At the end of the block, Irina crossed the street and ducked inside a wrought-iron gate. She walked up to a large marble building that looked like an embassy or something. Dan hid behind a gatepost and watched as Irina punched a security code and went inside.
"Look at the gate," Amy said.
In the center was a gold-lettered sign that read:
INSTITUT DE DIPLOMATIE INTERNATIONALE
INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMACY
[proofreader's note: the left side of the sign shows a sword with two snakes curled around it]
"The Lucian crest!" Dan said. "But what's an institute for, um, whatever that means?"
"I guess it's like a school for ambassadors," Amy said. "But don't you get it? That's just a cover. You remember what Jonah said? Paris is a Lucian stronghold."
Dan's eyes lit up. "This must be their secret base!"
Amy nodded. "The question is what do we do?"
"We go in," Dan said.
"Right. Without the security code?"
"5910. I watched her punch it in."
Amy stared at him. "How did you -- never mind. Let's go. But be careful. They probably have cameras and guard dogs and stuff."
They squeezed inside the gate and ran up the front steps. Dan punched in the code.
The door opened easily. No alarms went off. No guard dogs barked.
"Weird," he muttered. But it was too late for second-guessing. They slipped inside the Lucian base.
The entry hall was bigger than their whole apartment. The floor was polished marble and a chandelier hung from the ceiling. A set of black doors stood in front of them. On the left, a spiral staircase led up to a balcony.
"Look." Dan pointed above the doors. A surveillance camera was sweeping the room.
It was angled away from them, but it wouldn't be for long.
Then he heard voices from behind the double doors -- someone coming in their direction.
"Quick!" He ran for the stairs. Amy looked like she wanted to argue, but there was no time. She followed him up.
Dan's heart pounded. He'd always thought it would be cool to play burglar and sneak into someone's house, but now that he was doing it for real, his hands were sweating.
He wondered if the French still threw burglars into rat-infested dungeons. He'd seen something like that once in a musical Grace took them to.
They sneaked along a second-floor hallway.
"I don't get it," Dan whispered. "Irina must be a Lucian. Benjamin Franklin was a Lucian. Does that mean Franklin was one of the bad guys?"
"Maybe it's not that simple," Amy said. "Look."
Painted portraits hung along the walls -- Napoleon Bonaparte, Isaac Newton, Winston Churchill, a few others Dan didn't recognize.
"More famous Lucians," Amy guessed. "Not necessarily good or bad. But definitely a lot of powerful people."
"And we just invaded their house," Dan said.
They passed a row of heavy oak doors, all of them closed. One was labeled LOGISTIQUE. Another read CARTOGRAPHIE. The last door on the right read ARSENAL.
"Sweet!"
"Dan, no!" Amy whispered, but she was too late to intercept him. Dan opened the arsenal door and slipped inside.
A little late, he considered that it might not be a good idea to enter a room full of weapons if there was already someone in there. Fortunately, there wasn't. The arsenal was about thirty feet square and full of amazingly cool stuff: crates of cannonballs, racks of knives, swords, canes, shields, and umbrellas. Dan wasn't sure about the umbrellas, but he figured they did something besides just stop the rain.
"We shouldn't be here!" Amy hissed.
"Gee, you think?" Dan picked up a shoebox-size wooden crate full of glass tubes with copper wires twined around the tops. "Hey, it's one of those Franklin batteries, like in the museum."
Amy's eyebrows furrowed. "What's it doing in an arsenal?"
"Don't know, but I'm collecting it!" Despite Amy's protests, Dan stuffed the battery in his backpack. It fit because the pack was pretty much empty. The only other thing he had in there was the picture of his parents, wrapped in its plastic sleeve, which he'd decided to keep with him for good luck.
A Styrofoam egg carton caught his eye. He opened it and found a single silver orb with little blinking red lights. "This is cool, too!" He dropped it into his backpack.
"Dan, no!"
"What? They've got plenty of other stuff, and we need all the help we can get!"
"It could be dangerous."
"I hope so." He was admiring the shurikens and thinking he might take some of those, too, when a door slammed somewhere down the hall.
"Better know what she's doing," a man said in English. "If she's wrong -- "
A woman responded in French. Both voices faded down the corridor.
"Come on," Amy insisted.
"Now."
They poked their heads out to make sure the hall was clear, then sneaked out of the arsenal and deeper into the building. At the end of the hallway was another balcony, this one looking down on a big circular room. What Dan saw below reminded him of a military command center. There were computers along the walls, and in the middle of the room was a conference table that seemed to be one huge flat screen TV. Irina Spasky was alone, leaning over the tabletop. Stacks of papers and folders sat next to her. She was punching commands on the tabletop, making images zoom or shrink. She was looking at a satellite map of the city.
Dan didn't dare speak, but he locked eyes with Amy.
I want one of those, he told her.
Amy's expression said