Nick and Tesla's Secret Agent Gadget Battle

by Bob Pflugfelder

“For, like, singing into?” Silas asked.

  “No,” said Tesla. “For, like, spying with.”

  Hiroko had questions about where the mini-microphone had come from. Even if the kids had answers, though, it was obvious Tesla wouldn’t share them.

  “It’s just something we found,” she said. “You know how our uncle’s place is. Weird gizmos everywhere.”

  A crash and a curse came from the back corner of the store.

  “Uh-oh—sounds like Blaine needs you again,” Tesla said. “Thanks, Hiroko! See ya later!”

  She spun on her heel and hustled from the store, the boys following right behind her.

  “Do you think she was right about the microphone?” DeMarco asked when they were outside.

  “Hiroko used to build robots for NASA,” Tesla said. “So, yeah, I think she knows what she’s talking about.”

  “Why didn’t you tell her the truth about where you got it?”

  “Because—”

  “This isn’t her problem to solve,” Nick cut in. “Now let’s … oops.”

  He plucked the mini-microphone from his sister’s hand, dropped it to the sidewalk, and stepped on it.

  It crunched and crackled under Nick’s foot.

  “Hey!” said Tesla.

  “Wasn’t that evidence or something?” said DeMarco.

  “Awww,” said Silas. “Why didn’t you let me stomp on it?”

  Nick lifted his foot to make sure the little black square was now a bunch of little black bits.

  “There was no reason to think that microphone wasn’t still working,” he said. “Whatever our next move is, we probably shouldn’t tell the spy. Right?”

  “Good point,” said Tesla. She gazed wistfully at the shattered plastic and pulverized electronics components at their feet. “I think we could’ve come up with a more subtle way to handle that, though.”

  Nick shrugged, looking a bit chagrined. “I thought fast was more important than subtle. And hopefully we already have all the evidence we need anyway. Speaking of which …”

  Tesla brightened.

  “Right,” she said. “Let’s go see what our enemy looks like.”

  “Ahh—there you are!” Lon Beetner said when the kids walked back into Beetner’s Cameratown and Stuff-Yourself Teddy Bear Workshop. He held up a small stack of pictures. “Just finished up. I took the liberty of printing everything on 8-by-12 glossy paper. More fun for me that way, and some of the shots you got out of that dinky little camera actually turned out great.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Beetner!” Tesla said, striding forward with an arm outstretched. “We really appreciate your doing this so fast.”

  Before Tesla could take the pictures, Beetner lifted them up over his head. He was such a tall, lanky man, they nearly scraped the ceiling.

  “That’ll be eighty-seven dollars and thirteen cents,” he said.

  “Eighty-seven dollars!” Nick said. “We don’t have that!”

  Beetner chuckled and lowered his arm.

  “Just kidding,” he said. “It’s twenty-two dollars even.”

  The pictures were right in front of Tesla now, but she didn’t take them.

  “Uhh … I don’t think we have that either,” she said.

  The kids started pulling crumpled dollars and loose change from their pockets.

  “I’ve got four dollars and sixteen cents,” said Nick.

  “I’ve got three dollars and seventy-five cents,” said Tesla.

  “I’ve got a five-dollar bill,” said DeMarco.

  “I’ve got thirty-six cents,” said Silas. “And some gum.”

  They all started toward the nearest counter, about to pile up their money by the cash register.

  “Never mind,” Beetner said with a sigh and a roll of the eyes. “Just come back sometime and buy a teddy bear. The markup on those things is obscene.”

  He held out the photographs to Tesla again.

  This time, she took them.

  The kids thanked Mr. Beetner, then retreated to the Stuffin’ Station and began leafing through the pictures.

  There was DeMarco’s family by a wooden sign that read WELCOME TO SOUTH LAKE TAHOE.

  There was a stony-faced Elesha standing waist-deep in crystal-clear water.

  There was a scowling Monique floating in a little rubber raft.

  There was DeMarco on a pebble-covered beach, grinning obliviously as Elesha sneaked up behind him with a bucket of mud.

