Read Online The 39 Clues: Cahills vs. Vespers Book 2: A King's Ransom by Jude Watson - Free Book Online

must be a New Yorker,” the man said. “I love New York.
The Lion King
— excellent show!”
    Dan turned to go.
    “I don’t think I caught your name,” the man said.
    “I didn’t throw it,” Dan said.
    He left the place and walked quickly back to the tram stop. On the way, he tossed the Yankees cap into the trash can. Too many questions. The guy was probably harmless. But he couldn’t take a chance.

    Vesper Two read the text message and smiled.
    Dan Cahill had made several interesting purchases while in Basel. Sending out that alert to all chemical supply houses had been a brilliant stroke. Amazing what the promise of a little money could do. If someone comes asking to buy odd items, please let us know. We will make it worth your while.
    So, just as Vesper Two had thought. He was collecting the Clues, thirty-nine ingredients for the serum.
    The serum could change everything. And the only one who had the formula was Dan Cahill.
    Vesper One didn’t have to know just yet. He wasn’t convinced that Dan could be turned. Not yet. He didn’t realize completely that the ties of blood could work in their favor.
    Not yet. But soon.

Amy leaned back and rubbed her eyes. She had window after window of research stacked on her computer. She’d spoken to Evan and Ian and Sinead. They’d thrown theories at each other, random facts, odd bits, wild guesses, hoping something would stick. Nothing did.
    “Talk to me, Jane,” she said aloud. “You were a rich girl, used to comfort. London was being bombed. Why did you stay? Why did you stay in Germany so long in the thirties?
Who are you?
”
    She typed in
Jane Sperling
and
World War II
and scrolled through the results. She clicked on a page called Down Easterner, a small-town paper in Angel Harbor, Maine. Amy quickly scanned the article, an obituary for Jane Sperling. She had died at age ninety-two. The obituary documented her early life, her studies at the University of Chicago, and then the war years.
    “
Yes, I stayed in London during the Blitz. Oh, heavens, I was never heroic. Just a secretary for the OSS — I translated documents and things from German to English. Because I’d lived in Germany before the war. I never look back. The things I did are done now. All down the drain.”
    “OSS,” Amy muttered. She did a quick word search. The Office of Strategic Services was the spying arm of the American government during the war!
    Amy clicked back to the research Evan and Ian had sent. Professor Hummel had turned out to be one superbad Nazi. He’d risen to major and had been involved in a group called the
Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg
, which, as Evan put it, was quite a mouthful for “dirty despicable thieves.” They were also known as the ERR, Hitler’s special group that stole art and artifacts and property from Jewish families. The artworks were shipped to Paris and stored at a museum called the Jeu de Paume. There, the art was cataloged, inventoried, and crated, then sent to Germany. Hundreds of thousands of looted treasures from world-famous artists: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Van Gogh. Hummel was a high-ranking officer in charge, valuable because of his knowledge of medieval art.
    “So, Herr Hummel,” Amy murmured, “you were a thief.”
    Near the end of the war, as the Allies began bombing German cities, the Nazis got nervous. They moved the art to salt mines and caves and castles in the Bavarian Alps. It all would have worked except for a few inconvenient facts. One: The Nazis lost the war. Two: In 1943, a section of the Allied army was formed called the Monuments Men. After the invasion they traveled with the front lines, charged with finding the artworks and returning them to their rightful owners.
    “The Nazis were evil, but what made them so especially chilling is that they were really
organized
about it,” Evan had explained. “They kept records of everything they stole. So when the Allied armies moved in, they found everything