Arkie Sparkle Treasure Hunter: Code Crimson Read online

  7 treasures

  7 continents

  7 days

  7 books

  6 changes of clothes

  5 suspicious sightings

  4 close shaves

  3 wrong turns

  2 maps

  1 treasure hunter

  p.s. + 1 treasure hunter’s helper

  p.p.s. ++ 1 treasure hunter’s helper’s super-snooper dog

  The biggest treasure hunt in the world is about to begin

  Eleven-year-old Arkie Sparkle’s archaeologist parents have been kidnapped. With the help of her genius cousin TJ and basset hound Cleo, she must find seven treasures across the seven continents in seven days.

  CODE CRIMSON

  DAY 1: Egypt

  A golden queen, a famous pharaoh, greedy explorers, a pair of pyramid pants

  Arkie Sparkle must find the first treasure in the temple of the famous Egyptian pharaoh, Ramses II. But first she has to find the temple, buried deep in the sands of the Sahara Desert.

  Contents

  Cover

  Blurb

  Epigraph

  Treasure Hunter’s Diary

  Home Alone

  Code Crimson

  Super Speedy

  Egyptian Dawn

  TJ’s Style File

  The Temple of the Gods

  Sun Ray, Sun Say

  Time Slip

  A Boy Called Abu Simbel

  Stealing Away

  The Eye of the Storm

  Debrief

  What Next?

  In Real Life

  treasure hunter / n 1. a person who hunts for wealth or riches or jewels or gold statues or anything that is treasured by someone.

  2. Arkie Sparkle

  Treasure Hunter’s Diary

  This is my last entry in the diary.

  I know you’re just beginning the story so it won’t make much sense to you yet but TJ says that beginnings and endings belong together. Like green eggs and ham, marshmallows and jam. Courage and fear.

  One without the other is only half the picture, and I want you to see the whole picture.

  I’ll never forget what happened but, sometimes, I almost feel as though it happened to someone else — not me, Arkie Sparkle.

  Maybe we’ll talk about it one day.

  I’d like that.

  Love from Arkie xox

  Home Alone

  Arkie Sparkle found the note at 3.05 pm.

  She knew exactly what time it was because HAL, the House ALarm, had beeped her in five minutes earlier.

  ‘Welcome, Arkie,’ HAL had said as she finished entering the code ARKS-323. ‘Gate opening sequence initiated in 60 seconds 55 . . . 40 . . . 30 . . . 30 . . . 20 . . . 10 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . ’

  HAL kept a precise record of all their comings and goings. Ted Sparkle, Arkie’s dad, said that patterns were important. They told you things about people.

  ‘Xie xie, HAL,’ said Arkie as the iron gate creaked open and clanged closed behind her.

  ‘Bu yong xie, Arkie,’ said HAL.

  Arkie was learning Mandarin at school and HAL was helping her with essential vocabulary such as ‘thank you’, ‘you are welcome’, and ‘fried rice, please’ – wo yao chao fan (Arkie’s mum said you should never be hungry in another language).

  Arkie swung her schoolbag over her shoulder and walked up the drive to her house. Her dark brown hair was still wet from swimming squad, and her t-shirt stuck to her skin.

  She knew she had five minutes to reach the front door, which opened automatically once the gate had been activated.

  The Sparkles lived in the last house on Artemis Street, bordering a huge forest where trees blocked every sliver of sunlight. Sometimes the house almost disappeared in the shadow of their branches.

  As Arkie passed the rose and magnolia bushes and followed the curve of the driveway up to the house, she could see that the front door was ajar.

  That’s weird, she thought. The door shouldn’t be opening for another . . . she checked her watch . . . 12 seconds. Maybe HAL’s had a glitch?

  Then Arkie saw that a bag of shopping was propping the door open. A carton of eggs had fallen out and a couple of the eggs had cracked. Their yellow goo trickled down the sides.

  We’ve got a new treasure hunt, thought Arkie. Broken eggs – they’re a sure sign.

  Martha Sparkle, Arkie’s mum, often forgot things like unpacking the shopping, cooking and eating when she had caught the scent of a hunt.

