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10:23 p.m.
Frost was forming over the rutted fields of northern Poland.
Three giant klieg lights cast a brilliant glow on a stone-faced man in a long leather overcoat, making his trim white hair look like the peak of a snow-capped mountain. He stared down at the dirt being excavated shovelful by shovelful from a pit.
“Fifteen days and nothing,” said a voice over his shoulder. “The men are exhausted. We should try another location.”
The white-haired man half turned, keeping his eyes riveted on the work below. “She told Dr. von Braun the exact spot. She knows these things. Would you like to tell her that we gave up?”
The second man shrank back. “No. No. I’m simply saying that perhaps the coordinates are wrong and there’s been a mistake.”
“Fraulein Krause makes no mistakes.”
“And yet fifteen days and still no—”
Clink.
The white-haired man felt his heart stop. The shovelers froze in their places, turning their eyes up to him. He clambered down into the pit, the workers helping him from ledge to ledge. He reached the bottom and shooed them away. Holding a flashlight in one hand, he took a soft brush from the pocket of his coat and cleared away centuries of dirt from the object lodged in the ground. First he revealed a corner. The object was rectangular. This quickened his heart. She had told him: a bronze casket the size of a Gucci shoebox. As a man of fine taste, he knew exactly the dimensions she meant. More brushing, more clawing gently at the centuries of caked dirt, and a bronze box revealed itself.
Carefully, he extracted it from the ground.
“Light! More light!”
Two work lights were refocused on the box. With the handle of the brush he cleared the dirt from the rim of the chest’s lid. Setting it on level ground, he undid the clasp that held the lid to the body of the chest. He drew in a long breath to calm his thudding heart and lifted the lid for the first time in five centuries.
Inside, amid the tattered remains of its velvet lining, was a leather strap, a sort of belt, half-rotted away as if it were the skin of a corpse. On it, however, and catching the spotlights’ beams as exquisitely as it would have on the day it was last seen, sat a large ruby in the shape of a sea creature with a dozen coiling arms.
A kraken.
The white-haired man turned. “You were saying?”
At the same moment a thousand miles south, the same starry sky looked down over the streets of an Italian city packing up for the night. Bologna on a warm March evening was heaven, mused a middle-aged woman at a café table. The street was deserted, save for the shopkeepers and café owners sweeping, turning their chairs over, and lowering their louvered security gates in preparation for tomorrow morning’s rush. She sat on a wicker chair, sipped the last drop of espresso from her cup, then set it down in its saucer and picked up her cell phone.
“Answer this time,” she said aloud. She pressed the name for the fourth time in the last ten minutes. Holding the phone to her ear, she heard the same message, brief and clipped. After the tone she said, “Call me, Henry. Please. It’s about Silvio. I have discovered something about his accident last year. Something he intended me to find after all this time. I need to speak with you as soon as you get this.” She ended the call.
Across the piazza, chimes sounded. She glanced up at the six-hundred-year-old tower, then at her phone. The clock, a nineteenth-century addition, wasn’t more than a minute off.
Cars were fewer now. She had to get going to her office, a short stroll from the café. Her lecture on Michelangelo’s poems was early the next morning, and there were final notes to assemble. Her husband, Silvio, a longtime reader of the artist’s poetry, would have loved to be there to listen. Now, she realized, there was only one reason he wouldn’t be.
As she reached into her bag for several coins, a black car rumbled up the cobbled street toward the café. It drove across the open square and shrieked to a halt, skidding on the stones. The rear door flew open, and a man wearing an oily black suit leaped out.
Instinctively, the woman screamed. “Aiuto! Help!”
From inside the café came the sound of a broom dropping, the quick scrape of chairs. “Que? Signora Mercanti?”
The oily man outside wrapped one arm around the woman’s face, the other around her waist. She kicked furiously with her heels, knocking over the small table. The man dragged her into the backseat. The car roared away.
When the café owner rushed out three seconds later, all he saw was an overturned table and a small saucer spinning on the pavement.
(#ulink_b5745c47-79b4-503c-bb01-0d7775b7c43e)
Becca Moore nearly screamed, “I’m going to Europe!” when she caught herself and slapped her hands over her mouth. “I’m so sorry!”
“For what?” asked Wade, looking up from his backpack.
The house was in a minor uproar as Wade, Darrell, and Dr. Kaplan rushed from room to room, grabbing clothes, stuffing duffel bags.
“I almost said something dumb,” she said. “Go pack.”
Becca knew her face was red. She always blushed when she made social mistakes. And even when she didn’t. Never mind that she had wanted to go to Europe since forever. Or that before they came to this country her grandparents were their own melting pot of French, German, Scottish, and Spanish. Or that Europe was home to all the cultures she adored. Or that it was the place they actually kept Paris and Rome and Madrid, not to mention Berlin.
