A crowd of passengers jammed up against the huddle of men, apparently unsure of what it was all about. They tried to help Dr. Kaplan to his feet. A uniformed policeman appeared, his hand on a holster at his waist, but he was blocked by the crowd around his father and the fallen men. A second policeman was joined now by several other men in suits, all hovering around his father. The train squealed again, and it started to move.

Darrell banged his fist on the door. "Dad! Dad!"

The train gasped once more and pulled away from the platform. The short policeman from the cemetery appeared now, gesticulating frantically to his men, one of whom shouted into a cell phone. Others butted their way through the crowd toward the end of their platform, but the head car was already out of the station. The train was gaining speed.

"Oh my gosh," said Lily, staring out the window as the station receded. "What . . . what . . . what are we going to do?"

"The police have Dad!" Darrell shrieked, grabbing Wade by the shoulders and shaking him. "He saved us from being caught!"

Wade couldn't breathe. "The last thing he said on the phone was about Isabella Mercanti. The lady in Bologna. He wants us to find her. He said we should try to not to get caught. And she'd help us."

"Don't get caught?" Lily frowned. "Ohhhh, man . . ."

"I have to call Mom right now," said Darrell. "I don't care where she is!"

Wade handed him Lily's phone. He tapped in Sara's cell number, as the train sped through the train yard. Everyone watched his face. "Mom!" he said, then paused and breathed out. "Voice mail. Of course. She's in Bolivia already. Mom? Hey, it's me. Look, we're on a train in Berlin and Dad just got-"

"Wait!" Wade put his hand over the phone. "They already broke into our house. They don't need to know about Sara. Plus she's off the grid. Which is what we should be. Close it."

"But I have to tell her!"

"She can't come here!" Wade insisted. "These guys may know we're going to Verona, but maybe not to Bologna. Don't give it away. End the call."

Darrell gave him a dark look, pulled away, and said, "Call you later," and hung up. "What a fail," he groaned.

"You did the right thing," said Lily.

"Nobody calls anywhere," Wade said, trying to sound calm, although he really felt like screaming and punching something over and over. Then he felt a touch on his arm. It was Becca.

"Look, your dad is . . . going to be okay. There were hundreds of witnesses back there. And we have passports and tickets," she said. "Plus a little bit of cash. The best thing to do is get off at the next stop, wherever that is. Go to the American embassy, or call it first, or whatever, and do our best to explain what's been happening. We can try to get in touch with Isabella Mercanti from there. If she's your father's friend, she'll help us."

Wade looked at her. Suddenly, he could breathe again. "Yeah, you're right. That's amazing that you could figure all that out. Under pressure and everything."

Becca sighed. "I have some practice, but never mind that. Are we all agreed?"

Everyone nodded. They found cabin seven, a small room with two facing bench seats with a narrow bed folded up overhead above each one. They sat down, trying to catch their breath as the train picked up more speed. Outside the windows the downtown was diminishing rapidly into suburbs and wooded areas broken by highways. It was a gray day like the day before. Germany was a gray place.

Lily pulled her tablet from her bag and swiped at the screen.

"The next town with an American embassy is a place called Magdeburg. It's a pretty big city-"

The compartment door jostled suddenly and squeaked open.

"Sorry, zis cabin-zee is taken-zee," said Darrell.

The door swung wide to reveal two men with flat expressionless faces blocking the way like a pair of oak trees.

"Whoa, what the-" Wade stood.

A third man with a plump red face and badly dyed black hair squeezed between the man-trees. He had a cell phone at his ear.

"Ya," he said into it. Then he lowered it. "You, show me ticket, now!"

Without thinking, Wade showed him his ticket.

The man barked into the phone. "Bologna."

At the sound of the word, Wade's stomach twisted. Why had he simply obeyed the man?

Redface turned the phone around and snapped a picture of them. Bwip! A moment later, he said, "Ya!" into the phone again and hung up.

In an accent as thick as peanut butter, the red-faced man with the black helmet hair said, "If you vant to zee your vater Dr. Keplen alife again . . . you vill come viss us. Now."

Chapter Twenty-Nine.

Darrell had expected this from the beginning.

Ugly guys with ugly guns and thick accents. "Come viss us." It was playing out like the bad screenplay of a cheesy foreign spy movie. He knew it would be this way. He was only surprised it hadn't happened sooner. This was Germany, after all. The capital of spies and murder and death and foreign movies and spies.

The tree-size men pushed them into an empty corridor. Naturally, it was empty; all the other passengers had already found their cabins and were making themselves comfortable eating warm snacks. If people had been moving in the corridor, the kids could have made a scene and the bad guys might have been arrested. Or, wait. Not arrested. The bad guys were working with the police. Or fake police. Whatever. They were all spies, and spies with accents were always bad news.

"Zis vay," the red-faced spy said. His hair shone like a jet-black bowling ball. It was probably crusty and sticky.

Never mind his hair, plan our escape!

The men marched the kids roughly down the narrow corridor, through the heavy connecting door and onto the platform between the cars. The wind was strong and nearly blew them off the train.

No escape plans came to him there.

The city had long disappeared behind them, and they were speeding through the last stretch of suburbs dotted with trees and houses, until finally there were no houses and just forest.

A good place to dump our bodies.

"Into ze next car!"

Darrell wished he had the sort of brain that would look at their situation and come up with an instant foolproof plan for escape. A movie once showed into the mind of the hero, and it buzzed like a computer, an electronic head. That would be so cool right now.

"Hurry alonk," Redface said. "Ze next car."

