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I = O
J = P
K = Q
M = V
O = W
P = X
Q = Y
V = Z
W = B
X = L
Y = A
Z = U
“If we’re right about this decryption code, where the email message uses the letter B, it really represents S, and so forth down the line. So when the whole message is translated …” Dr. Kaplan scratched away on the pad for several minutes. He breathed in and out more excitedly until he dropped his pencil and spoke.
“The kraken devours us.
Strange tragedies will now begin.
Protect the Magisters Legacy.
Find the twelve relics.
You are the last.”
Wade felt a twinge in the center of his chest. You are the last. That was never a good message, especially when it was in code. But the other words? Tragedies? Legacy? Relics?
“Magister,” said Darrell. “Is that like a magician?”
Dr. Kaplan shook his head. “More like a master. A title of respect. Like professor.”
“Okay, but we’re not calling you Magister, Dad.”
“And kraken?” said Lily. “What’s kraken?”
“Sort of a giant squid,” Becca said. “A sea monster. It’s in legends and stories and things.”
Wade blinked. Where does she get this stuff? Substitution codes and krakens? Is it really all that time she spends poring over books or is she an actual genius? Either way, she’s kind of amazing.
“How did your uncle know yesterday about the tragedies they’re talking about this morning?” asked Lily.
“What tragedies?” Darrell asked.
“The things going on all over. It’s been on the net all morning. Look.” Lily linked to a news page on her tablet and scrolled down. Below the political news was a photo report of a building collapse in the center of Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil. Below that were several pieces about an oil tanker sinking in the Mediterranean. “It’s pretty weird, isn’t it, that they both happened at kind of the same time as his message? They’re tragedies, right?” Lily looked from one to the other of them. “I think they are.”
“They are, of course,” Dr. Kaplan said over the tablet. “But I don’t know …”
“Call him,” said Wade. “Call Uncle Henry now and find out what he means.”
“You absolutely have to, Uncle Roald,” Lily added.
Dr. Kaplan glanced at his watch. “It’s six hours later there. Afternoon. He should be home. All right.” He found the number in his notebook. Sliding his cell phone from his jacket pocket, he realized once again that it was dead and plugged it into its charger. Then he went into the living room and keyed the number into the home phone. He put it on speaker, and set it on the coffee table.
It rang five times before a woman answered, “Ja?”
“Hello,” said Dr. Kaplan. “I would like to speak to Herr Heinrich Vogel, please. It’s urgent.”
There was a pause. “Nein. No. No Herr Vogel. I em Frau Munch. Howze kipper.” The woman had a thick accent. It took a moment for Wade to understand her.
“Housekeeper,” he whispered.
“Can you please give Dr. Vogel a message?”
“No mess edge.”
“It’s short. Please tell him to call me. My name is—”
“Herr Vogel no call. Herr Vogel iz ded!”
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Wade turned to his father. “Dad?”
Dr. Kaplan appeared to freeze for a moment. Then he slipped off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, the phone crackling on the table. “Excuse me, I don’t think we heard you. Are you saying … Heinrich …”
“Ded. Ja. Ja.” The voice rasped from the other end. “Ze fun … fun …”
Becca silently mouthed the word, “Fun.”
“Fun … fun … eral. Tomorrow mornink. Alter St.-Matthäus-Kirchhof. Here. Berlin. Elfen glock.”
“Eleven o’clock?” said Lily.
“Ja, ja.”
“Wait. This can’t be right,” said Wade. His chest was burning. “I mean how? How did he die? When?”
The voice on the other end went in and out.
“Frau Munch,” his father said, leaning over the phone. “Frau—”
“Hurry. You vill mizz ze boorial!”
The line clicked. She had hung up.
The children stared at one another, listening to the dial tone until the phone blinked and the connection was severed. Lily set it back in its cradle.
Wade felt suddenly dizzy, as if freezing water streamed down his back, while the inside of his chest was on fire. “Dad?” He lowered himself onto the sofa and felt Becca’s hand touch his shoulder.
Uncle Henry … dead?
Dr. Kaplan slumped down next to him, nearly buried by the cushions. “Wade, I’m so sorry. This is … unbelievable. How could Heinrich be dead?” He looked at the wall clock. “I can’t go … not with you here and Sara flying off to South America.” He seemed as deflated as the pillows around him.
Darrell picked up the translated email and read over its few words. “I mean, I didn’t know Uncle Henry, but something about this isn’t right. He sends you a strange email, a coded message, and now he’s dead? This is way too suspicious.”
Wade stood up from the sofa. Becca’s hand slipped away. “Dad, what do you think we should do?”
