William Wenton and the Impossible Puzzle Read online

  To Michelle,

  had it not been for you, this book

  would never have been!

  VICTORIA STATION,

  LONDON

  It was the middle of morning rush hour. Busy people of every shape and size scurried this way and that. Everyone was minding their own business. No one noticed an elderly man with a beard and round glasses running through the hall. He was clutching a brown parcel and constantly looking behind him, as if he was being chased.

  He stumbled on a suitcase someone was wheeling by. It took him a few steps to catch his balance, and then he proceeded down the escalator to the underground trains.

  Down on the platform, people were crowded together like lemmings on a cliff. The man pushed his way through the crowd and stopped at the end of the platform. A cool breeze blew out of the tunnel. A train was coming.

  None of the other travelers noticed the man jumping down onto the tracks. The screech of an approaching train could be heard, and the air pressure coming from the tunnel made his long beard flap.

  The old man cast one last look at the platform before he turned and disappeared into the dark tunnel.

  1

  EIGHT YEARS LATER.

  AT A SECRET ADDRESS

  SOMEWHERE IN NORWAY.

  William was so engrossed in what he was doing that he didn’t hear his mother calling him. He sat hunched over a massive desk. With a steady hand he tightened the final screw into a metal cylinder the size of an empty toilet paper roll. The cylinder was divided into several sections that were engraved with various symbols and inscriptions.

  William held the cylinder up to the light and studied it with satisfaction. He picked up a newspaper clipping with a picture of a cylinder that looked like the one he was holding in his hand. It said THE IMPOSSIBLE PUZZLE: THE WORLD’S MOST DIFFICULT CODE IS COMING TO NORWAY. CAN YOU BREAK IT?

  Even though William had already read the article hundreds of times, he read it again now. He glanced at the picture of the enigmatic metal cylinder. A group of the world’s best cryptographers had spent more than three years creating it. And now it was on its introductory tour with the tagline “world’s most difficult code.” It had the reputation of being impossible to crack. Some of the world’s smartest people had already tried—and failed. And now it had finally come to Norway, but after tomorrow night the exhibit would be moving on to Finland, so it was now or never.

  “DINNER!” his mother yelled from the kitchen.

  William didn’t react. In his defense, sound did not travel particularly well in this house. The walls of every room were covered in bookshelves that were jam-packed with books that had been inherited from his grandfather, along with strict instructions never to get rid of them. The books had been hauled over from England in seven big containers. William had read them all. At least twice.

  It had been eight years since they’d had to leave England. Eight years since they’d moved into the house. And eight years since Grandfather had disappeared. Now William and his parents lived incognito, at a secret address, with new names, in a narrow country called Norway.

  “WILLIAM OLSEN! DINNER!”

  His mother didn’t let up. William heard her now. She had said Olsen, William Olsen. He was just never going to get used to that name. He longed for the day when he could tell everyone his actual name: William Wenton.

  He’d given up asking what really happened back in London eight years earlier. About why they were named Olsen now and had learned Norwegian. About why they lived here, of all places, and about what had happened to Grandfather. His parents had decided not to talk about it. As if all the secrets were better than the truth.

  He didn’t know much about what had happened, but he did know that it had something to do with a car accident. The same car accident that had left his father paralyzed.

  But there was more. Something so serious that their family had to disappear, and a thin little country that almost no one in the rest of the world could find on a map had been the perfect place to disappear to—for as long as it lasted.

  “DIIIINNER!!” Mama yelled yet again.

  “I just have to fix one little thing first . . . ,” William mumbled to himself.

  Then it was his father’s turn to holler from the distance. “WILLIAM . . . IT’S TIME FOR DINNER!”

  William delicately rotated the metal cylinder, feeling how the small pieces rested perfectly in his hands as if they understood him. He jumped when the door to his room suddenly flew open, hitting a tall stack of books and knocking them over. One of the books hit the cylinder, which slipped out of his hands, landed on the floor with a clank and started rolling. William was leaning down to pick it up when his father drove over the threshold in his electric wheelchair, on a collision course with the cylinder. William watched in dismay. A metallic crunch was the only sound as the full weight of one wheel drove over it. His father braked abruptly. The ruined electronics sparked, and a little cloud of smoke rose from the wreckage under the wheel. His father glanced down at his chair in irritation and wrinkled his nose.

  “Is it playing up again? I just took it in to get it serviced,” he muttered to himself, and then turned his stern eyes to William, who moved his hand to cover the newspaper clipping on the desk.

  “It’s time for dinner . . . NOW!” said his father before putting his chair in reverse, bumping into another stack of books, and then driving back out of the room.

  William waited until the hum of his father’s stair lift faded before he stood up. He took a breath. That was close. But his father hadn’t seen anything, had he? William was quite sure that he’d managed to hide the newspaper clipping before his father noticed it. He walked over to the cylinder and picked it up. One side was crumpled in. He shook it a little.

  “Really?” he said to himself, irritated, and glanced at a thick chain lock on the inside of his door. How had he forgotten to lock it? He always locked his door when he was working on code breaking.

