The Copernicus Legacy: The Forbidden Stone

by Tony Abbott

  “Maybe we should stay off the big streets,” Wade said.

  “Good idea,” Darrell added.

  Roald quickly reworked Lily’s internet directions to keep them off the main routes as long as possible, though even the narrower side streets were packed with pedestrians. They skirted across several well-lit open parks, then through a modern department store that reminded Wade of an airport mall, brimming with customers even at night.

  “There’s been so much building since I was here,” Roald said, glancing right and left to get his bearings. “I hope the place is open when we get there . . .”

  Thirty-three breathless minutes after they started, they found themselves crouching under the bare trees of Lützowstrasse, staring across the street.

  Buried in the shadow of its larger neighbors, its windows steamed over and dim, stood the Blue Star, forlorn, in bad repair, possibly harboring a dangerous clientele. But an amber glow from inside signaled that it was open for business.

  “Hard to believe it’s still alive,” Dr. Kaplan said as they made their way warily down the sidewalk. “It was gasping for life twenty years ago. We helped Herr Hempel mop the floor and stack chairs at the end of the night. Or early in the morning. We talked forever . . .”

  Two motorcycles snaked by close and fast.

  “Spies,” Darrell grumbled, huddling into his collar. “Spies everywhere.”

  Wade herded them forward. “Let’s get off the streets. Now.”

  Looking both ways, Roald pushed them straight through the heavy doors and into the depths of the tavern.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Willkommen in den Blauen Stern!”

  Wade liked the look of Christina Hempel from the instant she flashed her cheery smile and repeated her welcome in fairly articulate English.

  She was a woman in late middle age with big red hair and big everything else. When Dr. Kaplan explained how as a student of Uncle Henry’s he had known her father, she grew more animated, giving them a table by the window with a view of the street in both directions.

  “Heinrich Vogel’s favorite table. He still comes once a year to commemorate his wife’s birthday,” she said. “Alas, Frieda passed away several years ago now.”

  Roald’s expression fell. “I’m so sorry to be the one to tell you. Heinrich also passed away. Just two days ago.”

  Frau Hempel put her hands to her face. Tears rose instantly to her eyes. “Oh no. Father loved him so. How?”

  Wade’s blood ran cold when he thought of how. “We’re still finding out,” he managed to say. “But I didn’t know Uncle Henry was married. Dad, did you?”

  His father seemed to retreat into himself for a moment. “No. I mean, yes, but I never met her. He married later in life.”

  Frau Hempel wiped her cheeks. “Oh dear. This is too sad. Yes, Frieda Kupfermann was her name. She passed some years ago. And now him. So sad.” She left menus on the table and disappeared behind the counter.

  Wade sat quietly, looking out at the street and saying nothing, though he couldn’t stop his thoughts from circling his uncle’s death.

  Death? It’s not regular death. It’s murder.

  No one else said anything either until Lily opened her cell phone. “I’m emailing the photo I took of the table in the apartment to my tablet, so we can see it bigger.”

  Wade unfolded the celestial chart on the table. “The first word of the dusty message is ‘the,’ so I’m pretty sure the code number is still four.”

  “Here, use this,” his father said, handing him his student notebook. “I wrote down the decryption alphabet on the plane. We should be keeping all the information we find in one place.”

  “Good idea.” Slipping a mechanical pencil from his backpack, Wade studied the computer photo, noodled around on a blank page of the notebook, and decoded the first line of Frau Munch’s message.

  Lca Ayulc himab ds lca Cyzb ir Gzjrauhyss

  . . . became . . .

  The Earth moves in the Haus of Kupfermann

  “Kupfermann?” said Lily. “As in Frieda Kupfermann, Heinrich’s wife? I wonder what that means.”

  “Haus is ‘house,’” added Becca. “Could Uncle Henry want us to go to his wife’s family’s house?”

  Wade liked how Becca called his uncle her uncle. “Maybe that’s it. But ‘the Earth moves’? What do you think, Dad?”

  His father surfaced from his thoughts. “It might be that. I’m not sure. Haus is a term that in German can mean any number of things.”

