The Secret of Rover (34 page)

“So just play the middle,” said David. “It doesn't matter!”

“Yes, it does!”

David took a deep breath and began to sing.
“You. Are. My
.
Sunshine
. . .”

“Don't forget ‘happy!'” And she leapt in and sang with him.

My only sunshine
. . .

On the second line Katie's fingers suddenly remembered the notes and she began to play. This was too much for Alex, who emitted a small, emotional yelp. Distracted, they rolled over “happy” without emphasis. But they finished the song.

“That's a wrap,” said David into the silence that followed their final notes.

“Got it,” confirmed the man with the laptop, looking up at Alex. “It's all here.”

“Great,” said David. “Let's—”

“One more time,” said Katie.

“You're crazy!”

“David, we had no piano at the top—but I can do it now! I just remembered the beginning! And later—we didn't do it the same way at all. We didn't—”

David thrust his wrist before her eyes so that she could see the gleaming face of his watch.

It was 8:04. Uncle Alex had said they would need to find their mom and dad and Theo by eight thirty their time for the Katkajanian police to be able to rescue them. And at nine o'clock . . .

“See you in the car,” said Katie without further ado. And she jumped from the piano bench as if it were on fire.

Alex had been huddled with the sound men, who were e-mailing the recording to Rover. But now he looked at his own watch and the significance of what he saw seemed to register with him, too. With uncharacteristic speed he hustled after David and Katie. All three of them streaked out of the house, down the front steps, and into the car. It was not the same car—that one was still stuck in the azaleas—but Tyrone was behind the wheel. He was poised for flight, light bar flashing and motor churning.

Tyrone flicked a switch on his dashboard and the siren sprang to life, wailing into the silent streets. He peeled out
of the driveway, and this time there was no stopping for seat belts.

Less than an hour to go. Just the thought made Katie sick.

“Uncle Alex?” asked David.

Alex was staring at the speedometer, his face frozen in alarm. The needle was climbing toward sixty-five and they were still on narrow residential streets.

The siren was very loud. David tried again, this time raising his voice. “Uncle Alex, does it have to wait till we get there, or can it start now?”

Dragging his gaze from the dashboard, Alex looked puzzled.

“Rover,” said David. “I mean Rover. It already has our song; you e-mailed it. So while we're driving, can it start—”

But at the mention of Rover, Alex's distraction cleared and his eyes went wide with alarm.

David broke off. “What?” he said, exasperated. “What now?”

With a tiny movement of his head, Alex gestured toward Tyrone.

Oh, yeah. David had forgotten. Rover was top-secret. So without conversation—and on two wheels—they turned out of the neighborhood and back onto the broad avenue that led to the city.

Tyrone stepped on the gas, and the streets and houses around them dissolved into a blur as the screaming police
car pointed its nose south toward Washington DC. Katie and David watched in silence. How far would they go? And where exactly were they headed? Despite their fear, both children were intensely curious about the location of the mysterious War Room.

They were not far from the center of the city when suddenly Tyrone flipped a switch. The light bar went dark and the siren was cut off in mid-wail. At the same time he swung to the left and began a series of quick, sharp turns that took them deep into the residential neighborhoods north and east of downtown.

Within minutes David closed his eyes. There was no point in keeping them open. He was thoroughly lost.

Katie was close to lost too. But she struggled to keep track of the sequence of turns they were making. It had been a left by that hotel, then three blocks and another left, then right at that red building . . . She was weary, and even without this additional challenge, her nerves were stretched to the breaking point. But she had learned her lesson. Until her parents and her sister came home, she would know everything it was possible to know. These people would never keep secrets from her again.

Night had fallen and the city had emptied. There was little traffic downtown and almost nothing to slow their course. In no time Tyrone swung to the right, bumped up a driveway, and glided to a stop.

David opened his eyes. They had arrived at a modest
brick row house. It sat in the dead center of a block of identical houses. David knew that there were dozens of blocks that looked exactly like this one in this part of the city.

So that was how they hid the War Room, he thought. They hid it in plain sight.

“This way,” said Alex. And he kicked the door open and headed for the house.

David and Katie followed him up a short stoop and through the front door. There a sharp military voice ordered them to stop. “We're cleared,” said Alex brusquely, thrusting an ID card at the guard.

Wordlessly, the guard nodded toward a door that led to a narrow corridor. At the farthest end was a closed door. In front of that stood another guard, alert and unsmiling, with a weapon in his hands.

Was it smart to run at full tilt toward an armed guard? Too late if it wasn't.

Katie and David broke free of Uncle Alex. Their footsteps pounded as they pelted toward the door where the guard stood. Just before they reached it, the soldier bowed his head and, with one arm, pushed the door open.

It was the War Room, and they were in it.

But what was wrong? Supposedly, this was the red-hot center of the hunt for the missing Bowdens. Supposedly, too, the hunt was down to the wire. It was less than half an hour until Katie and David's parents and sister would be killed, and eleven minutes past the time when Alex said they had to find them if they wanted the police to find them alive.

So common sense said the place should have been frantic with activity. But it wasn't.

It had been busy, from the look of things. A bank of computer screens against the far wall scrolled seemingly endless lines of complex text, and a wilderness of tiny lights flashed green and blue. The tables, desks, and
chairs were all askew; the tiny, windowless space was strewn with crumpled paper cups, and a crushed pizza box had been jammed into an overflowing trash can.

