The Hunt for the Missing Spy (10 page)

“Who said it?” Luke asked.

“I'll look it up.” Cody pulled out her cell phone and entered the phrase. A familiar name appeared. “Abraham Lincoln!” she announced.

Quinn looked up from the GPS device. “And guess where the coordinates meet!”

“That makes sense!” Luke said.

“We'd better hurry,” Quinn said. “It looks like it's a long way off.”

The kids dashed off to find their next waypoint and clue, with Ms. Takeda doing her best to keep up with them. In her excitement, Cody had temporarily forgotten about the man in the khaki coat and baseball cap, but as they neared the steps to the memorial, she stopped and looked around. If she spotted the guy this time, she wouldn't take any chances.

So far, though, there was no sign of him.

Cody felt relieved, but also a little disappointed. Maybe it
had
just been her imagination. Aside from those holes torn in the newspaper, she still had no proof that a strange man was spying on them. Still, if the guy was gone for good, she and the others had
nothing to worry about.

Turning her attention to the memorial, she was surprised to see how large it was. She'd seen pictures on the back of pennies and five dollar bills, but nothing prepared her for this. The Lincoln Memorial was built out of marble, surrounded by columns, and decorated with lion heads, wreaths, eagle wings, and the names of the states. But the most impressive sight was Abraham Lincoln in his chair. Over sixty feet high, sixty feet long, and seventy-four feet long, the president was ginormous!

Cody followed the others up the steps to get a better look at the statue of the sixteenth president. She had heard his hands were shaped to represent the ASL letters
A
and
L
so she checked to make sure. She was happy to see the rumor was true!

After pausing to admire the memorial, the kids began searching the area for their next clue. They circled the monument several times before finally gathering at the steps.

“Any sign of the clue?” Cody asked, glancing at the tourists visiting the monument to see if she
spotted the stranger.

“Nope,” Luke said. “You guys?”

The others shook their heads.

“Mom, do you know where the hidden clue is?” Mika asked as she headed down the stairs to her mother, who was talking on her cell phone.

Mrs. Takeda held up her index finger, signaling, “Just a minute.”

Mika waited for her mother, while the others sat on the steps of the memorial.

Suddenly, Mrs. Takeda gasped. She looked pale. Something was wrong.

The Code Busters got up and headed down the stairs to wait with Mika.

“What's up?” Luke whispered to her.

Mika shrugged and stared at her mother.

They stood, listening, but all Mrs. Takeda said was, “No . . . no . . . yes.” Moments later, she ended the call.

“What happened?” Mika asked as the others looked on anxiously.

Cody wondered if it might have something to do
with the man she thought had been following them. Had he been trailing the other groups, too? Had he done something? Hurt someone? Had the police caught him?

Mrs. Takeda looked at the kids. “That was your teacher, Mrs. Stadelhofer,” she began slowly.

“What did she want?” M.E. asked. “She said we have to stop the hunt and return to the Spy Museum.”

“But why?” Quinn complained. “This is fun! We don't want to quit now. We're ahead of everyone else.”

Mrs. Takeda took a deep breath. “I'm sorry, kids, but we have to go now.”

“Mom, what happened?” Mika pleaded. “Please tell us!”

Mrs. Takeda leveled her eyes on her daughter. “It seems that one of your classmates has gone missing.”

“What? Who?” Cody asked.

“A boy named Matthew Jeffreys,” Mrs. Takeda replied. “No one has seen him since the Spy Museum tour.”

Whoa!
Cody thought.
Matt the Brat is missing!

Then she wondered if the man who had been following them had something to do with Matt's disappearance. Maybe she should have said something earlier.

And now it was too late.

B
y the time the Code Busters' group returned to the Spy Museum, most of the other students were already there and on the bus. Cody spotted Ms. Stad standing next to the bus doors, talking on her cellphone. She was frowning and gesturing wildly.

Cody had never seen her teacher look so worried.

She gestured for the other Code Busters to follow her and headed over to see what was going on. Maybe the Code Busters could help. After all, they
were great at cracking codes and solving puzzles and finding missing treasure. Maybe they could find Matt.

When they reached Ms. Stad, she ended the call and began talking to one of the Spy Museum security guards. His name tag read “Youngblood.”

“The police are on their way,” Ms. Stad said to the guard. “Now, are you sure you've searched the entire museum?”

Mr. Youngblood nodded. “Every inch, ma'am. We've called an Adam Alert and closed the museum. No one can get in or out without checking with me or the other guard. Are all of your other students accounted for?”

Ms. Stad looked at her clipboard. “Yes, except . . .” She turned and saw the Code Busters standing next to her.

“Thank goodness your group is here!” she said. “I need you students to get on the bus so I can keep track of you and not lose anyone else.”

“What happened to Matt the . . . to Matt?” Cody asked her teacher.

There was no way she would get on the bus without knowing exactly what happened.

“I don't know!” Ms. Stad said, sounding frantic. “Mr. Littlefield, his group chaperone, called me when he noticed Matthew wasn't with the
others.”

“When was that?” Quinn asked.

