The Hunt for the Missing Spy Read Free Page A

but she waited until the others were done before saying the answer out loud. She didn’t want to ruin the fun for them.
    â€œThat 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.
    â€œLet’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 aboutsomething 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.
    â€œWhoa, 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.
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    Code Busters’ Key and Solution found on pp. 149, 154.
    When they were done, M.E. said, “It looks like a bunch of math problems in Japanese. That’s not as fun as the Washington Code the boys got.”
    Was it true? Cody wondered. Had Ms. Stad just given them math problems to do for homework using Japanese characters? She scanned the page, then turned it over and noticed a note in small print at the bottom.
    â€œLook,” she said, then read the message to the others: “
Students, when you finish decoding the Japanese numbers, use your Alphanumeric Decoder Card to read the secret message
.”
    â€œAwesome!” M.E. said. “It’s actually a coded message, too.”
    â€œDude, maybe it’s something about the Spy Museum,” Luke offered.
    â€œThere’s only one way to find out,” Quinn said.
    The kids got out the alphanumeric decoder cards that Ms. Stad had given them a few months ago and quickly went to work figuring out the message:

    Code Busters’ Key and Solution found on pp. 149, 154.
    â€œThis trip keeps getting better and better,” M.E. said, after everyone had finished deciphering Ms. Stad’s message. “I can’t wait to check out the School for Spies and get a Spy vs. Spy T-shirt at the museum! Plus I want to see the National Museum of American History. They’ve got a collection of old fashions people used to wear.”
    â€œI want to see the Apollo 11 Command Module at the Air and Space Museum,” Quinn said.
    â€œI’m going to check out the stegosaurus and triceratops fossils at the National Museum of Natural History,” Luke added.
    â€œBesides the Spy Museum, I think the Cherry Blossom Festival parade will