“You told me our recent experiments were too risky,” Galina responded. “A trial, then. A minor experiment. With someone expendable. Send Sara Kaplan.”

“No experiment in the physics of time is minor!” he blurted, then caught himself. “Forgive me, Galina, but that woman was to have been our insurance that the Kaplans would give us the relics.”

“All the family needs to know is that we have her,” she said. “Fear will do the rest. What actually happens to the woman is of little consequence.”

“But, but …” Ebner was sputtering now. “Galina, even assuming we manage to get the woman to report to us, how would she do it? By what mechanism? To say nothing of the havoc she might create five centuries ago. Any tiny misstep of hers could shudder down through the years to the present. Her mere presence could cause a greater rupture—”

“Ready Kronos Three for her journey. In the meantime, I go to Prague to persuade this courier to reveal his Italian contact. A message was delivered. I want to know to whom.” Galina turned her face away. It was a face, Ebner knew, from which all expression had just died. She was done listening. She had issued her command.

So.

Sara Kaplan would go on a journey.

A journey likely to result in her death.

Or worse.

New York

“That didn’t just happen,” Becca heard someone saying.

She turned. It was Darrell.

“Oh, it happened,” someone else said. That was Wade, who was looking at her when he said it. There was a hand on her arm, urging her gently out of the town car and onto the street. Even at night, New York City was noisy. And cold, bitter cold for the middle of March. But she hardly registered those things. Her head buzzed. Her eyes could barely focus enough to keep her from smashing into stuff.

She had just attacked a man.

Stabbed a man.

No matter that he was a thickheaded creepy goon, or that he had mauled poor Lily and threatened to toss her off a bridge, or that three days ago his boss, Galina, had shot Becca herself with a gas-powered crossbow, giving her a wound that still hadn’t healed. Forget all that. Becca was a girl who read books, a girl with a loving family, a girl who was just a girl. The Hummer goon was maybe a goon, but he was also a human being, and she had stabbed him. With a dagger.

She glanced at her hands. One was shaking like a leaf in a storm, but at least there was no blood on it. She would have freaked if there’d been blood on it. The other hand? Lily was holding it. Tightly. Comfortingly.

“It’s okay, Bec,” Lily said, pulling her along the sidewalk by her unhurt arm. “You saved my life. You were awesome. Really. Thank you doesn’t begin to cover it. I was so scared and … well … I guess you knew that and that’s why you …”

Becca’s cell phone vibrated suddenly, and she didn’t hear the rest. She pulled it out and glanced at the screen. She saw who was calling her. She let it vibrate.

Before they had departed the San Francisco airport that morning, Uncle Roald had picked up new phones for each of them. Despite the danger of their phones being tracked, he said it was unrealistic to think that the five of them would always be in the same place at the same time. They needed to be able to communicate with one another at a moment’s notice. Though Lily had immediately cross-programmed the phones with all their numbers as well as family numbers, they all kept their batteries out most of the time. The first thing Becca herself had done was to call her mother to say she was safe. Her mother hadn’t answered. No one had answered. So she’d left a voice mail. She realized now that she must have forgotten to remove the battery, because someone was calling back.

The dark screen was lit with four large white letters.

Home.

But how could she answer it? She had just … she had just …

The phone stopped vibrating, and Becca watched the number 1 appear next to the voice mail icon. She slipped it back into her pocket. Lily was still talking.

“… are definitely my hero, and I so owe you one, or probably way more than one, but we’ll round it off to one big one …”

“Uh-huh,” Becca said. “Uh-huh.”

What would Maggie say if she knew what I just did? Becca’s younger sister was the reason for so many things in her life. After nearly dying two years ago, Maggie was always on her mind, and when that creep grabbed Lily on the bridge, Becca saw Maggie in the thug’s powerful grip. How could she not jump at him? And if her hand went to Magellan’s dagger first, well, she couldn’t stop herself. But no way could she talk to anyone at home. Not yet.

The doors of the Gramercy Park Hotel whisked open, and warm air engulfed them. After raising his hand to the man and woman behind the check-in desk, who smiled warmly, Terence Ackroyd led the Kaplans into the elevator, pressing the button for the seventh floor.

It was Mr. Ackroyd who’d originally told them that Sara had disappeared. Sara was supposed to fly from Bolivia to New York to meet him, but her luggage arrived without her. His rescuing them in the car, not an instant too soon, was their first actual meeting with the famous writer, though Becca had started reading one of his books, The Prometheus Riddle. The spy thriller she’d picked up in Honolulu was like their lives now. Full of death and near death. She wondered where the novelist got his ideas. He didn’t look like a spy as much as a rich man. He was tall, casually dressed, with longish dark hair, graying at the temples. He moved easily among all the glitter and obvious wealth in the lobby, as if he owned the place.