  William turned and walked back over to the desk. He opened one of the drawers and put the newspaper clipping and what was left of the cylinder into it. He stood there for a bit, staring at the other things in the big drawer: a mechanical hand he’d built himself; a 3-D metal puzzle; a completely normal Rubik’s Cube; and a shoebox that contained a soldering iron, some small screwdrivers, and a pair of pliers.

  He closed the drawer and locked it with a key he hid in a crack between two floorboards. He gave the room a last once-over to make sure he’d stowed everything away.

  For some reason or other his father hated cryptography. He’d forbidden any form of code-breaking activity. He wanted William to do the stuff normal children did: soccer, band practice, whatever. It was almost as if his father was afraid of codes and afraid that William would be interested in them. And it was just getting worse. Now his dad had started cutting the crossword puzzles out of the newspapers and burning them in the fireplace. That’s why William had started locking his bedroom door. So his father wouldn’t discover all the stuff he had hidden in his room.

  If his father only knew how William felt some days. Sometimes all he could see around him were codes. Anything could actually be a code: a yard, a house, a car, everything he saw on TV or read in a book. They were all puzzles, and his brain took over. It could happen when he looked at a tree or the pattern in some wallpaper. Sometimes it was like things dissolved right before his eyes so that he saw each individual component and where it fit in. He’d been this way for as long as he could remember, and he often got in trouble because of it. That’s why he was happiest on his own. Preferably in his room, with the door locked, where he was in full control.

  William
stood there looking at the big desk, his grandfather’s desk. The desktop was made of dark ebony, one of the hardest woods in the world. In each corner there were carvings of demonlike faces, grimacing and sticking out their tongues.

  William had been scared of the desk when he was little. But gradually as he got older, he became curious. The whole desktop was covered with strange symbols. William imagined that they were secret messages from his grandfather, who was one of the best cryptologists in the world. But William hadn’t managed to decipher the symbols yet. He hoped that someday he would understand them, that he would understand what his grandfather had written, and why.

  “WE’RE EATING NOW!” his mother yelled again.

  “I’m coming!” William replied. And in two easy steps he was out of the room.

  2

  “Aren’t you hungry?” his mother asked.

  “Not really,” William responded, pushing his plate away.

  His father swallowed. “You sit around too much,” he said. “When I was your age, we never just sat around. We played soccer, ran around outside, stole fruit off the neighbors’ trees. Look at you. You’re skin and bones.”

  William tried to ignore him. He knew his dad was right. He was skin and bones. But he was stronger than he looked. He always had been. No one in his class could do more push-ups than him. Even his PE teacher had trouble keeping up when he got going.

  William glanced at the folded newspaper and pair of scissors sitting on his dad’s lap. Recently his father had started cutting even more out of the newspapers than the crosswords. Ever since ads had started showing up about the Impossible Exhibit that was coming to the History of Science Museum. His father was trying as hard as he could to keep William away from it.

  But what his father didn’t know was that William’s class was planning a field trip to the exhibit. His mom had told William he could go if he promised not to say anything to his father. And didn’t touch any of the artifacts. It was as if his mom understood how much it meant to him, as if she recognized the tingle William felt every time he thought about the code no one had been able to crack, as if she knew he’d been dreaming about the exhibit ever since he’d first heard of the Impossible Puzzle.

  After his dad had left the table, William and his mother sat there for a few more minutes. “Your teacher Mr. Turnbull is very concerned about the museum field trip tomorrow,” she said. “And so am I, actually. Living in hiding for so long has been hard for all of us, but we really can’t draw attention to ourselves. You know that.”

  William didn’t respond. Mr. Turnbull had hated him ever since William had corrected him in class one day.

  “Look at me, William,” she said sternly.

  He turned and looked at her.

  “Promise me you’re going to behave yourself tomorrow!” she pleaded. “Can you promise me that? We can’t draw attention to ourselves!”

  William knew he was going to have a hard time keeping his hands off the Impossible Puzzle. But he also knew that he couldn’t do anything that would give them away.

  “I promise,” he said, and felt a twinge in his stomach.

  3

  “Hello, and welcome to an exciting day at the History of Science Museum,” said a tall, nervous-looking woman who greeted them outside the museum. It looked as if she had been waiting for a while. Her nose was as red as a tomato, and she was really shivering. She jumped up and down a little to keep warm while Mr. Turnbull tried to get the class to settle down. “My name is Edna and I’ll be your guide today.” She nervously straightened her skirt. “You’re a little late, and, unfortunately, the Impossible Exhibit is just closing. But of course you have the whole rest of the museum.”

  William stiffened. It couldn’t be true. They were too late.

  “Since you didn’t quite make the Impossible Exhibit, we’ll start with the science word puzzles. Everyone should take one sheet of paper from the table just inside the doors there,” said Edna. “It’ll work best if you do it in pairs.”

  It only took a few seconds for the students to team up with their usual partners. William was still frozen to the spot, paralyzed with disappointment.

