“I’m not going back in there,” said Sarah. “Especially during a storm. Let’s make a run for it.”

  Sarah didn’t wait for Matt to answer. She dashed through the rapidly forming puddles, leaving him standing on the doorstep. He shook his head, flipped up the hood of his windbreaker, which was immediately plastered to his head by the downpour, and followed.

  They covered the length of the block in record time. Another brilliant flash illuminated the red brick of Sarah’s house, like a splash of blood on a white canvas. The lightning also revealed a silver Saturn in the driveway. Sarah skittered to a stop.

  “Wh-what is it?” asked Matt as he caught up to her, gasping.

  “Dad’s home.”

  “So? He won’t suspect anything. We were just at the park and got caught in the rain. There’s no way he’ll figure out where we were.”

  Sarah nodded, but he could tell she was nervous. Probably because her father had forbidden them to return to Matt’s house until the police had caught Nadine.

  Matt touched her arm tentatively, to bolster her courage. “Trust me.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I always do.”

  They walked through the doorway together and stood dripping on the tiles in the front hall. Sarah shed her sopping jacket and hung it in the closet. Matt tossed his on the floor. She frowned at him, as was customary when he didn’t follow her example of obsessive neatness, so he bent down, smoothed the windbreaker with his hand, and hung it beside hers. Sarah slipped off her runners and placed them precisely under her coat. Matt kicked his off and left them strewn upside down on either side of Sarah’s. She scowled at him, but this time he shrugged. How far did she expect him to go?

  “Sarah?”

  It was Donald Sachs, Sarah’s dad.

  “Would you come here, please?”

  He sounded a little sterner than usual, but no need to panic, yet.

  Sarah trudged forward, dragging her feet on the tiles. Matt entered behind her, trying to keep a cheery smile on his face.

  “Hi, Dad,” she said. “We got caught in the rain.”

  Donald Sachs, a tall muscular man with wavy chestnut hair, was lounging on their beige leather couch, one eyebrow raised over his very high forehead. “I can see that,” he said. His voice had a slight tremor, as if he were holding in laughter. “You couldn’t have carried an umbrella with you?”

  Matt nearly sighed in relief. He must have imagined the edge to Mr. Sachs’s voice.

  “It came up suddenly,” she said. “We didn’t think we’d need an umbrella.”

  Sarah’s dad’s warm, slightly amused face darkened suspiciously. “The clouds have been rolling in for a good hour. You would have seen them, if you were at the park. That is where you said were going today, right?”

  “We—we—” said Sarah.

  “—stopped by the store,” said Matt, stepping forward. “We just wanted to get some treats.”

  Mr. Sachs’s bushy eyebrows crushed together. “Let’s see your treats, then.”

  “Um,” said Sarah. “Ah.”

  “We ate them,” said Matt, but he felt instant shame. Why was it that he could lie to everyone else without a quiver of conscience, but when he lied to Sarah’s father, he felt like a heel? But he had to do it. His fist was curled around the very reason.

  “Something in your hand, Matt?”

  “N-no.”

  “Come on, now. If you have candy left, I wouldn’t mind some.” Mr. Sachs’s crusty voice grated against Matt’s ears—demanding, not asking.

  He got off the couch, crossed the distance between them, and leaned down, matching his nearly two-metre frame to Matt’s much shorter height. “Open your hand.”

  Matt clenched, glowered.

  “I’m very hungry,” said Sarah’s dad. “If you don’t open it, I may have to ground you for a month.”

  Matt gritted his teeth. A month? He might have the solution to retrieving his father in his hand, but he wouldn’t have the chance to use it for a month? Slowly he opened his fist.

  Mr. Sachs’s forehead creased, now making him look more intrigued than angry. He bent down and scrutinized the miniature film in Matt’s palm. “Looks like microfilm.”

  “I think it is,” said Matt. He flushed as he felt the excitement swell within him. “It might contain the code that Nadine used to lock my dad in the past. If we could figure it out . . . ”

  “That would be wonderful,” said Sarah’s father. “But where did you find it?” His gaze hit Matt like an intense beam of light.

  Matt shifted uncomfortably. There was no way out of this one. “We sneaked into my old house.”

  For some reason Mr. Sachs didn’t look the least bit surprised, but a reddish shade of anger crossed his face. “Didn’t I say that would be too dangerous? Or was I talking to the wind?”

  “Dad,” said Sarah. “You’ve had half a dozen experts trying to crack the code for months. How far have they gotten? Nowhere. We might have found the answer in one hour of investigation.”

  “In a house that Nadine might have returned to at any moment. That woman is dangerous. Did you ever think of what might happen to you if she found you there?”

  Matt met Sarah’s eyes.

  Her father frowned. “Am I missing something?”