  There was DeMarco asleep in his hotel bed with LOSER written on his forehead in blue toothpaste.

  Then the pictures got grayer and grainier.

  DeMarco and Silas firing bottle rockets from a rooftop.

  DeMarco and Silas riding their bikes with Nick and Tesla.

  DeMarco creeping across Julie Casserly’s lawn with a roll of toilet paper.

  And then, crisp and bright and plain as day, a figure bending down toward a star-shaped pendant on a bedroom floor.

  A man in a tan jumpsuit with the words VERMINATOR PEST CONTROL printed across the back.

  “Whoa,” Nick gasped. “I thought for sure it was going to be Oli.”

  Tesla nodded.

  “Me, too. But pictures don’t lie,” she said. “Skip didn’t come to kill bugs. He came to plant them.”

  “The dude’s been at your uncle’s house all day,” DeMarco said. “The place could be full of hidden mics by now.”

  “It’s not just the house we have to worry about,” Nick added. “I mean, if the guy took the time to put a bug on a bicycle, he could have put them anywhere.”

  “And he’s probably not just using microphones,” Tesla said to her brother. “He took that fingerprint, too, remember? How did he know where we hid it?”

  Nick pondered that, then went pale.

  “Hidden cameras,” he said.

  “Ew,” Silas said with a squirm. “I’m never going to the bathroom in your uncle’s house again.”

  The others ignored him.

  “From now on,” Tesla said, “we’re only going to let Skip see and hear what we want him to, while we make all our real plans in secret.”

  “How are we going to do that?” DeMarco asked.

  Rather than answer, Tesla turned to her brother with an expectant look on her face.

  “We’ll do it just like spies do,” he told DeMarco. “We’ll use code.”

  NICK AND TESLA’S

  EGBQD OAAX CODE WHEELS

  [THIS TITLE USES AN AO CODE!]

  THE STUFF

  • 4 Styrofoam cups (2 for each code ring set)

  • Scissors

  • Felt-tip marker

  • The code wheel guide on this page of this book

  THE SETUP

  1. You’ll need to create at least two identical sets of code wheels—one for you and one for the person you want to send secret notes to. Poke a hole with scissors below the lip of the first cup and carefully trim around the lower rim.

  2. Trim the second cup like the first, but leave about 1/2 inch (1 cm) below the rim so that the first ring can fit over it.

  3. Working with one ring at a time, center the ring over the code wheel guide on this page and carefully mark the ring with a dot above each line. Be sure the ring does not move on the guide as you do this.

  4. Fit the two rings together and draw a straight line down from each dot you made, as shown.

  5. Write the alphabet in order on the second ring you cut, using the space between lines for each letter.

  6. Repeat for the other ring. Fit the two together.

  THE FINAL STEPS

  1. To create a code, spin the wheels so that they line up with different letters. Each letter on the bottom ring is now represented by a new letter on the top ring.

  2. Write your message in code, substituting the new letters (on the top ring) for the correct ones.

  3. To tell your friend how to line up the rings to unscramble the secret message, start the code with two letters to show which letters to match up. (These are
not really part of your message: for example, AO means to match the A on the top ring with the O on the bottom.)

  4. If you want to make a supersecret code, scramble the order of the letters on the top ring or use symbols instead of letters. The more complex the code, the harder it is to break!

  “All right, let’s test them,” Tesla said when the code wheels were done. “Get out.”

  “What?” said Silas, surprised.

  It wasn’t every day he got kicked out of his own room.

  “Get out,” Tesla said again. “I’m going to use my code wheel to write messages to all three of you, so we can make sure you can do the translations. The test won’t work if you’re looking over my shoulder while I write, will it?”

  “I guess not.”

  “All right, then. Shoo.”

  Reluctantly, Silas, DeMarco, and Nick got up off the floor, where they’d been huddled around the scissors and markers and cups they’d needed to make the code wheels. It took them a while to get to the door, because they had to weave their way through a dense jungle of toys, comics, books, games, DVDs, models, moldy plates of half-eaten snacks, and piles of dirty clothes nearly as tall as DeMarco.

