Mr. Kim went speechless for a moment and the color drained from his face. Then he looked at Mr. Quinn.
“Oops,” he said.
CHAPTER FOUR
I Prove Invaluable to the Cause
Even though I had this moment of brilliance and everything, Mr. Kim and Mr. Quinn still wouldn’t let us come. The next night in THE BIG SECRET SPY ROOM THAT’S HIDDEN UNDER THE SCHOOL AND ACCESSIBLE ONLY BY SECRET PASSAGE FROM MR. KIM’S OFFICE, Mr. Kim explained that he and Mr. Quinn were going to Oahu to investigate. Well, I said boo on that. They were going to tell Mrs. Marquardt and Mr. Torres that they were going to an educational conference and leave them in charge of the school. Double boo. Leaving Mrs. Marquardt in charge? I was very pouty while Mr. Kim delivered the news.
“There is something I have to tell you all,” said Mr. Kim. He sounded serious, so we all stopped fidgeting and sat up in our seats.
“You need to understand how dangerous this is. Simon Blankenship is an evil man. He wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to harm any of you. I want it to be perfectly clear that you are not to do anything reckless or foolish while Mr. Quinn and I are gone.” He was looking at me when he said the reckless and foolish part. Why does he always look at me when he says that kind of stuff? I am so totally not reckless and foolish! As if.
“Secondly, you need to realize that Simon has vast resources. He has a dedicated and fanatical group of followers. My point is that, under the circumstances, you can trust no one. Only the six of us in this room know that we have the authentic book. No matter what happens, that book must not fall into Simon’s hands.” Mr. Kim looked at all of us, one by one. “Above all else, you must remember that Simon’s people could be anywhere. So act accordingly. Trust no one.
“While we’re gone, I think it would be a good idea if the four of you continue to meet here. You may work on trying to unravel the secrets of the book,” he said.
“That’s it? That’s your idea of us helping to catch Mithras?” I said. “I’m sorry. For a minute there I might have dozed off because it sounded so boring! Fine. Go jetting off to Hawaii or wherever and have the secret-agent fun. We’ll just stay here and be bored out of our skulls. No problemo!”
He said it like it was a big honor. Like we should be thrilled that we were free to come and go in THE BIG SECRET SPY ROOM THAT’S HIDDEN UNDER THE SCHOOL AND ACCESSIBLE ONLY BY SECRET PASSAGE FROM MR. KIM’S OFFICE, even if he wasn’t around. Personally, I thought he was crazy. Who knew how much trouble we could get into with all this stuff down here? But I kept that thought to myself.
“We’ll be gone a few days,” he said, ignoring my tirade. “Try not to get yourself into any dangerous situations while we’re gone.” Again he looked at me. I think Mr. Kim was starting to have “trust issues” where I was concerned.
“Do you want us to dust and vacuum while you’re gone?” I said as they loaded the car. I didn’t even try to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
“Now that you mention it, this room could use a good dusting,” Mr. Kim said.
They both laughed and then got in the car and drove away.
Well, I had news for them. Rachel Buchanan does not do anyone’s dusting. Especially someone who tries to keep her from her free trip to Hawaii.
CHAPTER FIVE
No One Is Going to Cheat Me Out of My Hula Lessons
“This is so infuriating,” I said. “He told me we’d get to help bring this knucklehead down, and then they take off for who knows where and leave us behind?” I was working up a full head of Rachel Buchanan steam, and my friends had seen enough of it to back off and let me rant.
We sat in THE BIG SECRET…oh forget it…the room for a couple of hours while I worked on a full-blown meltdown at the injustice of my life.
I kept pacing back and forth and yammering on and on about how unfair everything was. In the meantime, Brent kept fiddling with my watch, Alex just sat there flexing his muscles, and Pilar did something with the computer. None of them seemed to realize the seriousness of our situation, which was that we were stuck here at school when we could be in Hawaii or some other exotic locale. I mean, come on. Focus, people!