  “No, Dad,” Sarah said quickly. “We’re sorry. We won’t go back there again.”

  “Darn right,” he said. “Now, about the microfilm. Shall I take it to the experts for them to examine?”

  Matt shook his head. “I want to look at it myself. Only . . . I don’t know how to read it.”

  “Oh,” said Sarah’s dad, “the curse of the computer age. I can tell you exactly how to read it.”

  Sarah and Matt regarded her father expectantly.

  “If you promise to let me know what you find.”

  “Of course, Mr. Sachs. We’re going to need your help to get Dad home. We’re through with sneaking around.” Matt tried to emulate Sarah’s totally innocent expression.

  “All right,” said her father. “First, you go to the library.”

  “Library? What’s a library?”

  Sarah kicked his ankle.

  “Ow! Just because you live there doesn’t mean that everyone likes to tiptoe around a stack of books.”

  “Well, this time, if you want to read that film, you’ll have to,” Mr. Sachs said.

  “Is there a book that tells us how?” asked Matt.

  “No, there’s a microreader at the library. It’s for reading books on microfiche, but it’ll work for microfilm, too. Check it out. Then report back to me. Capiche?”

  “Gotcha,” said Matt.

  “Now you’d better get out of those soaked clothes so we can have dinner.”

  “But . . .” said Matt. “. . . the library?”

  “Tomorrow will be soon enough. You need to be grounded for at least a week, possibly a month, for disobeying me, but I’ll let you go to the library for one day.”

  “Thanks,” said Matt, not feeling at all grateful. Didn’t Sarah’s father realize how important this could be to him? He had no family to speak of, no happy home, nothing. Ever since he was a baby, all he’d had were nannies and Nadine. If Mr. Sachs knew that his father existed, that he just needed to be rescued, wouldn’t he have done anything to get him home?

  Sarah’s father swung back towards him, mid-stride, on his way to the kitchen. “I hope this will be the answer you’ve been searching for, Matt. I really do.”

  Matt took a deep breath, firmed his jaw to keep it from trembling, and nodded.

  “Thanks,” he whispered. “So do I.”

  Chapter 3

  The Spies

  Matt pounded on Sarah’s door early the next morning. Was she going to sleep all day?

  “Wh-what?” she called.

  He flung open the door to find her face buried in her pillow. “Get up,” he said, ripping the cushion from beneath her head. She growled at him, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t wait any longer. “Let’s go!”

  Sarah rolled over and peeled her drowsy eyes open. “I never thought I’d see the day. In fact, I’ve never seen anyone so excited to go to the library. Even me.”

  Matt grinned. “There’s a first for everything. So, let’s go.”

  “The library’s not open yet, silly. It’s Sunday. And you should get dressed first.”

  Matt contemplated his rumpled Senators pajamas. “Why? These are so cool,” he said, tugging on the hockey team’s centurion logo. They were a gift from Sarah’s father and he treasured them. They were the first gift he’d ever received.

  “Cool or not, the librarians won’t let you in with those on.”

  Matt hurried to get dressed, but ended up pacing for another hour, impatience gnawing at his gut. At eleven o’clock Sarah relented and they set off for the library—a five-block hike. Sarah struggled to catch her breath as she raced to keep up with Matt’s pavement-gobbling pace. In his haste, he clipped an old neighbour half a block from their destination and sent her spinning sideways. He caught her just in time to prevent a fall.

  “Neem me niet kwalijk, mevrouw Van Diesel,” Matt sputtered out in Dutch. Sorry, Mrs. Van Diesel.

  “Het is goed,” the silver-haired lady replied. It’s all right. She smiled at Matt, grasped his arm to steady herself, and winked, before she continued down the street.

  Sarah halted on the sidewalk and gaped.

  “What?”

  “What language is that?”

  “Dutch,” said Matt. “We have to hurry. The library’s just ahead.”

  Sarah crossed her arms. “How do you know Dutch?”

  “She was my next door neighbour for twelve years. She hardly spoke any English. I picked it up.”

  “You just ‘picked it up.’”

  Matt cast a longing glance at the great grey building, breaching out of the mist. “What difference does it make? We have things to do. Dutch was an easy language to learn, okay? Besides, I had no one else to talk to. She was the one person who was nice to me.”

  “You never cease to amaze me,” she said, shaking her head. “Let’s go.”

  Matt charged forward without another word. The library was an unremarkable rectangle of brick attached to the arena and sports centre. For the first time in his life, Matt ignored the athletic centre and stood in awe of the sparkling glass doors of the library. “I’ve never been in here before.”

  “I know,” said Sarah.

  “It’s a big step for me.”

  Sarah rolled her eyes. “Come on.” She swung the door open and passed through the barrier. “The viewing room is at the back,” she whispered.

