Tony Abbott - The Forbidden Stone

“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.

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!

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.”