“My uncle is not a terrorist!” Elizabeth exploded.
Kate looked at her solemnly and handed her a sheet of folded-up notebook paper. “Stick this in your pocket,” she whispered. “Don’t lose it, and don’t open it until you get back to Sydney’s house.”
By three o’clock, Sydney and Elizabeth were back in Sydney’s bedroom. Elizabeth read Kate’s note aloud:
Elizabeth,
I think a tracking device might be hidden in your backpack. That might be how Al knows where you are all the time. From now on, leave your backpack at Sydney’s house, but not in your room where a mic could pick up your discussions. Be careful what you say in public, too. Someone might be listening.
Kate
Elizabeth flopped down on her bed as Sydney booted up the computer. “I don’t care what anyone says. My uncle is not plotting to do something terrible to the president.”
Sydney watched the monitor screen turn from black to blue. “You’re probably right, Beth, but we have to be careful until we find out what’s going on.”
“And do you know what else?” Elizabeth continued. “We need to pray. In 1 Timothy the Bible says to pray for those in authority. So we should be praying for President Meade. In Matthew scripture says we should pray for our enemies. We should be praying for Rusty and Moose, the suit guy, and The Professor. And most of all, we should be praying for ourselves that we’re doing the right thing.”
Sydney clicked on the icon to bring up her e-mail program. “You’re right, Beth. We’ll form a Camp Club Girls prayer group. If we all join together to trust God, I know He’ll help us save the president.”
“If the president needs saving,” Elizabeth reminded her. “We don’t know what this is all about yet.”
Sydney clicked her mouse a couple of times to bring up a list of new mail messages. Only two waited: one from Bailey and the other from McKenzie. “Elizabeth, even before I agreed with you, you’d decided those guys were terrorists.”
“I know,” Elizabeth answered, “but now it’s getting personal.”
Sydney opened Bailey’s e-mail.
I’ve been tracking Mr. Green since I got your text message. He went from the Wall a little bit south. Then he turned around and went north. He’s been a little northwest of the White House all afternoon. He hasn’t moved at all. I hope you guys are okay! Let me know what’s happening.
“I’m going to log on to Kate’s tracking site,” said Sydney. “My password’s Jones, and you’re Indiana, right?”
“Right,” Elizabeth said. She got up from the bed and walked across the room to sit with Sydney at the desk. Sydney typed the password into the log-in box. Soon a map appeared. A little off from the center of it was a small, glowing green dot. Sydney clicked the zoom icon. The map morphed into a bird’s-eye view of Washington, D.C. You could see the tops of trees and buildings as if you were looking down at them from an airplane. All the important streets, highways, buildings, and monuments were labeled.
“This is so neat!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “Kate’s outdone herself this time.”
“And Bailey’s right with her directions,” said Sydney. “Moose is northwest of the White House, in Foggy Bottom. From this view, it looks like they’re in an apartment house.”
Elizabeth remembered that she and Sydney had gotten off the train in Foggy Bottom, but she had no idea that it was northwest of the White House.
“Well, now we know that Moose and Rusty didn’t follow us,” Sydney said. “According to Bailey’s e-mail, they walked from the Wall a little bit south. That must have been when they were coming after us, just before we ran.”
Sydney minimized the map screen and brought up her e-mail program. “Then if they turned and went north, they must not have seen that we ran to the Tidal Basin.”
Sydney typed her reply to Bailey:
Great work, Bailey! That area northwest of the White House is called Foggy Bottom. Keep watching, OK? In a little while, we’ll set up a schedule so we all can take turns watching Moose. We’re fine. More later. Syd.
“Did you notice that the blip didn’t go anywhere near where my uncle is staying?” Elizabeth asked. “I just know that he’s not a part of this.”
“You’re right; it didn’t,” Sydney replied. Then she opened McKenzie’s e-mail.
Call me online as soon as you get this. Kate has texted me the whole time she’s been on the train. She told me everything that’s going on. Call me!
Before Sydney could respond, the videophone rang. It was McKenzie. Sydney turned on the webcam and picked up the call.
McKenzie sat at the computer desk in her bedroom. She wore a pink baseball cap with a picture of a racehorse embroidered on the front. Her orange tomcat, Andrew, lounged on the back of her desk chair.
“We were just going to call you,” Sydney said.
“I couldn’t wait,” McKenzie replied. She twisted a lock of her hair between her thumb and her index finger. “Do you realize what a big deal this is if you’ve uncovered a plot to assassinate the president? I couldn’t believe half the stuff that Kate told me.”
“Believe it,” Sydney said. “It’s all true.”