Maybe he did.

She was coming back to herself now. Observing things. Beginning to remember stuff and hear things in real time. Happily, their limo driver was all right, just shaken up, and had already retired to his own room on a lower floor. Darrell’s forehead was gashed slightly from the limo’s ceiling light and had been bandaged using the first aid kit in Mr. Ackroyd’s car. There was talk about getting a doctor to look at her arrow wound, which she hardly felt at the moment.

They entered the elevator. It was warm. Her breathing was slowing down, her breaths becoming deeper. She took her place between Lily and Wade at the back of the glass-and-wood-paneled car and clamped her elbow tightly on her shoulder bag. The bag held not only the cracked hilt of the Magellan dagger, but something even more priceless. The secret diary of Nicolaus Copernicus.

Written by the astronomer and his young assistant, Hans Novak, from 1514 to about a decade later, the diary was the main source of what they knew about the time-traveling astrolabe. The book was composed in several languages and was heavily coded. Thanks to her maternal grandparents, Becca had a gift for foreign languages, and with the help of Wade’s science and math smarts she had already translated pretty good-size chunks of the diary into her red notebook. In fact, it was on the jet here from San Francisco that they’d discovered what Copernicus had come to call his time-traveling device.

Die Ewigkeitsmaschine.

The Eternity Machine.

It seemed the perfect name for something so mysterious, and so deadly.

“Here we are,” Terence Ackroyd said as the elevator opened directly into his suite.

Whoa. The suite was huge, a multiroom apartment with broad windows looking out over lower Manhattan. It was furnished like a billionaire’s home, with a combination of antique chairs painted gold and white and modern leather sofas, two of which shared a lacquered Japanese coffee table that Mr. Ackroyd went straight to. He motioned for them to sit. “Please, rest, while we brew some fresh tea.”

We?

“I have it, Dad.”

A boy entered the room, carrying a tray with a steaming teapot and several cups on it. He seemed a couple of years older than the kids, and had long, sandy-colored hair and very blue eyes. He set the tray on the table between the couches.

“I’m Julian,” he said.

Terence smiled. “My son. Excuse me for a moment.” Then he slipped off into a room with double doors, leaving them open. It was a study, from which a keyboard suite by Handel was playing softly from hidden speakers.

Is that where he writes his thrillers?

“I have to apologize for your welcome to New York,” Julian said with as pleasant a smile as his father’s, which he kept while they introduced themselves. “The Knights of the Teutonic Order have been violent since their first appearance in Jerusalem in 1198. Lawless in Poland and other northern European cities after the Crusades. Copernicus himself fought them several times. They were finally abolished by Napoleon in 1809, but a sect related to Albrecht von Hohenzollern has continued underground since then, hanging on through bloodlines, mostly, and has grown suddenly very wealthy.”

His way of speaking was a bit PBS, Becca thought, but he went straight to business, which was what they needed right now.

“But Mr. Kaplan, I’m sorry,” he said, suddenly bouncing to his feet. “Of course you want to know about Mrs. Kaplan. Let me bring her luggage.”

“Thank you. And call me Roald, please.”

Julian trotted down a hall as his father returned from his workroom. “Becca, the hotel doctor is on his way up to take a look at your arm,” Terence said. “In the meantime, Dennis, our driver, sends his heartfelt regards.” He breathed out. “Now … you’ve been through—are going through—a terrible shock, and I’m very sorry.”

“We appreciate anything you can tell us about Sara,” Wade said, with a look at Darrell. “About Mom.”

Terence nodded and sat among them. “First, let me say this. I have sources on the ground all over the world. For my writing, you understand. This apartment is one of a few research stations I have that’s fully equipped: a workroom, communications study, and so on. I’m trying to say that my research team and I are fully at your disposal.”

“And why are you helping us exactly?” Darrell broke in. “I mean, sorry, but you don’t really know us, and we’ve learned we can’t trust new people.”

“Whoa, Darrell,” Lily said. “That’s rude.”

“No, no. Fair question,” Terence said. “It’s simple. The moment I received Sara’s things, I knew something was off, you see. Something was dreadfully wrong. Since I’m a mystery writer, my antennae shot up. More than that, I’ve just started, well, a foundation for causes that are actively fighting injustice here and around the globe. The Teutonic Order is far more powerful than you. More powerful, actually, than any international organization I’ve come across. And they’ve become that mainly in the last four years. I’ve asked myself, what exactly is going on here?”