“I'm not sure . . .” Ms. Stad shook her head, as if she was trying to think. “According to Mr. Littlefield, Matt began the hunt with his group, but then he ran ahead. Mr. Littlefield called to him to slow down, but apparently Matt ignored him. He figured Matt was excited and wanted to be the first one in the group to the waypoint, but when the others arrived, Matt was nowhere to be found. Mr. Littlefield said they looked for him at the monument, then retraced their steps back here to the Spy Museum, but Matt had vanished.”

“I'm sure he'll show up,” Cody said, placing a hand on Ms. Stad's arm to comfort her teacher. It was hard seeing her teacher so upset. Ms. Stad was almost always calm, patient, and cheerful.

“Ms. Stadelhofer!” Mr. Littlefield called from the top of the bus stairs. He bounded down the steps. “I almost forgot! One of the kids found this at the Washington Monument. It was sticking out from under the sign post.”

The chaperone held up what looked like a brochure for the Spy Museum. He unfolded it and gave it to Ms. Stadelhofer.

“She thought the message was part of the Spy Hunt, but she couldn't make sense of it, so she gave it to me. I stuck it in my pocket and forgot about it when I realized Matt was missing. Do you think it's important?”

Ms. Stad studied the brochure for a moment. The Code Busters leaned over to see what was on it. In the margins were drawings of animals. Cody instantly recognized the artwork—it looked similar to the cartoons she'd found on the paper in her backpack.

Cody pointed to the brochure in Ms. Stad's hands. “They're more drawings. Only this time it's a bunch of animals.”

Cody studied the cartoon figures. Their style looked similar to those other pictures they had found during the past week. But there was something weird about them.

“Guys,” Cody said to the others, “do you notice anything interesting about these pictures?”

M.E. shook her head.

“What is it?” Mika asked.

“Look,” Cody said. “Whoever drew these animals repeated some of them.”

“It has to be a code!” Quinn exclaimed.

“That's what I thought,” Cody said. “Why would only some of the animals be repeated, unless there was a reason? What if these animals stand for letters, and the repeated ones are double letters?”

“If we can crack the code,” M.E. added, “we can figure out what the message says, and maybe find Matt.”

Ms. Stad studied the brochure for a moment, then handed it to Cody. “All right, kids, see if you can make any sense of this.”

Luke got out his notebook and a pencil.

“Look,” Cody said, “there are spaces between some of the animal drawings. Those are probably words. The first word has two tigers, so two of the same letter. They could be
l
's,
t
's,
s
's,
m
's,
p
's,
e
's . . .”

“This could take forever,” M.E. muttered.

“Well, we could start with the most common letter
used in English—the letter
E
,” Quinn suggested. “That's what real cryptanalysts do. I have a chart in my Code Busters notebook that tells how often certain letters are used in English.” He got out his notebook and opened it to the page that was headed, “Letter Frequency.”

Quinn pointed to the next letter. “The next is
T
, then
A
, then
O
, then—”

“And
that
could take forever, too!” M.E. complained again.

“Got a better idea?” Quinn asked her.

M.E. shrugged.

Cody glanced over at her teacher, who was talking with both security guards.

“Guys,” she said, holding up her hand. “If this code was written by Matt and left for the others to find, then I'm guessing it's pretty simple. Think about it. He didn't use any of the codes we've learned in class. He used drawings. The first one is a picture of a mouse.”

“Yeah,” Luke said, “and the second one is a monkey.”

“An ape, actually,” Mika offered. “Monkeys have tails and are smaller than apes.”

“Okay, an ape,” Cody confirmed. “And the last two are tigers. I think I know what he was trying to do.”

“What?” M.E. asked.

“Remember that code we had earlier where the first letters spelled the answer to the puzzle?” Cody asked.

The others nodded. “Yeah, ‘Father of The Country,'” Luke said.

“So what letters do each of these animals' names start with?” Cody asked.

“Oh,” M.E. said, her face lighting up. Everyone grinned as they finally understood how to crack the code.

Cody said each letter aloud, then Luke wrote them down. When he was done, he read the message to the group.

“Matt the Brat thinks he's James Bond!” M.E. said, rolling her eyes.

Cody handed the brochure back to her teacher.
“We solved the code,” she said, proudly, and told her what it said.

Code Busters' Solution found on p. 156.

Ms. Stad nodded, but she didn't look pleased. “But I'm afraid it doesn't tell us where Matthew is. You kids need to get on the bus now. I don't want to have to worry about you, too.”

“How about if we look for him?” Cody suggested. “You know the Code Busters are good at solving mysteries. This is a mystery. And besides, we sort of know how Matt thinks.”

Ms. Stad gave a weak smile at Cody's suggestion. “That's very nice of you, kids, but I can't take the chance that you'll end up missing, too. Now, please, have your group get on the bus. It looks like the police are here and I need to speak with them.”

A patrol car had pulled up in front of the museum. Two officers got out of the black and white police car. They would have looked intimidating to most kids, with their official uniforms and all that police gear hanging from their belts. But Cody's mom was a police officer, so Cody was used to cops.

While Ms. Stad was distracted, Cody sneaked over to the alcove where she'd seen the stranger lurking earlier. It was empty. Cody wondered if the stranger had something to do with Matt's disappearance.