The Smartest Kid in the Universe Read online

  “Ninety-seven,” Grace, Kojo, and Jake all said at the exact same second.

  “Correct,” said Mr. Lyons.

  On Wednesday, after drilling their way through two dozen questions, they heard a very strange thumping coming from outside the window. It grew louder and louder.

  “We should keep going,” said Mr. Lyons, raising his voice to be heard over the noise. “We only have one week left to prepare.”

  The whump-whump-whumps outside became more intense. Windows rattled.

  “In animal coloring and camouflage,” Mr. Lyons practically yelled, “what characteristic is usually indicated by bright, vivid colors?”

  “Poisonous,” said Jake.

  “Deadly,” said Grace.

  “Venomous,” added Kojo.

  Just then, Mrs. Malvolio stepped into the room. She wore bright, vivid colors and an enormous beaded necklace.

  “Mr. McQuade?” she screamed over the whapping.

  “Yes?” Jake screamed back.

  “They tell me you’re needed in Washington. The Pentagon.”

  “What?”

  “The Pentagon! Big building? Lots of generals?”

  Jake turned to Kojo and Grace. They looked as shocked as he felt.

  “There has to be some kind of mistake,” Jake said to Mrs. Malvolio. “I’m only twelve. I can’t even vote yet.”

  “Apparently, the United States military doesn’t care!” Mrs. Malvolio gestured toward the window, where dust and debris were swirling around in circles. “That’s your helicopter. It just landed on our baseball field.”

  Two helmeted Marines burst into the classroom.

  They were both wearing tan flight suits and helmets with tinted visors.

  “Mr. Jake McQuade?” barked one.

  Jake’s armpits were working overtime again. Had he done something wrong? Did the United States government know about the jelly beans? Were they after Haazim Farooqi, too?

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Your country needs you, son,” said the other. “Please come with us.”

  “Now?”

  “Roger that.”

  “Right now, son!” hollered the first Marine. She might’ve been a drill sergeant.

  “Um, okay.”

  “I’m his manager,” said Kojo, stepping forward. “Wherever Jake goes, I go, too, baby.”

  “Fine. We don’t have time to argue. We need to be Oscar Mike.”

  “Huh?” said Mrs. Malvolio with a confused flutter of eyelashes.

  “Oscar Mike, ma’am. On the move! We’ve alerted your mother as to your whereabouts, Mr. McQuade.”

  “Did she say it was okay?”

  “Roger that. We hope to shuttle you back home before midnight.”

  “Good,” said Kojo. “Because it is a school night.”

  “Kojo—I’ll let your mom know you won’t be home for supper,” said Grace.

  “Thanks!” said Kojo. He turned to the Marines. “You guys have food on the chopper? Chips or something? Maybe some of those crispy Biscoff cookies I had on an airplane once?”

  “Gunny?” said the other Marine, turning his wrist to consult his watch. “General Coleman is waiting for us. We needed to be in DC fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Let’s move, gentlemen.”

  The two Marines hustled Jake and Kojo out of the school to the waiting chopper.

  “This is so cool, dude!” said Kojo as the helicopter lifted off. “I can see my house!”

  It took nearly an hour for the high-speed whirlybird to make it to Washington.

  “Okay,” said Kojo, peering out a window at all the glistening monuments and buildings below. “This is way better than our fourth-grade class trip to DC.”

  “Did you know that the Washington Monument is five hundred and fifty-five feet tall and was completed in 1884?”

  “Yeah,” said Kojo. “It was in the brochure.”

  Soon they were landing at a helipad behind the Pentagon.

  “You know why they call it the Pentagon?” Kojo said to Jake as they dashed up the concrete pathway leading to the building with their Marine escort.

  “Because it is a five-sided structure,” said Jake.

  “Correct. Just because we’re on some kind of major mission to save America doesn’t mean we can’t keep prepping for the Quiz Bowl, baby!”

  Jake and Kojo were whisked through security.

  They surrendered their phones and were given laminated high-security clearance badges on lanyards.

  “Can I keep this as a souvenir?” Kojo asked. The grim guard didn’t answer. She just shook her head. “Okay. That’s cool. We’re cool….”

  “Follow me,” said another soldier. He was wearing a helmet. Indoors.

  The soldier escorted Jake and Kojo to the National Military Command Center, what some called the War Room.

  “This is just like in that Transformers movie!” said Kojo, admiring all the giant-screen TVs, glowing maps, and computer terminals.

  “This McQuade?” asked a gruff guard.

  “Roger that,” said the lead Marine.

  “Who’s the other kid?”

  “I’m Kojo Shelton, sir,” said Kojo. “I’m kind of like Jake’s sidekick. He’s Batman, I’m Robin. He’s Captain America, I’m Bucky Barnes. He’s—”

  “We got it,” said the guard. “This way.”

  The guard took Jake and Kojo into a conference room where a gray-haired general with a colorful salad of ribbons on his chest was impatiently waiting for the dozen assorted military personnel seated at the table and clacking their laptops to tell him something he needed to know.

  “General Coleman?” said the guard. “We have McQuade.”