  They’d decided that Silas’s house was the safest place to build the code wheels, but that safety had come with a price: they had to work in a room that smelled like three-week-old cheese dip and sweaty socks.

  The boys headed up the hall toward the equally cluttered kitchen, where Silas’s mom was stirring a huge pot of soup she ominously called “Use-It-or-Lose-It Leftovers Surprise.” Like Silas, she was husky and good-natured and not overly concerned with tidiness or good grooming.

  “Your little club meeting over?” she asked.

  “Not quite,” said Nick.

  He left it at that.

  Silas didn’t.

  “Tesla made us come out here because she wants to test the code thingies we put together so the exterminator guy hiding microphones and cameras everywhere won’t know what we’re doing when we go back to her uncle’s house to prove that he’s the spy dude her mom warned her and Nick was after them for some reason,” he said.

  Nick gaped at him.

  DeMarco nodded approvingly.

  “Good synopsis,” he said.

  Silas’s mom chuckled.

  “How do you kids come up with this stuff?” She waved her ladle at a pan on the counter, splattering the floor with drops of steaming purple liquid in the process. “Help yourselves to brownies.”

  “Ooo! Sweet!” said Silas.

  “Thanks, Mrs. Kuskie!” said DeMarco.

  They descended on the pan and began tearing out big brown chunks with their hands.

  “Ready!” Tesla called from down the hall.

  Silas and DeMarco walked out of the kitchen munching on slabs of brownie the size of sandwiches.

  Nick didn’t get any for himself. He couldn’t work up much of an appetite knowing what they still had to do that day.

  “Good luck catching your ‘spy dude,’ ” Silas’s mom said as the boys left. “And don’t be late for dinner!”

  Tesla handed slips of paper to Nick, DeMarco, and Silas.

  For Nick: AP T MPE JZF QTYTDS JZFC XPDDLRP QTCDE.

  For DeMarco: AH UNM FTRUX RHN PBEE YBGBLA YBKLM.

  For Silas: AD VLR XOB DLFKD QL YB IXPQ.

  “You each have your own unique message,” she said. “Let’s see who can decipher theirs first.”

  The boys hunkered down over their new code wheels and got to work.

  “I BET YOU FINISH YOUR MESSAGE FIRST,” Nick read out a minute later.

  “Right,” said Tesla.

  “Hey!” said DeMarco.

  “Just keep decoding,” Tesla told him.

  After another minute, DeMarco looked up again.

  “BUT MAYBE YOU WILL FINISH FIRST,” he read.

  “Right again,” said Tesla. “How’s yours coming, Silas?”

  “I think I’ve just about got it.”

  Silas held up his piece of paper and read from it proudly.

  “YOU ARE GOING PO BE LASP.”

  “Close enough,” said Tesla. “We’re ready.”

  What they were ready for, Tesla thought, was this: going back to Uncle Newt’s house, making sure Skip was still there to be nabbed, and collecting the final bit of evidence they needed to prove he was up to no good.

  Nick wasn’t so sure they were ready. But he had to concede that he didn’t have any better ideas. So Tesla’s plan won by default.

  As the kids walked up the street toward Uncle Newt’s, Tesla noticed Nick brushing his fingers over the front of his shirt in a dreamy, absent-minded kind of way.

  “You’re thinking about your pendant,” she said.

  “Huh?” Nick looked down at the hand resting on his chest right where the pendant used to hang. “Oh. I guess I am.”

  “You’re nervous about going back to the house without it.”

  Nick nodded. “Yeah. If something happens to us, there’ll be no way for Agent McIntyre to track us down.”

  “That’s why we’re going to get Skip before something happens to us.”

  “Right. I know. Sure.”

  But Nick didn’t look convinced.

  The kids were all wearing backpacks now—they couldn’t think of a sneaky way to carry around their code wheels without crushing them—and Tesla shrugged hers off. Without missing a step, she pulled out her code wheel and a pen and pad of paper and began jotting down a message.

  It was finished just as the kids reached the front door.

  Tesla showed it to Nick.

  AB VD BZM CN HS, MHBJ!

