Max needed to
focus.
He was on a mission.
Well, two missions.
Mission One: infiltrate the Funkhaus, the center of Nazi radio and propaganda. This was the mission his British spymasters knew about. It was why they’d sent him.
Mission Two: find his parents. Mission Two was forbidden. Max’s spymaster and adopted uncle, Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu, had made him promise
not to go looking for his parents. Max had promised. He had lied.
Two missions. One twelve-year-old Jewish boy in Nazi Germany.
What’s the worst that could happen? Max asked himself. That was a joke. He knew what could happen. What probably
would happen.
Just focus. Take it one piece at a time. Like assembling a watch. That’s what his papa would have told him.
First piece: Get to my apartment building. Without getting caught.The lights at the edge of the field turned out to be a couple of houses. Good.
Max figured where there were houses, there had to be a road.
He was right. The road was long and thin and newly paved.
Max looked left and right. “Which way to Berlin?” he murmured.
Stein pointed down the road. “Berlin is that way.”
“You’re sure?” Max asked.
“Let me think . . .” said Stein, the immortal dybbuk on Max's left shoulder. “I’ve lived in Germany since the Sixth Day of Creation, and while the pavement is new, this road has been here since at least 1640—”
“And it was an oxcart path since the 1300s,” put in Berg, the eternal kobold on his right shoulder.
“—so, yeah. I’m
pretty sure,” Stein concluded. “Any other dumb questions?”
Copyright © 2025 by Adam Gidwitz. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