  “About time,” grunted the general. “Who’s the other kid?”

  “Kojo Shelton, sir,” said Kojo with a salute. “Sidekick. Reporting for duty.”

  The general peered at Jake. Sized him up.

  “Son, I’m General Joe Coleman. They tell me you’re smarter than Einstein.”

  “I don’t know about that, sir,” Jake answered modestly. “I did score pretty high on an IQ test.”

  “This is no time for modesty, son.”

  “No, sir. Sorry, sir.”

  The general snatched up a sheet of paper near one of the keyboard clackers.

  “We intercepted this coded message from a hostile ship patrolling near the Strait of Hormuz.”

  Jake nodded. “The only sea passage from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and then out to sea. Twenty-one percent of the world’s oil travels through the narrow passage.”

  “Exactly,” said General Coleman, squinting hard. “So, son, can you decode this thing? So far, our top cryptographers, all of whom are assembled here, haven’t been able to. What are the hostiles’ intentions? Do I need to alert the president and ask him to authorize a preemptive military strike?”

  “This is just like that movie,” Kojo whispered to Jake.

  “What movie?” Jake whispered back.

  “The one with the president and the missiles and stuff.”

  “Mr. McQuade?” said General Coleman. “We need your assistance. And your undivided attention. If we hit them, they will, undoubtedly, hit back.”

  Okay, now the pressure was really on. This isn’t a Quiz Bowl. This is about missiles and bombs and blowing things up. Lives are at stake! This incident could spark a third world war!

  Jake studied the coded message. “Huh. It kind of reminds me of the codes etched into the Kryptos sculpture located on the grounds of the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia.”

  All the cryptographers in the room stopped tapping their laptop keys so they could hear what Jake had to say. A few of them nodded when he mentioned the sculpture.

  “As you probably kn
ow, Kryptos has four hidden messages encoded on it. Three have been solved. The fourth hasn’t. This message you intercepted seems to be mimicking the ciphertext of that fourth riddle, but with letters from the Persian alphabet, not the twenty-six of our Latin alphabet.”

  “What’s it say, son?”

  Jake started blushing. “It’s a love poem, sir.”

  “Come again?”

  “It’s a Persian love poem. ‘This flame of love set my heart on fire. This flood of love drowned me.’ Junk like that.”

  The general scowled at Jake. “You’re telling me it’s a la-di-da love letter?”

  “Yes, sir. I think somebody on the boat is lonely. He and his girlfriend back home are probably totally into secret codes and junk.”

  The general’s scowl melted into a smile. Then he started laughing. Big, hearty, room-rumbling laughs.

  Pretty soon, all the code crackers in the room were laughing and applauding, giving Jake a standing ovation.

  “Well done, son,” said the general. “You just saved us from making a major military blunder. Well done, indeed!”

  “Thanks. Well, we should probably chopper back home now. It’s kind of late….”

  “And,” said Kojo, “as you may know, General Joe, it is a school night.”

  “Thank you for your service,” General Coleman said to Jake, giving him a hearty salute.

  Then he turned to Kojo. “You too, sidekick.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Kojo. “Our honor, sir.”

  A military aide entered the room. He was holding Jake’s cell phone.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” said the aide. “Mr. McQuade has been receiving a series of urgent texts.”

  “Give him his phone,” commanded the general. “This boy just saved our butts.”

  Jake wondered who had been texting. Probably his mom. Or Grace. Maybe Mr. Lyons. Maybe all of them!

  The instant Jake touched the phone, it started thrumming.

  He glanced at the caller ID: HAAZIM FAROOQI.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Jake said to the happy general. “I need to take this. It’s kind of urgent. And private.”

  The general nodded toward a side room.

  “Thanks. Wait for me here, Kojo.”

  “Roger that,” said Kojo, because all the military people said it a lot.

  Jake stepped into the side room.

  “Hello?” he said into the phone. “This is Subject One.”

  “Jake? It’s me. Haazim!”

  “I know. Your name popped up on the screen.”

  “Oh. Then why didn’t you say, ‘Hello, Haazim,’ or ‘Wazzup, Haazim,’ or—”

  “Because you always call me Subject One!”

  “I do? I don’t recall doing that….”

  “It doesn’t matter. What’s this about? I’m kind of busy.”

  “Oh, you’re busy? What about me? Doing research. Boiling ramen noodles. Tinkering with my Ingestible Knowledge formulas.”

  “Or formulae.”

  “Right. Those. So, Subject One, this is my urgent status report. I may have an antidote. I may also have a Spanish-language jelly bean. Which one do you want me to complete first?”

  Okay, this was a new conundrum (what old Jake would’ve just called a difficult question). If there was an antidote, should Jake take it? What if his country needed him to prevent some other armed conflict? But if he took an antidote, he could go back to just being easy-breezy Jake. No stress. No one counting on him. Nothing to worry about except where his next slice of pizza might be coming from and how to make it to the next level of Revenge of the Brain Dead.

  “Um, can you work on both?”

  “Sure, sure,” Farooqi said sarcastically. “I’ll whip up two new jelly beans. No problem.”

  “Mr. Farooqi?”