Finally, as usual, Alex spoke up, if only to needle me.
“When do you want to get started on that dusting?” he said.
“Very funny,” I said. Then I noticed that Pilar was looking at the computer screen and frowning.
“What?” I said to her.
She had one of those looks on her face. That “something is going on here and I know something the rest of you don’t and it’s really bugging me” look.
She glanced up at me.
“Ummm, nothing…,” she said.
“Pilar,” I said. “Spill it.”
“Really, it’s nothing,” she said.
“Okay. You of all people should know better by now. We can sit here and do this all night. I’ll say ‘Pilar, what’s on your mind?’ and you’ll say ‘Oh, nothing’ and it will go on like that for hours until I finally drag it out of you. So let’s save time and you just tell me.”
Pilar punched a few buttons on the keyboard and the big-screen monitor on the wall brought up an image of an archaeological dig site.
“This is the site on the Big Island, where the first Roman artifacts were found. Shields, swords, that kind of stuff,” she said.
“Yes?” I said.
“Well, I know Mr. Quinn said some Roman-era stuff was found on the other islands, which is why they’re starting on Oahu, but this is where it was found first, and I think it’s important,” she said.
Good heavens. This was going to take days! Even Alex and Brent were paying attention to her now.
“It’s just one phrase in the book—I keep thinking about it,” she said. “It says ‘Mithras walks with Hades’ handmaiden.’ It didn’t make any sense to me at first. But now something’s telling me it’s connected to this. I can’t explain it.”
She clicked through some pictures of the dig site. I watched as the images moved by on the screen. Then I saw something. Something that made my flesh crawl.
“Wait! Pilar, go back to that last picture!”
Pilar punched the keyboard and the previous image came up.
“I think you’re right,” I said. “This is the place to start.”
“Why are you always so sure that you’re…,” Alex started to say, but I shushed him. I picked up a little laser pointer that was lying on the table and pointed it at the monitor up on the wall.
“Because of this,” I said. I moved the red dot of the pointer to the bottom right corner of the photograph. An archaeologist was standing next to a rock wall, holding an old bronze helmet that must have belonged to a Roman soldier. Behind him, on the wall of rock down close to the ground, where I’d almost missed it, was a carving in the stone.
A carving of a bull’s head.
CHAPTER SIX
Holy Cow!
“Holy cow!” said Brent.
“I think that nails it. The Romans made it to that island alive,” I said.
Alex had that stunned expression on his face, like he wasn’t quite ready to give in.
“Okay, I’ll admit that it looks like the carvings that Simon has on all of his stuff. But even if this is all true, how do we know the artifact is still there? Maybe someone found it and carried it off.”
“It’s there,” said Pilar.
“How do you know?” he said.
“Because I know,” she said.
Alex didn’t say anything, clearly not wanting to get into that argument again. I may think he’s a jerk, and he’s clearly uncomfortable with Pilar’s gifts, but at least he tried not to hurt her feelings. I gave him props for that.
Pilar’s announcement sealed it for me, though. I mean, sure, a ton of circumstantial evidence and a wacky feeling from my roommate was all I really had to go on. But I didn’t need a lot of convincing. I’m easy that way. Especially if it’s going to get me to Hawaii.
“What do we do?” Br
ent asked.
“They’re on a plane by now. They said they’re going to Oahu, but we have no idea where, or how to get in touch with them,” Alex said.
All true. We had no way of getting this info to them. They didn’t even give us their cell-phone numbers, because they were worried about Mithrians listening in. Who knew how much time they’d waste wandering around Oahu when they really needed to be on the Big Island.
“Maybe Mrs. Marquardt knows how to get in touch with him?” Alex said.
“And what do we tell her that would possibly convince her to interrupt him at his ‘conference,’ without spilling the beans?” I said.
They nodded. I felt like a clock was ticking in my head and we were running out of time.
“Okay. So we need to get out of here and start working on finding those artifacts. Are you guys in?”
