The Copernicus Legacy: The Forbidden Stone (6 page)

Chapter Twelve

B
erlin was gray. It was cold. It was raining.

When the kids pushed out of the enormous arrival terminal the next morning in search of a taxi, the air hit them heavily with diesel exhaust and cigarette smoke and the odor of strong coffee.

Becca took a shallow breath. “I read that Europe smells like this.”

Roald nodded. “It takes me back. I wish we weren’t here for this reason.”

“One cab left,” Wade called out, hurrying with Darrell to a small car with a short man standing next to it.

No one spoke as the taxi zigzagged out of the airport complex and raced onto the highway toward the city. They passed several clusters of identical high rises surrounded by small parks of bare trees.

“Not too attractive,” Lily said.

Roald explained that much of Berlin had been rebuilt after the Second World War with a sense of function rather than style. The sober buildings made Berlin seem that much more cold and sad.

The cab exited the highway and entered rain-slicked streets by the railroad and after that a series of cobblestone roads in what Becca guessed was an older part of the city.

Pulling to an abrupt stop before a tall set of iron gates, they arrived at the cemetery just before eleven thirty. They got out, hoisting their carry-on bags over their shoulders.

Inside the grounds stood a soot-stained church-like building that looked as if it had been there for centuries but which Lily’s tablet said was a “mere hundred and fifty years old.”

Beyond the chapel, the graves and markers stretched away into several heavily wooded acres.

Wade pointed across the park. “People are gathering over there.” His words were strangely muffled in the cold air. “There’s a path.”

Many of the gravestones were placed in orderly rows stretching away from the path. Others with faded words and numbers seemed to have grown right out of the ground. Some stones had rain-soaked stuffed animals placed among the wreaths.

Children’s graves.

One well-worn trail slithered between the trees like a snake, ending at four tall unadorned stone blocks, two of which were inscribed with names Becca knew well: Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, the brothers who had collected folk tales in the middle of the nineteenth century. Lily snapped a picture before hurrying on.

As they crossed the grass and threaded through a stand of tall trees, Becca breathed in a scent of pine needles and tried to steady herself. She felt almost light-headed.

What was it about graveyards?

What was it? She knew exactly what it was.

When her younger sister, Maggie, had fallen ill two years ago, Becca had been terrified of losing her. She cried herself to sleep more nights than she could remember and had begun to dream of places like this—avenues of stone, the murmuring of small voices—and didn’t stop dreaming about them until her sister was fully recovered and out of danger. Some of her fear she hid from her parents, who were struggling in their own way with a possible unbearable loss. Maggie was fine now, and yet . . .

Lily touched her on the arm. “There they are.”

A small group of mourners clustered under the boughs of several towering beech trees. Nearby stood a sad old mausoleum overgrown with vines. The name carved into the stone over its doors was all but unreadable. A crumbling sundial stood at an angle in front of it. Time. Death. Tombs. Loss.

Melville’s words came back to her.
Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be lost . . .

Something moved. Beyond the old tomb a handful of men in overalls stood among the trees, groundskeepers, probably waiting for the service to be over. Maggie’s face hovered in her mind, but Becca whooshed it away with a rapid shake of her head.
No. She’s fine. This funeral is not for her. This is for Heinrich Vogel. An old man. Wade’s uncle.

“I don’t recognize anyone here,” Dr. Kaplan whispered. “I guess all of his old professor friends are gone now, but I expected . . .” He removed his glasses, wiped his cheeks. “I expected to see another student or two.”

Becca patted his arm, remembering the email.
You are the last
.

Roald and the boys advanced. Lily hung back. “I know this isn’t right,” she whispered, sliding her bag off her shoulder and pulling her phone out. “I mean, I know it’s a funeral, but I want to get this.”

“Lily, I don’t know . . .”

But she took a slow video of the mourners as the priest began.

“Guten Morgen, liebe Freunde . . .”

