Ice Shock (23 page)

“I should borrow your backpack,” I say. “Can't carry the Adapter around like this.”

I take her dripping backpack and open it up. Ixchel snatches it back.

“Who said you could open my bag?”

We stare at each other.

“I just need to borrow it!”

“Okay,” she says. “But at least ask first!”

I take it back from her reluctant hand, a bit astonished at her outburst.

“You really don't know much about girls, do you?” she muses. “You don't open a girl's bag without asking. Ever!”

“It's ‘cause I don't think of you as a girl,” I say, through a mouthful of bread and ham. “You're more like a friend,” I tell her hurriedly, furious that I can't do anything to stop a blush. “Like saying
wey
.”

“You better not call me
wey
,” she warns. “I hate it! I can't believe people in Mexico call each other ‘ox.'”

“Okay,
wey
,” I say, grinning. It's a word that always makes me laugh. “Promise not to call you
wey
,
wey
.”

“Stop it,” she says. “I'm serious.”

“You are
very
serious,” I say. “Too serious.”

Ixchel's eyes widen. “Listen to who's talking!”

“I'm not so serious.”

“Yes, you are.”

“It's just the situations we've been in,” I explain.

“So really you're, what, a funny guy?”

“Maybe not funny, but fun. Yeah. I think I was pretty fun, once.”

“What happened?”

I put my
torta
down with a heavy sigh. “Just … everything.”

I get back to searching through the backpack. My fingers land on the napkin where Ixchel wrote my mysterious postcard messages. The napkin is soaked through, on the verge of turning to mush, but I notice the writing. It's fuzzy, but I can still read what she wrote. As I look at it upside down, the positions of the periods suddenly grab my attention.

WHAT.KEY.HOLDS.BLOOD.

DEATH.UNDID.HARMONY.

ZOMBIE.DOWNED.WHEN.FLYING.

KINGDOM'S.LOSS.QUESTIONABLE.JUDGMENT.

“What if … ,” I whisper.

Ixchel puts her bottle down. “What?”

“What if the periods actually mean something?”

“You mean, like part of the code?”

I point to the letters at the start of each word.

“What if this message is an acrostic? Where you just use the first or last letters of each word?
What key holds blood
—W-K-H-B.”

Ixchel shrugs. “It's meaningless.”

“Yeah, but now,” I tell her breathlessly, “now that
does
look like a Caesar cipher word.”

“Caesar cipher? Like Julius Caesar?”

I nod. “He used it to encrypt messages to his troops. It's one of the simplest, earliest codes. You shift each letter along three places to get the cipher letter. So an
A
becomes a
D
, a
B
becomes
E
.”

Ixchel's eyes widen, impressed. She looks down at the writing.

I continue, pointing. “
W
in the cipher message … go back three in the alphabet … that's
T
. Then
K
… that's an
H
.
H
is code for
E
… and
B
is code for …”

I stop, momentarily stumped.

“It would have to be
Y
,” Ixchel points out. “Going back to the end of the alphabet.”

“That spells …
THEY
.”

We stare at each other.

“What's the second word?”

We work it out together.

ARE
.

We continue, until we've deciphered the message so far.

THEY ARE WATCHING
.

I jump up, run over to the woman selling
tortas,
and beg her for a napkin. Ixchel digs around inside her backpack and finds her pencil. I scribble the decoded message. And we just stare at it in wonder.

“Josh,” Ixchel says, her voice hushed, “how long have you had this message?”

“Days …”

I think suddenly of Tyler. If we want to call him before he goes to bed, we have to hurry. I check my watch—almost six in the evening. That's eleven o'clock in England. I walk to the other end of the field, far from anyone, and open the plastic bag containing the Adapter. I have no idea if it's still giving off the poisonous gas, but better to be safe. I remove the iPod and both phones. I seal up the Adapter again, stuff it into my back pocket and return to Ixchel. Then I try my cell phone. It turns on okay—finally! But the battery is almost dead, so I use Ixchel's phone.

We call Benicio, who almost has a fit when he hears my voice. He's furious. I can't say I blame him. But he'll feel differently when he sees the prize we've captured—the Adapter.

We assure Benicio that we'll be back by morning. Montoyo won't know that we ever separated; Benicio won't get into trouble.

I'm feeling my confidence return. This is working out. We've had everything thrown at us, but we're still in the game.

We call Tyler. He sounds tired and grumpy. When I ask if he went to my neighbor Jackie's and picked up today's mail, he perks up.

“Yeah, there were two more.”

He reads aloud the latest two messages, in date order.

FINESSE.REQUIRES.PROPER.HEED.

Just before I hang up, Ixchel whispers, “Ask him what the photos are …”

I'm a bit puzzled but ask anyway. He tells me that they're photos of Labna and Palenque, two more Mayan ruins.

“You think that's important?” I ask Ixchel.

“Could be. Another way to give more information, maybe?”

“You mean there's a clue in the photos?”

“Maybe.”

I'm suddenly angry with myself for not going back to my house for the postcards.

That's the first place Ollie and Madison would have looked for me, but …

Without the actual postcards, it seems that I won't be able to solve the coded message.

Ixchel and I concentrate on deciphering the next few words.

In cipher-text they spell F-R-P-H. In English,
COME
.

THEY ARE WATCHING. COME.

It's definitely a message—with an instruction. But where?

“The clue to where could be in some more messages,” Ixchel comments. “Or it could be right here, in what you already have.”

“That would be the smart way to send a message,” I agree. “Give as much information as possible in each piece.”

