10

Corey didn’t know what the guy was saying. He was practically spitting his words. He seemed jittery and wild-eyed. None of those things was a good sign.

“I—I don’t speak German,” Corey said. “No . . . gespeaken . . .”

The guy stopped. His eyes were focused on Corey’s shoes now. He swallowed and blinked. “Bist du . . . Amerikanisch?” he said.

“R-r—right,” Corey replied. “I come in peace.”

He cringed at his own words. That plea hadn’t worked the first time.

“Peace,” the man repeated. Then he pointed to himself. “Eh . . . Georg, me,” he said, pronouncing the name GAY-org. “Johann Georg Elser.”

“Corey, me,” Corey replied.

The man gestured toward Corey’s shoes. “Sehr . . . interessant.”

“Air Jordans,” Corey said.

The guy cocked his head. “Er . . . was?”

Corey tried to shake loose, but the guy held tight. He wasn’t sure what to do. Possibilities flew through his head: The guy could be homeless. Or a burglar. Or a repairman who got stuck in the place overnight and was afraid to be found out. Or a homicidal maniac digging graves under the restaurant.

“Well, nice to meet you,” Corey said. “But I’m late for breakfast. Leil—!”

“Ssssh!” With his free hand, Georg covered Corey’s mouth. The palm smelled of motor oil and plaster. Corey looked around desperately for a mode of escape. He couldn’t help coughing. The only thing he could do was use his teeth. In midcough, he bit down hard. His teeth grabbed a tough, fleshy part of the guy’s palm. As Georg jerked backward, gasping, Corey bolted out the door and headed for the kitchen.

“Nein!” Georg cried out. His hand grabbed the edge of Corey’s untucked shirt. Corey lost his balance. They both tumbled to the floor, landing next to the pile of tools by the pillar. Corey reached for a hammer, but Georg snatched it away from him and held it high over his head.

Corey scrabbled to his feet. “You—you don’t want to do that. I’m not even born yet.”

Georg’s face was growing red and swollen. His chest was heaving. “Who . . . is you?”

“A tourist?” Corey replied. Georg looked confused, but at least he had some English vocabulary, so Corey slowed down. “I . . . don’t care . . . that you’re . . . here. Okay? Let . . . me . . . go . . . and I won’t . . . say . . . a word.”

“You . . . me . . . secret?” Georg said, his voice soft and desperate sounding. “Please to tell nobody about me . . . ?”

“Absolutely nobody. Boy Scout promise.” Corey began backing away. “Mouth gezippen.”

“Or I must . . .”

The old guy was fishing for the right English word. But Corey didn’t care what the right English word was. He turned, zigzagging around the tables toward the kitchen. He didn’t bother to look back.

In the kitchen, Maria and Leila were chatting away in a mix of German and English, while Maria prepared an elaborate-looking omelet. The air smelled of cooked onions and peppers. “Where have you been?” Leila asked.

“Nowhere!” Corey snapped, a little too loud. He forced a smile, trying to stop himself from jittering. “I mean, just . . . in there. The restaurant. Ballroom. Or whatever it is. Admiring the chandeliers.”

“Very biggest room, eh?” Maria said. “Are you hungry?”

“Wait, you know English?” Corey asked.

Maria laughed. “Ja, ein bisschen.”

“That means ‘yes, a little,’” Leila said, raising an eyebrow toward Corey. “And you are lying to me. Something happened.”

“Nope,” Corey lied.

“What was it?” Leila insisted.

“I’m not supposed to tell you!”

Once again, Corey cringed at his own words.

With a sigh, Leila removed her apron. Taking Corey by the arm, she led him back toward the restaurant. “Entschuldigung, Maria, er hat Angst, auf die Toilette zu gehen.”

As they approached the door, Corey asked. “What did you tell her?”

“That you were nervous about going to the bathroom.”

“That’s humiliating!”

Leila pulled him through the swinging doors and into the big restaurant. Corey’s eyes went right to the pillar, where he’d last seen Georg, but the guy was nowhere in sight.

“So tell me, Corey Fletcher,” Leila barreled on, “why are you acting so weird? And what just happened to you? We are here in nineteen thirty-nine, this is your idea, and if you think you’re going to keep secrets from me, I will go back to the future and leave you here to work things out yourself.”

Corey thought for a moment. “I did a little snooping around, but . . . um . . . I promised someone I wouldn’t say what I saw. Sorry. Don’t leave me here.”

“We’re, like, a century in the past and you’re worried about keeping secrets?”

“It was a guy named Georg, Leila, okay?” Corey replied. “He was doing something with tools . . . repairing . . . I don’t know. It didn’t seem like it would be a big deal, but he hid from me. I was curious. I didn’t expect him to jump me with a hammer.”

“What? He attacked you?” Leila ran around Corey, heading for the door. “No one attacks my best friend!”

“Leila, no!” Corey yelled. “Wait, I’m your best friend? Come back!”

There was no stopping her. Corey raced to the pillar to pick up one of the tools, just in case they needed to threaten him. But the floor around the pillar was clear—no tools, no rags, no pile of dust.

“He escaped!” Leila called out from the door. “There’s no one in here.”

“That was quick,” Corey said. “There were tools here. A hammer, a chisel, rags. Like the guy had been repairing one of these columns.”

“Repairing?” Leila said. “So he’s a homicidal custodian?”

Corey knelt by the pillar. A thin rectangle had been traced into the side, about two feet high by a foot wide. Leila ran her fingers along the shape. “Looks like some kind of door. But there’s no keyhole. No handle.”

“You think he’s hiding something in there he doesn’t want Maria to know about?” Corey guessed.

“Why would a person hide something in a big old restaurant?”

Corey shrugged. “I’ll work on that.”

