Behind Enemy Lines Read Online Free PDF Page B

do now.” Once Dak had taken the clothes, Riq went back to his bag and pulled out some bread wrapped in brown paper. “I also figured you’d be hungry.”
    “Starving is more like it.” Dak had a slice in his mouth even before finishing his sentence. “Is there any cheese?”
    “Are you kidding?” Riq asked. “I had to scrub a grocer’s floor just to earn that!” He hesitated a moment, then quietly added, “Was she mad at me, after you two went to the future?”
    “She was mad at both of us,” Dak said.
    “But you know why I couldn’t — why I can’t . . . right?” Riq couldn’t even say the words to Dak. It was hard enough just to think about his future, much less have to explain it.
    Dak only swallowed the food in his mouth and said, “It won’t take long for Sera to figure it out, too. We’re here, when you want to talk about it.”
    That was good to know, but at least for now, Riq still hated even thinking about it. He put his problems to the back of his mind when Sera reappeared in her new outfit. She did a high kick in the air and laughed, then told Dak to get changed next.
    Once they were all ready, they gathered around the SQuare. Words had appeared on the screen.
    TROUT:
    HDMS2W EEMWTO LAAIHL PDNMEF
    “Trout? Like the fish?” Sera groaned. “And the rest is gibberish. It could mean anything.”
    “And the number two is in the first word,” Riq said, shaking his head.
    “Maybe Tilda uploaded false codes after all,” Dak said.
    “I don’t think so.” Riq ran his finger across the screen. “This looks like Arin’s handiwork to me.”
    “I was hoping it’d be written in Navajo,” Dak said. “You know, because this is World War Two and the Allies used the Navajo language for a code. It’s one of the only wartime codes in history that was never cracked by the enemy.” He looked up at Riq. “You know Navajo, right?”
    Riq shrugged. “A little. But there’s a reason why Germany never cracked that code. It’s a spoken language so, at least in 1943, there’s no written record of it. Its details can change depending on the specific tribe, and a lot of words mean different things just by the way they’re pronounced.”
    “So . . . that’s a no, right?” Dak said.
    “I know a little,” Riq insisted. “At least enough that I was able to talk my way inside the Admiralty building as a translator. I only translate newspapers from other countries, so it’s hardly top secret, but I figured if we’re going to be spies, then we needed to get inside somehow.”
    “Exciting!” Sera said. “You’re like James Bond with a day job.”
    “It’s funny you’d say that,” Dak said. “Because Ian Fleming, who created the James Bond character in the 1950s,
did
work for the British Secret Intelligence Service in World War Two. In fact —” Dak drew in a breath and grabbed the SQuare. “Let me look at this!”
    Sera scooted toward Riq to give Dak room for whatever thought was working its way through his brain.
    “Anyway,” Riq said, “I’ve been working at the Admiralty — a lot of spy stuff happens there. Once they found out I knew so many languages, they’ve been very happy to have my help.”
    “Trout!” Dak interrupted. When he caught Riq and Sera staring at him, he added, “A few years ago, right at the start of the war, Ian Fleming wrote a list of ideas for how Britain might trick Germany, just like a fisherman lures in a fish. It was called the Trout Memo.”
    “But Ian Fleming only wrote spy novels,” Sera said. “This is real-life spying.”
    “Maybe the reason he could write them is because he’d already lived them,” Riq pointed out.
    “Exactly! Do you have anything to write with?” Dak asked. Riq handed over a loose sheet of paper and the pen that he’d been using for work. Dak started writing immediately, then after a minute scratched out what he’d done and started over.
    “Anyway
again
,” Riq said, “maybe I could bring the SQuare’s code in and