Challenge (19 page)
Authors: Ridley Pearson
Steel and his dad stood on the far side of the security checkpoint’s X-ray monitor as the lottery audience was admitted into the building. Steel took in every face of every person who arrived with a cell phone. To his discouragement, that was twenty-six of the thirty people who showed up. He committed each face to memory, but knew he would be of little help when the time came.
He whispered to his father, “Why don’t we just convince Mr. Cunningham to take everyone’s cell phones before the drawing?”
“If we could convince Mr. Cunningham of anything, we would convince him of that. The problem is, Steel, some people just aren’t believers.”
“The thing of it is,” Steel said, “the drawing happens fast, doesn’t it? They don’t wait around. Is it even possible for someone to dial a phone that quickly? Punch in all those numbers in time? I doubt it.”
“The numbers would have to be preprogrammed into the phone. That’s not complicated. You can program most phones to speed dial from the keypad. One touch.”
“And if that’s the case,” Steel said, “the person wouldn’t even need to take his phone out of his pocket. Which means we aren’t going to see that person even with our camera pointed at the audience.”
“You’re saying we can’t do this?” his father asked.
“We’re going about it the wrong way,” Steel said. He watched as the last of the audience members moved toward the elevators. He checked his father’s watch: 6:52. At 7:00 the drawing would start. Eight minutes.
“We know several things,” Steel said to his father. “The chips in those Ping-Pong balls—if there are chips in there—were either purchased or stolen, probably in Chicago when they were figuring out how to adapt Kaileigh’s science project to rigging the lottery. But long-distance calls, even on cell phones, take a few seconds to get through. It’s unpredictable. What if the connection is weak or the system is busy? Besides that, the chips are inside the Ping-Pong balls, and have basically no antennas. How can these people be absolutely sure the calls will arrive quickly, and on time?”
“I don’t have an answer to that,” his father said.
“I’m just thinking aloud, Dad,” Steel said. “The point is, it’s too variable. The balls are picked quickly, one right after another. You can’t depend on cell phones to dial fast enough, or even to get through.”
“So?”
“So the way I’d do it is I’d have a radio transmitter—something
in the room
that would allow me to send out specific frequencies, one right after another. A high-frequency generator…” Steel felt a jolt of electricity pass through him. “They’ve modified her technology!” he said excitedly. “It’s not cell phone frequencies. They can’t control that in the room. It’s Bluetooth.”
“What?” His father sounded confused.
“Bluetooth, Dad. Wireless communication. Basically every cell phone has it these days. But it’s only the PDAs that are going to let you mess with what frequencies you want.”
“How many PDAs came through security, Steel?”
Steel squinted his eyes shut. “Two. A BlackBerry and a Motorola Q. The Q is Windows Mobile. It could be modified to do this—I know it could. The BlackBerry’s more limited.”
“Do you have a face to go with the Q? Did you get a face?” his father asked anxiously.
Steel squinted again. He saw the face: a normal-looking man with dark hair and glasses. “I’ve got it,” he said.
Mr. Trapp called up to Larson while he and Steel rode the elevator.
His watch read 6:56 p.m.
“Is that accurate?” Steel asked.
“A minute slow, a minute fast. I have no idea.”
They were met in the hall by Larson and Kaileigh, and together the four entered the studio, where across the way they could see Mr. Cunningham flanked by two uniformed police officers. He held a box in his hand.
“Two minutes!” a stage manager shouted out. “Audience: quiet, please!”
The stage manager waved Cunningham onto the stage. He opened the box and poured the Ping-Pong balls into the plastic container. He shut the container’s lid, someone threw a switch, and the balls started jumping around in the forced air inside the box.
“Steel?” his father asked.
“I don’t see him,” Steel answered. Face by face he’d gone through the small crowd. They sat in folding chairs on risers that looked down on the small stage where a man and a woman, both dressed in formal wear, awaited their cues to start the drawing. “He’s not here.”
“He has to be here,” Larson mumbled. “What’s the number again?” he asked Kaileigh. “The winning number?”
She recited it for him. He scribbled it down and crossed the stage to Cunningham. “This is the number that’s going to win,” Larson told him. “And when it does, I would hope you’d have a question or two about how we knew that
in advance.”
Cunningham looked dazed.
“ONE MINUTE!” a voice shouted.
“Come on, Steel,” his father said, clearly frustrated.
“He’s not in the audience,” Steel said, still scanning the faces.
“Maybe you just don’t remember right,” said his father.
It was the first—and only—time his father had challenged his memory skills.
“He’s not in the crowd, Dad,” Steel said bluntly.
“Closed circuit,” Kaileigh said. She pointed at the monitor they were watching. “Closed-circuit TV. It’s not broadcast; it’s real time. There’s no delay. He doesn’t have to be in the audience. He just has to have a view of one of these monitors.”
“But they’re everywhere,” Mr. Trapp said.
It was true—there were a half dozen TV monitors spread around the studio, and twice that number of places someone could hide—behind a curtain, a prop—and not be seen.
“Spread out,” his father said.
“TEN SECONDS!” The same loud voice.
The four of them fanned out, walking behind the cameras, but turning to try to take in all the locations of the TV monitors. Cunningham waved at them to stay quiet for the sake of the broadcast.
“FIVE, FOUR, THREE…”
A booming voice. “Good evening! And welcome to the Sunday night lottery!”
Steel worked past the cameras, to the right of the audience. He caught a glow of light coming from behind a stage curtain directly across from him. The set was basically dark except for that blue glow at waist height in the middle of a curtain. A PDA? he wondered.
“And the first number is…”
Steel mouthed the number as the announcer said it:
“
Seven
!”
The audience applauded. Now Steel had no doubt. It was rigged: Kaileigh had been right.
