Chapter 1

ONE FALSE NOTE

CHAPTER 1 The hunger strike began two hours east of Paris. Saladin took a single dainty whiff of the open cat food tin and turned up his nose. "Come on, Saladin," coaxed fourteen-year-old Amy Cahill. "Here's your dinner. It's a long way to Vienna." The Egyptian Mau emitted a haughty snort that was a clinic in nonverbal communication: You've got to be kidding me. "He's used to red snapper," Amy said apologetically to Nellie Gomez, the Cahills' au pair. Nellie was unmoved. "Do you have any idea how much fresh fish costs? We've got to make our money last. Who knows how long we'll be running around looking for these precious clues of yours?" Saladin let out a disapproving "Mrrp!"

Dan Cahill, Amy's eleven-year-old brother, looked up from the page of sheet music he was examining. "I'm with you, dude. I can't believe we had to take the slowest train in Europe. We've got to get moving! The competition has private jets, and we're wasting time on the Loser Express. Are we going to stop in every podunk town in France?" "No," Nellie told him honestly. "Pretty soon it'll stop in every podunk town in Germany. Then every podunk town in Austria. Look, it was cheap, okay? I didn't agree to babysit you guys on this quest—" "Au pair us on the quest," Dan amended. "—just to have you drop out halfway through because you blew all your cash on snapper and expensive train tickets," she concluded. "We really appreciate your help, Nellie," Amy told her. "We could never do this without you." Amy was still dizzy from the whirlwind of the past two weeks. One minute you're an orphan; the next, you're part of the most powerful family the world has ever known! An unbelievable twist for two kids who had

been palmed off on an uncaring guardian who, in turn, palmed them off on a series of au pairs. Now they knew the truth — they were relatives of Benjamin Franklin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and more — geniuses, visionaries, and global leaders. We were nobody. Suddenly we have a chance to shape the world…. All thanks to the contest their grandmother Grace had set up in her will. Somehow, the secret of the Cahills' centuries-old power had been lost — a secret that could only be found by assembling 39 Clues. Those Clues were hidden all around the globe. So this was a treasure hunt. But what a treasure hunt — spanning oceans and continents, with nothing less than world domination as the prize. Yet high stakes meant high risks. Their rivals would stop at nothing to defeat them. Already there had been casualties. There will probably be many more…. Amy regarded Dan in the seat opposite her. Two weeks ago, we were fighting over the TV

remote…. She couldn't seem to get through to Dan how weird it all was. Her brother saw nothing unusual about belonging to the strongest, most influential family in history. He accepted it without question. After all, it said great things about him. He saw no drawbacks to being a high roller in the scheme of things. The poor kid was only eleven — no parents, and now even Grace was gone. In all the excitement over the contest, they had hardly mourned their grandmother's death. It didn't seem right. Amy and Grace Cahill had been so close. Still, Grace was the one who had started them on this dangerous roller coaster. Sometimes Amy didn't know what to feel…. She shook her head to clear it and focused on her brother. He was scouring the sheet music, looking for hidden markings or secret writing. "Any luck?" Amy asked him. "Zilch," he told her. "Are you sure this Mozart dude was a Cahill? I mean, Ben Franklin hardly blew his nose without planting a coded message in the Kleenex. This is nothing but boring music."

Amy rolled her green eyes." 'This Mozart dude'? Were you born a dweeb, or did you have to get a diploma? Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is considered the greatest classical composer who ever lived." "Right, classical. Boring." "Musical notes correspond to the letters A through G," Nellie mused. "Maybe there's a message that way." "Been there, done that," Dan reported. "I even tried unscrambling the letters in case the words were anagrams. Face it — we almost got killed for a clue that isn't really a clue." "It's a clue," Amy insisted. "It has to be." Clues. 39 of them. Never before had a contest held so much promise — or so much danger. With ultimate power hanging in the balance, the deaths of two American orphans would be barely a footnote. But we didn't die. We found the first clue — after a treacherous obstacle course through the life of Benjamin Franklin. Amy was convinced that Mozart was the key to the second. The answer lay