  “Yes?”

  “I really appreciate all that you are doing. I mean, you’re the one who actually did the work. I just got hungry. You’re the real genius in this thing, not me. This is your big discovery, not mine.”

  There was silence for a moment.

  “Thank you, Subject One. I sincerely appreciate that sentiment. But, Subject One?”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t tell anybody. I couldn’t stand the pressure. I’ve seen how those vultures descend upon you on TV. That sort of life isn’t for me. I don’t want anybody knowing about the jelly beans until I’m confident I can replicate what I created the first time.”

  “But—”

  “I insist.”

  “Okay. Your secret—our secret is safe. No one knows except you, me, and Kojo.”

  “Good. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must return to my laboratory. My purple goop is boiling over a Bunsen burner. So are my ramen noodles.”

  They clicked off.

  Jake stepped back into the War Room.

  Kojo was gone. The general and all the cryptographers and other military people were gone.

  The only two people in the room were two very muscular figures in dark suits, a man and a woman, both wearing sunglasses (even though they were in a windowless room). They also had bodyguard-style curly-wire earpieces.

  “Mr. McQuade?” said the woman.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Special Agent Sydney Tillman, FBI.”

  “Oh-kay,” said Jake. “Have you seen my friend Kojo? Kojo Shelton? He’s my age, wears glasses….”

  “The Marines are ferrying him home on a military transport, after a quick stop at Shake Shack for something called a Shack Stack and a concrete.” She took a step forward. “The Pentagon advised us you were here in DC, Jake. We could use your assistance.”

  “Tonight? Because it’s a school night. My mother—”

  “Was very proud to hear that you would be helping the Federal Bureau of Investigation solve a major case.”

  “She was?”

  The agents nodded.

  “She wants you to call her later. She and Emma would both like to hear from you and tell you how proud they are of you. Your mother would also like to remind you to brush your teeth at some point before going to bed.”

  Jake grinned. He really did like his mom being proud of him on a regular basis. Emma, too.

  “We assured your mother that you would be well taken care of during your stay in Washington,” Tillman continued. “We’ve booked you into a child-friendly hotel that will, on request, deliver handmade ice cream sandwiches to your suite. Agent Patrick Andrus, here, will be bunking next door to you for security purposes and to provide transportation to FBI headquarters first thing in the a.m.”

  “How long will I, uh, be staying here?”

  “That depends on how long it takes you to crack the case.”

  “I have a social studies quiz tomorrow.”

  “I feel confident this will count as extra credit.”

  “Oh. Okay. Then let’s get to work.”

  “Not tonight,” said Tillman. “Tonight you grab some chow and some sleep. First thing tomorrow Agent Andrus will deliver you to Deputy Assistant Director Don Struchen. And, Mr. McQuade?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Your country’s counting on you.”

  * * *

  —

  Jake ordered room service and scarfed down a fancy cheeseburger and two of those handmade ice cream sandwiches. He also packed up all the little bottles of shampoo and hand lotion and mouthwash in the bathroom. Emma would like those.

  He picked up his phone to FaceTime with his mom and Emma and saw a text from Grace:

  You are my superhero! Kojo filled me in. Thanks for saving America.

  Grinning, Jake thumbed an app and video-called home.

  “Were you really with a general like Kojo told us?” said Emma, her eyes wide with amazement. “Was it the room
with all the computers and junk from that movie?”

  “Yeah,” said Jake. “It was pretty awesome.”

  “You are so cool, Jake.”

  “So are you, bro.”

  “Jake? I’m your sister.”

  “Jake?” said his mom, sounding kind of choked up. “We’re so proud of you. But, honey?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How are you holding up? This is a lot of pressure. Being on TV. Helping the Pentagon. Working with the FBI. You’re still only twelve, hon.”

  “True,” said Jake.

  And then he said what he knew his mother wanted to hear because maybe by saying it out loud he could convince himself that it was true.

  “I’m fine, Mom. Trust me. It’s like Shakespeare said: ‘Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.’ Guess I’m just in the thrust-upon category.”

  “Um, okay, honey. But you know we think you’ve always been great.”

  “Even when you were lazy,” added Emma.

  That made Jake laugh. “Love you guys!”

  “Love you back!”

  And after ordering one more ice cream sandwich (with sprinkles on top), Jake fell asleep with a smile on his face.

  The next morning, after a breakfast in bed of pancakes and French toast (with real maple syrup) plus two orders of bacon, while watching ESPN on a jumbo-screen TV, Jake had a quick FaceTime chat with Grace.

  “Good morning!” she said.

  “Hey. Sorry I’m missing so many Quiz Bowl practices. It’s less than a week away.”

  “That’s okay, Jake. You don’t really need them as much as Kojo and I do. Besides, Kojo texted me last night while he was flying home on the helicopter. He told me how you guys saved the world. He didn’t get into any details, though….”

  “They just needed a little help cracking a code. Turns out, I’m pretty good at that. The easiest questions on your father’s IQ test were the more visual ones. The puzzles.”

  “Excellent,” said Grace. “Because when you get back, Uncle Charley and I have another code for you to crack.”