Enemy Spy (4 page)

He hurried over to the bridge.

He went under the bridge!

I watched him through my binoculars, scooting over a few trees so I could keep an eye on him.

I lost him in the shadows of the bridge for a minute.

Two minutes.

Not knowing where he was made me nervous. Had he figured out I was there? Could he be sneaking up behind me?

Did he have a gun?

Then I spotted him coming out from under the bridge. Looking left. Looking right. Hiking back up the riverbank.

Only now both his arms were swinging free.

No boulder.

I watched him get back into his car, and right before he drove away I zoomed in and took a picture of the car.

When he was gone, I just stayed put a minute,
thinking. Obviously this guy was doing something sneaky. Maybe even illegal.

But with a
boulder
?

The car was long gone by the time I decided to investigate. I strapped on my backpack, then hur-ried down to the bridge. And believe me, I was on the serious lookout for anyone around.

I also wanted to hurry because it was cooling off quick, and the shadows were very long.

The sun was going down!

Or, really, the earth was rotating away from the sun, making it
look
like the sun was going down.

Anyway, I hurried under the bridge and checked all around.

Boulders, boulders, everywhere!

I found one about the size of the trench coat guy's and went to pick it up.

It weighed a ton!

Well, okay, it wasn't really two thousand pounds. It was more like fifty or sixty pounds. But
still! How had the trench coat guy carried something that heavy under one arm? Was he Hercules in disguise?

Wait a minute—maybe it wasn't a real boulder. Maybe it was like one of those fake rocks they use in the movies.

But why would he bring a fake rock down to the river?

I picked up a stick and started poking at boulders. Any boulder that was about the right size, I jabbed.

Clonk. Clonk. Clonk.
They were all solid. Didn't budge an inch.

Then, about halfway under the bridge, I jabbed at a boulder and it went
thump.

I jabbed again.

Thump.

It sure looked like a boulder. It even had moss growing on it!

I looked left.

I looked right.

The water running downstream made it hard to hear anything else. If someone came along, I'd never hear them.

I reached for the boulder, and that's when I noticed that the moss was
glued
on.

In the shape of an X!

My heart started pounding.

My skin started creeping.

X marks the spot!

I picked up the boulder.

Compared to a real boulder, it weighed hardly anything!

I turned it over. There was a secret door!

I twisted the latch and opened the door.

And when I saw what was inside, I knew I had to get out of there.

Quick!

I'd never seen so much money in my life. I pulled out a stack that was rubber-banded together and fanned through it.

Wow.

They were all Benjamin Franklins.

All one-hundred-dollar bills!

And maybe Benjamin Franklin was never a United States president, but he definitely deserves to be on the one-hundred-dollar bill.

He invented the fire engine.

The post office.

The library.

He discovered electricity!

How many presidents can say
that?

And, I asked myself, how much time was I going to waste thinking about Benjamin Franklin while I was in danger under a bridge?

I looked around quick, then pulled out more stacks and fanned through them, trying to do a speedy count of the money in the boulder. Ten stacks, a hundred bills each, a hundred dollars each…

Holy hollow boulder, Batman! There was a hundred thousand dollars in this rock!

Talk about electricity—boy, was I charged!

Then all of a sudden, the bridge
thump-thump-thumped
overhead.

Uh-triple-oh!

What if the trench coat guy was back?

I stuffed all the money into the rock, put the rock back where I'd found it, then scrambled up the riverbank, staying under the bridge.

I really wanted to get
out
of there, but I couldn't risk being seen.

I had to hide!

I found a place way up the bank, behind a pillar of cement that was helping to hold up the bridge.

I held my breath.

One minute.

Two!

Finally I let it out and tried to think. What if no one was up there? I couldn't
hear
anyone up there. What if I was hiding from no one? How long was I going to sit there, hiding from no one?

Very quietly, I took my periscope out of my backpack.

I extended it up, up, up, until it was peeking over the planks of the bridge.

I turned it left.

I turned it right.

There
was
a car up there!

