The History Mystery (9 page)

‘Hello, Pedro? What's up?'

When the phone rang, Sonia was so enthralled by the conversation she was having with Faye that she did something surprising even to herself. Instead of saying ‘Hi!' enthusiastically and interrupting everything else to talk to Pedro, as she would usually do, she replied almost automatically, saying, ‘I'm sorry, I'm a bit busy. Can I call you later?'

Pedro couldn't exactly put his finger on why, but he felt put out at being treated like that.

‘Try not to be too long,' he said. ‘It's urgent, Sonia.' And, to pique her curiosity, he added, ‘I think it could be important. We might have a really great clue about the Brainy Hacker. But we need to act fast, as time may be running short.'

He was sure that, on hearing this, Sonia would drop everything to talk to him. He was not prepared for the answer he got: ‘In that case get over here straight away, because I've also got a great clue and I can't stop now or I'll miss it. Bye.'
Beep. Beep
.

She'd hung up! It couldn't be! But it was. It had happened.

It must have really been something serious, then. He was just going to have to go over to her place. Even though he was starving.

Pedro was permanently starving, actually, but especially when it was past noon, after a hard game of football, with his head spinning at a thousand miles an hour.

He just had to eat something before leaving home. On his way through the kitchen, he grabbed a banana and a slice of bread left over from breakfast and headed towards the door.

‘Bye, Mum,' he said as he went. ‘I'm off to Sonia's.'

‘Now
, Pedro? We're just about to have lunch!'

‘I can't, it's urgent.'

‘In that case, take a slice of meat in that bread and make a sandwich that you can eat on the way.'

The meat smelt irresistible, making Pedro's mouth water, so he did as his mother suggested and started to make himself a sandwich.

‘Oh, I almost forgot,' said his mother as she sliced the meat. ‘That classmate of yours, Faye? She called three times this morning. I told her you were at school, playing football. She said to tell you she was going to Sonia's house.'

Faye? She wanted to talk to
him
?

‘Apparently Matt is going too,' his mother went
on. ‘He also called looking for you and I said you might go to Sonia's house to meet the girls when you arrived home, since Faye was so insistent. But I think he already knew that.'

What
was going on? Matt hadn't come to the game because he had the flu. He hadn't been to school the day before either. Perhaps Faye had called him too – and of course, flu or no flu, he could never resist a call from her. They were probably all together at Sonia's house by now. Just like that, on a Saturday morning?

By the time Pedro arrived, the other two had got the gist of Faye's story. She had told it in her usual roundabout way, leaving important information out and putting in things that were totally irrelevant. But by now Sonia and Matt had worked it out, and they were able to sum it up nice and concisely for Pedro, which was just as well, because if he had to hear it at Faye's pace, Pedro really couldn't take it. She was a nice girl, but sometimes she drove him mad, the way she told a story – or rather, the way she didn't tell it.

As soon as Pedro walked in, Matt announced right away: ‘The hacker has contacted Faye again, Pedro!'

‘How?'

‘Well, after what happened last time and all the stuff we talked about, I started thinking a lot about the model-woman thing,' said Faye. ‘I decided to do
some research online. It was amazing. Who would have thought, I found out that –'

‘Faye found out a lot of incredible stuff about what women's lives were like in various places at various times – I'll tell you the details later,' Sonia cut in, kind but firm. ‘Anyway, on the website for this university library, there was a form asking her to agree not to use that information for commercial purposes. Then another window popped up asking her to agree not to abandon the written word, not to stop reading books, stuff like that. Right, Faye?'

‘I thought it was a bit weird and I didn't quite get it, but I was in a hurry to move on, so I just ticked the box,' Faye explained. ‘Then another window appeared asking me to take this commitment to my network of friends. I thought that was even weirder. But once again I agreed and moved ahead. I wanted to search for some stuff and I knew they had a paper about women in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime. Listen, it's amazing how this kind of situation still exists nowadays. After all, it wasn't that long ago. They couldn't study, or work, or go out in the streets – at all, for anything. Not even to buy food. If they didn't have a man in the family, they could starve to death. And since there was a war –'

Sonia interrupted her again. ‘Then another message appeared, right, Faye? This time, in big letters.'

‘Actually, there were
two
messages on the same window, in two font sizes,' Faye corrected her. ‘One of them asked, “I
F YOU DON'T READ WHAT'S BEEN WRITTEN, WHAT IS HISTORY WORTH?”
The other one, in a larger size, had an exclamation mark at the end:
“DO NOT ABANDON YOUR ANCESTORS. READ WHAT THEY HAVE WRITTEN. NO MORE BETRAYAL!”
And at the end of it all, almost like a challenge, it said, “
SO? ARE YOU GOING TO HELP ME OUT OR NOT?
”'

‘Just like that?' asked Pedro. ‘In those exact words?'

‘Yes, I am sure of it, because it was frozen on the screen for a while, it just wouldn't go away, so I had time to memorise it,' said Faye. ‘The only way to get rid of that window was to restart the computer. But then it happened all over again. I agreed with everything in the pop-up windows and when I got to that one, the same thing happened. Everything froze. I was stuck on that window. I had to start from scratch yet again.

‘But this time, I didn't just tick all the boxes and agree to everything. When I got to that website, the one belonging to the university library, I saw that there was an email address on their contact page.'

‘Ah!' said Pedro. ‘So?'

‘So I sent them a message explaining what had happened.'

