Never Say Genius (23 page)

In the display cases, they have lots of cool stuff like lipstick pistols, microdots, and cameras hidden in everything from pens to buttonholes. One room is devoted to hero pigeons, which were once used to carry secret messages. Before the days of satellite surveillance, pigeons even wore tiny cameras to take photos from the sky. There is also a section devoted to famous spies who led double lives. Some of them were caught, and sometimes executed.

“Did you know that Julia Child, the French chef on TV, was a spy?” Pep asked her brother.

“Sure I did,” Coke replied.

In fact, he had no idea that Julia Child was a spy. He didn’t even know who Julia Child
was
. But he didn’t like the idea of his sister—or anybody—knowing something he didn’t.

Pep, of course, knew a lot of this already, because espionage was one of her obsessions. (The other was the Donner Party, which you would know if you read
The Genius Files: Mission Unstoppable
.) But she enjoyed seeing all this stuff with her own eyes. It was like the museum had been built just for her.

Coke and Pep were fascinated by spy paraphernalia, while their parents were more interested in cyberspying—how countries are using the internet to spy on one another and disrupt communications systems. The kids and grown-ups agreed to split up and meet in front of the museum when everybody was finished.

“Hey, check this out,” Coke told his sister after his parents left, “a dog doo transmitter!”

In fact, it was for real. Inside a glass display case was a long lump of what looked to be either a Snickers bar or a dog poop. The plaque on the wall said that hidden inside it was an actual radio transmitter that the CIA used in 1970.

Toward the end of the exhibits, off in a dark corner and leaning against a fake brick wall, was a statue of a man. He was tall, dressed up in a trench coat, dark glasses, black gloves, and a hat. He was carrying a briefcase. The statue looked just like a typical spy from an old movie. The twins walked up to it.

“It looks so lifelike,” Pep said. “But it’s just a dummy.”

Suddenly, the statue moved its hand and put it over Pep’s mouth. She tried to scream, but the sound was muffled.

“Who ya calling a dummy?” the “statue” asked.

For a moment, Coke almost lost control of his bladder.

“What the—,” he said instead.

“Shhhhhhhhhhh!” the guy in the trench coat said, removing his hand from Pep’s mouth. “You’ll blow my cover.”

“Are you a spy?” Pep asked, trembling.

“Do I look like a spy?” the guy asked.

“Yes.”

“Then I’m not a spy. Because if I was a spy and I looked like a spy, then I wouldn’t be a very
good
spy, now would I?”

“No, I guess not,” Pep said. “A good spy wouldn’t look at all like a spy.”

“Right, and because I look just like a spy, I couldn’t possibly be one, could I?”

“No.”

“But of course, if people are convinced that I’m not a spy, that would be the perfect cover for a real spy, wouldn’t it?”

Coke looked at the guy closely.

“You might be a
bad
spy,” he said.

“I might be. Or I might be a guy pretending to be a bad spy.”

“I’m confused,” said Pep.

“See these glasses I’m wearing?” the guy said. “There are cyanide pills concealed in the earpieces. If I had to, I could chew on an earpiece for a few minutes and kill myself. Glasses like these were actually used by the CIA in the 1970s.”

“I bet you’re just an actor who gets paid to hang around the Spy Museum answering questions about spies,” said Coke.

“Maybe. Or maybe I’m a real spy
pretending
to be an actor who gets paid to hang around the Spy Museum answering questions about spies.”

“Huh?” said Pep.

“Maybe I’m a spy, and maybe I’m just a guy.”

“I’ll call you Spy Guy,” said Coke.

“Agreed.”

“Whatever you are,” said Pep, “can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot. I mean, go ahead.”

“We received this message the other day,” Pep said, pulling the white piece of paper out of her pocket, “but we don’t know what it means.”

Spy Guy examined the white paper, and then held it up to the light. He put his briefcase on top of a trash can and popped open the locks.

“If there’s any message on this,” he said, “it was written with invisible ink.”

“See? I told you,” Pep said to her brother.

“There are two ways of writing invisible messages,” Spy Guy said. “Wet systems and transfer systems. A wet system uses ink that is only visible when it’s exposed to heat or chemicals. A transfer system would use something like carbon paper.”

He took a gizmo about the size of a cell phone out of his briefcase, flipped a switch, and the gizmo produced a bright purple light.

“The message is probably written in special fluorescent ink,” Spy Guy said. “The ink emits visible light only when exposed to ultraviolet light of a specific wavelength.”

“You really are a spy, aren’t you?” Pep asked.

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

Spy Guy shined the ultraviolet light over the piece of white paper, first from left to right and then from right to left. He looked at it carefully.

“So what does it say?” Coke asked impatiently.

“Nothing,” Spy Guy said, turning off the light. “What we have here is a plain old white piece of paper.”

“Oh no,” Pep said.

Maybe her brother was right. Maybe “white paper” simply meant “White House.” But what did the White House have to do with John Bull, or Dumbo the flying elephant?

“There is one other possibility,” Spy Guy said, as he took a cigarette lighter out of his pocket.

“What’s that?” Pep asked.

“The message could have been written with milk.”

“Milk?”

