The Forbidden Stone. Tony Abbott
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
… 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.
To 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,
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?