Chapter 2

Fred gaped up at the angry soldier dressed in blue, his eyes drawn to the long gun at his side. The re-enactor’s eighteenth-century French officer’s uniform looked totally real, just like photos he’d seen. So what about the gun? Was it real, too?

“Well?” barked the soldier.

“I…I…”

“Cat got your tongue?”

Fred clutched the box tighter. Whatever happened, he wasn’t leaving without it.

“Trying to think up a lie, eh? Out with it!”

Could my heart explode? Fred wondered, wincing as it thundered like a Japanese taiko drum in his ear. Paralyzed, he couldn’t think of anything to say. He was dead meat!

“We’re part of the Public Archaeological Program,” Mai said.

The soldier immediately relaxed his stance. “Oh, you’re with those people, are you?” he grunted, rolling his eyes. He waved his gun toward the roped-off section on the other side of the ruins. “You’re supposed to be over there with the rest of them.”

“Sorry,” she continued. “It was so crowded, we thought it wouldn’t matter which part of the ruins we excavated. As long as we turned in what we found, of course.”

Fred held his breath, his arms still buried in soot.

The soldier rotated in a slow circle, examining each of them in turn. His gaze rested on the few items they’d found. “Well,” he said, “it does matter. This is a protected site, and I’m here to do just that—protect it. You can’t dig wherever you feel like it.”

Oh great, Fred thought, psycho soldier. “We didn’t know.”

“They shouldn’t be letting the public dig in here anyway,” the soldier said. “I warned them it wasn’t a good idea.”

“We’ll leave,” Grace said.

“This might be just a field of rocks to you kids, but it’s actually a very important place.” Soldier guy stuck his chest out, his arms spread wide. “Bet you kids didn’t know this—the Fortress of Louisbourg is the biggest reconstructed site in North America. A real piece of history.”

“It is amazing,” Mai said.

“And it needs to be protected.” The soldier stood over Fred. “You. Up. You’ll all have to come with me.”

The guy was going to turn them in. Fred couldn’t believe he’d come this close and was going to lose it all. As the soldier bent to scoop up their meagre collection of unearthed treasures, Fred glared at Grace. Distract him, he mouthed silently, his eyes darting to the soldier’s back.

Grace grinned and nodded.

“Um, officer?” she cooed in a sickly sweet and very un-Grace-like voice. “Could I ask you some questions about the fortress? You seem like you know a lot.” She spread out a map along the wall away from Fred.

“Well, yes, I do. I’ve worked here every summer for fifteen years,” he said. “I know every boulder and brick.”

Mai and Grace huddled over the map, asking questions about various buildings. Fred pulled the box out of the ash and leapt to his feet. He stuffed the narrow, flat, black metal case down the front of his pants and pulled his shirt out over, letting it hang loose. It seemed to hide the bulge from the box. At least, he hoped it did.

What was the punishment for removing artifacts from a heritage site? He imagined being locked away in some dungeon-like prison for fifty years, with long white hair and crazy eyes, never seeing his family again—

“Hey, kid!”

Fred snapped out of his daydream. “What?”

“Guilty conscience?”

Did he suspect? Could he see there was something under his shirt? “What? No, I—”

“We’re leaving,’ Grace interrupted. “No problem. We’re going right now.” She grabbed her pack and handed Fred his. “Come on,” she whispered. “And walk behind me. You’ve got soot all over your shirt.”

He could feel the sharp metal edges of the box digging into his skin. Maybe he could sneak it into his backpack. The waist of his jeans wasn’t very secure—they were baggier than ever these days.

“Hang on,” the soldier said. “What’s in those packs?”

“Nothing,” Mai said.

“How do I know that? I’ll have to take you to the office to have them searched. This is a breach of security.”

“Please, we, uh, don’t want to get in any trouble,” Fred said. “Isn’t there something you can do?”

The soldier stroked his chin. “Well,” he said. “You’ll have to show me what you’ve got in there. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I just let you walk away without checking inside them.”