She had never really believed that she would get to Europe with Lily, and when the trip was canceled she knew she had jinxed it by not believing it would happen in the first place.
Lily! She sat on the couch next to her, sorting through her own luggage. What a kind of angel to invite me in the first place.Me! The total opposite of her cool, together, plugged-in self!
Yet now, mere hours after that disappointment, here they were, going again! Having met Roald Kaplan through Lily’s dad, her parents were fine with the change in plans. There was nothing stopping her.
But how thoughtless she nearly was!
A man had died. Dr. Kaplan’s old teacher. Wade’s sort-of uncle.
“It’s okay,” said Wade, pausing in his packing to reach his hand toward her arm—which Lily glared at—but not quite making contact. Becca had noticed that about him. He was … reachy. But from a distance. She smiled at him, but he’d already looked away.
I have a goofy smile anyway. Which is why I don’t use it a lot.
“He’s mostly okay,” Lily whispered when Wade left the room. “But, you know, he’s all mathy and stuff like his dad.” She wiggled her fingers in the air over her head then leaned closer. “Darrell, kind of a mystery, no? Bottom line, you and me will have to stick together to stay sane.”
Becca laughed. “Deal.”
Dr. Kaplan came in to retrieve his notebook. When he saw the girls, he breathed out a kind of sad laugh. “Sorry, not the best reason to go to Europe. You should stuff what you need into a carry-on. We need to travel light. Two days max, and we’re home.”
“Already done, Uncle Roald,” Lily said with a smile.
For Becca it was easy. Three tops, extra jeans, sweater, assorted junk, comb, small bag, book. While everyone ran around gathering last-minute things and setting timers and locking and relocking doors, she watched Wade carefully pack the decoded email and the star chart in the leather folder and slip it into his backpack as calmly as if he were a kind of planet and they were all moons orbiting him.
Beep!
Lily gasped. “Taxi! Here we go!”
The first flight they’d been able to book from Austin-Bergstrom International was United Airways Flight 766, leaving at 12:15 p.m. After a layover in Washington, D.C., to change planes, they were due to arrive in Berlin just before eleven o’clock the next morning, meaning they’d have to rush to be at the Alter St.-Matthäus cemetery on time.
The airport was a madhouse. Becca knew it would be and steeled herself against the noise as best she could. Anywhere crowded made her feel a little crazy and a little edgy. So many people, so many eyes. From the moment they entered the terminal, she didn’t think, she didn’t listen, she just followed Lily through ticketing and security.
“I’ve done this a few times,” Lily whispered to her as they hustled along. “You see all kinds of people in airports. The best advice I can give? Don’t make eye contact.”
“I normally don’t,” Becca said. “Anywhere.”
Lily laughed. “I noticed. It’s fine. I’ll tell you when it’s okay to look up. We’ll be at the gate soon. You can relax. Gawk at Wade or something.”
“Gawk?”
“Kidding!” Lily laughed halfway down the next hallway.
Wade? Was it obvious? NO EYE CONTACT!
(#ulink_b2fc4864-bf32-5ca7-afd4-afdca0bf1b36)
Minutes later they arrived at the gate. Keeping her head low, Becca sat next to Lily, immediately opened her backpack, and slipped out her book. It was a big one, guaranteed to take days. Reading, if it was possible at all, was the best for turning off the noise.
She opened to page 190. Chapter XXXII.
Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be lost in its unshored, harborless immensities.
Odd line to be reading just now, she thought.
“A little light reading?” said Darrell, from the seat next to her in the waiting area. “Is that a history of the universe or something?”
“No …”
Wade tilted his head to read the title. “Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville. That’s a guy’s quest to find a giant whale, isn’t it? But then he finds the whale, the ship sinks, and everybody dies?”
“Not everybody,” said Becca. “This is my second time through.”
“Actually,” said Darrell, “my mom once worked with a manuscript by Herman Melville. Dickens too. Well, everybody. After Bolivia, she’s flying to New York to talk to Terence Somebody about donating his stuff to the university library. She’s the chief archivist in the rare books department.”
Becca flicked a glance up at him and smiled. “I know. Your mom is so cool.”
Darrell beamed. “I made her my mom, you know. She was just a regular person before I came along.”
Wade squinted at him. “You have such a weird take on stuff.”
The first boarding call was announced and Dr. Kaplan sat up. “I’m calling Sara again, just to touch base and tell her what we’re up to.”
It was clear that Wade’s father was worried about doing such a huge thing without his wife’s input. That was kind of nice. They seemed really close, and Becca figured they must talk about everything. But not this time. The call went to voice mail again. He talked for a bit, asked her at least to text, and closed the phone.
