Caching In (5 page)

Chris grins. “Nope. Totally alive, as you can see.”

“How can you be so calm? That was really scary. And all for nothing.”

“Not really,” he drawls. He reaches behind him into the waistband of his jeans and pulls out the toy lantern that had been in the bird's nest.

For a second, I think I'm seeing things. I blink a couple of times. “You got it? But you said it fell into the river.”

Chris shrugs. “I had to say that, or those people would have wanted to look at it. And then they would've asked a ton of questions.”

“Yeah, you're right,” I agree. I slug him in the arm. “So open it!”

As Chris fumbles with the tiny latch, his hands shake. I'm thinking maybe his hanging over the Sooke River got to him more than he wants to let on.

He shoves the lantern at me. “You open it. My fingers are too big and clumsy.”

I don't say anything. I just take the lantern.

Opening it is a snap. Digging out the paper that's inside is a whole different matter. It's wedged in so tight, it's hard to get a grip on it.

“Don't rip it,” Chris says as I twist and tug.

“I'm not,” I snap. “This isn't easy, you know.”

Chris doesn't say anything else.

Eventually, I manage to shift the paper enough that I can grab a corner and pull. Chris holds on to the lantern so that I can concentrate on yanking out the paper. Finally, it pops free.

“Open it,” he says. He's practically breathing down my neck. I've never seen him so uptight.

“Relax, will ya? I'm going as fast as I can.”

When I get the paper unfolded, I smooth it out on the picnic table.

The top half is a comic drawing of an eagle in a nest. It's wearing an army helmet, and it's sitting on a grenade. The dialogue bubble by the eagle's head says,
Sometimes you gotta go out on a limb. Heh, heh, heh.

“Very funny,” Chris sneers. “This guy is a real comedian.”

I point to the lower half of the paper. “Read the rest.”

Congratulations on locating the third cache. Even more important, congratulations on retrieving it. Obviously, you enjoy a challenge. That's good, because finding the last cache is going to be even tougher. Good luck.

Time to move forward.

After that comes the clue. At least, I think it's a clue.

—gj22f-tje5e 16sp10fd20jpo 15o 1 gp18ujg9dbujpo

—hfp13fusj3 gjhvsf 23jui gpvs f17vb12 19usbj7iu tj4ft boe 6p21s sjh8u b14hmft

“Great,” I groan. “Now, before we can even try to figure out what the clue
means
, we have to figure out what it
says
. How's your Russian?”

“That's not Russian,” Chris scoffs.

“Well, it sure as heck isn't English.”

“Maybe the guy's a really bad speller.”

“I'll say. He doesn't even know his letters from his numbers.”

Chris ignores me and goes back to studying the paper. “Obviously, it's some kind of code.”

“No kidding,” I snort. “The question is,
what
code?”

Without looking up, Chris says, “We'll figure it out.”

By the end of school the next day, we still haven't cracked the code.

When I exit the building, I don't see Chris, so I lean against the brick wall near the entrance to wait. The air is an energetic whirr of voices as kids stream past. Two girls look my way and giggle behind their hands. I hope they're laughing at the dorky-looking dude with the briefcase standing beside me. I move to the other side of the entrance and watch a couple of guys toss a football. A long pass bounces off the hood of a red convertible parked at the curb. One of the guys runs into the street to retrieve the football and then says something to the lady behind the wheel.

“Well?” Chris appears out of nowhere and leans against the wall too. “Did you figure it out?”

I shake my head. “Nope. How about you?”

“Uh-uh.”

“So now what?”

“We keep thinking.”

“We don't have a lot of time, you know. Just one more day. And we're no closer to deciphering the code than we were yesterday.”

“We're just missing the key,” Chris mumbles, almost to himself.

“We've tried everything.”

“No, we haven't,” Chris says. “Otherwise, we'd have figured it out.” He whips his copy of the clue out of his pocket and reads it aloud—the part that's readable, that is. “The guy who wrote this is trying to tell us something. He's giving us a clue to cracking the code. I just know it.”

“You mean the
time to move forward
bit? Trust me, we're not moving anywhere. Half the code is letters, and the other half is numbers. How are we supposed to figure that out?”

“
Time to move forward
,” Chris mutters again. “Why say that? Why not just say, ‘Here's the clue'? Time to move forward. Time is numbers, so let's concentrate on that.”

“What numbers are in the code?”

I dig out a paper and pencil and write them down as Chris rattles them off. “They range from one to twenty-three,” I say when I'm done, “but two and eleven are missing. There are no repeats.”

“Okay, there are no huge numbers. Nothing bigger than twenty-three. Maybe each number represents a letter. What do you think?”

“But there are twenty-six letters in the alphabet. The highest number is twenty-three.”

“So some of the letters are left out. If one equals
a
and so on, the missing letters would be
x
,
y
and
z
. It wouldn't be hard to write a clue without those letters.”

I nod and do some fast computing. “The other numbers left out of the code are two and eleven, which would be
b
and
k
. You could probably write a message without those letters too.”

“Okay,” Chris says, and I can tell he's getting pumped. “Let's rewrite the code, inserting letters for those numbers, and see if it tells us anything.”

—gj
v
f-tje
e
e
p
sp
j
fd
tjpo o
o
a
gp
r
ujg
i
dbujpo

—hfp
m
fusj
c
gjhvsf
w
jui gpvs f
q
vb
l
s
usbj
g
iu tj
d
ft boe
f
p
u
s sjh
h
u b
n
hmft

“It still doesn't make any sense,” I say when we're done.

Chris stabs a finger at the paper. “Except for that.”

I look where he's pointing. “The letter
a
? What's so big about that?”

“Don't you get it? It's all by itself. It's the word
a
. It has to be.”