  Arkie picked up the bag of shopping, walked through the hall and into the kitchen. ‘MUM, DAD,’ she shouted as she dropped the bag by the kitchen bench. ‘I’m home. Where’s the hunt? What’s for dinner? S T A R V I N G.’

  Her words echoed through the kitchen. A half-eaten sandwich and a cup of tea were on the bench, next to the latest edition of the Archaeological Society’s magazine. Her dad’s glasses were sitting on top of it.

  Arkie touched the side of the cup. It was still warm.

  Even weirder, thought Arkie. Mum must be downstairs in the THinc Tank. She’s probably downloading files onto datamax and Dad will be refuelling BLUR. And I’d better recharge Codemode.

  Arkie thought of their last treasure hunt three weeks ago in Mesopotamia. They had just crossed a rickety wooden bridge swinging high above the icy depths of a river, slithered through a narrow airshaft, and were one code away from discovering the lost tomb of Queen Puabi of Ur, when Codemode ran out of power.

  Luckily, her dad remembered Point 42b from the Treasure Hunter’s Handbook. He took the battery out and sat on it. ‘If you warm up a battery on the blink,’ he had said, ‘you can squeeze out just a little more energy before it kaputs completely.’

  Dad’s smart like that, thought Arkie. He’s the best treasure hunter in the world.

  She sniffed the air hopefully. Nope. No cooking smells. Takeaway pizza for dinner, she thought. But I need something to eat right now. I’m ravenous.

  She headed straight for the third shelf in the pantry. The chocolate-chip cookie jar.

  But when she opened it, Arkie gasped.

  There was only one cookie left in the cookie jar.

  Dad is such a cookie guts, she thought.

  That’s when she saw the note. It was folded up underneath the cookie.

  Arkie smiled as she started to eat the cookie and picked up the note.

  Her dad was always leaving coded notes around the house, asking her to finish her homework; file the expedition notes from their recent hunt; unpack the dishwasher; or write the entry for ‘L’ in the ‘Top Tips for Treasure Tracking’ in the Treasure Hunter’s Field Guide he was compiling.

  Sometimes the notes were in special spy codes. Or Greek. Or Latin.

  ‘The languages of the past are the key to the future,’ Ted Sparkle often said. He liked the picture languages best.

  Last week, Arkie had taken a sick note to school in Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.

  Mrs Malakoff, her teacher, had frowned as she had turned the note one way, then the other. ‘Why can’t your parents be like other parents?’ she had sighed, filing the note under IP for Impossible Parents.

  Arkie thought her parents were like other parents until she started school. She could still remember the shocking moment when she realised that other parents didn’t travel around the world digging up old cities and finding treasures.

  Some of them even had nine to five jobs.

  Arkie Sparkle’s parents were archaeologists and treasure hunters, commissioned by museums or other cultural institutions to travel around the world searching for lost treasures.

  They had known Arkie was going to join the family business when
she was two and they were on a dig in Pompeii.

  Her mother had been dusting dirt away from the small statue of a Roman house god.

  ‘T is for Trivia,’ she had said, ‘the Roman goddess of witchcraft and the Queen of Ghosts.’

  Her father had been roping off a new area for excavating. ‘And T is for the mighty Titans,’ he had said.

  ‘Arkie,’ her mother had said. ‘T is for —’

  ‘TREASURE,’ Arkie had shouted, clutching the half-chewed plastic spoon she had just found buried in a pile of dirt.

  Her father had clapped with delight. ‘That’s my little Sparkle,’ he had said. ‘It’s time to put the “inc” into “TH”, Martha.’

  Arkie loved to hear that story about finding her first treasure. She made her parents tell it again and again. And she still had the plastic spoon. It was in her jewellery box, next to the gold scarab beetle broach Aunt Edie had given her. (Edie was in another branch of the treasure-hunting business.)

  Arkie licked the last cookie crumb off her THinc ring and unfolded the note on the kitchen table.

  She started to read.

  Arkie dropped the note.

  A deadly chill spread through her – more deadly than the chill that froze her words on speech day last Wednesday.

  Ted and Martha Sparkle had been kidnapped.

  Code Crimson

  Arkie raced to her schoolbag and pulled out a red mobile – the THinc hotline.

