“It’s not even high definition!” he complained. “What is this, the Middle Ages?”
His mother, Natalie Cooper, stood in the doorway; she had come from the room next door to check on her children. She was basically an older version of Sarah: tall, slender, and olive-skinned, with wide-set, dramatically dark eyes. And like her daughter, Natalie had a black belt in sarcasm.
“I know!” she said, gesturing at the children’s elegantly furnished room. “It’s so primitive. We’ll probably have to kill our own food.”
Sarah, lying on her bed, snorted.
“Go ahead, laugh,” said Aidan.
“Thanks, I will,” said Sarah.
“Tom,” Natalie called over her shoulder. “Did you bring the squirrel gun?”
Her husband appeared in the doorway behind her, a tall, rumpled, bespectacled man with a prominent chin and nose. He looked vaguely distracted, as he always did except when he was examining antiques.
“Did I bring the what?” he said.
“Never mind,” said Natalie, exchanging eye rolls with her daughter. She turned to her son and said, “Aidan, we didn’t come to London to watch television. We’re here to do things.”
“Not now, I hope,” said Sarah, sitting up and looking at herself in a wall mirror. “I have airplane hair.”
“Your hair does that,” said Natalie, “because you—”
“I know, I know,” interrupted Sarah. She imitated her mother’s lecture voice: “‘You use too much hair spray, young lady.’”
“Well, you do,” said Natalie. Sarah had taken to wearing her hair in a retro style that she sprayed constantly from a can of intensive-hold hair spray she carried with her everywhere. Natalie hated the hairstyle; currently this was the topic of eighty percent of all conversations between mother and daughter.
“So what are we gonna do?” said Aidan, who was sick of the hair debate.
“Well,” said Tom, “we’re going to start this afternoon with a tour of London on a double-decker bus. Then we’ll…”
He went on for several minutes, giving a detailed schedule of tours, museum visits, and excursions. When he finished, Natalie said, “So you see, there won’t be time to watch television.”
“There won’t be time to go to the bathroom,” said Aidan.
“Will we have any free time?” asked Sarah. She and her brother exchanged glances.
“Sure, you’ll have some time on your own,” her father answered.
“As long as we know where you are,” added her mother.
“Of course,” said Sarah, with another glance at her brother. Both of them made a point of not looking at Sarah’s backpack, which contained the mysterious document they’d found in the desk.
“All right, then,” said Tom. “We leave for the bus tour in a half hour.”
“My hair!” said Sarah, heading for the bathroom.
Tom and Natalie returned to their room to continue unpacking. Aidan flopped on his bed and turned on the TV.
“Hey!” he said. “They have Family Guy!”
“Finally!” said his mother from the other room. “A sign of civilization!”
After three busy days filled with planned activities, Sarah and Aidan were finally able to get some time on their own. Telling their parents that they were going to explore the neighborhood—which was technically true, as Sarah pointed out to her brother—and promising to be back for dinner, they set out from the Cadogan in the late afternoon. It was a sunny and unusually warm day for June in England; the sidewalks were crowded with sightseeing tourists and Londoners trying to get home.
Sarah studied the Google map directions she’d printed out back in Pennsylvania.
“This way,” she said, pointing south on Sloane Street. “Half a mile.”
Less than fifteen minutes later they reached the north end of Draycott Place, a four-block street lined on both sides with red brick buildings.
“Okay,” said Sarah. “In the book, the hotel was called the Scotland Landing. But according to Google there’s no Scotland Landing here now.”
“So why exactly are we here?”
“Because maybe one of these buildings used to be the Scotland Landing.”
“How are we gonna find it?”
“We’ll just walk down the street and see…whatever we see,” said Sarah.
“Wow,” said Aidan. “Clever.”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “I’ll take the left side of the street,” she said. “You take the right.”
They set off, one on each sidewalk, studying the buildings. They all looked pretty much alike; most appeared to be residences. After two blocks Sarah was starting to become discouraged. As they neared the end of the third block, her discouragement was turning to embarrassment.
What was I thinking? she wondered. Getting all excited about a stupid story…
“Sarah!”
Aidan’s shout interrupted her thoughts. She looked across the street and saw him standing in front of a building with flags hanging from two poles jutting out over the entrance. A plaque on the wall to the left of the door identified the building as the Spanish consulate. Aidan, looking excited, was motioning for her to cross the street.
Sarah waited impatiently for a break in traffic and trotted across.
“What?” she said.
“Check this out,” he said, pointing to the set of worn, white stone steps leading up to the consulate door.
“Steps,” said Sarah. “Yeah, so?”
“Look at the top one.”
Sarah moved nearer and studied the top step more closely. It had been worn down by countless footsteps, but Sarah could make out a faint design carved into the stone consisting of two interlocking letters.
“An S and an L,” she whispered. She turned to Aidan. “Scotland Landing!”
“Could be,” he said.
“You found it! How’d you even see this?”
“Keen powers of observation.” He tapped his temple.
“Seriously,” said Sarah.
“Okay,” he said, “there was this really hot girl going in, and she had this ankle chain thingie, and I happened to be looking at her legs, and—”
“Okay, okay!” Sarah said. “Anyway, you found it.” She started up the steps.
“Wait,” said Aidan. “You can’t just walk in there.”
“Why not?” said Sarah. “Nobody’s stopping me.”
But somebody did stop her. In the consulate lobby, a uniformed guard manned a metal detector at a security-screening station. Beyond that was a counter where a dozen people waited in line.
“May I help you?” asked the guard, in accented English.
Sarah thought he was quite handsome, not at all like the security people at airports.
“Yes, I…that is, we…” Sarah stammered. “We’d like to, uh, come inside.”
“Smooth,” said Aidan, standing a few steps behind her.
“May I ask the nature of your business with the consulate?” said the guard.
“I…uh,” said Sarah. “Just a moment please.”
She turned and walked back to Aidan.