  “A shop, for instance,” said Lily. “Like Alsterhaus and Carsch Haus. Those are German stores I read about.”

  “Or a hotel,” Roald went on. “There are also twelve ‘houses’ in astrology. I’m sure Heinrich knew them, even though they were not by any means scientific and none of them are named Kupfermann. I’ll ask Frau Hempel what she knows. Keep working.” He left the table.

  Wade decoded the second line more quickly.

  Rixxio lca nsihis, rixxio lca wxyea

  . . . became . . .

  Follow the gnomon, follow the blade

  “Gnomon?” said Darrell. “Gnomon’s not a word. Do it again.”

  Wade did. Twice. “It still spells gnomon.” It was not a word he or anyone else knew. He wondered about the old saying that two heads are better than one to figure out a problem. Sometimes it probably worked pretty well. But four different heads all chattering about a bunch of dusty words made his own head feel like imploding.

  “I can look it up,” said Lily.

  “No, keep the code on the screen. I’ll try again.” Wade started decoding again when his father returned to the table.

  “Frieda Kupfermann was the last one in her family,” he said. “Their real estate was sold years ago, and there’s no longer any Kupfermann house in Berlin. She did say that Heinrich always joked that Frieda’s name amused him. Frieda? I don’t get it. I suppose we could try decoding it, but our hostess didn’t know any more than that.”

  “It still says, ‘Follow the gnomon,’” said Wade.

  “Gnomon?” said Dr. Kaplan, pushing his glasses up and leaning over Wade’s translation. “It says ‘gnomon’?”

  “I told him he did it wrong,” Darrell said.

  “Is it a real thing?” asked Lily.

  “Absolutely. The gnomon is what you call the blade of a sundial. It’s what casts the shadow that points to the time—”

  “Sundial?” Becca practically exploded. “Are you kidding me? There was a sundial at the cemetery! Didn’t you all see it? At that old tomb near the service. It had vines all over it and there was a sundial in front—Lily, you must have gotten it on your video.”

  Lily sent the video from her phone to her tablet. When it came up on the screen, she froze the image of the tomb.

  The crumbling sundial stood leaning in front of the old mausoleum, and because of its sunken angle, its blade pointed directly into it. Over the heavy-looking iron doors on the face of the tomb was its occupant’s name, carved in elaborate old Gothic letters. Several of the letters were in shadow, and some had worn away. It took them a long moment to decipher the carving, until Lily enlarged the image and they all realized at once.

  K . . . u . . . p . . .

  The name on the tomb was Kupfermann.

  Wade blew out a cold breath. “The house of Kupfermann is his wife’s tomb. Is that it? He wants us to go back there? He wants us to follow the way the blade of the sundial is pointing? Why? What’s in there?”

  All eyes turned to Dr. Kaplan. He stared at the translated message, then stood up. He walked across the room, walked partway back, then turned again.

  “Dad?” Darrell said.

  His stepfather flicked his finger up as if to say, “Hush!” and closed his eyes. A full minute went by before he released a long, slow breath. Then he sat and flipped over several pages in his notebook, searching. He stopped. “My German isn’t as good as yours, Becca. I know Mann means ‘man.’ What does Kupfer mean?”

 
Becca stared blankly at him. “Um . . .”

  “Copper,” said Lily. When everyone turned to her, she said, “What? There’s a translation site.”

  “Copper man?” Darrell said. “Is that more code?”

  Looking from the star chart to Wade’s decoded message to the lights of cars zipping past outside the restaurant, Roald flipped three more pages in the notebook, stopped, stood up, and began rocking on his feet.

  “Kupfermann. Copper Man. That was the joke of Frieda’s name.”

  Wade could practically hear the gears meshing one after the other until his father finally spoke. He said one word.

  “Copernicus.”

  Darrell frowned. “Uh . . .”

  “It’s where the Greek quote comes from,” Roald said, looking at a page in his notebook. “Heinrich wanted us to remember it because the quote also appears at the beginning of On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres, the treatise by Nicolaus Copernicus that describes how the earth moves around the sun.