‘And did they reply?'

‘Yeah, they did,' said Faye. ‘Only not until the following day. Still, they did get back to me.' She paused for a moment.

‘Go on,' said Pedro.

‘Well, it wasn't much help, actually. They said it had nothing to do with them.'

‘But there was more to it than that,' Matt prompted her. ‘Remember what you said about how the library had this big campaign going on about the importance of reading?'

Faye nodded. ‘Yes, they told me about that, but they also said that this particular message that I'd got wasn't part of it, as far as they knew.'

‘Apparently this reading initiative is pretty big,' Matt added. ‘Lots of different institutions are involved in it. They said the message you saw must have been some mistake, maybe brought in through one of the other organisations, but nothing to do with them.'

‘Yes, that's right,' said Faye. ‘They said they were dedicated to protecting the written word. They said they wanted more people to be involved in the project, that it's the duty of us all, of the whole community. I have their email saved in my inbox. You can read it later if you like, or I could print it out for you.'

Matt said there was no need for her to print out the message, but he might come by her place later to read it and check a few details.

Faye smiled (she smiled!) and said yes, she thought that was a good idea.

Meanwhile, Sonia went back over the rest of the things Faye had told them.

‘The thing is, Pedro, the people from the university swore that they were not the ones who wrote that stuff. The two professors who signed the email said they would never use words like that. They were almost offended, saying that this kind of language was not part of their campaign, that they did not use emotional terms such as helping out, abandoning or betrayal. Which kind of makes sense. It's not the way professors speak, is it? So that means –'

Faye cut in. ‘They said they must have been hacked by some student trying to be funny or someone trying to derail their project. They apologised for the aggressive tone and promised to take measures to solve the problem.'

‘This
has
to have been our hacker again,' said Matt. ‘The Brainy Hacker, I mean.'

‘Our
hacker?
Whose
hacker? We've got nothing to do with this stuff,' protested Sonia.

Pedro disagreed. ‘I think we have to accept that this is “our” hacker, in a way, Sonia. Because he or she keeps talking to us all the time.'

Sonia didn't argue.

‘But, listen,' Pedro went on, ‘I think it might be a good idea to contact the university again and tell
them the whole story. I mean, look, they have a lot of resources. They would be in a much better position to tackle this whole business than we could possibly be. They have much better security systems, for a start.'

‘Yeah, could be,' said Sonia. ‘But look, on the other hand, they jumped to the conclusion that it was probably one of their students who was to blame for this.'

‘So?' said Pedro.

‘Well, I think that means they are suspicious of young people. So they could easily start thinking it's our fault. I think we should steer clear of these people, or we might end up in trouble.'

‘But they can investigate this stuff much better than we can,' argued Pedro. ‘They can dig deeper.'

The others weren't sure. They thought about it for a while.

Then Faye spoke up. ‘You have a point, Pedro, when you say that talking to the university people might be a good thing. They're a large institution, as you say, and they must have a legal department as well as a really big IT department, all sorts of stuff. They really have a much better chance of solving this mystery than we have.'

Pedro smiled. At last, someone recognised how right he was.

‘But …' Faye went on, ‘Sonia has a point too. The
thing is, we don't want people to start suspecting that we are responsible for this whole thing.'

‘So what do you suggest, Faye?' asked Matt eagerly.

‘Well, I think the best thing would be to talk to Colin again. He's a lawyer, remember, and we promised him we'd get back to him if there were any more developments.'

So they had.

‘So I think the best thing is to let Colin deal with it for us. Then we won't have anything to worry about – that's what the law is for, isn't it? To defend the citizens and make sure that everybody in society is respected. I mean, look, suppose you have a case of domestic violence, for example. If all you could depend on was some random police officer who got called in to the case, the woman might end up completely defenceless. If there were no …'

Her friends were speechless. This really didn't seem like the Faye they had known for all these years, launching into a speech like that on the value of the law and the importance of justice. She usually came across as so ditzy. And yet, they all knew in their hearts that there was more to Faye than she let on. Something had given her the courage to speak up, clearly and fluently and confidently.

Matt, of course, was completely enthralled. Faye was more beautiful than ever when she was like
this, her eyes sparkling with the excitement of what she was saying,

Sonia was about to make a joke about Faye's oratorical skills, when Pedro cut in quickly to bring them back to the subject.

‘Great idea, Faye! I think we can all agree on this. We should definitely talk to Colin. Right, everyone?'

The others all nodded.

‘But we can't really get in touch with him until Monday, so just for now, let's see if we can think our way through this a bit more.'

They all looked at him expectantly.

‘As I see it,' Pedro continued, ‘our hacker has made an important move here. He's made a much more daring approach, using a much bigger, more powerful website, with a higher risk of leaving a trail. He's taking a bigger risk to get close to us.'

Well, that seemed to make sense. But did it get them anywhere?

‘And by the way,' Pedro went on, ‘I have something else to tell you. Robbie told me something earlier today that also suggests that the Brainy Hacker is making new moves. But one thing at a time. Remind me to tell you later, when we've finished discussing this thing of Faye's.'

He turned to Matt then and asked, ‘What do you think, Matt?'

‘I agree. I mean, I agree with what you said just
now and also with Faye's idea about talking to Colin when we get a chance. But I also want to say that I think this whole story confirms what I've been saying for a while: this guy is somebody who's in trouble and wants us to help him.'