“War,” said Darrell gloomily. “That’s what’s going on. Galina Krause and the Teutonic Order have declared war on us.”

“I completely agree,” Terence said. “And on the world, too, which is why my foundation and I want to help you however we can … but there will be time later for that. Here’s Sara’s suitcase.”

The moment Julian entered the room with Sara’s main bag and set it down on the coffee table, Becca watched Uncle Roald and Darrell. Roald practically leaped on the suitcase. But his fingers shook, and she saw the blood drain visibly from his cheeks. Darrell hovered over the suitcase next to his stepfather, his fingers poised but apparently unable to touch anything. Becca wanted to help, but stupidly couldn’t think of how. It took Roald a full minute to open the clasp and unzip the case, and by the time he lifted the top, he had to wipe away tears.

Sara’s clothes, toiletries, books, shoes—everything was stowed neatly in its place, just as Sara must have packed it for the return flight from South America, the flight she never made. A lump forced its way into Becca’s throat, and she teared up, too. On the table in front of them was the clearest evidence so far that Sara was lost, and that no one knew where.

Darrell put both hands over his eyes. “Oh, Mom … Mom …”

Becca looked at the floor. Her heart thundered as loudly as it had when she’d thought of Lily and Maggie on the bridge.

“I hasten to say that I have every reason to believe that right now your mother is safe,” Terence said earnestly to Darrell. “Step by step, here’s what we think …”

The voice blurred in Darrell’s ears, then faded away.

Something had cracked inside him when his mother’s suitcase was opened, and it was still cracking. Seeing her clothes like that was like looking at stuff belonging to somebody who was dead. His throat tightened. He threw himself back on the sofa to be able to breathe, but just as quickly bent over the suitcase again. His ears were hot, like something was screaming into them. His stepfather was on his feet now, looking away.

When Lily patted him awkwardly on the arm, Darrell realized that the room was quiet and everyone was waiting for him. To do what? He glanced up to see them all staring at him; then he brushed his hand over his face. Oh, right. To stop crying. He wiped his cheeks. “Sorry. Go on, Mr. Ackroyd.”

“No need to be sorry,” the man said, glancing searchingly at Julian.

Uh-huh, and what was that look?

“To continue, when I realized that Sara’s luggage had arrived here without her, I immediately examined it, without actually moving too much. All of her belongings, including her phone and wallet, everything seemed to be here and intact.”

“As my dad told you on the phone in Guam, we didn’t contact the police because of what else we found,” Julian said. He was now sitting in a chair across the room, alternately looking down from behind the curtain, as if he was surveilling the street, and tapping the keys on a laptop.

“Exactly,” said Terence. “We’ve discovered two things. The first is what I take to be a warning, hidden cleverly in the inner lining.” Terence carefully peeled back a portion of the patterned lining. It had been pried open and reclosed with a safety pin. Tucked into the space behind the lining was a charm bracelet.

Roald lifted it out. “I know this bracelet. Sara’s had it for a long time, but …”

One of its charms was wrapped inside a self-adhesive Forever postage stamp depicting the American flag.

“May I?” Carefully unpeeling the stamp, Terence revealed the charm inside. It was a silver skull.

“I don’t like the way this looks,” Darrell said. “Dad, a skull? Mom’s not a skull kind of person. And I don’t remember this charm. When did she get it?”

Terence was about to speak when Roald said, “I think she got it last year at a conference in Mexico. It’s a standard icon there. ‘Day of the Dead’ and all that.”

“But wrapped inside a picture of the American flag,” said Lily. “Is that like something against our country?”

“No, no.” Terence shook his head vigorously. “Not at all. I attended that same conference. It was, in fact, where I met Sara for the first time and decided to donate my manuscripts to her archive in Austin. I believe this part of the clue was actually meant for me. It is a direct reference to a silly thing I wrote about in my first novel—”

“The Zanzibar Cryptex,” Julian said from across the room. “Not one of your best, Dad. The ending on the ocean liner?”

Terence smirked. “Everyone’s a critic. But seriously, in that book there was a similar clue, an item wrapped in a stamp. And it meant something very specific, which Sara well knew. You see, the skull represents, well, death, or at the very least danger. The flag quite simply means the authorities. The message in the novel—and here—is plain: contacting the authorities will put Sara in more danger. At least she thought so. She must have been threatened or somehow understood that bringing the police in—”

“Or the CIA or FBI,” Julian added.

“—would not help,” Terence said. “For the moment, then, finding her should remain a private matter. But not without resources.”

