The Unbreakable Code Read online

  “Aww!” Emily and James cooed over the dogs. Matthew dropped to one knee, held out a hand, and clicked his tongue, but both dogs ignored him. The large one ran in a figure eight around them while the small dog came to a halt just outside the office, gave one perfunctory yip, then raced back inside. Jack shooed the big dog to return to the office, but that seemed to only encourage his trotting figure eights.

  “Claus,” Mr. Griswold’s voice called from inside. The dog’s ears perked at the crumple and rattle of treats, and he abruptly turned and went back into the room.

  Mr. Griswold’s office was big and sunny with a view of downtown skyscrapers framing the Ferry Building clock tower and the bay beyond. A bust of Edgar Allan Poe posed in front of the window wearing a golden rabbit medallion. The bookshelves were overstuffed with toys and puzzles as well as books. Marbles click-clacked through a glass-encased contraption that consisted of ramps and rotating buckets and other obstacles designed to keep them moving.

  The office was just as Emily remembered, but Mr. Griswold was not. The man she’d met in November had seemed much more like the Mr. Griswold she knew from the videos on the Book Scavenger website. Today, the publisher appeared frail and washed out in his oversize gray sweater and slacks. Even though Jack had warned them, seeing this diluted, normal version of her idol was like pulling back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz.

  Their surprised reactions must have showed, because Mr. Griswold brushed his clothes and said, almost apologetically, “My usual suits aren’t so comfortable right now.” To Jack he said, “I suppose my casual wear could use some brightening, couldn’t it?”

  “You look great, Old Book Dude,” Matthew said. Ordinarily this was the sort of comment that would make Emily thwap her brother, but Mr. Griswold chuckled at the nickname Matthew had coined a couple of months ago.

  “You met my new pups?” The big dog continued to lick Mr. Griswold’s palm after gobbling up his treat. “This one is Claus, and the little one is Angel.”

  Angel curled up in a basket in a corner with one furry eyebrow raised, watching the room skeptically. Having finished his treat, Claus pranced to the couch, gingerly nipped the corner of a throw pillow so it dangled from his mouth, then trotted away with his head held high like he was showing off a newly won trophy.

  “Claus likes to imagine himself in a parade, I think,” Mr. Griswold said, his mustache lifting with his smile.

  They all laughed, and it felt good, like a breeze of fresh air sweeping through the room.

  “Are those cameras?” James pointed to the ceiling where plastic bubbles encased shiny black equipment.

  Mr. Griswold nodded. “A new addition since…” He gestured to himself with a flourish. “You can never be too cautious these days. This might interest you three. I know you like electronics, James.” With the help of a cane, Mr. Griswold crossed the room to open a panel of bookcases that revealed a secret room they had seen once before. The small room was filled with computer equipment. Emily stepped inside. Mechanical whirring surrounded her like a swarm of invisible robotic bees. Four new monitors showed black-and-white footage of Mr. Griswold’s office, the Bayside Press reception area, what looked like the front entry of an apartment building, and a rooftop patio. “To help me keep an eye on things here and at home,” Mr. Griswold explained.

  “Wow…” Emily said, her voice hushed.

  “I suppose it is impressive, isn’t it?”

  But Emily wasn’t in awe. The guard dogs and the surveillance cameras … It bothered Emily that a pendulum could swing into Mr. Griswold’s life and leave his personality and spirit dented.

  They exited the room, and Mr. Griswold swung the bookcase closed. He limped back to the couch. Claus climbed up next to him, dragging his pillow, and plopped both pillow and head onto Mr. Griswold’s lap. The dog whimpered and nibbled at the corner of the pillow.

  “He looks like he’d be ferocious, but he’s the biggest baby you’ll ever meet,” Mr. Griswold said, stroking Claus’s head.

  From his basket, Angel snorted, as if in agreement, and dropped her head onto her paws.

  “Now, the teen advisory committee!” Mr. Griswold smiled. “I’ve been wanting to organize this for a while. Your young perspectives will be invaluable for Book Scavenger.”