“Mrs. Kaplan will get the message before we get to Washington,” she said, “and you can talk to her during the layover.”
“Oh, go ahead and call her Sara,” Darrell said. “Everybody but me does.”
“Thanks,” Dr. Kaplan said, smiling just like a dad, she thought. “Do call her Sara. And me Uncle Roald, or just plain Roald. I’ll tell you, I will feel better when she knows exactly what we’re doing.”
Which is … going to Europe! she screamed inside.
“Passengers for Flight Seven Sixty-Six to Washington, D.C., and those continuing on to Berlin, we are now boarding group three.”
Twenty minutes later, as the plane was taxiing into position for takeoff, Wade and Darrell leaned all over each other—and Lily—to get the best view of the city while they took off. It was the last thing Becca wanted to look at. She didn’t mind riding in cars. She kind of liked buses. Trains she really loved. Giant birds made of heavy steel that somehow defied gravity? Not so much.
The engines whined impossibly loudly, and the jet started rolling fast. She gripped the seat handles.
“That’s my arm, you know,” said Lily.
“Sorry—”
“You get used to it. Settle in. Next stop, Washington!”
Her stomach was feeling somewhere between weightless and sinking as the jet rose. After a few minutes she realized that the noise was there to stay, making talking uncomfortable for anybody but Darrell, who seemed to be keeping Wade from paying attention to anyone else. Fine. Even Lily, who loved to chat, finally gave up and just typed her blog post.
The engines droned for the longest two hours in history before she managed to doze off.
“Finally!” Dr. Kaplan said when the jet touched down at Washington’s Reagan airport, where they had to switch planes. As soon as he turned on his phone it buzzed with a missed call. He listened for a minute, pressed a button, spoke several words, then ended the call.
“Because of storms in Atlanta, Sara nearly missed her connection to Bolivia and had to run,” he said. “She’s already in the air again and will probably be off the grid until the end of the week at the earliest. So it’s just us. Let’s use the restrooms, eat, then get some newspapers for the flight. See if we discover any more disasters. Maybe find a link.”
Their layover was shortened when the Atlanta storm system threatened D.C. They hurried back to the gate from the food court, stopping quickly at a news kiosk on the way.
Because her grandparents lived in Austin and babysat often over the years, Becca had learned several foreign languages early. Her French wasn’t great—her German and Spanish were better—but she could read it more or less without a dictionary, so when she saw a copy of Le Monde, she bought it. Not that she knew exactly—or even vaguely—what they were looking for. Tragedies? The whole world was tragic some days. And here she was going digging for more.
“Final boarding call for Flight Three-Fifty-Four to Berlin.”
“We’re off!” Dr. Kaplan ushered them into the Jetway. The cabin door closed soon after they took their seats, and the jet taxied out on the slick runway.
“You can hold my arm if you want to,” Lily whispered to her.
She laughed. “It’s okay. I’m a pro now.”
Hardly. Her lungs felt squashed during the long climb to cruising altitude, and her brain pounded like hammers on an anvil.
“Breathe,” Lily said. “You’ll stay alive better.”
“Thanks.” They finally leveled out. “Maybe I’m not such a pro.”
“Guys, listen to this,” Darrell said, a London paper in his lap. “The oil tanker in the Mediterranean near Turkey that we heard about? They know now that it had seventeen people on board. That’s pretty tragic.”
Then Wade folded his newspaper over and showed it to them. “Is this anything? There was an accident between a truck and a stretch limo outside of Miami. So, the truck driver disappears from the scene but they find him wandering a hundred miles away at almost exactly the same time as the accident.”
“It probably wasn’t even him driving the truck,” said Lily.
Wade shook his head. “There were witnesses at the accident who identified him. Plus, he had the truck keys with him.”
“Okay, that’s a little freaky,” said Lily.
Dr. Kaplan took Wade’s newspaper and read the article. “Heinrich was a dear friend, but he retired some years ago. He kept to himself. I hate to say it, but maybe his email might just have been him getting old. You know, it happens. And he passed away, and there’s no link between these things at all.”
Becca found herself stuck on the words “passed away.” They sounded so peaceful and so unlike the coded message. Devours. Tragedies. Protect. Find. Besides that, they didn’t really know how he died, did they? His housekeeper hadn’t said a word about that.
She was about to close Le Monde when a short news item caught her eye. “It’s not huge, but there was a death at the newspaper’s office in Paris. A person from the night staff accidentally fell down an open elevator shaft. He was killed.”
“Wade, remember this,” said Darrell. “I do not want to go like that. No way.”