  The first two letters told Nick it was a B-for-A substitution code. So simple he didn’t even need his code wheel to figure it out.

  WE CAN DO IT, NICK!

  Nick took the pen from Tesla’s hand and wrote his own message.

  AB SGZMJR, SDY

  THANKS, TEZ

  Brother and sister smiled at each other.

  Then Tesla put away the paper and pen, strapped on her backpack, and reached for the doorknob.

  Gladys was vacuuming the staircase when the kids walked in. Ethel was polishing the banister.

  “Hi!” Tesla said brightly. “Good job on the first floor. It almost looks like normal people live here!”

  Either the maids couldn’t hear her over the roar of the vacuum cleaner or they just chose to ignore her.

  “Well, I guess DeMarco and I will get that snack we talked about,” Tesla said for the benefit of the hidden mics and video cameras.

  “Yes,” said Nick. “And Silas and I will go upstairs to look for the pendants again. Gosh … I can’t believe we misplaced them both on the same day!”

  “Ha ha—what sillies we are!” said Tesla.

  “Ha ha—I know!” said Nick.

  “Ha ha—you’re as absent-minded as your uncle!” said DeMarco.

  Silas remained silent. He’d been told not to say anything unless it was “Run!” (if someone was coming after them), “Duck!” (if someone threw or fired something at them), or “Told ya so!” (if he spotted a bald eagle—Nick and Tesla always looked skeptical when he said he’d seen them hanging around the neighborhood, and he insisted on the freedom to gloat when he was proved right).

  “Do you have any more of that delicious homemade lemonade?” DeMarco asked Tesla.

  They headed for the kitchen while Nick and Silas started up the stairs.

  “I don’t think so, DeMarco,” Tesla said. “But let’s go see.”

  When she and DeMarco reached the fridge, it wasn’t lemonade Tesla was looking for. It was a little hairy body in a bowl of water.

  A little hairy brown body in a bowl of black-and-red-streaked water.

  “Just as I suspected!” Tesla said.

  DeMarco leaned in next to her.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  Tesla pointed at the dead spider.

  “No lemonade,” she said. “Want a Coke?”
<
br />   “Excuse me,” Nick said as he and Silas scooted around Gladys and Ethel on the stairs.

  Silas just gave each of the maids a little bow.

  “Tesla and I already looked for the pendants in our room,” Nick said loudly. “So I think we should search the bathroom next.”

  Silas simply nodded.

  As the boys headed down the hall, they heard the sound of movement up ahead.

  “Uncle Newt, is that you?” Nick said.

  He turned into Uncle Newt’s room and found what he was really looking for.

  Skip the exterminator—Skip the spy—was stretched out on the floor peering under Uncle Newt’s bed.

  “All clear under there,” he said when he noticed Nick and Silas staring at him. He got up on his knees and began crawling along the wall. “Now to check behind these dressers. Black widows just love hiding behind dressers.”

  “Have you run across my star pendant by any chance?” Nick asked. “Because that’s what we’re up here looking for, you know.”

  Skip stopped crawling.

  “I thought your uncle found it,” he said.

  “Ah, well, he did. Kind of,” Nick said. “But then I sort of lost it again.”

  Skip looked at Silas.

  “Your friend always this forgetful?” he said with a jerk of the chin at Nick.

  Silas shrugged.

  “Well, we shouldn’t keep you from your spiders,” Nick said. “Come on, Silas. Let’s go check the bathroom, like we originally intended.”

  Silas gave him a silent thumbs-up, and the two of them turned and sauntered up the hall as casually as they could.

  When they reached the bathroom, Nick bent down and opened the cabinet beneath the sink.

  “Maybe my pendant got stuck under here … uhh … somehow,” he said. “I’ll just take a look.”

  He slung off his backpack and, moving quickly and furtively, took out his code wheel, paper, and pen. Even if the house was full of hidden cameras, he figured there wouldn’t be any under the sink. Who’d want to spy on pipes, spare towels, and a hair dryer?

  Working with his head stuffed in next to the pipes and spare towels, Nick began writing a message.