Page 36 of The Presidents Shadow

Each of the six guards twists a small lever on the magazine release of their gun, then clicks it back into place.

The man who gave the original order shouts again, “Number Two! Test!” One of the guards, presumably Number Two, fires the weapon into the air.

Margo and I reflexively cover our ears but soon discover that we don’t need to. The weapon is absolutely silent.

The test over, all six guards return to their positions.

Margo turns to me and speaks quietly but with a note of excitement in her voice.

“Pika,” she says.

“Pika?” I repeat. “What the hell is that?”

CHAPTER 50

MARGO EDUCATES ME quickly: a pika is a small furry creature that lives in the mountains of Japan, like a koala bear, only smaller and nowhere near as cute. Because of the destruction of the mountains, the tough little animals have fled to the rubble-strewn cities of Japan to join other animals—dogs, cats, and pigs—in a desperate search for food. Their hunger has made the pikas vicious.

It’s a bit of a struggle to transform myself into one of these obscure mountain terrors, since I don’t have the best idea of what they look like. But once Margo has shifted, it’s much easier.

“You are definitely as cute as a koala bear,” I inform her, before I shift my own form.

Once inside, we return to our normal selves, and for the first time on this mission we experience a bit of luck. In front of us is a door marked with a sign:EVIDENCEROOM. Inside, we find boxes of hard drives and stacks of files, as well as ten personal computers lined up in a row like thestone monuments at a cemetery. A home for the dead? No way. We soon discover that the room is very much alive… with information.

Margo is the first to make a discovery: a handwritten note on a piece of thick elegant paper:

Ignore my messages as you see fit, but you are foolish to do so

As Margo continues to read aloud the contents of hard-copy messages, I snap a hard drive labeledNakashimainto my personal handheld computer.

You can ignore my brilliant ideas. My algorithms. My theorems. My biochemical discoveries. But you cannot ignore my promise, a promise to disrupt and destroy you and everyone in your domain.

The threats, the tone, the absolute coldness of the notes, are all the same. Although Jason told us earlier that his father did not know who was sending them, Margo and I see that both these messages have been signed with the lowercase letterh.Indeed, as we quickly sort through other emails, notes, and texts, we discover that this simple one-letter signature closes them all.

We keep reading as fast as we can, disturbed only when we hear an occasional noise from outside. When we hearthe shouts for another weapons check, we realize that we are pressing our luck by remaining here.

“Just a few more minutes,” I say.

“Fine,” says Margo, “but we have to enter into the pika shape-change soon. We can’t be caught in here. You’re a highly recognizable person.”

She’s right, but I’m too intrigued by a new message I’ve found to listen. “Look at this one,” I say as I hold up my screen.

“It’s totally encrypted,” she says. We are both looking at a long jumble of English letters and Japanese characters. There are a few images that we can identify—some numbers, a question mark, a ridiculous smiling emoji—but beyond those things, the document is gibberish.

“We’ve got to get this deciphered by Burbank or Jericho,” I say.

“Which we can’t possibly do if we’re caught,” says Margo pointedly.

I pause and look around the room; Margo’s eyebrows go up.

“Just give me a second to enjoy myself,” I say. “We’re finally onto something.”

CHAPTER 51

MADDY IS READY to go undercover. Really undercover.

Wardrobe and makeup are an easy fix for her. She’s a very young-looking twenty-one-year-old to begin with, so eliminating makeup and leaving her hair loose is all that’s needed. This accentuates her soft, pale skin. When she looks in her bedroom mirror, she smiles at her image. Maddy could pass as a cheerleader for a junior varsity football team. An inexpensive gold chain, a pair of faded not-too-tight jeans, a snug white T-shirt. The crowning piece of the costume is an old favorite, something that she wore almost daily when she was in middle school—a faded olive-green shacket from Forever 21.

But she realizes that this is no Halloween costume party. This is the real world, and her intrusion into a very dark part of it is truly frightening. She has to admit to herself that she’s scared. Yes, she keeps reminding herself that she’s worked hard with Dache, that he’s even assured her (in his own stern way) that she has mastered the teachingsof the master. But Dache is still a man in a man’s world, and Maddy is about to wander into the worst place to be a female.

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