  It was used for AEs – Archaeological Emergencies.

  ‘CODE CRIMSON!’ she shouted.

  Then she dropped the phone and crumpled onto the floor, trying to breathe, the words in the note cascading through her head:

  WEHAVESTOLENYOURPARENTSWEHAVE

  STOLENYOURPARENTSWEHAVESTOLEN

  YOURPARENTSWEHAVESTOLENYOUR

  PARENTSWEHAVESTOLENYOURPARENTS

  WEHAVESTOLENYOURPARENTSWEHAVE

  Theodora Junior arrived 1 minute and 28 seconds later. She was wearing her special response sunglasses and a polka-dot action headband. Her blue eyes were glowing with excitement.

  Cleopatra, TJ’s basset hound, followed five seconds later, skidding to a stop with slippery, s l i d i n g paws.

  Arkie’s first cousin, best friend and undervalued genius – TJ – lived next door. She was a standby member of THinc. Her parents said that when she was sixteen they’d consider giving her permission to fly around the world on treasure hunts. ‘Five years on standby,’ TJ lamented nearly every week. ‘My parents are so unreasonable!’

  Luckily, TJ had been preparing for an exciting life since she had taught herself to read from The Encyclopaedia Britannica when she was two. She was ready for a Code Crimson.

  ‘My best response time yet,’ she puffed, clicking her stopwatch. ‘Although one of us licked our dog bowl before leaping into response mode.’ She frowned at Cleo who was sniffing the floor for food. ‘You’re such a dog sometimes, Cleo,’ she said. ‘Well, what’s up, Arkie? I hope it’s important. I was watching reruns of Junior Genius.’

  ‘It’s Mum and Dad,’ said Arkie. ‘LOOK.’ She held out the note. ‘It was under a chocolate-chip cookie.’

  TJ read the note, her face creasing with shock. ‘A ransom note? Uncle Ted and Aunt Martha have been kidnapped?’ She looked up at Arkie. ‘It’s not an early April Fool’s joke, is it?’

  ‘No,’ said Arkie. ‘Mum and Dad would never scare me like this. Mum hates practical jokes. She says that giving someone a fright is not practical. The note’s for real – I’m sure it is. The door was open when I got home and Dad’s tea was untouched. And you know how he loves security and a cup of tea.’

  ‘Have you called the police?’ said TJ.

  ‘No, just you. I needed someone calm and logical. And the note says not to call the police. We need to do exactly what it says. Mum and Dad are in terrible danger already. We can’t make it any worse. We can’t tell anyone – not even your parents.’

  TJ inspected the note more closely. ‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘What about the curly Z at the end of the note? Do you know anyone called Zac, Zander, Zacheus or Zena?’

  ‘No, no, no, no,’ said Arkie, shaking her head.

  ‘Well, the ransom note itself is the standard kind,’ said TJ. ‘It’s mixed-up typefaces from old newspapers and magazines. Looks to me like they used the website Faster ransom notes for busy kidnappers. It’s brilliant if you don’t have time to chop up old newspapers, or don’t want to rummage in the stinky recycling bin, but it’s not going to tell us much. Where’s the chocolate-chip cookie?’

  ‘I ate it,’ said Arkie.

  TJ slapped her forehead. ‘Geez, Arkie. You ate the evidence. How can I examine the cookie for DNA or fingerprints if it’s inside your stomach combining furiously with hydrochloric acid. It’s probably en route to your small intestine already.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t know it was evidence when I ate it,’ said Arkie. ‘It was still just a chocolate-chip cookie.’

  TJ read the note aloud.

  ‘The kidnapper isn’t very good at poetry,’ she said.

  ‘The rhymes in the last two lines are so predictable.’

  ‘That’s because they’ve given up poetry and taken up kidnapping,’ said Arkie.

  ‘Yeah, it probably pays better,’ said TJ. ‘I don’t think poets make much —’

  ‘TJ,’ shouted Arkie. ‘FOCUS. What are we going to do?’

  ‘Find your parents, of course,’ said TJ. ‘Okay. Let’s think like evil kidnappers. Why did they put the note under the cookie?’

