heart, so Henri brought his cane as protection. The cane was heavy, made of pure ebony with a solid brass cap. A sturdy weapon if swung with force.

  But the cane wasn’t in its usual place by the door. Hannah rummaged all through the house, searching each room until she found the nightcane leaning against the wall in the den between the grandfather clock and the remains of the bookcase. She stood there in the small, protected hollow. She wrapped the belt around the cane, whispering to herself, “Please Henri, give me a clue. Who are the Cancellarii? Where were you taken?”

  When she completed the last coil, the letters lined up perfectly:

  Andrepont

  A name. Andrepont was a name, a French name. But who was it?

  Hannah looked down, studying both the belt and the cane, trying to make sense of it all. For the famous archaeologist, Henri Dubuisson, expert in ancient enigmas, symbols, hidden codes, everything had a meaning. Everything. If she knew Henri—and as his granddaughter, she did—it was no mistake Hannah was now standing here, in the most concealed part of his home, with two things in her hand:

  1.A weapon

  2.A name

  She had no doubt one was now meant for the other.

  r

  Hannah heard a noise on the stairwell. She froze, straining to hear if—there! She heard it again! Someone was climbing the stairs. Hannah crouched behind the grandfather clock with cane in hand. Could it be Clooney? No, she heard voices. Several voices. The Cancellarii then? Had they returned to search for the journal once more? Or perhaps they had seen Hannah entering the apartment and were now coming