“Oh, good,” I reply sarcastically. “We know one of the words is
a
. We've practically got this thing solved.”

Chris doesn't hear me. He's totally focused on figuring out the code. “We got the
time
part. Now we just need to
move forward.
But how?”

That's when a bell goes off in my head. “I got it!” I say. I start to scribble, changing the letters in the first word of the code to the letters that come next alphabetically.

The result is
hkwg-ukff.
I chuck my pencil. “So much for that idea. I thought for sure the code was telling us to move the letters forward.”

Chris picks up my pencil and hands it back. “What if the letters have already been moved forward? Maybe we need to move them backward instead.”

So I do.
Gjvf-tjeee
now becomes
fiue-siddd.

Chris sighs and slumps against the wall. “That's no better.”

“It does look more like a word,” I say. I look at the original code word with numbers and letters. “What if?” I start to scribble again.

“What if what?” Chris peers over my shoulder.

“What if we leave the letters that were originally numbers alone because they've already been changed once?” When I finish writing, I smack the paper with my pencil. “Ta-da!
Five-sided.
And in case you haven't noticed, that's a real word.”

For a second, Chris turns into a statue. He's not blinking. He doesn't even seem to be breathing. Finally, he says, “Hurry up. Decode the rest.”

“
Five-sided projection on a fortification,
” I read, and then, “
Geometric figure with four equal straight sides and four right angles.
” I look up. “That second one is a square.”

Chris nods. His eyes are glittering. “And the first one is a bastion. I had a toy fort when I was a kid.” His face breaks into the biggest grin I've ever seen. “We're going to Bastion Square.”

Chapter Nine

Now that we've figured out where the next cache is, Chris and I can't wait to start looking for it. There's a bus stop outside the school, so we hop on a bus for downtown and Bastion Square. We're barely up the steps before the driver shuts the door and pulls away from the curb, so we weave our way down the aisle like a couple of drunks and flop onto the backseat. Then we slouch into opposite corners and stretch out.

Chris chucks a wadded gum wrapper at my head. “This is it,” he says. “The last cache,
and
we're a day ahead of schedule. Oh, yeah. We are da men.”

“We haven't found the cache yet,” I remind him. “Maybe we should hold off celebrating until we actually have it in our hands.”

Chris makes a face and waves away my words. “It's in the bag, man.”

I shake my head. “Don't be so sure. There could be another twist. The guy who hid the caches has a thing for surprises. Or haven't you noticed?”

“I bet you half your share of the prize that we find that cache today.”

“You really think I'm going to take that bet?” I hoot. “You're a moron.” I chuck the gum wrapper back at him.

He grins and deflects it with his arm. Then we both sit back and look out the window.

It's almost rush hour, and the bus is entering the city center, so traffic is starting to bog down. When we stop at a light, we're hemmed in on all sides.

Chris whistles. “Take a look at that.”

“What?”

“Second car back.” He nods toward the line of vehicles behind the bus.

“You mean that red convertible?”

“Yeah, that
and
the girl inside.”

“What's so special about her? You can't even see her,” I say. “Her hair is covered with a scarf, and she's wearing sunglasses.”

“She's hot,” Chris insists.

I start to laugh.

Chris frowns. “What's so funny?”

“I was just thinking how dumb you're going to feel when you find out that that girl is the mom of a kid we go to school with.”

He kicks my foot. “She is not.”

I kick him back. “There was a red convertible parked outside the school today. And the driver was a lady. Could've been this car and this lady. Most ladies in cars parked outside of schools are moms.” I pause before adding, “But if that's your thing—” I grin and move my legs before he can kick me again.

We get off the bus at Douglas Street and hang a right onto View. After a couple of blocks, we're in the tourist part of downtown. We cross Government Street with the Bastion Square entrance straight ahead. There is a glass and metal archway with the name welded onto it. The huge building on our right is a pub, according to the sign, but it looks like it could have been a bank once. Like all the other old buildings around here, it's kept in good shape to attract the tourists.

From this point on, it's foot traffic only. No cars are allowed in Bastion Square. Good thing, too. There's no room for them. The place is swarming with pedestrians.

Chris and I walk down one side of the square to the Wharf Street boundary, then up the other side toward Langley Street, where we slide onto a bench just vacated by a couple of old guys.

“Did you see it?” Chris asks.

He means the cache. I
didn't
see it, but something in his voice makes me think he might have, so I turn quickly to look at him. “Did you?”

He shakes his head. “Where do you think it could be?”

“Not in any of the buildings. The rules say it's got to be outside somewhere. In the shrubs, maybe, or taped to the bottom of one of the benches? Over the top of a door or window? It's so wide open here. There aren't a lot of good hiding places. Of course, it would help if we knew what we're looking for.”

Chris squints up at the sun and then scans the tops of the buildings.

“Don't tell me you think it's going to be somewhere up there,” I say as my stomach does a flip. If I can't climb down a ten-foot cliff, I sure as heck can't scale a fifty-foot wall.

Chris shrugs. “I don't know. Like you said, there aren't a lot of good hiding places around here. I'm just thinking about the possibilities.”

“Maybe there's a clue in the note to narrow things down,” I say.

“Like what?”

Chris pulls out the paper and we study it, looking for anything that might be a hint. If there is a clue, we don't see it. As we continue to ponder where the cache might be, Chris absentmindedly refolds the paper until it looks like it did when we pulled it out of the lantern.

That makes me wonder if the lantern is the clue. I dig through my backpack and haul it out. I can't quite close my hand around it, but it's still pretty small. The frame and pointed top are black, and it has four clear-plastic panels. One of them is hinged with a latch.

Chris looks at the lantern and then holds the folded paper next to it. “I don't know how that paper ever fit inside,” he says.