Elizabeth slid her chair closer to Sydney’s. “Hi, McKenzie,” she offered.
“Hi, Elizabeth,” McKenzie answered. “Listen, I’ve been thinking. That first note you found said ‘Meade me in St. Louis, July first,’ right?”
“Right,” Elizabeth confirmed.
“Get off!” Andrew had jumped from the chair onto McKenzie’s keyboard. He loved to act up when she was online. “I just Googled the president to find out where he’ll be on July first. He’s not anywhere near St. Louis. He’s going to be in Baltimore. So could you be on the wrong track with all of this?” She picked up Andrew and put him on her lap.
“Your guess is as good as ours,” Elizabeth said. “The first of July is Friday. That gives us two days to find out if we’re right. If nothing happens by the end of the weekend, I’ll have to help out from Amarillo. We’re going home on Sunday night. Uncle Dan has a class starting on the fifth.”
Sydney picked up a red fine-point marker and scribbled the word Baltimore on a scrap of paper. She doodled all around it. Drawing flowers and animals somehow helped her concentrate.
“What kind of class is your uncle taking?” McKenzie asked.
“He’s not taking it; he’s teaching it,” Elizabeth replied.
Sydney penned the words: Teaching…Teacher.
“My uncle teaches American history at Amarillo Community College,” Elizabeth continued.
Sydney scribbled the words: Teacher…College… Professor!
Oh my goodness, she thought. She decided not to say what she was thinking. As Elizabeth and McKenzie talked, Sydney tore the paper into little pieces and tossed it into the trash can under the desk.
“So what’s the president doing in Baltimore on Friday?” she asked. She tried hard not to let her feelings show. Inside her brain, a voice shouted, “Oh no! Kate’s right! Elizabeth’s uncle is The Professor, the top guy in the plot to kill the president!”
McKenzie was feeding Andrew now. She held his bowl of food while he sat on the desk and scarfed it down. “He’s going to be at Fort McHenry for some Fourth of July weekend concert thing. I can’t remember exactly what it’s called. Just a minute, I wrote it down.” McKenzie set the cat’s dish on the desk. The girls heard paper rustling as she looked for the note she’d jotted about the president. “Here it is. It’s called a Twilight Tattoo.”
Elizabeth gasped.
“What?” McKenzie asked.
“That was Moose’s big idea,” Elizabeth said. “He made a plan that involved a tattoo, and the suit guy couldn’t believe that Moose was bright enough to think of it—”
Sydney interrupted, “Only we thought he meant tattoo, as in a picture branded on your skin.”
“Tattoos aren’t branded on people,” McKenzie corrected her. “You brand cattle.”
“Obviously that’s not what it means,” Elizabeth said. She found a dictionary in Sydney’s bookcase. She opened it to the T section and searched. “Tattle…tattler…tattletail… tattoo! Here it is. Oh girls, listen to this: ‘an outdoor military exercise given by troops as evening entertainment’ and ‘a call sounded shortly before taps as notice to go to quarters.’ It all fits! Taps is a bugle call that’s sounded at the end of a day and at military funerals. They plan to assassinate the president at the tattoo!”
McKenzie leaned back in her chair and put her hands on top of her baseball cap. “I can’t believe this is happening,” she said. “What are you guys going to do? I mean, if you say something and we’re wrong, can you imagine all the trouble it will cause?” She took off her hat and set it on the desk. “Just a second, I’m getting an IM from Alexis. She wants to know what’s going on—”
“Listen, McKenzie,” Sydney said. “We have to go. Will you tell Alexis and the rest of the girls what we just talked about?”
Elizabeth got up and started unpacking her backpack. “Tell her to get a prayer group going, too,” she said as she looked through her backpack for anything odd, like a tracking device.
“I heard,” McKenzie said. “Will do, and I’ll tell the girls to try to figure out more of this. We’ll be in touch with you later.” McKenzie waved at the camera and signed off.
Elizabeth had everything out of her backpack now. Her camera, a tube of sunscreen, her hot-pink iPod, a pair of socks, lip gloss…all of it lay in a pile on her bed. She turned the yellow backpack upside down and gave it a few hard shakes. Nothing fell out. “See,” she said. “No tracking device. If anyone is tracking me, it’s not with this backpack.”
Sydney sat quietly at her desk pretending to straighten papers and organize her bookcase. There was one important clue that she and Elizabeth hadn’t discussed, and they couldn’t avoid it any longer. “That note we left behind,” Sydney said. “The one that said ‘Lieutenant Dan, we’ve got legs.’ What do you think it meant, Beth?”
Once again, Elizabeth said nothing.
