Double Vision by F. T. Bradley Page B

please!” Agent Stark called behind me.
    â€œYeah, yeah,” I mumbled. I couldn’t help it that the French had no love for skateboarding, right? I walked up to Françoise, who looked nervous.
    â€œDid you see him?” She leaned closer and scanned the crowd.
    â€œBenjamin Green? Yeah, I did. So you knew it was him and not me?” I scanned the crowd, too, but I was pretty sure my noisy encounter with the French police had scared Benjamin Green away for now.
    â€œOf course I knew,” Françoise snapped. “What am I, stupid? But I played along and made him think that I had no idea where the next clue is.”
    â€œSo you found the next code?”
    â€œHeck no, but I didn’t want him to know that.”
    â€œSo you told him you had no clue, so he wouldn’t know you had no clue?” This was confusing and sort of funny, too.
    Françoise laughed. I was pretty sure I hadn’t seen her laugh out loud until then, so I laughed along. With all this chasing across Paris and dealing with the police, it felt good.
    â€œNow what?” I asked her once we stopped laughing. “I think we sent Benjamin Green on his way, so what do we do next?”
    â€œI don’t know.” Françoise stared up at the Arc de Triomphe while I strapped my skateboard to my backpack. “According to the clue, there should be something here for us to find.”
    I looked up, too, and it made me dizzy. “This place is huge.” I studied the arc, the carved detail up high. Guys on horses, looking angry, ready to charge with their swords pulled. On the walls below it, names were carved into the stone. Hundreds of dead people—it was actually pretty creepy when you thought about it. “You think your father hid a code here somewhere?”
    â€œI don’t know how he would have been able to hide anything here. This monument is more than a hundred years old. It’s not like he could carve his code into the stone or write it on it, even.” She motioned around at the policemen guarding the arc and the traffic circle around it. “There’s always someone watching.”
    â€œNo kidding.” I told her about my ticket for skateboarding, and she laughed. “I guess you’re supposed to take the tunnel to get here?” I asked.
    â€œWe’ll make sure we take it on our way out. But first, we have to find out why my father sent me here. Maybe there’s a clue on top of the arc.” She bought us both a ticket, and we made our way to these really tight circular stairs. “You have to climb two hundred and eighty-four steps to get to the top.”
    I thought of calling it quits around step 103, but then Françoise had already bought the tickets, so that would be rude. But 284 steps? “Why no elevator?”
    â€œOh, there’s an elevator, too. But maybe the clue is on the walls.”
    It wasn’t. By the time we made it to the top, I thought I was going to die. I was about to complain when I saw the view: all of Paris, wherever you looked. The Eiffel Tower, Nôtre Dame—all of it. From up here, you could see how all the major roads in Paris connected right where we stood. You’ve been hanging around me long enough to know that I’m never really speechless, but right there at the top of the Arc de Triomphe, I was.
    â€œThey call this point the Étoile—the star,” Françoise said next to me. “Napoleon built the arc to celebrate military victories. My father used to take me here all the time.”
    â€œMaybe you can see a clue from up here?” I was reaching, but Françoise looked so desperate.
    â€œCan you imagine where?” she asked.
    We circled the deck—Françoise even made people move so she could look for clues on the stone floor under their feet. That got her a few puzzled looks from tourists and a dark one from the guard.
    â€œThere’s nothing,” Françoise