  “Come on, William, we don’t have all day,” Mr. Turnbull continued.

  William nodded slightly. Then his anger flared. Word puzzles? No way. He was here to see the Impossible Puzzle.

  “We’ll meet by the exit in one hour,” squeaked Edna, opening the large oak doors of the museum.

  The class stormed noisily up the front steps. A girl bumped into Edna, knocking her down. Edna sat there on the step, dazed. Mr. Turnbull rushed over to her. She held out her arm so he could help her up.

  But Mr. Turnbull hurried right by. “No running . . . WALK!” he yelled at the top of his lungs, and kept going into the museum without so much as looking at her.

  William stopped in front of Edna and took her hand. He helped her up. “Thank you,” she said, brushing off her skirt.

  “You’re welcome,” said William, smiling meekly. He hesitated a moment.

  “Is the Impossible Exhibit totally closed?” he asked.

  “They’re at maximum capacity down there. We can’t let anyone else in, fire marshal’s orders,” Edna said.

  William nodded and proceeded through the doors.

  He noticed two men taking down a poster next to the stairs. It said IMPOSSIBLE EXHIBIT—DOWNSTAIRS.

  He glanced over at Mr. Turnbull. He was busy with a boy whose hand was stuck in a steam engine. A museum guard had come over to help.

  William smiled. Mr. Turnbull had his hands full. Now was his chance to get into the Impossible Exhibit.

  4

  William walked down the stairs and stopped. Two enormous guards in gray suits were blocking the doorway. People were packed into the room beyond like sardines. One of the guards was busy with an angry little man who wanted to enter. The little man waved his ticket under the guard’s nose.

  “I already paid. You can’t refuse to let me in if I have a ticket,” he yelled.

  “Then you should have been here earlier. We can’t let any more people in. The exhibit is at maximum capacity.” The guard pointed at the crowd behind him to emphasize his point.

  “Look at me. I’m only four foot nine. I weigh one hundred ten pounds. No one is going to notice one way or the other whether I’m out here or in there,” the man argued.

  “Sorry,” the other guard said firmly, folding his arms across his chest.

  The little man stood there for a few seconds. William saw him clenching his hands into fists like a stubborn four-year-old. His face got redder, and it looked as if he was about to explode.

  Then he turned around and started up the stairs. William walked over to the guards.

  “Excuse me,” he said as innocently as he could. The two men glanced down at him.

  “I’m here with my class, and we’re supposed to be in there,” he said, pointing into the code exhibit.

  “Is your class in there?” one of the guards asked.

  “Um . . . yeah,” William said tentatively.

  “Do you have a stamp?”

  William stood there. He was about to say something when a shape suddenly came flying through the air and hit one of the guards with a smack.

  “LET ME IN! LET ME IN! LET ME IN!” yelled the little man, hanging around the guard’s neck and trying to climb over his head to enter the exhibit.

  “Get him off of me,” the guard yelled. “Get him off of me!”

  The other guard rushed over, grabbed the little man’s legs, and tried to pull him off his colleague. But the little guy clung to the guard’s neck like an angry octopus.

  “He’s stronger than he looks, Håvard. Tickle him under the arms—maybe he’ll let go!” yelled the guard.

  “Tickle him yourself, Svein!” the other guard cried back, flailing his arms around.

  Several other guards arrived to help. They were all so preoccupied that none of them noticed William slip through the open doors.

>   Soon William was standing in the middle of a large room, surrounded by people. His body tingled. He had to find a spot where he could get a good view. It was only a question of time before Mr. Turnbull discovered that he was missing, and once he had, he would move heaven and earth to find him. The Impossible Exhibit would be the first place he’d check.

  “Only five minutes left to decipher the world’s most difficult puzzle!” a voice announced over the PA system. “Many have tried, but none have succeeded. Yet.”

  William glanced around. On the wall at the far end of the room he spotted a screen on which big, red numbers were counting down. A poster with a picture of the Impossible Puzzle was hanging over the countdown clock. William pushed his way forward. He didn’t have any plans to solve the Impossible Puzzle. He just wanted to see it. Preferably when someone else was trying to solve it. His pulse sped up, his adrenaline pumped.

  A couple of minutes later William had managed to push his way through the crowd and was now standing in front of a small stage.

  There was a chair and a table on the stage. A thin man in his midforties was sitting in the chair. His long, blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail. He was leaning over the table, twisting sections of a metal cylinder. Little beads of sweat kept appearing on his forehead. He was breathing hard, constantly casting nervous glances up at the digital countdown clock on the wall above him.

  A chubby man in a tight suit was fidgeting nervously next to the table. William recognized him from TV. His name was Ludo Kläbbert, and he was a kind of jack-of-all-trades comedian. Ludo raised the microphone to his mouth and glanced up at the clock as he started to count down.

  “Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . . seven . . .”

  Soon everyone in the room was counting with him. It looked as if the long-haired man was going to pass out.

  “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . zero!” cried Ludo. “Time’s up! Have you solved it, Vektor Hansen?” Ludo walked over to the sweaty man at the table.