  “In the first message, Uncle Henry says ‘the Magister’s Legacy.’ Copernicus’s students called him Magister. Heinrich is saying that Copernicus’s legacy—whatever it is—needs protecting. I have no idea what it could be, but the gnomon of the sundial at his wife’s tomb is pointing toward it—”

  The bell rang over the doorway, and two stone-faced men entered. They didn’t look like students. They wore dark suits and had obvious bulges near their armpits. They sat down on the other side of the doorway with a clear view of the darkening street.

  One of the men started pawing his cell phone while the other glanced at a menu.

  Or pretended to.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Darrell’s heart thumped like a Fender bass laying down a funk riff. If they were right, Heinrich Vogel had been murdered by the goons from the cemetery. By natural extension, if the two guys at the other table had managed to tail them from Vogel’s apartment, they must be killers too.

  He knew all too well from movies how things went from here.

  The men would follow them into the street. They’d corner them in a filthy alleyway. They’d wait until no one was watching, pull out automatic weapons with silencers, utter a couple of German words, and—thit-thit!—end of story.

  “Those guys are killers,” he whispered. “We need to pay our bill and get out of here. Far out of here. Like home. Or Hawaii. I vote for Hawaii.” Both stone men were staring at him now. “Oh man . . .”

  “What are we going to do?” Becca asked, her head bent low.

  A young man carrying a tray with four giant water jugs on it suddenly appeared at their table with Frau Hempel, who whispered cheerily at the kids, “Gather your things. I think you had better come with me.”

  “Is there a back way?” asked Lily. “The last place we escaped from had a back way.”

  “There’s a way,” said Frau Hempel, “but it’s not in the back.”

  The moment they threw their bags over their shoulders and got up from the table, the two men pushed their chairs back and stood. In a move that baffled Darrell even as he saw it happen, the waiter with the water jugs jerked awkwardly between the tables. Then his feet twisted, the tray tipped, and the four glass jugs crashed onto the men’s table and exploded.

  One of the men screamed like a lady, while the other tried to follow the kids but slipped in the water and fell. Then the waiter flailed and slipped, dragging the screamer into the pile. Frau Hempel tugged the Kaplans into the room behind the counter and shut the door firmly.

  “Kurt is training to be a clown,” she said. “He thanks you for the opportunity to try his act. This way.”

  They dashed through another door and down a narrow set of steps into the cellar of the cafe. It was ancient, half carved out of rough stone, half finished off in diamond-shaped oak shelves holding hundreds of wine bottles.

  “Quickly now, and hush,” she whispered, putting her finger to her lips. They followed her to the end of the wine shelves and turned a corner into a small alcove. Tugging a lever on the topmost shelf, she stood back as the shelving sprang out about twelve inches.

  She clicked a light switch, revealing a passageway leading steeply under the tavern. Strung along the ceiling of the passage was an electrical cord, dipping every few feet to a bare lightbulb. The bulbs cast only enough light to see that the passage went on and on.

  “These tunnels were built by East Berliners trying to escape under the Wall to the West,” Frau Hempel said. “They are cold and wet and nasty. But they are seldom traveled now. That’s why there are so many rats. They have made their own metropolis under Berlin. A rat city.”

  Wade shivered. “An underground city of rats. Wonderful.”

  She laughed. “But these tunnels will get you out of here faster than any other way.” From upstairs there came the sound of shouting and wood cracking.

  “Thank Kurt for us,” said Wade, moving into the passage.

  “We owe him,” Becca added. “And you.”

  Frau Hempel smiled. “Kurt’s also a wrestler, so he’ll be fine. Now, take the passages, making right turns when you have the opportunity, and you will come up near . . . well, you’ll see. You will be miles from here and safe. Good luck. Be careful. Now go!”

  Dr. Kaplan hugged her. “You’ve saved us.”

  As they followed the dim light, hurrying down the tight passage into the first turn, Darrell really hoped that they wouldn’t lose themselves, wandering forever and ever in the unending darkness . . . of an underground city . . . of rats.

