The Hunt for the Missing Spy (4 page)

“Awesome!” Luke said, pulling the collar of his jacket up with both hands to mimic an undercover agent. “I've always wanted to be a spy like
double-oh-seven.”

Quinn continued reading down the page. “Hey, there's even a code name for the president.”

“What is it?” M.E. asked.

“
POTUS
,” Quinn said. “It's an acronym. It stands for President of the United States. The motorcade that he rides in is called
Bamboo
.”

“Bamboo?” M.E. laughed at the funny name. “Where did they get that code name?”

Quinn shrugged. “Listen to this: the vice president's office is called the
Cobweb
!”

The kids giggled at the weird name.

“We're going to be visiting the White House,” Cody said. “What's it called?”

“The
Castle
,” Quinn answered. “The Capital is called the
Punch Bowl
and the Pentagon is called
Calico
.”

“Awesome,” Luke said. “Maybe we should give our clubhouse a code name.”

Quinn read on. “There's also something in the museum called
Operation Spy
where you get to solve puzzles and read video messages and listen to sound effects—stuff like that. And you can play an interactive game called ‘Spy in the City.'”

“Sounds fun. How do you play?” M.E. asked.

“The museum lends you a GPS device and you have to find clues at landmarks around the area,” Quinn answered. “Your mission is to discover a password for a secret cache.”

“I wonder if we'll get to play.” Cody said.

“Mr. Pike said we're going on some kind of Spy Scavenger Hunt and we'll look for coded clues,” Luke said.

Quinn put away the small tablet. “I think our homework has something to do with our trip. If you guys want to help Luke and me crack the Washington code that Mr. Pike gave us, we'll help you with the one Ms. Stad gave you.”

The girls nodded. Everyone got out pencils. Quinn placed his paper on the floor in front of him so everyone could see it. “Let's race to see who can crack it first.”

On the word “Go!” the kids got to work. Cody glanced back and forth between the homework paper and the Washington code she'd copied in her notebook and began translating the message.

Code Busters' Key and Solution found on pp. 149, 154.

Cody was the first one to finish deciphering the coded message, but she waited until the others were done before saying the answer out loud. She didn't want to ruin the fun for them.

“That was easy,” M.E. said “And since we belong to the Code Busters Club, we already have code names.”

The kids had chosen their own secret identities when they formed the club, and they used their code names when they sent secret messages back and forth. M.E. had used the phonetic spelling of her two initials to create a code name that was also a palindrome. She wrote it down in Washington code:

Meanwhile, Luke scrambled up the letters of his first name to make it an anagram, then added a rhyming word. He wrote down the coded message. With two repeated letters, he knew it wouldn't be too hard to decipher.

Since Quinn's last name rhymed with a spy-type word, he added another word that went with it, which he used for his code name. In Washington Code, it looked like:

Finally, Cody used part of her name plus her hair color to create her secret identity. She knew this would be easy to crack but it was fun to create.

Code Busters' Solutions found on pp. 154.

“Let's write some messages using Washington Code,” Quinn suggested. Everyone got out a sheet of notebook paper and began to encode secret messages using the new code. Cody wrote about
something she wanted to get at the Spy Museum:

Luke thought about why he loved codes so much, then wrote in code the reason:

M.E. couldn't think if anything special to say, so she decided to ask a question:

And Quinn decided to make a suggestion for their visit to the Spy Museum and wrote:

The Code Busters were having so much fun encoding and decoding messages, they lost track of the time. When Cody's cell phone pinged, she read the text from her mother, reminding her to get home.

“Whoa, it's four o'clock. I have to be home in half an hour and we haven't cracked the message Ms. Stad gave us for homework. We better hurry.”

Cody set out the homework assignment for the others to see, along with the key to the Japanese code that represented the numbers from zero to nine. The kids hurried to crack the series of numbers that Ms. Stad had written in Japanese.