Becca’s grandmother Heidi had taught her a good bit of German, though making out conversations was always tougher than reading. People spoke so quickly and always talked on and on, moving forward, never going back, like you could do if you were reading a book.

We are
something, something
here . . . friend . . . scientist . . . teacher . . . his life of “
Gelehrsamkeit
”
. . .
scholarship . . .

Becca’s mind drifted. Ever since her sister’s recovery, she had been drawn to cemeteries, even though they frightened her. Maybe it was a kind of gratitude that she hadn’t had to visit her sister in one. But an actual service was sad and she didn’t need to be more sad. She rubbed her eyes, realized once more that she hadn’t slept for many hours and wondered when they would have a chance to rest.

. . . final rest . . . soul’s long journey . . .

No, no. Please don’t go there. Blinking her eyelashes apart she gazed beyond the tilted sundial to a tomb with a broken column sticking up from it. Next to that leaned a stone with a weeping angel sitting on top. Loss and grief no matter where she looked . . .

A man appeared at the edge of the wooded path to their left. He walked slowly toward the mourners, then stopped midway, his eyes moving over her and the Kaplans.

Becca turned to see Lily still filming. “That guy over there stopped coming when he saw your camera.”

Darrell stepped back to them. “You saw that, too? Here come his friends.”

Two other men joined the first. One was a heavyset man with a chiseled face, wearing a slick black suit. The other was pale, smaller, and hunched over like a bent wire. The pale man spoke to the other two, who both stepped behind a tomb at the same time, as if they were connected.

Becca watched the pale man pick his way carefully over the wet grass to the gravesite and stand close-by. His hands were folded, his head down. During a pause in the priest’s words, the man raised his eyes to Becca, then to Roald and Wade, then lowered his face. She felt a weird tingle crawl up her back, as if in that instant he had looked directly through her. His glasses were thick and his posture twisted, although he was not an old man. His left temple bore a nasty V-shaped bruise, stippled with dots. It looked recent.

“Amen . . .”

The priest dribbled holy water on the casket from a small silver vessel, murmured a final blessing, and it was over. The sky seemed to darken at the same moment. The chill rain came down harder.

The crowd dispersed quickly, some to cars, others on foot on the paths and sidewalks toward the exits. Several people hailed taxis on the street. Soon the cemetery was empty except for them, the workers, and the three men by the weeping angel, still eyeing them.

She stepped toward Wade and his father. “Uncle Roald, those guys are watching us.” By the time Roald lifted his head, slid his glasses back on, and turned to look, the men had gone.

Chapter Thirteen

T
o get out of the rain, Darrell squirrelled himself under the broad lintel of a haunted mausoleum next to the others who, he guessed, were silent because they were wondering what to do next. He was pretty sure what they should do next.

“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?”

Everyone looked at Becca. “She asked who we are.”

“We’re friends of Heinrich,” Darrell’s stepfather said, coming forward with his hand outstretched. “I was his student a long time ago, Roald Kaplan.”

“Ah, ah,” the woman said, not taking his hand. “I speak at you on ze telephoon.
Amerikaner.
I am Frau Munch.”

She hobbled into the room and settled herself familiarly in an overstuffed chair. She raised her head and blinked for some time before speaking. “I see not well. Zis is why I no go to funeral. Zere are
sree
of you?”

Darrell held up a hand with all his fingers outstretched, which she did not look at. “Um . . . five,” he said.

“Fife! Ah. Zo. You have question marks?”

“Yes,” said Wade, glowering at Darrell’s hand, which was still in the air. “Can you tell us how Dr. Vogel died?”

“Wade, perhaps . . . ,” his father said.

“No, no. Is fine,” Frau Munch said, drawing her eyebrows together in a fierce scowl. “I vas not working two night ago. He vas alone and must have gone out. Ze
Polizei
discovered him on ze
Strasse
behint ze buildink. He vas joked.”

“Joked?” said Lily.

“Ja!”
Frau Munch wrapped her hands around her neck. “Kkkk! Joked!”