“Tonight’s second number is…
two.”
Steel ducked under the camera’s sight line, crossing the set. To his right, Cunningham stared dumbfoundedly down at the piece of paper Larson had handed him. The man looked up, confused, and nearing a state of panic.
There!
He caught another glimpse of dull blue light. The curtain rippled: there was a man back there. Steel tackled the hanging curtain the way he’d been taught in football: low and hard, driving his shoulder forward, head down.
“TONIGHT’S THIRD NUMBER…”
He hit something hard and muscular. And strong. He went down, as did the man. The curtain tore and fell down onto them. He heard the
clackety-clack
of something scooting across the floor.
His dad and Larson were alongside him in seconds, untangling the curtain and pinning the man under it. Kaileigh scurried across and picked up the PDA—a Motorola Q cell phone. She fumbled with it and pulled out its battery. The device went dark.
“Tonight’s fifth number…” Steel had missed the calling out of the fourth. “…is
eight.”
Steel, being helped to his feet by his dad, met eyes with Kaileigh. This fifth number was incorrect.
Four
was the number in the code. They’d done it—the winning number had not been picked.
The two cops raced over and helped out. The man was handcuffed and brought to his feet. Behind a roar of audience applause, the quick drawing went off the air.
Cunningham marched over to Larson and said, “You nearly wrecked the drawing, Marshal. Your superiors will be hearing from the proper authorities. And as for this so-called winning number: you weren’t even right!” He tore up the piece of paper, and confetti fell to the ground.
Kaileigh and Steel could no longer contain themselves. They broke out laughing.
MONDAY, JUNE 2
They met the next day in the waiting area of Union Station, which seemed only fitting to Steel since he’d met Kaileigh on the train in the first place. She was in the care of Miss Kay, who looked more pleasant up close, though not without a certain old-school posture and pursing of the lips. They were booked on the same train back to Chicago. Once again Steel’s dad was not going to make the trip. He had to stay behind to write reports and give statements about all that had happened.
The man caught at the lottery drawing was found with the winning ticket in his wallet—the ticket that Larson and Hampton had traced to its sale at a convenience store. A ticket that had nearly been worth forty-five million dollars. Every Ping-Pong ball in the lottery was found to have a phone chip inside, and investigations were underway to uncover who had switched out the rigged Ping-Pong balls for the originals. No connection could be made between the man arrested and Aaron Grym, also under arrest. The man at the lottery was charged with attempted robbery and conspiracy to defraud the federal government, but he was unlikely to spend more than a few years in prison.
Grym had been taken to a hospital and later transferred to a city jail, awaiting a hearing and further transfer to a federal facility. There was no mention of him, or a briefcase, or a young woman in the news. It was as if none of what Steel had gone through had ever happened. There was one brief article on someone trying to rig the lottery, but that was all.
The science challenge was won by a dimple-faced, goofy-looking boy who, in his picture on the front page of the business section, wore a Hawaiian shirt. Steel remembered the nervous boy, and he smiled at his victory. Steel hoped to compete in next year’s challenge, though his own future was currently in question.
Steel said good-bye to Cairo, crated and ready for transport to the baggage car. They’d arranged adjacent sleeper cars so that Kaileigh and Steel could spend time together.
The two days on the train passed uneventfully. More than once, Steel had been cautioned to pay no attention to any briefcases or misplaced luggage, but he needed no encouragement. He and Kaileigh spent time with her computer, or playing cards, or reading. He didn’t want to admit it, but he had no problem with her being a girl, and he felt closer to her than friends he’d had most of his life.
So when it came time in Chicago to say good-bye, the words came with difficulty.
“I don’t know exactly how to say this,” Steel said.
“That’s because you’re a science nerd,” Kaileigh interjected.
“Yeah…but the thing is…in a weird way, I had a really good time.”
“A very weird way.”
“Obviously.”
“Me too,” she said. “And I’m sure we’ll see each other again. You’re going to the regionals in the fall, right?” Steel nodded. “So I’ll see you there.”
“The thing of it is…I’m not supposed to tell you this…but my father said our family may have to change our names and stuff. Move to someplace and start all over. This gang…they’re arresting them, but they’re not sure they’ll get them all. And even though this Grym guy isn’t talking, my father says I could be at risk.”
“Like witness protection?” she said, sounding excited.
“That kind of thing. Yeah.”
“So when I see you at a science challenge, I’ll pretend I don’t know you.”
“That would be good. I think. But not really.”
“Other people don’t need to know.”
“Exactly.”
“But we know,” she said. And the way she said it ran electricity down his legs and out his toes.
“Yeah, we know.”
“We’re a good team.”
“We are,” he agreed.
“And Cairo, of course.”
“Of course.”
She giggled. Her nose scrunched up when she laughed. He hadn’t noticed that before.
Kaileigh and Miss Kay took off across the station, with Kaileigh looking over her shoulder and meeting eyes with Steel, scrunching that same way again. He knew she was laughing, and that made him feel good inside.
“Ready to go home?” his mother asked.
“I suppose,” he answered. “Wherever home turns out to be.”
“Life’s an adventure,” she said.
With Cairo following on a trolley drawn by a haggard old man with big ears, they headed out into the parking lot, looking for their car, and the life they’d left behind.
Ridley Pearson
is the award-winning coauthor, along with Dave Barry, of
Peter and the Starcatchers, Peter and the Shadow Thieves, Peter and the Secret of Rundoon,
and
Science Fair.
He has also written more than twenty best-selling crime novels, including
Killer Weekend,
and the young-adult fantasies
Kingdom Keepers
—
Disney After Dark
and
Kingdom Keepers II
—
Disney at Dawn.
He was the first American to be awarded the Raymond Chandler/Fulbright Fellowship in Detective Fiction at Oxford University.