“Sara’s in danger but she’s sending us codes and clues?” Lily said. “What a mom.”

“You better believe it,” Wade whispered.

The elevator chime rang behind them, and Terence hopped up. “Ah, Becca. Your doctor.” A middle-aged woman entered, smiling, and Becca went with her to the dining-room table, where they chatted softly, so Becca could also listen.

Roald stood anxiously. “All right, so Sara is telling us to be cautious. Terence, you said you found two things.”

“That’s my cue,” Julian said, leaving his chair by the window after one last look at the street and setting his laptop on the coffee table. “Three hours ago we received a heavily encrypted video from our investigators in Brazil. I’ve just been decoding it and cleaning up some of the images.” He adjusted the screen, and hit the Play button.

A fuzzy nighttime video image appeared, showing an old station wagon creeping slowly along what appeared to be a utility road behind a large building. There were words on the side of the building: Reparação Hangar 4.

“Hmm. An airline-repair hangar,” Terence whispered, shooting a glance at his son. “In Rio de Janeiro.”

In the video the car stopped abruptly. Behind it, a set of double doors slid aside on the hangar, and two shapes emerged from it. The driver and a passenger climbed from the car, opened the back of the station wagon, and began to tug something out, while the two men from the hangar assisted. It was a coffin. The four men carried it like pallbearers into the hangar. A few minutes later, the two from the station wagon reappeared, closed the rear door, and drove off. The video ended.

Darrell stared at his stepfather, not wanting to believe what he saw, but his lips formed the words. “Mom is dead?”

“No, no,” said Terence, rising and putting his hand on Darrell’s shoulder. “What we have just witnessed means precisely the opposite. The shipment of coffins is a well-known but poorly policed method of moving people from country to country without documents. The time stamp tells us that this occurred at two twenty-seven a.m. last night, Rio time. Precisely thirty-six minutes later, two small private jets took off, both heading east on different routes, possibly to Europe or Africa. By tomorrow, we will know where each landed. If your mother is indeed in that coffin, it means that the Order is flying her somewhere, smuggling her to another country. Excuse me for being blunt, but if Sara were … dead, the Order would not go to such lengths. This video not only means that she is alive, but that precautions are being taken to ensure her safety.”

It didn’t sound right to Darrell, but Terence’s face—and Julian’s—betrayed no sense of hiding the truth. “She’s alive? You’re sure?”

“I quite believe so,” Terence said, nodding heartily. “It is a matter now of tracking down both jets to see where they may be moving her.”

“We had heard something about Madrid,” said Becca from the dining room. “In San Francisco, we discovered that the Order has some servers, big computers, there, and Galina might have been there, too.”

“Good. I’ll alert my people. This may be a solid lead.”

“We’ve been tricked before,” said Lily.

“I understand your disappointment in San Francisco,” Terence said. “But my network is largest in Europe. I’ve taken the liberty of arranging a meeting between Dr. Kaplan and myself and Paul Ferrere, the head of my Paris bureau, tomorrow morning, here in the city. Ferrere is ex–Foreign Legion and has a team of detectives spread across the length and breadth of Europe. We have hopes of finding Sara Kaplan before very long.”

“Hopes?” Darrell grunted.

Roald patted him on the arm. “Not false hopes. Never again. But we can inch ahead. Keep moving forward.”

Darrell wanted to believe him. “Okay …”

His stepfather took one more look at the paused video on Julian’s laptop and began to pace the living room. “Here’s the way I see it. Galina Krause may be waiting for us to lead her somewhere, and we’ll be in danger the moment we make a move. I get that, but while we’re waiting for a solid lead about Sara, we have to continue our search for the second relic, the one Vela is supposed to lead us to. Wade, you have my notebook; Becca, you have the diary. Lily, you’re the electronic brains. Darrell, you cracked some riddles in San Francisco that baffled the rest of us. Together, we will find the second relic, and we will find Sara.”

Darrell got it. He understood. It made sense, and having Terence and his detectives on the case gave them a way forward. His lungs were gasping for a deep breath, and his heart pounded like pistons in his chest, but being scattered or afraid wouldn’t help them or his mother. He wiped his cheeks. “Okay. Good.”

The doctor left, with a silent smile and thumbs-up to the family, and Becca rejoined them, a clean bandage on her arm.

“All set,” she said. “It feels great. Thank you, Mr. Ackroyd … Terence.”

“Not at all,” he said.

“And now … Vela,” said Roald.

Still worrying about his mother, Darrell watched his stepfather move his hand inside the breast pocket of his jacket. When he drew it out, he was holding the brilliant blue stone.

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