But everyone just looked depressed. Six people were there—no, eight—and every one of them slumped over a computer as if defeated. Alicia leaned haggardly against the wall. The secretary, who had been so crisp and in control at her office in the State Department, was now limp and unkempt, with great dark circles beneath her eyes.

David bypassed every normal greeting. “It's eight forty-one!” he shouted. “Why isn't anybody hurrying?”

Alicia pushed herself away from the wall where she had propped her thin, exhausted frame and picked her way through the scattered furniture to meet them. “David, Katie,” she said, robotic with weariness. “Alex.” She nodded toward the door, where he was breathlessly entering. “I'm so glad you've come. I'm sure—”

“Where are they?” demanded David, frustrated to the point of rudeness by these time-wasting preliminaries.

“I understand,” said Alicia, looking grave. “First things first,” she said. “Your parents and sister are still living. Or at least, we have no reason to think they aren't. But kids . . .” She took a deep breath and continued. “Kids, the news isn't good. We just aren't finding them. I don't want to—I won't lie to you. We—we've reached the end.” Her face was full of compassion and shame.

“The recording?” asked Alex anxiously. He was now by their sides.

Alicia shook her head. “It's just not working. It's—I'm sorry, Alex.”

“So you're giving up?” asked Katie in disbelief.

“We've tried it three times,” said Alicia, “and—”

“Try it again,” demanded David. “Uncle Alex, you try it.”

Alicia and Alex shared an agonized gaze and Alex slipped into an empty chair before a gigantic console. Frowning, he tapped a few obviously familiar keystrokes.

Hurry, thought David, watching his uncle's careful fingers. But Katie's eyes were elsewhere. She was looking toward the front of the room, where a single enormous screen hung high on the wall, facing every desk and dominating the tiny space. This screen alone, among all the others in the War Room, had until now been totally blank. With Alex's keystrokes, it had sprung to life.

“Katkajan,” Katie whispered. And so it was. A satellite photo of that country had filled the gigantic screen.

Just to the right of David and Katie sat a technician with headphones over her ears. This woman now read out a string of letters and numbers. Hearing them, Alex pushed another button and a small, green dot appeared on the screen. The dot hovered somewhere over a range of mountains that cut across the center of Katkajan like a slash.

“They're huge,” murmured Katie, looking with dismay
at those mountains. If their mom and dad and Theo were still there, then there really was no hope.

But by now David had also found this screen, and he had focused on a different part of it. David was watching the green dot. “That must be Rover,” he said to Katie in a low voice. “That dot right there.”

Alex, still frowning, was punching more instructions into his keyboard. And as he typed—and as they watched—the green dot started moving. It had been perfectly still, but now it began to vibrate and tremble.

Rover indeed: The dot on Alex's machine looked exactly like a panting dog, straining restlessly at the end of its leash. Katie found herself whispering to this doglike dot. “Go,” she murmured. “Go, Rover. Go get 'em.”

Then Alex threw the dog a bone. He tapped a final key, and the song that Katie and David had recorded just moments earlier filled the room. The instant it did, he leaned to his right and pushed a button on a nearby phone.

The button dialed a number. Somewhere in Katkajan, a phone began to ring, and it was playing the same song.

You are my sunshine
. . .

“Fetch,” muttered David tightly. “Rover, fetch. Go find that phone.”

It was almost as if the dot had heard him. Instantly
its faint tremble switched to a steady pulse. Instead of vibrating in one place, it began making tentative darting motions this way and that. Then slowly, shakily, the dot began floating away from the mountains. It began to draw nearer and nearer to Taq, the Katkajanian capital.

“It's working!” said David.

“They're not in the mountains!” cried Katie. “David, this is good! If they're in Taq, we might still have time!”

But at this Alicia spoke. “I don't like to disappoint you, kids,” she warned. “But you need to watch what happens next.”

She was all too right.

No sooner had the words left Alicia's lips than Rover stopped. The dot paused briefly, somewhere over the eastern foothills of the Katkajanian mountains. Abruptly, it then headed northeast. They all held their breath as just as abruptly it dropped perhaps a hundred miles to the south, hovered briefly, and began floating west.

Rover had heard, but it could not make sense of what it heard. The dog was tracking, but it could not pick up the scent.

“It's just wandering!” cried Katie in despair. “It's all mixed up!”

While the dot was drifting, Alex was holding the phone to his ear. Now he hung it up. “Voice mail!” he said bitterly. And the final notes of David and Katie's brief recording faded from the air.

“That's what it's been doing, Alex,” Alicia said apologetically, as if she were trying to let him down gently. “At first it seems to hear, and then it doesn't.”

“Have you tried Level 3?” asked Alex desperately.

“I'm afraid we have, sir,” responded the technician with the headphones.

“It's so close, Alex,” said Alicia. “It's so close to working. But it's not—it's just not—”

“It's just not enough.” Katie broke in and they all turned to stare, their eyes drawn by the decision in her voice. “It's not enough,” she repeated, “so we have to give it more. David, let's sing it again. Let's try it live.”

“But what about the piano?” asked David.

“Forget the piano. It can work with just our voices. That recording we just did—it's not good, David! It isn't right at all!”

Alex stopped her. “It won't make any difference, Katie,” he said mournfully. “Rover isn't about details like that. It listens for tones, the unique vibrations—”

But Katie spoke only to David. “What do we have to lose?” she demanded. She seized his arm in her two fists and shook it. “David, what's going to happen if we
don't
try?”

David spun around to face his uncle. “Where's the microphone?” he barked.