Pilar, Brent, and Alex all looked at one another. They weren’t like me. (At least not yet.) They were superloyal to Mr. Kim, and I could tell that their first instinct was to tell me we should stay at the school and mind our own beeswax. But they’d also gotten a glimpse of what was at stake on the ship that night. They knew that Simon needed to be stopped. So, they were torn. Time for some of the old Rachel charm.
“Guys, look, I know what you’re thinking. You want to obey Mr. Kim’s orders and stay out of it. But Mr. Kim is not infallible. Correct me if I’m wrong, but whose idea was it to give Simon a copy of the book that ends up having directions to the treasures right on the front cover? We should be putting all the resources we have into catching Simon and finding these little gizmos. And we are resources, aren’t we?” They all nodded. Except for maybe Alex. I couldn’t tell if he nodded or not. Alex was something of a stick-in-the-mud when it came to bending the rules. Once he got past the actual rule-breaking he was fine, but it was the part leading up to the act that he had trouble with.
“So it’s a waste of resources for us to sit here and do nothing, right?” I said.
“I guess so,” Pilar said.
“I suppose,” said Alex. Even when he knew I was right, he couldn’t give me an inch.
Brent, Mr. Verbose, just nodded in agreement. Never use two nods when one will do.
“Then the first thing we need to do is figure out how to get out of school without Mrs. Marquardt catching on,” I said.
“You can’t be serious,” Pilar said.
“I’m totally serious.”
“Rachel, come on, this is not like heading to Washington, D.C. in a van. We’re talking about Hawaii. Even if we could leave the school, we don’t have any way to get there.”
“One step at a time. Alex, think about this. We have to get past Mrs. Marquardt. That’s our tactical objective. How do we do it?” I said.
I had noticed that Alex was good at this kind of thing. If I could get him to focus on a project by putting it all into macho-military-type terms, he wouldn’t be such a whiner about breaking the rules.
“Look,” he said. “If we go charging in like this again, Mr. Kim could decide enough is enough and throw us all out of here. And then what? We all move back to Beverly Hills with you?”
This was taking a little longer than I thought. The guy sure was thickheaded.
“Fine, if you’re not up to the task, we’ll just…” I said. That did it.
“I didn’t say I wasn’t up to the task! Oh, you make me so mad sometimes. Wait here.”
Alex stalked over to one of the computers and sat down. Soon he came back with a piece of paper in his hand.
Alex had gone on the FBI website and downloaded their logo onto the page to make it look like an official FBI letterhead from Special Agent Nathan Tyler, with a letter to Mr. Kim. It said that Tyler was more than happy to make arrangements for Alex Scott, Brent Christian, Rachel Buchanan, and Pilar Jordan to attend the weeklong Introduction to FBI Careers Camp at Quantico. The letter said we’d be attending the camp starting tomorrow for the next week, and that he would arrange for FBI transportation to pick us up at school in the morning. It had all the right dates and just the right tone, and it sounded totally official. Alex took a stack of fax pages out of the incoming tray of the fax machine. He sorted through them, found a letter that Agent Tyler had faxed to Mr. Kim, and traced over Agent Tyler’s signature. It was a really good forgery.
“You realize this is probably a huge felony. Impersonating an FBI agent or something,” I said. I wanted to make sure he wasn’t the only one that was aware of all the rules.
“I’m not impersonating an agent,” he said. “I’m impersonating an agent’s letter. Besides, if we get caught, you’ll be in so much more trouble as the ringleader of this little operation that I’ll just be an afterthought.”
Right, I thought. That’ll hold up in court. Ringleader?
Me?
“We need one more thing,” Alex said as he sat back down at the computer. He typed out a note from Mr. Kim to Mrs. Marquardt.
Mrs. Marquardt:
In my rush to leave for the conference, I neglected to inform you that Rachel, Alex, Pilar, and Brent will be attending a special FBI Careers Camp at Quantico for the next few days as guests of Agent Tyler. He has arranged their transportation and they will be picked up here on Wednesday. You can reach me on my cell phone with any questions.