“At any rate, he probably wouldn’t care about Maria. She doesn’t run the place or own it. She’s just a waiter, plus she cooks and shops.” Leila glanced around the room. “Maybe he’s still here. Maybe he’s hiding.”

“This place is huge. You could play a baseball game in here.” Corey gazed up into the balconies, looking for shadows, movement, but he saw nothing unusual. The chandelier crystals shot pinpricks of light against the wall. One of them seemed to be turning slightly, as if from a small gust of wind.

There was something about those chandeliers.

His eyes fixed on one of them. It hung from a sturdy metal ring affixed to the ceiling. From the circumference of the ring, filigreed metal bars curved downward and inward to meet at the center. They formed a cage in the shape of a half-sphere, containing a bank of light bulbs.

Removing his backpack, Corey reached inside and pulled out the rusted, twisted piece of metal, the artifact from Auntie Flora’s box. He held it high, his eyes darting from it to the chandeliers. “Leila?” he said.

“What are you doing?”

“Holding up your Auntie Flora’s artifact. Look at it. Then look at the chandeliers.”

Adjusting for the warps and corrosion, the bent shard was a perfect match for any of the curved metal bars.

Leila gasped. “Whoa . . . it’s the same.”

“Which explains how this artifact got us here,” Corey said.

“But why would Auntie Flora’s ancestors have saved a mangled piece of a chandelier? Why did she keep it?”

“And the message that was attached to it—what did that mean?” Corey reached into his pack, pulled the photo from the decaying envelope, and flipped it to the message on the back.

CLARA, MEIN LIEBCHEN:

VERGISS NICHT.

HÖR NICHT AUF ZU VERSUCHEN

11/39

—M. STROBEL

“This stuff about never forgetting,” Corey said. “Never forget what?”

“Leila?”

The call from the kitchen startled them both. “Breakfast break,” Corey said.

“Put that thing away.” Heading toward the kitchen, Leila cried out, “Es tut mir leid, Maria! I’m sorry!”

Corey shoved the metal back into his pack and followed Leila into the kitchen. There, Maria had set out plates piled high with fluffy, steaming omelets and piping hot cups of tea.

As Corey sat, he caught a glimpse of a calendar on the wall—a portrait of a smiling milkmaid and an unsmiling cow in a field, with a date printed across the top: NOVEMBER 1939.

Corey glanced at Leila. She’d picked up on that, too. If they’d had any doubts, there was the date. The same day and month on the artifact.

“Ess! Eat!” Maria urged as she removed her apron and sat across from them. “This Onkel Franz? He is free tonight?”

“Onkel who?” Corey said.

Leila kicked him under the table. She gave him a look that said just-say-yes-to-my-dumb-alibi-because-it-was-all-I-could-think-of. “Yes, Franz. Who we are visiting in Germany. Our favorite uncle.”

“The best!” Corey said, playing along. “We love him. A lot. We call him . . . Franzy Pants.”

“Please, I invite to you to come. Here. Tonight,” Maria said with a smile. “All three of you. I bring you dinner.”

Corey shot Leila a panicked look. “Uh . . . unfortunately Uncle Franz can’t come.”

“Oh?” Maria said.

“He’s dead,” Corey blurted.

At Leila’s second kick, Corey let out a gasp. “He means Franz is sick,” Leila said. “Franz ist krank. Danke, Maria, aber wir müssen gehen.” She turned to Corey. “We can’t stay for dinner because we need to go to take care of him. Right, Corey?”

“I know very good doctors,” Maria said.

“We need to take him away to a special hospital,” Leila blurted. “Far away.”

“New York,” Corey improvised.

Maria nodded. “Ahhh, it is good, you leave Europe now.” She gave them an uncertain look. “You of course know about Hitler?”

“Hate him,” Corey shot back.

Leila kicked him a third time. Trash-talking Nazis in 1939 Germany wasn’t a smart thing.

“Hate?” Maria said.

“Um, maybe hate is the wrong word?” Corey quickly replied.

But Maria’s lips were curling into a smile. Lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, she said, “Das ist gut. Sehr gut.”

“So y-you agree?” Leila whispered. “You’re not a—”

“Nazi?” Maria said with a sneer. “Nein! Aber— You do not tell anyone I say this?”

“No way,” Leila said.

“I’m all about keeping secrets,” Corey added.

Maria nodded. She sat at the table and leaned toward them. “Everything in Germany bad. Very bad,” She waved her fingers nervously in the air. “The country ist ganz verrückt. Crazy. You will not want to be near the Bürgerbräukeller when we are visited by der Affe mit dem Schnurrbart.”

“What does that mean?” Corey asked.

“The monkey with the mustache?” Leila said, looking confused.

“It is the name I give to der Führer,” she whispered, with a derisive snort. “That monkey Hitler. Every year he speaks here. Many people come. We will make many marks. But the Nazis—pfft! They take most of it anyway. Enough of this talk. Möchtet ihr Milch? Can I get you milk?”

Maria stood back up and pulled a small wad of bills from her pocket. “When we are fertig—finished—please, take this and buy some echte deutsche Kleidung. Proper German clothing. I insist.”

She glanced quickly at Corey’s and Leila’s outfits, barely concealing a giggle at the sight of Corey’s Air Jordans. Then she bustled to the refrigerator. She did not seem to enjoy staying still.

Corey tucked his shoes under the table. His heart, which had been racing, was beginning to calm. He glanced at Leila, but she was staring at the apron on the counter. A tag hung from one of the straps, with a name. Quickly Leila reached toward it, pulling out the entire tag so they could see it.

The sight of the full name gave Corey a chill.

BÜRGERBRÄUKELLER

MARIA

STROBEL