  Emily couldn’t help but think that hearing their ideas might be exactly what Mr. Griswold needed to get back to his old flamboyant, game-scheming ways. She jumped right in. “We’re really excited. James and I already have a plan. We thought there could be an obstacle course around Golden Gate Park—”

  “With puzzle stations,” James added. “The competitors would complete a puzzle station, then go down the cement slide, then run to the next puzzle station—”

  “And then paddleboat across Stow Lake to the next puzzle station.”

  Matthew hadn’t been part of their brainstorming, but he was nodding along with everything they said. “We should end the whole thing at a live concert! I wonder how much it would cost to have Flush play.”

  Mr. Griswold’s eyebrows rose up and up and up. “Oh, dear,” he finally said. “Well. That certainly sounds ambitious. And it’s something I might have done … before.” Mr. Griswold sighed. “Those days are behind me now. The elaborate games and events were fun while they lasted, but—” Mr. Griswold shook his head and wrinkled his nose, his mustache scrunching up like he’d tasted something sour.

  “Oh.” It was all Emily could muster to say. Of course Mr. Griswold would be reluctant to do a big event again. But how could he give them up altogether? She remembered the video he’d posted to the Book Scavenger website recounting the reverse egg hunt he’d hosted. Contestants wore large, inflatable egg-shaped suits and ran around a park bumping into each other as they found hidden paperback books to fill their baskets. In the video, Mr. Griswold started laughing so hard he couldn’t talk. Clearly, planning those events had made him happy. Emily could understand why he might be scared now, but how could you give up something that had been such a big part of who you were?

  Jack chimed in. “Our idea for the advisory had been for you to start off generating content for the website, maybe feature book recommendations or tips for book hunting. We’d also like to set you up as website admins to help model and maintain an encouraging and collaborative atmosphere. And you could help with forum housekeeping—deleting inactive threads, booting trolls off the site, that sort of thing.”

  Mr. Griswold rhythmically stroked Claus’s head as Jack spoke. The dog had fallen asleep.

  “Oh. Sure!” Emily said, maybe a bit too brightly. The obstacle course she and James had envisioned seemed like it could be so much fun. Maybe in time Mr. Griswold would come around to doing it.

  After a little more discussion about their teen advisory responsibilities, James said, “Hey, Mr. Griswold, did you know there might be an old ship buried under your office building?”

  Mr. Griswold smiled. “I did know about that, as a matter of fact. I take it you’ve learned part of the city was built on landfill?”

  “On landfill? Like on trash?” Matthew said. He walked to the window as if he’d be able to see evidence of this outside.

  “Have you heard about something called the unbreakable code?” Emily asked. She leaned forward in her seat, eager to hear his answer. If Mr. Griswold knew about the buried ships, maybe he’d know about this, too.

  “The unbreakable code?” Mr. Griswold studied his hand resting on Claus’s neck.

  “Isn’t that the Mark Twain cipher?” Jack said.

  Emily and James looked to Jack in surprise, then each other.

  “The writer?” Emily asked. The Maritime Museum docent hadn’t said anything about Mark Twain. Of course she hadn’t wanted them to know about the unbreakable code in the first place.

  Mr. Griswold continued to study sleeping Claus, but Jack nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, yeah—I’m fuzzy on the details, but I remember hearing about this a while back. You can view the code at the main library. They hav
e the original document there.”

  “It’s at the library?!” Emily and James looked sheepishly at each other. They’d spent the last two days debating what the code could be and doing random searches on the Internet. Why hadn’t it occurred to them to ask at a library?

  “You have to request to see it at the History Center,” Jack replied. “But yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s there.”

  “We are so totally checking this out,” Emily said.

  CHAPTER

  9

  A SHORT WHILE LATER, Emily, James, and Matthew were riding a streetcar down Market Street on their way to the main library.

  “Jack didn’t say anything about a fire curse,” Emily noted.

  “Maybe that docent was pulling our leg,” James said.

  “What’s the fire curse?” Matthew asked.

  They filled her brother in on the odd way the woman at the Maritime Museum had acted when they asked about the unbreakable code, and how she’d said it was cursed.