“Choked,” Lily said softly. Her face was white. So was Becca’s.

Wade seemed to be teetering on his feet. “Do you mean he was . . .” He swung around. “Dad . . . Uncle Henry was . . . ?”

“Are you saying he was murdered?” Dr. Kaplan asked.

Darrell felt suddenly weak. He slumped into the chair by the window next to the dusty table with the pitch pipe on it.

“Ze
Polizei
are searching for his killer. Zey believe it is a rubbery gone rong and zat ze killer iz a seef.”

Darrell wondered for a second if Frau Munch was using Uncle Henry’s code to talk. “Excuse me? A . . .
seef
?”

“
Ja.
You know. Seef. Rubber. Burk-a-ler!”

The words stuttered in his mind, until he finally understood. “Thief, robber, burglar!” he said.

“Zat iz vut I set. Und, like I set, I klean apartment sree times week. I vas not here two night ago ven he died.”

Lily nudged Darrell and whispered in his ear. “For a lady who can’t see too well, she sure keeps the place spotless.”

It was true. Except for the extremely dusty table next to his chair, the place was immaculate. He peeked under the furniture to see if she vacuumed as well as she dusted.

“Is there anything more you can tell us?” asked Lily.

“No,” Frau Munch said. “I em done. You go now.”

Dr. Kaplan rose haltingly to his feet, though the old lady didn’t. “Well, thank you. Herr Vogel was a dear old friend. I was one of the group of students he called Asterias—”

All at once, Frau Munch stiffened in her chair. “Asterias? Asterias!
Ja, ja!
”

She rose awkwardly from the chair and limped directly toward Darrell, though she didn’t appear to see him. She stood squarely in front of the dusty table by his chair, raised a thin hand, and with her fingernail began to spell out words in the dust. It took minutes, as she carefully formed each letter. When she was done, she spun around, holding the pitch pipe in her hand. “Who is moosical here?”

Everyone looked at Darrell. He raised his hand.

No response. She couldn’t see him.

Finally he said, “Uh . . . I’m musical. I play the guitar—”

“Zo!” Frau Munch pressed the pitch pipe into Darrell’s hand, and breathed out a long breath. “Now, I hef told you vut Heinrich asked me to memorize. I leaf ze rest to you now.”

She made her way to the door and down the stairs.

Clack. Thump. Clack. Thump.

They all stared at the dust marks on the table, except Darrell. Something glinted on the floor under the desk, and he got on all fours to examine it. “It looks like Frau Munch doesn’t vacuum as well as she dusts. Dad, did Uncle Henry have a starfish paperweight?”

Roald nodded. “As a matter of fact, yes. He said it was what gave him the idea to call us that.”

Darrell delicately tugged a V-shaped shard of glass from under the desk. “This looks like one arm of a starfish. It’s sticky with something red.”

Becca stared at the fragment of glass. “One of the guys at the funeral had a bruise on his forehead that kind of matches that shape. Did anybody else notice that? It was all red and swollen.”

“I saw it too,” said Wade, studying the piece of glass. “It was nasty, as if he’d been bashed with something. Dad, is this . . . this isn’t blood, is it?”

Dr. Kaplan examined it under the lamp. “It could be . . .”

“Oh . . .” Darrell wiped his fingers on his pants.

“Hold on, now. Blood?” Lily moved closer to Becca. “What exactly are we saying here?”

Wade took the shard back from his father. He held it gingerly between his fingers and looked at Darrell. “I guess we’re saying that maybe Uncle Henry slammed that guy with this paperweight and that’s how it broke.”

He seemed to be searching for more words when Roald let out a long breath, shaking his head slowly.

Scanning the darkening room as if looking for another clue, he said, “If . . .
if
this paperweight has blood on it, and if the blood belongs to the man at the cemetery, it means that the police are wrong. Uncle Henry wasn’t killed on the street. It may mean that the man at the cemetery killed Uncle Henry. And he may have done it right here.”