His father pressed his fingers to his temples and rubbed them in slow circles. “Kids, I don’t know yet. It’s too sudden. But I’m fairly sure there’s no time to do anything. Certainly not while your mom’s away.” He took in a deep breath. His face was drawn and gray.
“At least call her,” said Darrell. “She needs to know.”
Roald glanced again at his watch as if trying to find more information there than it could deliver. “She’ll be in the air now, but I’ll leave a message. Lily, could you look up the flight to La Paz, Bolivia, and see when her first layover is?”
“Sure thing.” She tapped and swiped her screen.
Roald dried his eyes and dialed Sara’s number. “Sara, hi. I know you’re in the air now, but call me when you get to your first stop—”
“Atlanta in two hours,” Lily reported. “But there’s a storm.”
He nodded. “Everybody’s fine, but a dear old professor of mine has … passed away. Heinrich Vogel. You’ve heard me talk about him. His funeral is tomorrow. In Germany. Of course, I’m not going to leave the kids for a second. Lily and her friend Becca are here, too. I feel I should go but, well, call me from Atlanta when you land, and we’ll sort this out.” He hung up.
“Does anybody seriously think his death has anything to do with the email and the code?” Becca asked. “It’s kind of too James Bond to be real.”
“Bond is real,” Darrell whispered.
“I wish his housekeeper had told us more,” said Wade. “Why didn’t she tell us?”
“And these things in the news?” Lily said. “They can’t really be connected to Uncle Henry.”
“I can’t imagine how they could be,” Roald said. “They sound like accidents, tragic, but unrelated.” He flipped page after page of his notebook. “The Magister’s Legacy. Magister. That sounds slightly familiar.” He started pacing as he read. “Heinrich, what are you trying to tell us …?”
Wade knew his father always paced when he was thinking through math problems. This was something else entirely.
“Bring us with you,” Becca said suddenly.
Roald turned. “What?”
Lily jumped up. “Yes! Six of us were going to fly to France, but we got airline credit instead. I bet that’s more than enough for a bunch of tickets to Germany. We have our passports already. We should go, Uncle Roald!”
Dr. Kaplan laughed nervously. “No, no, no.”
The boys looked at each other. “Dad, we all got passports for Mexico last year,” said Darrell. “And you could use some backup. Europe is all about spies, isn’t it?”
“Maybe not so much anymore,” said Becca.
“No, there are tons of movies,” Darrell said. “They call it the—”
“The Cold War,” Becca said. “That’s over now.”
“Or maybe that’s what they want you to believe—”
“Kids, really? Spies? Backup? Heinrich was an old man. It might just have been his time to go. What do you think this is all about?”
Wade didn’t know what it was all about.
He didn’t know anything except that Uncle Henry died right after they got a coded message, and his father wanted to go to Berlin for the funeral of his old friend. Of their old friend. Uncle Henry was connected from the beginning with his own deep love of astronomy.
“Maybe we can fly there, Dad,” he said quietly. “After Atlanta, Sara’s going to be unreachable for a week anyway. Uncle Henry told us to find some relics. Well, Europe has tons of relics. Dad, really. I think we should go.”
“Wade …” His father trailed off, his eyes turning from his notebook to the email message on the table and the coded star chart spread out next to it. “Maybe I can ask my assistant, Joan, to stay for a couple of days to watch over you. You remember her. She’s young and fun. Well, youngish. And she has a poodle now—”
Darrell snorted. “Dad, remember last vacation? She ran screaming out of here after only two hours with Wade and me. I think we’d better go with you.”
“No one’s going to Europe!” Dr. Kaplan said, wiping his eyes again. “We can’t.”
Lily sidled over and patted his arm with her tablet. “But we could, Uncle Roald. He was your teacher, your friend, and Wade’s uncle. We can so do it. According to the airline website the next flight is completely doable. We can totally make it. I’ve got the credit codes for tickets right here. I just checked, my dad is fine with it. I think we should all pack our chargers and go.”
“You already checked with your dad?” Roald said.
Seeing his father’s expression beginning to soften, Wade wanted to hug Lily. If Becca had said what Lily just had, he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself.
His father stood in the center of the room, his eyes shut, his head tilted up.
Wade knew the look. His father needed quiet while he worked out the last few elements of a problem. He was brilliant that way. On the other hand, if his father thought like that for too long, he might anticipate the hundreds of reasons not to fly to Berlin with a bunch of kids and remember someone to stay with them while he went alone.
“Dad, I want to go,” Wade said.
“Me, too,” said Darrell. “I think we should. All of us. As a family.”
“Boys …” Roald started, then wrapped his arms around them. “All right. Yes. Yes.”
“I’ll book the flights now and call a cab,” said Lily. “Better pack. Only a little over two hours to takeoff!”
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Nowotna, Poland
March 9th