  “She said the code survived a fire in 1851. That means it’s over a hundred and sixty years old. How cool would it be to crack a cipher that couldn’t be solved for that long?” James asked.

  Matthew placed an earbud in one ear. “You two get excited about the weirdest things.”

  The main library was a silver-and-gray grid of concrete and windows—about as exciting as graph paper—so it surprised Emily to walk into a vast, sun-filled lobby crowned with a round sunroof high overhead. Emily’s head spun looking up and around at the balconied hallways that ringed every level. All those hallways and doors led to different sections of the library. If they weren’t on a mission to see the unbreakable code, Emily would have wanted to randomly pick a floor and wander.

  Once they found their way to the History Center, Emily had imagined they would browse shelves like she normally did in a library, but they were stopped at the front desk by a librarian.

  “What can I help you find?” The woman’s name tag read REGINA LINDEN, and she looked nothing like what Emily imagined when she thought of the word librarian. She had green-streaked hair threading through an otherwise black ponytail. The color surprised Emily most of all because the librarian was old. Not old-old, like little-old-lady old, but colorful hair was something Emily thought of teenagers and college kids having, and Ms. Linden was older than that. Maybe even older than her parents. And then there were the tattoos wrapping around her forearm that peeked out from the cuff of her blouse.

  “Cool sleeve,” Matthew said, noting the tattoos.

  “Thanks.” Ms. Linden smiled, and pushed up the fabric so they could have a better look at the collage of images. It was like an I-Spy game with flowers, a feather, a lightning bolt, a cat—Emily thought it would take her an hour to make out all the pictures. An airplane carried a banner that read Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

  “Great quote, don’t you think?” Ms. Linden asked. “It’s from the poet Mary Oliver. So you tell me”—she pressed her hands together like she was praying, pointed her fingers toward them, and said—“what do you plan to do with your one wild and precious … visit to the History Center?”

  Emily laughed nervously. James shifted his feet, and they looked at each other, daring the other to speak up first. There was something about how vibrant and bold Ms. Linden seemed that intimidated Emily.

  “They want to see the unbreakable code,” Matthew said. “I’m just along for the ride.”

  Ms. Linden’s eyes lit up. “Treasure hunters, are you? You’ll appreciate this, then.” The librarian lifted her necklace to show them an odd-looking coin strung on the chain. “This is from a dive through an old shipwreck off the coast of Florida.”

  Emily and James collectively breathed out the word wow. Matthew leaned an elbow on the counter. “You dive?” he said. “I’ve been wanting to try that.”

  Emily snorted. Matthew freaked out in aquariums, so she was pretty sure he hadn’t considered scuba diving until that very second.

  “You’ll love it,” Ms. Linden said. “I’ve got a J-Boat I take down to Monterey every so often when I’m itching for a local dive.” She typed into her computer. “Okay, I’ll bring the code to you, but you all need to sign this first.” Ms. Linden slid over a sheet of paper stating they wouldn’t destroy or steal any of the materials. “And I’ll keep your bags up here with me.”

  “Can I bring my notebook?” Emily asked.

  “Sure. Notebooks are fine. Pens, pencils, even cameras—but no flash on historical documents. No photocopying, of course.”

  Ms. Linden led them to a long empty table in the middle of an intimidatingly quiet room lined with sleek, glass-fronted bookshelves. There were three other people in the room reading.

  “So, I’m curious,” Ms. Linden said. “What exactly do you know about the unbreakable code?”

  “Not very much.”

  Emily hesitated to say any more, but her brother blurted out, “We know it’s cursed, but that sort of thing doesn’t scare us.” He shrugged nonchalantly.

  Who was this guy showing off for the librarian? Emily hadn’t even been sure Matthew had been listening when they’d told him about their conversation with the Maritime Museum docent, but obviously he had. She hadn’t been sure if they should mention the curse. The museum docent had refused to talk about it for that reason—what if Ms. Linden changed her mind about letting them look at it?

  “We also know it’s called the Mark Twain cipher,” James added. That made Ms. Linden’s eyes light up.

  “So then you know about Tom Sawyer?” she asked.

