Chapter 18

CHAPTER 18 Amy couldn't believe it. Something had happened between her and Kurt. She couldn't really explain it. Yes, they'd played chess. But there had been more to it than that. Like her senses had all been suddenly plugged in. For the first time in weeks, she had been able to think about something other than the hunt. Then, just like that, she had to go. There was barely time for a good-bye. "Good luck," Kurt had told her. But all she felt was the bad luck of the moment. And then there was Dan's destruction of Churchill's message. "How could you do that?" she asked as Nellie

sped them away from the Witbank mine… and Kurt. Her brother looked at her in disbelief. "Come on, Amy. You didn't think that just because I ripped it up—" "I know, I know, you memorized it!" Amy said. "It's the Dan Cahill Mental Gymnastics Show. But that's not the point! How could you have taken that incredibly stupid risk in the mine? You could have died! Again!" "I found what no one else has found in a hundred years," Dan said, "so maybe you say, like, thanks?" "He also tricked those two guys into thinking the paper meant nothing," Nellie said. "You're just as bad as he is!" Amy shot back. Dan held up a finger. "Winston Churchill once said, 'In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.'" "How do you know that?" Amy asked. "It's right there, on the page your book is open to," Dan said, pointing to the biography on the car

seat. "Churchill was all about hidden messages. He worked with spies. I locked this baby in my head, dude." On the other blank page Nellie had given him he wrote out what he had found in the mine: AM LOST, TIRED, GONE IN, DRIVEN NOUGHT. WE HIT A SHARK —O CONFUSED LETTERS, FLEE, LOVER, FROM THESE LINES! WLSC "Churchill wasn't crazy," Dan said. "And he wasn't drunk. I'm betting this all means something." Amy stared at the words." 'We hit a shark'?" "I'm buying the nutcase scenario," Nellie said. "Okay, okay, it sounds a little weird, but let's think," Dan said. "Isn't that what you do when you're attacked by a shark— hit it on its snout?" "Churchill just escaped from prison, right?"

Nellie said. "So maybe it's some English expression for victory. Like, 'Ho-ho, we really hit a shark there, didn't we, old chap?' Very Kabra, don't you think?" "Dan?" Amy said. "Remember that code we had to solve on Uncle Alistair's estate, to open the hatch in his backyard? Where the hint was actually a play on words? What if this thing is actually two parts— the top part is the code, and the bottom part is the instructions for decoding it?" "Hmm…" Dan looked at the last few lines of the message. "So, 'O confused letters' would be part of the instructions." "Yup, and 'confused' could be a code for 'scrambled.' Scrambled letters means an anagram," Amy said. "And 'flee'— that means the same thing as 'leave' in Uncle Alistair's puzzle. You have to take something away, like a letter or word…" "Lover!" Dan said. "That's it. He doesn't mean a real lover. He means the word l-o-v-e-r! And 'from these lines'— five letters, five lines!— wait,

I think I know…" Dan slapped his forehead. "Agggh, it's in Dutch." "I don't think so," Amy said. "Churchill was a Brit, not a Boer. So now we unscramble. Okay, that second to last word is easy—with." "Shaka!" Dan blurted out. "That's the last word! So the final words are with Shaka! Okay, I'll get the rest of it in two minutes. Time me. Go ahead." But Amy was staring at the first word already. "Dan, I think we hit the jackpot." Dan's face lit up, the way it did whenever the supermarket stocked Red Sox ice cream. Slowly, he attacked the puzzle and didn't stop until he'd finished:

"Tomas ingredient in the ground with Shaka!" Dan blurted. "That was three minutes seven seconds," Nellie remarked. "He knew!" Amy said. "Churchill knew the location of the Tomas clue!" "He must have found out while in prison," Dan said. "Or maybe there was a Cahill running the mine." "So… the clue must be buried with Shaka's corpse," Amy said. "Now we're talking!" Dan replied. "Ew," Nellie called from the front seat. "We have to dig up a body?" "Dan?" Amy asked. "Where is Shaka buried?" Dan took out his Shaka book and leafed to the end. "Well, no one is one hundred percent sure. But legend has it he was killed in a place called Durban, which is in the KwaZulu-Natal province." "Which is, uh, where?" Nellie said. "Past the Mpumalanga province," Dan replied. "Thanks a lot."