It wasn't sleek and black, though. It was small. And tan. And sort of banged up.

The man coming out of it didn't give me the creeps like the trench coat guy had, either. He was just a regular-looking guy. But he
was
acting kind of nervous.

I put my digital camera up to the periscope's eyepiece.

He looked over one shoulder.

I clicked.

He looked over the other shoulder.

I clicked again.

He started coming across the bridge.

I collapsed my periscope fast and put it away.

And then I saw him with my own naked eyes, stumbling down the riverbank. His hair was messy and his clothes were kind of shabby. He was actually the opposite of the trench coat guy. He looked really… unkempt.

Slovenly.

Bedraggled!

Did he know about the money?

Nah, he probably just had to do an emergency pee. No way a shabby guy like him knew someone as slick as the trench coat guy.

I watched him, thinking that maybe when he was done with his emergency, I'd ask him how to
get back to Old Town. Maybe I could even get him to call my mom.

I stayed hidden, though. I didn't want to embarrass him! But he didn't stop at a tree or anything. And I started thinking, Hey, guy— don't get so close to the river! People
drink
out of that, you know! But he kept on going straight down to the water. Then he turned and came under the bridge.

He was looking for the rock!

He was about to become $100,000 richer.

But
why
?

He went from boulder to boulder until he saw it: X marks the spot.

He looked around.

I ducked behind the pillar!

He picked up the rock.

I zoomed in on him with my camera!

He opened the bottom of the boulder.

I clicked!

He looked around.

I clicked again!

Boy, was he nervous.

Boy, was I nervous, too!

Then he unzipped his jacket and wrestled something out of the back of his pants.

He'd been hiding a stack of papers back there!

He put the papers on the ground and started cramming bundles of money down his pants. Pretty soon the boulder was empty and the guy had the hundred thousand dollars stashed.

In his underwear!

He folded the papers and crammed them into the rock. He closed the secret door. He was looking around like crazy, shaking like mad!

When he was done, he put the boulder back and raced out of there so fast that he fell twice on his hundred-thousand-dollar butt before making it up the riverbank.

Wow.

What had the shabby guy put into the boulder?

What in the world was worth one hundred thousand dollars to the trench coat man?

The minute I heard the car drive off, I raced down to the boulder.

I opened it.

I pulled out the papers.

I unfolded them and saw… diagrams and num-bers. Pages and pages of calculations!

Equations!

Formulas!

And at the top of every page, stamped in red, was “CLASSIFIED.”

It didn't take a rocket scientist—or even a superhero—to figure out that something was fishy. Stinky, smelly, fishy! And what's amazing is that I'd had the chance to take the money, but I hadn't. That would have felt like stealing.

But taking these calculations—whatever they were—didn't feel like stealing. It felt like I was
saving
them. “CLASSIFIED”meant they were important. Top-secret! No way the shabby guy should be selling them!

I crammed the papers into my backpack. I returned the boulder to where I'd found it.

I couldn't go back to the road now. What if the trench coat guy or the shabby guy came back? What if they saw me? Walking along the road was too dangerous!

Instead, I headed upstream, into the darkening forest.

Walking away from the road and into the forest wasn't as dumb as it sounds. I was walking
up
stream, and I knew that Cedar Creek ran
down
through town. Eventually I'd have to come to the Cedar Creek Bridge, and from there I'd know how to get home.

I was hurrying, too! I didn't want anyone to see me near the little bridge where I'd found the fake boulder.

At first I was only worried about the trench coat guy catching me. But after I'd walked a long way, I started worrying more about spending the night in the forest. It was getting dark fast!

So I ran the best I could. Through sand and
mud and rocks, I kept moving upstream, hoping the Cedar Creek Bridge would pop into view.

It didn't. And I was just starting to really panic when I saw something through the pine trees.

I wasn't dying of thirst or falling down dead in the desert or anything, but… was that a
mirage?

No!

It really was a log cabin!

A
green
log cabin!

I ran toward it like crazy, and when I got close
enough, I started shouting, “Mr. Green! Mr. Green!”