  Chapter Seventeen

  An underground city of rats.

  As Lily hustled forward in the dark with no clear view of the way ahead because they were all taller than her, she knew—she knew—that those creepy little fur balls were just waiting to sink their needle teeth into her slim pink ankles.

  Rats were all she could think about. They took over her mind like spies had taken over Darrell’s. Rats and spies. And murder. Murdering rat spies. Why not? This was hardly Texas.

  The tunnel got narrower still. And smellier. She growled so softly she was sure no one heard her.

  Why isn’t anyone talking? Hello! Aren’t you as scared as I am? Actually, I doubt that. I can do scared like nobody else.

  “We’re going back to the cemetery now, right?” she mumbled. “After we get out of here? We’re going to find a cab or something and go back to the tomb?”

  “Right,” Darrell said over his shoulder. “The blade of the sundial points to something inside.”

  “Maybe the Magister’s Legacy,” Wade said. “Or the relics. It all goes back to Copernicus and how the earth moves.”

  Everyone is so smart. Like they have libraries for brains. Get me aboveground where I can get some Wi-Fi, and I’ll show you smart.

  “Let’s get there ASAP. Even a cemetery in the rain is better than being underground with an army of giant rats . . .”

  “Who said anything about giant rats?” Wade said.

  “Any rat is a giant rat, as far as I’m concerned—”

  “Kids . . .” Roald huffed, slowing his steps. “The lightbulbs end up ahead. We’ll have to hold hands to not get lost.”

  “Or maybe Lily could just hum,” Darrell said. “Since she’s at the back, we’ll always know we’re together—”

  “Hey,” Lily snapped. “I could lead, you know.”

  “I’m just saying I’m not real sure about the holding hands thing,” Darrell said. “So many questions. Whose hand will I hold? Which hand? How tight? Plus holding hands makes me think of skeleton bones. I don’t want to touch bones . . .”

  “You,” said Lily, “are weird—”

  “I hear something,” said Wade. “Listen . . .”

  There was the noise of traffic above them. Cars, the rumbling of streetcars and trucks, the zipping of motor scooters. Then a sound from far behind. Footsteps?

  “Keep going,” said Becca. “Lil, take my hand.”

  They hurried on as best they could. Every so o
ften, the ceiling soared and they saw levels of girders beneath the streets, the half-finished excavation of subway tunnels, maybe, and odd circles of light that Lily couldn’t keep from saying looked like solar eclipses, which she thought sounded smart, until Wade explained they were merely rings of street light around manhole covers. Fine. Manholes. Tunnels. Cemeteries. Rats. Murder. Whatever.

  If I survive tonight, this is all going into my blog.

  Roald slowed and faced them. “A stairway,” he whispered as he pointed to a narrow set of iron steps, nearly as steep as a ladder, clinging to the wall. “It must go up to street level.”

  “The street is good. That’s where they keep the air,” Lily said, aware how lame the joke was but not caring. Just get me out of here!

  Becca nudged her. “I’m so going to gulp it in.”

  “I’ll check it out,” said Dr. Kaplan.

  “Me, too.” Darrell grinned at Wade. “You stay.”

  “Why me?” Wade asked.

  “I’ll wait,” said Becca, breathing shallowly.

  “I will, too,” said Wade.

  “I’m not staying down here a minute more than I have to,” Lily said. “Sorry, Bec. I’m going up.”

  Darrell and his stepfather took the stairs up slowly in single file, and she followed, stepping as softly as she could. She couldn’t look down. At the top stood the doorway of a small room built of cement blocks. A plank door stood at the end of it, ringed with faint light.

  Roald knocked on the door. Nothing. Then he turned the knob. “Locked solid.” He glanced back down the steps. “There might be another exit later on down the tunnel.”

  “No,” said Lily. “Please, we’re not going back down here. Isn’t there something—”

  Darrell suddenly kicked the door hard with his foot. The knob fell to the floor with a clank, and the frame cracked. “Like that?”

  “Darrell,” Roald groaned. “My gosh, your foot!”