  “The book?” Emily knew the title because she’d hunted it before through Book Scavenger. It was the first hunt she went on in San Francisco, actually, only another player had found the book before her.

  “Not the book.” Ms. Linden smiled. “Ah, this will be fun. You’ll love this story. I’ll be right back.”

  Ms. Linden left them for a moment and returned with two folders in hand. “Before we get to the code, I want you to meet someone.” She flipped open one folder to reveal a black-and-white portrait of a man with a mustache, goatee, and sideburns. A tall firefighter hat topped his head. “This is Tom Sawyer. He lived here in San Francisco in the late eighteen hundreds.”

  “That guy? He lived here that long ago?” Matthew scoffed. “He looks like a hipster. With a big hat.”

  Ms. Linden gave the photo a second look. “I guess some trends come back around. In any case, this guy was a hero of early San Francisco. He helped organize one of the first fire companies for the city.”

  “If his name is Tom Sawyer, then does he have anything to do with the book?” Emily asked.

  Ms. Linden nodded. “That’s where the story gets interesting. Our Tom Sawyer claimed Mark Twain—that’s the author of the book—named the character after him, although Twain never said one way or another if that was true. They did know each other, though, when Twain worked as a reporter here in San Francisco. He was Samuel Clemens then, of course.” Ms. Linden paused, studying their wrinkled foreheads, then explained, “Mark Twain was a pen name.

  “Tom Sawyer and Twain were good enough friends that Sawyer visited him when he lived in Virginia City, one of the mining towns up north in Nevada. It was when the two were together up there that Mark Twain supposedly won the unbreakable code while gambling. The man who lost didn’t have money to settle his bet and offered the code instead. He claimed that, once broken, it would lead to a stash of gold buried near San Francisco.”

  “Really?” Emily caught James’s eye. Could that be what Mr. Quisling was after? Buried gold? If they broke the unbreakable code, would they beat their teacher to the treasure?

  “Really,” Ms. Linden replied. “Twain was a sucker for a good story, so he accepted the code as payment. He was cautioned by someone that the code was cursed—allegedly it had survived a major fire—”

  “The one that burned down the Niantic,” Emily said, remembering what the docent at the Mari
time Museum had told them.

  Ms. Linden raised her eyebrows, impressed. “So you do know some of the history.” She nodded. “That’s where the idea of a curse began. The legend is that if anyone but the original owner tries to crack the cipher and find the rumored treasure, they will suffer a fire. But Mark Twain wasn’t concerned—some historians speculate that he accepted the code as payment specifically because he appreciated the story behind it. But then Mark Twain had a change of heart when a fire started in his hotel room.”

  “Seriously?” Matthew asked.

  Ms. Linden nodded solemnly. “Seriously. And it spooked Twain away from the code. Tom Sawyer offered to take it off his hands. He’d been a firefighter—he wasn’t afraid of a silly fire curse. Sawyer owned a saloon in San Francisco, and he saw the potential for drawing customers to his business if the code was on display. He framed it and hung it among the firefighting memorabilia that decorated the walls. He told patrons it was a gift from Mark Twain and challenged them to solve it, promising free drinks for life to anyone who could. Nobody ever did.

  “But here’s the kicker,” Ms. Linden said. “Tom Sawyer’s bar burned down while the code was hung on its walls. Imagine that! But guess what survived?”

  Ms. Linden flipped open the second folder, revealing an aged paper sandwiched between pieces of vellum. The bottom half of the paper was filled with letters written in an old-fashioned scroll. “The unbreakable code.”

  CHAPTER

  10

  “I’LL LEAVE YOU to it,” Ms. Linden said, and sashayed away.

  The paper was darker around the edges, as if it had been toasted. It smelled like an attic in an old house. The only thing on the top half of the page was the faintest moon-shaped mark, like a ring left from a coffee mug. Shadows of markings on the flip side showed through. Emily slid her fingers underneath the vellum and turned the page over. There was a simple sketch—four lopsided circles and a few wormy dashes—as if someone had started a drawing and then stopped. The sort of doodle she might do in class.