Page 51 of The Presidents Shadow

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: EVIDENCE ROOM .

Inside, we find boxes of hard drives and stacks of files, as well as ten personal computers lined up in a row like the stone 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 labeled Nakashima into 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 letter h.

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 hear the 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.”