“If ‘they are watching,' then the message has to be as subtle as possible. Hidden in plain view. So anyone could see one or two postcards and not get the whole message.”

What do we have? Photos of Mayan ruins: Tikal, Labna, Calakmul, Altun Ha … I can't remember them all.

And then I realize. I've been stupid. Blind as a bat.

It's another acrostic
.

I call Tyler again. This time he sounds really annoyed.

“Man, what? I'd just gone to sleep!”

“Tyler … this is really, really important. Can you read out the names of the ruins in the photos? In order of dates!”

I hear Tyler grumbling as he crawls out of bed and gropes around his desk. Papers rustle. “They're here somewhere …”

“Tyler … just get them!”

“Chill, man. You're so weird lately. Telling me to get out of Oxford! I don't know … what's the deal?”

I grit my teeth. Finally he finds the postcards.

“Okay. Here we go. First one is—Tikal. Next is Labna. Next, Altun Ha, Calakmul, Ocosingo, Tikal again, Altun Ha again, Labna again, Palenque.”

I scribble the names down.

“You done?”

“Awesome, thanks.”

“Okay. Can I go to sleep now?”

“Uhhh … listen, think you could go around tomorrow and check if there are any more postcards?”

Tyler lets off a stream of swear words.

“So that's a ‘no' … ?”

“Yeah, Josh, it's a ‘no.' I'm going to London tomorrow for the day. Where
are
you? You know your mom called here yesterday? Emmy's mom told her you were with me. I had to tell her you'd gone out to the movies.”

“Thanks, Tyler, you're a pal.”

I snap the phone closed and hand it back to Ixchel. My hands are actually trembling with excitement.

I can already see a pattern.

T-L-A-C-O-T-A-L-P.

“That's a Mexican place name,” I say, breathless with the rush of discovery. “Has to be.”

“Close enough,” Ixchel says, frowning. “It could mean ‘Tlacotalpan.'”

“Where's that? I've never heard of it.”

“It's a small town, not too close,” she admits, “on the way back to Veracruz.”

“That's it, then. We're going. We'll sneak aboard the bus with these Americans. How's the driver going to know we're not with them? He's bound to be going somewhere useful.”

Ixchel hesitates, looks doubtful. “I don't know. Maybe …”

“What?”

There's real anxiety on Ixchel's face. “We really should take the Adapter straight to Ek Naab.”

I can hardly believe what she's saying. “You mean … you and I go straight back to Ek Naab? Not to Tlacotalpan?”

Ixchel nods slowly, gazes directly into my eyes. Something about her expression irritates me. A feeling of frustration wells up inside, and I step away from her. “No way! Montoyo will flip his lid if he finds out I ran off again. And he'll blame Benicio! I'm not doing that to Benicio, not again.”

“But, Josh. We're close to Ek Naab here. We have to tell the Executive what we found about the Sect, about that Revival Chamber, what we saw them trying with the Key and the Adapter. We need to do that right away. When they hear what we know, they won't care that we sneaked away from Benicio.”

I glance away, avoiding her eyes. I take a deep breath. “All right. I admit it—this isn't just about going back with Benicio. This is about me. I need to know who's sending these postcards. I need to go to that place.”

“Yes, but later! We should get back now,” she insists. “No more adventures.”

“No!”

Ixchel stops in her tracks.

“This is a message about my father,” I say. “I know it. Someone knows the truth! Maybe someone in the NRO who's afraid to talk. Don't you get it? I
have
to go.”

Hey, Mom. I thought about calling you. It's four a.m. here, ten in the morning in England, so you should be finished with breakfast. I didn't want to have to lie to you, though. You still think I'm staying with Emmy's family, and I'm feeling a little bad about that. So I texted you again. Just to let you know I'm okay and ask how you are. But of course, you won't be able to reply—this number will just come up as “Anonymous.”

I'm waiting in yet another bus station, this time for a bus to Tlacotalpan. Not a fancy tourist-style bus this time—just a regular rickety one full of ordinary Mexican workers and farmers carrying chickens and goats
.

Tlacotalpan is a small town in the state of Veracruz, in case you didn't know. (I've never heard you mention it, so I don't know if you do … ) It's on the banks of a big river, the Papaloapan. Someone there has been sending us the postcards. They have a message for me. Or maybe it's for both of us—you and me?

I don't really feel like blogging anymore. I'm too nervous
.

I wake up on the bus to Tlacotalpan to find Ixchel asleep and slumped against my chest, with my arm around her. I don't want to move her away, because that might wake her up. On the other hand, it's hard to get back to sleep now that I know we're practically cuddling.

How weird is that?

So I stay exactly where I am, trying not to move my hand too much. I try to breathe like I'm asleep. And I try to ignore how nice and cozy this feels—which is the hardest job of all.

It doesn't last long. Ixchel stirs against me. For about one second she squeezes me tightly. Then she sits bolt upright, staring at me like she's seen a ghost.

“What's going on?”

“Nothing!”

“Are you trying to … ?”

I gasp. “No way—are you kidding?”

“So what … ?”

“
You
leaned on
me
! I just woke up a few seconds ago.”

“You didn't think to get your hands off me?”

“Hey! I didn't want to wake you up!”

Ixchel fumes. “Sure. Of course you didn't.”

She shuffles into the corner of her seat. I sigh. Clearly, I can't win.

I pull the plastic grocery-store bag from under my seat. It's stuffed with snacks and drinks that we bought in the bus station at Villahermosa. I open up a carton of pineapple juice. We each take two Gansitos. For the next few minutes we munch on the squishy cream-and-jam-filled chocolate-covered cakes.