The train began to slow. The next station appeared in the distance. Two black SUVs were idling on the street outside the station. Not good. Sliding their guns into their pockets, the two giants nudged the children toward the end of the next car to the stairs that lowered to the platform, while their boss got on his phone again.

Checking with Mommy?

Then he had a thought. It was a small thought, but he'd seen enough movies about trains to know what happens when a train pulls into a station. He poked his fingers into Lily's and Wade's backs and whispered, "Get ready to run."

"They have guns!" Lily whispered.

"Silence!" Redface spat. "Keep movink to ze door."

Darrell took a chance, and purposely stumbled to the floor.

"Get up-"

It was a short delay, but what he expected to happen, happened. Even before the train stopped, several compartment doors swung wide and passengers plowed into the corridor.

"Run!" said Darrell. He lurched to his feet and pushed his friends forward into a tangle of passengers.

"Hey!" "Ach du lieber!" the passengers yelled, but the kids rammed their way through them, past the connecting door and into the next car, bounding down that corridor to the end. The train jerked once. Becca stopped short and pointed out the window. "Look!"

Two more extra-large men in suits quickly climbed aboard.

"Now there are five of them!" Lily said.

"Keep moving!" said Wade, pushing them farther away from the men. Darrell realized soon enough that they were going to run out of train, and they did. The door to the final car was locked.

"It's the baggage car," said Becca.

Lily pounded on the door with her fists. "Let us in!"

"Eine minute!" shouted a voice behind the door. Two bolts were shoved back. The door opened a crack. "Was ist das?"

As the train picked up speed, Darrell heard the thugs crashing into the car toward them. "We need to-"

Becca rattled off a couple of sentences that sounded like she was coughing. But apparently that's what German sounded like, because the mustached man behind the door let them into the baggage car, then bolted the door behind them.

"I told him I needed medication from my suitcase-"

The door shook. "Lassen Sie Uns rein!" grunted a voice. "Die Kinder sind Ausreisser! Runavays!"

The security guard growled. "Vhat now?"

"They're lying!" said Lily.

They jumped over bags and suitcases to the door at the far end of the car. Pushing it open, they found themselves staring at the receding tracks. The train was racing quickly over the miles now, approaching top speed.

Unlocking the far door, the baggage guard reluctantly let the four thick men and Redface into the car. They pushed him aside, but he snagged one of the goons and started arguing his head off. Redface and his thugs simply pushed through to the rear and trapped the kids on the outside platform.

"No more runnink!" Redface grunted. "Giff us ze key."

The wind tore icily around them. The guard inside was ranting in a high-pitched voice now.

Darrell's brain scanned their options when he suddenly came up with a second amazing idea. He dug into his backpack, pulled out the pitch pipe, and held it out over the tracks. "You want the key? Here's the key. It belonged to Vogel. One more inch, I toss it overboard."

The men froze. "No, do not," said one of them.

"Zey know nussing!" said Redface.

"Oh yeah?" Darrell snarled. "Well, this is what was in the safe at the tomb. The secret you've all been looking for. That pretty lady told you to get it, didn't she?" Nice detail, he thought, and it seemed to work. The men mumbled at one another. As quickly as the train had gained speed, it slowed again. They were approaching a bridge. The lead car clattered onto it, slower still.

"Zey know nussing!" Redface repeated, his face getting redder and puffier. "Get it before ze next station!" The thugs lunged forward like the front line of the Texas Longhorns, pinning all of them to the back rail.

The space was too cramped to hold them. Lily kicked out, while Wade squirmed in front of Becca. Darrell managed to wrestle his arm free and fling the pitch pipe. One of the men shouted as it sailed through the air, and clattered onto the tracks. Redface responded by shoving the shouter right off the platform. "Find it! Get it!"

That left Redface and three goons. His thoughts popping one after another, Darrell pushed forward, and Redface fell back through the door into the baggage car, where the guard was yelling on the phone.

Wade moved to whip the dagger from his pack but settled for kicking one guy sideways in the knee. He fell headfirst on the platform. Becca and Lily took turns slapping another on the ears, while he cursed at them. Darrell jumped at the remaining guy, pushing him off balance on his way past, and the kids found themselves back in the baggage compartment.

Redface fumbled in his coat for something, but Wade and Darrell together pushed him back outside, where he fell over the others on the platform floor. Together, Lily and Becca slammed and barricaded the door.

The guard hustled over, his mustache flapping in anger. "I hev called ze conductor!"

Wade pushed his hand into his pocket and pulled out the wad of bills his father had given him. "Help us. I'll give you euros. Just go away and leave us the key."

The men battered on the door. "Open or ve'll shoot!"

Leaning hard against the door, Wade peeled off a couple of bills, but the guard snatched the whole wad of cash. "Sank you!" He locked the platform door, then rushed away, tossing the key to Wade as he slipped into the forward car.

"Hide behind the bags!" said Becca.

Wade quickly opened the far door halfway, then joined the others behind a wall of baggage just as the three gunmen and Redface broke down the rear door and burst into the car. Seeing the far door open, they raced through it without looking. After the men had gone through, Darrell rushed over and double bolted the door behind them.

"I can't believe we're still alive," Becca breathed.

Lily burst out with something between a laugh and a scream.

"Just wait!"

Chapter Thirty.

Wade knew they had only moments before the creeps battered their way back in. "We need another plan."

"Don't ask me," said Darrell. "I'm all planned out."

"Plus you just threw away one of our clues," Lily grumbled. "What if we need a pitch pipe again?"

"We won't," said Darrell. "I have perfect pitch."