Free The Copernicus Legacy: The Forbidden Stone by Tony Abbott Page A

door thudded. It burst open. Wade flattened against the wall and watched several thick-necked men push across the tiny lobby and straight up the stairs.
    Did they follow us from the cemetery—
    Becca pulled him roughly out the back door and into the alley. The sun was setting, and the cold night air closed in. She hurried him into a long passage of black brick. He stole a look over his shoulder. No one yet. They came out a block behind Unter den Linden. Taking a quick right, Dr. Kaplan hustled them into a crowd of young people bubbling with conversation. They mingled as far as the next street, then turned at the corner of an avenue of high-end shops, Charlottenstrasse, where Lily made a noise that sounded like a squeal.
    “Are you all right?” asked Darrell.
    “Just . . . the . . . shops . . .”
    A sudden series of screeching tires made them jump, and they ducked under the arched opening of a restaurant. Dr. Kaplan froze when he looked inside at the tables.
    “Dad, what do you see? Dad!” said Wade. “Is someone—”
    “It’s not that,” he said. “It’s just that . . .” He scanned the streets in every direction. “A lot has changed, but I think the Blue Star is not too far from here, if it still exists. I need time to sit and figure this whole thing out—”
    A motorcycle raced down the street, zigzagging among the pedestrians. The kids turned their faces toward the windows.
    “It’s still there, I found it!” said Lily, holding up her tablet. Roald nodded at the picture. “We can walk to the Blue Star in about half an hour. Down Charlottenstrasse . . . a right, two short lefts, straight . . .”
    Pulling themselves together, the kids and Dr. Kaplan made their way from street to street. It was nearing 6 p.m., and Berlin’s early nightlife was already a glittering mass of crowds and smoke and music and traffic.
    “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
    “ W illkommen 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