  ‘Because,’ said Arkie, thinking, ‘they knew I’d find it there.’ She could hear her dad’s voice in her head. Patterns, Arkie. See the patterns. ‘I always go straight to the cookie jar after school.’

  She stared suspiciously at the pots and pans hanging on hooks in the kitchen. ‘Maybe they’ve been watching us.’

  ‘But who?’ said TJ. ‘And why?’

  Arkie took the note again. ‘I don’t know but Mum and Dad are out there somewhere. Probably in a damp dark dungeon with rats. And Mum hates rats. She says they’re the worst part of being a treasure hunter. We need to find them, TJ.

  It says the first clue is close to my heart so let’s start by looking in the house. Spread out. We need to search everywhere. Here, Cleo,’ she said, putting the ransom note under Cleo’s nose. ‘Find the clue.’

  Cleo wagged her tail and set off, nose to the ground.

  ‘Try not to eat the clue this time, Arkie,’ shouted TJ as she disappeared into the study.

  Two hours later, they’d searched upstairs and downstairs – in the basement, the garage, the attic.

  They were slumped on the leather couch in the THinc Tank, the underground headquarters of THinc. The walls were covered with faded old maps and post-it notes, and a Zulu spear was suspended – pointy end down – above the large mahogany desk. Arkie’s dad said danger helped him think.

  ‘We’ve found nothing,’ said Arkie. ‘It’s not going to be much of a clue if we can’t find it. We need a clue to the clue. This is disastrous.’

  ‘Where’s Cleo?’ said TJ, looking behind the couch and under the stairwell. ‘Cleopatra. Meeting.’

  Cleopatra came clanking down the spiral staircase, her ears swaying with each step. She was dragging a jacket behind her.

  ‘Hey, that’s my jacket,’ said Arkie. ‘What are you doing with it, Cleo?’

  As Cleo came closer, they could see she also had a piece of paper in her mouth.

  ‘Great,’ said TJ as she tugged the paper out of Cleo’s mouth. ‘Another eater of clues.’ She bent down to talk to Cleo. ‘Remember point 29 of How to be a Better Hound, Cleo?’ she said. ‘Paper is not food. You don’t eat the mail, my homework or kidnapper’s clues.’

  Cleo nuzzled into TJ’s hand and looked at her with sad eyes.

  ‘That’s okay, girl,’ said TJ, tickling her under the chin. ‘You’ll get it right next time.’

  ‘The front pocket’s all soggy,’ said Arkie, holding the jacket at arm�
��s length. ‘Cleo must have slobbered all over it.’

  ‘That’s because the paper must have been in the pocket,’ said TJ. ‘We’re talking about a hound with an insatiable nose for clues, remember.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Arkie. ‘Clever Cleo. The pocket. That’s right on top of my heart.’

  TJ flattened the paper out on the table. ‘And this is without a doubt a clue,’ she said. ‘It’s got the same curly Z.’

  She whipped out a hairbrush from her handbag, unscrewed the handle and folded it out into a miniature microscope. She put the note on a slide and looked through the lens. ‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘Dog saliva and partially digested dog food: chopped liver, carrots and a hint of coriander.’

  ‘What’s that in the corner?’ said Arkie, peering over TJ’s shoulder.

  ‘Definitely of ancient origin,’ said TJ.

  ‘Wait a nanosecond,’ said Arkie. ‘I know what it is. It’s the cartouche for Ramses II, the great pharaoh of Egypt.’

  ‘How in Ancient Egypt did you know that?’ said TJ, looking impressed.

  ‘Dad signed himself as Ramses II on my sick note, last week,’ said Arkie. ‘He thought it would make Mrs Malakoff laugh.’ She sighed. ‘It didn’t.’

  ‘What about that cartouche?’ said TJ, pointing to the other symbols on the paper.

  ‘Let’s see what DATAMAX says,’ said Arkie, picking up a small tablet and scanning the cartouche. DATAMAX was linked to all the databases of museums around the world so THinc always had the most up-to-date archaeological information.

  ‘Analysis confirmed,’ she said, when DATAMAX beeped. ‘It’s Queen Nefertari’s cartouche. She was Ramses’ no. 1 wife.’

  ‘Number 1?’ said TJ. ‘How many wives did he have?’