“Sure,” Spy Guy said. “You can make invisible ink out of milk, lemon juice, saliva, vinegar, even soapy water—anything that will oxidize when you heat it.”

He flicked the lighter on and held the flame a few inches below the paper.

“Are you going to burn it?” Pep asked.

“No,” Spy Guy said. “The chemical compounds in milk have a low burning point. As the paper heats up, the chemicals turn brown, but the rest of the paper stays white.”

“Look!” Coke said. “It’s happening!”

Slowly, lines on the paper began to darken. A few broken letters appeared, and then gradually, so did the rest of the letters. In less than thirty seconds, it was possible to read the whole message.

“That’s from
The Wizard of Oz
!” Pep said excitedly. “Dorothy wore a pair of ruby red slippers, and at the end she clicked them together to go home.”

Coke and Pep reviewed all the messages they had received:

• July 3, two
P.M.

• Greensboro lunch counter

• John Bull

• Star-Spangled Banner

• Dumbo the flying elephant

• Dorothy’s ruby slippers

The question remained, what did all those things have in common? What tied them together?

“Well, I hope that was helpful to you,” Spy Guy said as he put his stuff away and closed the briefcase.

“Yes, thank you,” Pep said.

“So, are you a real spy or not?” asked Coke.

“If I tell you I’m a spy, I could be a spy or I could be lying and I’m not really a spy,” Spy Guy said. “And if I tell you I’m not a spy, that could be the truth or I could be lying and I’m really a spy. So it doesn’t really matter how I answer that question. But I will say this. Don’t believe what anybody tells you. Don’t believe what you tell
yourself
. Don’t believe everything you see, hear, smell or taste. Don’t believe
anything
. That’s my philosophy.”

“Great,” Coke said. “Listen, we have to go.”

“Do you
really
have to go,” Spy Guy said, “or are you just
saying
you have to go because you don’t want to talk to me anymore?”

“Yes and no.”

“Good answer.”

When they finished at the Spy Museum, the McDonalds took the Metro back to the campground. Dinner was burgers and hot dogs on the grill, followed by toasted marshmallows. Afterward, Dr. and Mrs. McDonald went to see what movie was playing in the outdoor theater. Coke put on his bathing suit and went for a swim. Pep walked over to the little camp store to get a pack of gum.

After she paid the cashier, she went to look at a rack of brochures by the door. It was the usual tourist stuff—local maps, travel guides, ads for Washington bike tours and interesting attractions like the Spy Museum. Pep was about to leave when her eye was caught by a flyer on the bottom of the rack.

Pep looked at the flyer, her eyes open wide. After scanning the first two items, she gasped and almost fell over.

“You okay, miss?” the cashier asked.

“Yeah, uh, I gotta go!”

Pep grabbed one of the flyers, dashed out of the store, and went running frantically in the direction of the swimming pools to find her brother. After two laps around both of the pools, she finally found him sitting in the hot tub, his eyes closed.

“Coke! Coke!” she shouted, out of breath.

“What’s the matter?”

“I know what all that stuff has in common!”

“What stuff?” Coke asked. “What are you talking about?”

“The stuff in the ciphers!” Pep said. “The Greensboro lunch counter! John Bull! The Star-Spangled Banner! And all that other stuff! I know what it all means.”

“Okay,” Coke said calmly, “what do they have in common?”

“They’re all right here in Washington, at the National Museum of American History!”

“You gotta be kidding me!” Coke said, getting up out of the hot tub. “How do you know that?”

Pep handed him the flyer.

“And tomorrow is July third,” Coke said solemnly. “We’ve got to be at that museum at two o’clock.”

J
uly third. Coke and Pep enjoyed a relaxing pancake breakfast at the campground with their parents before embarking on what would turn out to be one of the most important days of their lives.

“So, we have a whole day to kill in Washington before the wedding tomorrow,” Dr. McDonald announced as they cleaned the dishes. “Where shall we go? The Air and Space Museum? Museum of Natural History? Take a tour of the Capitol building? We could visit the Vietnam Memorial…”

“Pep and I want to go to the Museum of American History,” Coke said firmly.

“Yeah,” agreed his sister.

“What? I didn’t even mention
that
one.”

“Why do you kids want to go there?” asked Mrs. McDonald. “How do you even know about it?”

Pep looked at Coke for guidance.

“Before school let out,” Coke said, “they told us that next year the teachers are going to put a huge emphasis on social studies. So we thought going to that museum would really help us with our studies. But even more than that, it will help us learn about the history of this great land.”

“Yeah,” Pep agreed, “what he said.”

It was a total lie, of course. Nothing had been said at school about social studies, or any other subject. But Coke knew how to blow smoke with the best of them, when he put his mind to it.

“Don’t you want to go to the Museum of Natural History or the Air and Space Museum?” Dr. McDonald asked. “They have the Wright Brothers’ plane there. You can see the
Spirit of St. Louis
. That’s the plane Charles Lindbergh flew—”

“We know, Dad,” Coke interrupted. “We’ve seen plenty of planes.”

“Yeah, you see one plane, you’ve seen ’em all,” added Pep.

“Ben, they want to go to the Museum of American History,” said Mrs. McDonald. “That’s a
good
thing. It will help them in school. You, of all people, should be supportive. You’re a history teacher.”