“You can’t do that,” Grace said. She shoved her pack behind her back. “Isn’t that like an illegal search or something?”

“Fine.” The soldier shrugged. “We’ll go to the security office. But they’ll still look in your packs, and you’ll probably get kicked out of here.”

“No!” Fred shouted. “We’re camping here—part of the grand encampment. We can’t get kicked out.”

“Your choice,” the soldier said.

Fred pleaded to Mai and Grace with his eyes.

“Oh, fine,” Grace relented, handing over her pack. “But I still think it’s illegal.” Mai surrendered hers as well. The soldier began rooting through them, searching every compartment and placing the contents one by one on the grass.

Mai inched over to stand beside Fred and grabbed his arm. “What are you doing?” she hissed in his ear.

“What do you mean?”

“I saw you stick something in your shirt.”

“No I didn’t.”

She jabbed him in the stomach, her knuckle banging on the metal. “Then what’s that?”

The box slipped. He grabbed the front of his jeans, catching it before it fell down his pant leg. Luckily, the soldier, still sorting through Mai’s pack, had his back to them.

“Mai, don’t start,” Fred whispered. He wiggled around, trying to shift the box to a more secure spot.

“You aren’t seriously stealing that?”

“It’s not stealing,” he said. “It belongs to me.”

Mai’s jaw dropped. “Okay, now I know you’re losing it. You think something you just dug up in a three-hundred-year-old fortress belongs to you?”

“I know it does.”

“How do you figure that?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Next,” the soldier said, beckoning over his shoulder for Fred’s backpack.

Fred was still doing a little dance to get the box over his right leg so he could hold on to it through his pocket, and trying to hide the sooty handprints on his shirt. Mai glared at him, grabbed his bag, and stomped over to pass it to the soldier.

“What are you doing with all that stuff?” The soldier pointed to the contents of Mai’s bag spread out on the grass.

“I like to be prepared.”

“For what? World War Three?”

“Thank you for being neat.” Mai smiled and began methodically repacking her bag.

The soldier shook his head and turned to Grace. “And you,” he said, “are you kidding me? Swiss Army knife, rope, gloves, duct tape?”

“We’re explorers,” she said, as if that explained everything.

He held Grace’s gaze. She didn’t flinch. Oh no, Fred thought. What if he changed his mind and took them to security after all? That couldn’t happen.

“Uh-huh.” The soldier passed her empty pack back to her.

Suddenly, another blue-uniformed employee appeared. His eyes widened as he took in the backpack contents strewn over the grass. “Gerard! What are you doing?”

“These kids aren’t supposed to be here.” He pointed to the small pile of artifacts.

“You can’t search their stuff!”

“I had to make sure they didn’t take anything.”

The other soldier ran his hand through his hair. “You take this way too seriously, Gerard. We’re just re-enactors, you know—a summer job. If there’s a problem, you’re supposed to tell security. That’s their job.”

“No, it’s okay,” Fred said. “We told him he could.”

“Why would you do that?” the other soldier asked.

“It’s our fault—we were in the wrong place,” Fred replied. “He was giving us a break. Look, he can see what’s in my bag, too. Mai, show him.”

Mai dumped everything onto the grass. Fred’s rumpled clothes and balled-up papers were a stark contrast to Mai’s tidy pile, now neatly packed away.

The other soldier shook his head. “Whatever,” he said.

Gerard reached out as if to search through the pile.

The other soldier cleared his throat. “Gerard.”

“Well, I suppose you weren’t stealing anything,” Gerard said, finally. He sounded disappointed. His eyes met Fred’s. “But you’re up to something. There’s no doubt about that.”

Fred opened his mouth to protest, but Mai’s warning stare stopped him.

“Give it a rest, Gerard. C’mon, kids,” the other soldier said.

Fred shuffled awkwardly over to the wall, leaning against the stone to hold the box in place so he had both hands free to pack his things. The guard was surveying him with a frown.

As they marched single file along the path to join the authorized excavation site, Gerard leaned over and whispered menacingly in Fred’s ear, “I’ll be watching you.”