The three of us stared at the nonsensical words. What could they mean? The message was from Dad. There was no doubt about that. No one else knew that he’d called us the Expeditioners. But what was this about the third old oak—?
“The oak,” Zander said, reading the words over my shoulder. “It has to be the—”
“Desk,” I said.
M.K. rushed over to Dad’s big desk, sitting in a corner of the room. It had been made from the wood of the sixth old oak in front of the house after it had fallen. Dad had built the desk himself and secured the drawers with his ingenious locks, difficult things with combinations that were hard to figure out. The BNDL agents had gone all through the house, looking for maps and documents, but they hadn’t been able to get into the desk.
“The rest is easy,” I told Zander and M.K. “The third old oak on the right is the third drawer down on the right.” I tried it and of course it was locked, the seven brass rotating disks showing different letters. I spun them around. What was the combination that would open the lock?
I studied the coded message. THE THIRD OLD OAK ON THE RIGHT FLIPPED.
“Flipped?” Zander suggested. “F-l-i-p-p-e-d.”
Flipped ? Could that be it? It was the only word left. I spun the disks so that they read flipped and tried the drawer. Still locked.
What could it be? I felt a flash of annoyance. We were so close.
Zander looked excited now, his blue eyes wide and curious, just like Dad’s when he’d been on the scent of something. “M.K.,” he said, “do you think you could get in, with your tools?”
“I could try,” she said. “But I’d probably have to destroy the desk. His locks are unpickable. You know that.”
Sitting behind the desk, I couldn’t help but think of Dad, his smile, the way his eyes turned up at the corners when he joked with us about something or other. He’d loved riddles and word puzzles and codes and ciphers, and he’d sometimes leave little notes for us that we had to figure out.
The polished oak was smooth under my hand. Flipped. Flipped. Suddenly I had it. I had to flip flipped.
“I’ve got it,” I told them.
I turned the disks so that they read deppilf.
The drawer opened.
Even all these years after he’d built the desk, the inside of the drawer smelled of wood, varnish, and sawdust. The drawer was fairly shallow; a rectangle of green velvet lay in the bottom, and when I lifted it up, I saw a piece of thick paper, facedown in the bottom of the drawer. I lifted it out, turned it over, and found myself staring at a large and beautiful map.