The Forbidden Stone

“Ever since we had that bizarro conversation with Uncle Henry’s housekeeper on the phone, I keep thinking she’s got to know something.”

“We’ll go to the apartment,” Dr. Kaplan said. “But we’re checking into a hotel first. We rushed to get here on time, but we can slow down now. We’ll clean up, then head over to his place.”

“Which brings me to my next point. There’s got to be a restaurant in this city, right?” Darrell added. “Germans make good food. Maybe they don’t. It doesn’t matter. I’ll eat whatever. Did anyone like the food on the airplane? Let me rephrase that. Did anyone eat the food on the airplane—”

“Darrell, you’re doing it again,” said Lily.

He stopped talking, but his brain kept going. I ate it, but it wasn’t good and it wasn’t enough. No one else is hungry? I’m hungry …

“Why wasn’t Frau Munch here, Dad?” Wade asked. “It’s strange, isn’t it? She answered his phone. Maybe she even lives there, or at least in his building.”

“Everything’s strange,” Darrell said. “It’s Europe.”

Roald turned to face the exit, looking as if he were holding his breath to keep himself together. “I’m sure she’ll tell us something that will just put an end to the mystery. First, a hotel. Let’s go.”

Darrell partly agreed with his stepfather—she’ll tell us something—but he wasn’t sure that the mystery would end soon. It probably wouldn’t. A coded email from a friend who was suddenly dead had to mean something in the spy capital of the world. Of course it did.

Thanks to Lily’s online searching, they found an inexpensive hotel and checked into two rooms, one for Lily and Becca, one for the boys and their father. Darrell wanted to drop his junk off and get right back out on the street—Strasse, Becca told him—but sitting on the bed was a mistake. He could almost hear it screaming at him to lie down on it. He sank into the soft mattress, hoping it was as bug-free as it appeared. By the time his eyes opened, it was already midafternoon and everyone else was waking up too.

Lunch in the hotel dining room was something drowned in heavy sauce, but there was a lot of it, so that was good. When they stepped onto the busy Strasse, it was nearing dinnertime, the restaurants were lighting up, and he was feeling hungry again, though apparently no one else was.

They found a cab to Uncle Henry’s, and at twenty minutes to five they pulled to a stop in front of squat, faceless building on a broad, divided avenue called Unter den Linden.

Roald glanced into his student notebook, checked the building number, and closed the book. “This is it.” He paid the driver and they climbed out. A string of sirens two or three blocks away went eee-ooo-eee-ooo, like in the movies. Police? Fire trucks? Spies?

No, spies don’t use sirens.

A woman bundled against the cold murmured something as she stole quickly around them and up the street. Was she a spy? Or just cold. He could see his breath and started stamping his feet.

“Heinrich lived on the third floor,” Roald said, stepping up to a wide door set between a pair of waist-high planters with evergreen bushes in them. He pressed the bell. It rang faintly inside. No answer. He rang again. Again, no answer.

“Now what?” asked Lily. “Should we wait for someone to go in and tag along?”

“Or force our way in,” Darrell added. “Wade, you and me—”

“You and me what?”

“Hold your horses,” Roald said. He knelt down and reached behind the planter to the left of the door, slid his fingers up the side, and stopped halfway. When he drew back, he was holding a key ring with two keys.

“Cool!” said Wade. “Hidden in plain sight. How did you know?”

“Heinrich always left extra keys for late-arriving students.”

“Like you?” asked Becca.

“Oh yes. We used to talk long into the night. All of us.”

Using one key for the outside door, they entered a deserted lobby barely illuminated by a small ceiling fixture.

“European electricity,” Darrell breathed. “From the Dark Ages.”

Lily chuckled. “As long as it charges our phones.”

They climbed two flights of narrow stairs. The steps creaked, and it was nearly as cold in the stairwell as it was outside, but the building was otherwise quiet. They stopped at apartment 32. Roald raised his hand to knock on the door, then murmured that the apartment was empty. He unlocked it instead, and they entered.

“Hello?” Wade said quietly. “Anyone?”

No sound. The rooms were dark and without heat. Lily found the nearest light switch, and a table lamp came on. The living room looked neat and orderly, as if it had just been cleaned, except for one extremely dusty table by the street window. Becca picked up a silver pitch pipe from it. “Was Heinrich Vogel in a barbershop quartet?”

“No. A modern music group,” Dr. Kaplan said. “But then, maybe I didn’t know him all that well—”

Clack. Thump. Clack. Thump.

Darrell’s heart flew into his throat. “Someone’s coming up the stairs!”

Before they could move, the door swung open, and an elderly woman with thin gray hair leaned into the room. She scanned the space from wall to wall as if she didn’t see any of them.

“Wer ist da?”

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