Code of Honor

Alan Gratz

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2015

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Chapters 23-26Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 23 Summary

Hagan and Kamran move to a room full of computer monitors to watch Darius’s videos. Kamran is thrilled to have a soda and a bag of chips, something he never expected would mean so much a few weeks before, when “‘living large’ was dancing with Julia Gary and going to the Super Bowl with Adam” (78). Hagan helps Kamran decipher Darius’s finger-wagging in the first video by translating the wags into audible knocks, similar to the code Darius and Kamran shared as boys. Kamran realizes the code means that their mother and father are coming, another way of Darius communicating that there was danger on the way.

Hagan and Kamran then watch Darius’s Sith Lord comment, the one Kamran had already deciphered to mean that Darius was being brainwashed or forced to act against his will. Hagan explains the genius behind Darius’s actions: he chose to use an unbreakable code, one that only he and one other person in the world could understand. This, Hagan tells Kamran, might be helping Darius convince his captors that he believes in their mission.

Chapter 24 Summary

Hagan and Kamran watch the third video, which is another close-up recording of Darius speaking. In this one, Darius references Death Eaters and Rostam. Hagan asks Kamran to recall the story he and his brother concocted about Harry Potter.

Kamran tells Hagan that he and Darius made up a story about stopping Bellatrix Lestrange, a known Death Eater, from killing a fictional man named Lumpbucket. Lestrange was too late to capture Lumpbucket, as he was already dead, but she decided to steal his portrait from a museum gallery. Rostam and Siyavash stop her and save the day. Hagan is thrilled to hear this, and immediately connects the story of museum theft to a news article from a few days after Darius’s speech. Infidels had stolen ancient Mesopotamian artifacts from a storage facility guarded by American soldiers. Hagan is excited, saying, “We have proof, Kamran! Proof! It's a dead cert your brother is sending us coded messages” (84).

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Kamran feels relieved that his faith in his brother is not unfounded after all, and feels he finally has an ally in Hagan.

Chapter 25 Summary

Kamran’s guard drops him off at the video screening room, where Hagan is waiting for him with a newly-released video. They are both excited, hoping to crack the code in time to stop the next horrific event from happening, and save Darius in the process.

In this video, Darius has a long beard and a turban on. He looks tired and scraggly. He makes two coded references, one to the Joker and another to World's End. Kamran begins to decipher, explaining the story of a bomb inside a football, and a convoluted tale combining villains and heroes from The Incredibles and Transformers, a narrative that involves Rostam sacrificing himself to save the day by driving Optimus Prime off a cliff after nanobots hit his self-destruct button. Kamran begins to feel sick to his stomach: “Darius was telling us he was going to sacrifice himself” (89).

Chapter 26 Summary

Hagan and Kamran try to decipher the exact meaning of Darius’s two coded messages. Hagan puts together that the events likely are happening in or around the Middle East, based on Darius’s previous codes. After some thinking, Hagan has a breakthrough about the real meaning of the football metaphor. He believes it is actually about soccer, and connects that reference to the Women's World Cup, happening in Canada that week. Hagan says, “In the World Cup, you have a target truly worthy of a jihad. Infidel women running around outdoors without veils” (91-92).

Hagan also confirms what Kamran already knows in his gut: the second message means that Darius is going to be the person wearing the bomb.

Chapters 23-26 Analysis

The focus of these chapters is on the discovery and dissection of Darius’s secret codes. This connects back to the codes motif, which serves both to further the plot and as a symbol of the unbreakable bond between the two brothers. This proof is all Kamran needs to continue searching for his brother, and it gives him faith that Hagan will continue to help him, too.

The idea of self-sacrifice is also apparent in these sections, as Kamran realizes that Darius is talking in code about being the sacrificial lamb for the plot that the terrorist cell is planning. The story of Rostam, the mythic hero, and his tale of sacrifice disturbs Kamran, who worries that his brother will go too far and risk his own life in order to save others. Despite Kamran’s fear over Darius’s story of self-sacrifice, Kamran makes similar decisions later in the novel to put himself in harm’s way for the sake of his brother and his country. This theme of self-sacrifice is one proves Darius’s innocence, and, beyond that, it demonstrates the heroism of both brothers, and their ability to persevere through hardship and conflict.