Sydney felt anger inside of her. She didn’t want to be mad at her friend, but something was very different about Elizabeth. She wasn’t acting like the same girl Sydney knew from Discovery Lake Camp.
“What’s going on with you?” Sydney asked. “Every time I try to talk about your uncle, you clam up. Don’t you know you can talk to me if something’s bothering you?”
Elizabeth sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed. “My uncle saved his whole company of men in Vietnam by putting himself in the line of fire,” she said. “He got shot, and he might never walk again, and, Sydney, that’s not right! I get mad at God sometimes because bad things happen to good people. I get mad at my uncle’s Vietnam buddies because they can walk and he can’t. Then I get mad at myself for feeling that way. I know what kind of a man my uncle is, and now you want me to believe he’s a bad guy and is trying to kill the president. Well, he’s not! I don’t know what the note means, but it isn’t what you think.”
Sydney walked across the room and sat on the bed next to Elizabeth. “I don’t want your uncle to be a bad guy, Beth, and he probably isn’t. Help me prove that he isn’t, okay? I’m on your side. I really mean that.”
Elizabeth held the pendant that hung around her neck. It was a habit that helped her to remember the scripture verse engraved on it: “Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”
“I want your uncle to walk again,” Sydney continued, “but sometimes bad things do happen to good people, and you just have to accept that.”
As Elizabeth held the pendant, it came off the chain. The pendant remained in her hand, and the chain slipped to the floor. “Oh,” she said. “I can’t believe that happened. Uncle Dan just took this to the jewelry store the day before we came out here. He had it matched to this nice silver chain.” She picked up the chain and checked out the clasp. “That’s strange. It doesn’t look broken. I guess I must not have fastened it right. Will you do it, please?” Elizabeth held up her long blond hair while Sydney fastened the clasp.
“There,” Sydney said. “It’s as good as new. And how about us? Are we good as new?”
Elizabeth smiled. “We are,” she said softly. “Let’s make a pact to prove that my uncle Dan isn’t a terrorist. Agreed?”
“Agreed!” Sydney said.
Just then, Sydney’s cell phone began to buzz. She took it from her pocket and found a message from Bailey: Mr. Green is on the move! Log on now and watch where he goes.
Quickly Sydney and Elizabeth logged on to Kate’s tracking site. The green blip was moving steadily away from Foggy Bottom. Its rate of speed told the girls that Moose was not traveling on foot. The blip was on New York Avenue heading northeast out of town. Elizabeth and Sydney sat at the desk and watched for more than an hour as it slowly traveled to the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, on to Maryland 295 North, and along I-95 North. Then it stopped.
“Why is he stopping?” Elizabeth wondered. “Isn’t he in the middle of a freeway?”
“Maybe a toll booth or traffic,” Sydney answered.
“So now we know he’s in a car,” Elizabeth added.
“Or a taxi or a bus,” Sydney said.
Soon the green blip left I-95 and began weaving through the streets of Baltimore.
“Either he’s lost, or he’s looking for something,” Sydney observed. “It doesn’t look like he knows where he’s going.”
Eventually the green blip traveled east of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and stopped again. The girls waited for about twenty minutes, wondering if the blip would move. It didn’t.
“I know that neighborhood,” Sydney said. “It’s just across the harbor from Fort McHenry. I’ve been there with my aunt Dee; sometimes she fills in at the fort when a ranger is on vacation. Anyway, that neighborhood where Moose is now was once upon a time a place where pirates hung out.”
“Interesting,” Elizabeth said. “So now what do we do?”
Sydney was busy typing an e-mail to the Camp Club Girls.
Subject: Camp Club Girls Unite
Moose has moved from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. (Rusty is probably with him.) Let’s group chat tonight at 8:30. We need to make a plan to save President Meade, and we have to pray for guidance and safety. Tomorrow Elizabeth and I will go to Baltimore to check out Fort McHenry and to find out more about the Twilight Tattoo. We’ll meet you in the chat room.
“We’re going to Baltimore?” Elizabeth exclaimed. “How will we get there?”
“That’s easy,” Sydney answered. “Aunt Dee! The National Park Service has a van that travels from the Wall to Fort McHenry every day. I’ll tell Aunt Dee that I want to take you to see the fort, and we can hitch a ride with a ranger. We can spend the whole day in Baltimore sleuthing things out. Plus, we can get into the fort for free.”
“What if we run into Moose and Rusty?” Elizabeth asked.
“We won’t as long as the girls are tracking them,” Sydney replied. “They can let us know if Moose and Rusty are near, and then we can ditch them. Right now, we have other things to think about. The Camp Club Girls need to get organized. We’re on a mission to save the president.”