Thanks,
Jonathon Kim
“She’s never going to buy this,” I said.
“Yes, she will. We’ll leave it in a file folder in the box outside her office door tonight, like Mr. Kim put it there before he left. If we show up in the morning with our bags packed, she won’t think twice. Brent and I will load up the Henderson’s Dry Cleaning Van and park it out in the woods tonight. We’ll hustle out the front door, circle around the school, and hop in the van. Then we’re gone.”
Pilar asked good questions as usual. “That’s great, but that only gets us out of school. We can’t drive the van to Hawaii.”
They all looked at me like they expected me to do something. Like it was my job to come up with this part of the scheme. Think, Rachel.
“Wait here,” I said. I ran back up the stairs. Okay, jogged back up the stairs. Well, walked really quickly. I mean, I knew time was of the essence, but it is like ten flights of stairs already. I got to my room, grabbed my laptop, and hurried back down to the hideout. I plugged the computer into one of the Ethernet connections and went to the website for Buchanan Enterprises of Beverly Hills.
“What are you doing?” Brent asked.
“She’s getting us a ride to Hawaii,” Pilar said. See what I mean? Sometimes she just knows what I’m up to. It’s kind of neat and creepy all at once.
I think I’ve said before that I’m pretty good with computers. One night, after I’d come home late, I noticed that my dad had left his computer on in his study, still logged in to his office network. So of course I sat down and had a couple hours of fun. I was able to get into the protocols, find my dad’s password, and read his e-mail. Oh so boring. But since the computer thought I was Charles Buchanan, I was also able to set up a few little “trapdoors” on the company website.
I created a little program that I transferred to a file on my laptop that enabled me to get into the Buchanan Enterprises system. It was set up so that the company network thought I was my dad logging on from a remote location. It got me right past the security and I could do whatever I wanted. All I needed to do was go to the search engine on the website and type in “charlesisabigdoofus.”
I never did anything destructive like some hackers. Mainly I just wanted to see if I could do it. I figured if I got caught, Dad would just think I was acting out again and I’d get grounded or something, as usual.
“Great. But how does that help us?” asked Alex after I explained what I was doing.
“She’s going to order us an airplane,” Pilar said.
My roomie the psychic. Once this was all over, we should get her a TV show, a website, and a 900 number and start raking in the cash.
I went into the B
uchanan Enterprises network through my trapdoor. In a few minutes I found the company travel department. From there I was able to pull up a list of charter air services that used the Philadelphia airport. I scanned through the list of possibilities until I found one that looked promising. Hopefully there would still be someone answering the phone at this time of night.
“Hansen Charter Jet Service,” a voice said. Whew.
“Hello, my name is Theresa Barnett.” (Theresa was my dad’s secretary.) “I’m calling from Buchanan Enterprises in Beverly Hills,” I said. Pilar, Alex, and Brent were staring at me with their mouths open.
I explained that I was calling to arrange a charter flight to Hawaii for Mr. Buchanan’s daughter and a few of her classmates to attend a special environmental workshop on marine mammals. “Mr. Buchanan’s daughter is very interested in saving the whales, you see. I’d like to know if we could arrange a flight from Philadelphia to Hilo, Hawaii, through your service.”
After some discussion, I was able to arrange a charter flight on a small executive jet from Philadelphia to Hilo for $8,000. Score!
“Thank you so very much for your help. You may bill the charges directly to the company Platinum American Express. I’ll be sure to tell Mr. Buchanan how helpful you were in arranging this for his beloved daughter, and Buchanan Enterprises will be sure to use Hansen Charter Jet Service for all of our future air charter needs.” There are definitely advantages to having a rich and powerful father.
When I hung up the phone, I was shaking. Charles was going to freak when he found out what I did. But I’d worry about that later. I used the travel service to book online reservations for two rooms in a Hilo hotel. Then I backed out of the system through my trapdoor, and logged off the website.
To Hawaii, with Love Page 4