  Matt followed Sarah across the frayed red carpet and between a multitude of shelves. The shelves reached so high they restricted any view of the rest of the building except the narrow gully between them and the next path ahead. Matt felt as if he were a rat in a maze. A final weaving path brought them to the back of the library. There, they were confronted with a closed door labelled “Viewing Room.”

  Sarah opened the door and spilled light into the gloomy space beyond. The viewing room was arranged like a darkroom, with a mild artificial safelight and drawers of microfiche along the walls. Tucked in the corner was the microreader, a large box-like instrument with a scope at the bottom to feed the microfiche through and a screen at the top to enlarge and enhance the images. Sarah flipped the tiny cap from the microfilm and fed the reel under the scope of the reader. She flicked the machine on and, voilà, the images flashed in front of them on the screen.

  “Let me see,” said Matt, pushing her aside.

  “There’s no need to be rude. The screen is big enough for both of us to read at the same time. But you go ahead. I’m no good at deciphering computer codes, anyway.”

  Matt examined the image on the screen. No jumbled mathematics or scrambled words leaped into view. Instead it appeared to be a photograph of a beachfront, only not resembling any beach he’d ever seen before. Batteries with machine guns and mortars stretched all along the coast. On the beach he could make out barbed wire and sea walls.

  “What the heck is this?” Matt scrunched up his nose as he stared at the screen. He twisted the dial at the bottom and scrolled through the film. “It’s like an old war movie.”

  “Let me see,” said Sarah. She nudged him over so she could get a clear view. As she gazed at the images, her head tilted so far down that her dark, curly hair almost touched her elbow.

  “You’re right. It looks like a beachhead in Holland. See the windmills in the background. Maybe it was during World War II.”

  “How do you know this stuff?”

  “How do you think? I read.” She chewed on her lip. “It’s strange.”

  “You’re telling me,” said Matt. “I don’t get any of this. What would Nadine be doing with a microfilm from World War II?”

  “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Unless,” said Matt.

  Sarah raised her eyebrows.

  “Unless she went through the time portal and brought this back.”

  Sarah laughed as if the idea were preposterous. “I don’t think so. She’s not that brave. That would be the last time period anyone would want to visit. And occupied Europe would be the last place.”

  “Unless you’re a Nazi,” said Matt. “If anyone, Nadine would qualify.”

  “The Nazis lost the war. Even Nadine’s not stupid enough to risk going back there on either side. A lot of people died.”

  “Then why was this microfilm in the safe in my dad’s old house?”

  “Maybe that’s it,” said Sarah. “Your dad’s house. Was anyone from your family involved in World War II?”

  Matt shrugged. “I don’t know anything about my family.”

  “Your great-grandfather, maybe. My great-grandfather was a RAF pilot—a bomber pilot. He bombed quite a few cities in Europe during the war. I think he did top secret work, too.”

  “Really? What kind of work?”

  “I think he dropped agents into Europe to work with the Resistance. I remember Dad mentioning it.”

  “Dropped them?”

  “By parachute, silly,” she said. “It was real spy work.”

  “Cool,” said Matt. “Maybe this was real spy work, too. I never thought my family was involved in that kind of cloak-and-dagger stuff. I wish I could find out more.”

  “Find out more about what?” rumbled a voice behind them.

  Matt’s heart double-thumped. He glanced back to find a grinning Mr. Sachs leaning over his shoulder.

  “What are you doing here, Dad?” asked Sarah, her mouth twisted into a grimace. “Are you checking up on us?”

  “I would rather call it, ‘lending my assistance.’ You’ve been in enough trouble lately. I think it’s about time you accepted my help.”

  “Well, I don’t think you can help us,” said Sarah. “This is useless. There are no codes. It just looks like a World War II film taken in Holland.”

  “It does?” said Mr. Sachs, his eyes lighting up. “Let me see.” He squeezed his large frame between them and examined the screen, sliding the film through the reader very gradually and deliberately. “Amazing. Where did you get this?”

  “We told you,” said Matt. “My house.”

  “Where in your house?”

  “A safe in Nadine’s room. Actually, it was my dad’s old room.”

  “A safe,” said Sarah’s father. “You just happened to find it and knew the combination?”

  Sarah gazed at Matt anxiously. Matt bit his lip. If he told Sarah’s father about Nadine returning, then they’d be under house arrest from now on. He had to come up with an explanation quickly. “I knew about the safe before. Then we found the combination buried in a desk drawer yesterday.”

  “Really?” said Mr. Sachs, eyeing Matt, then Sarah. “Plausible, but I just don’t know.” He looked back at the screen. “I’d say someone in your family was involved in the SOE.”

  “What’s the SOE?” asked Matt.

  “The SOE was the Special Operations Executive created by the British government during World War II. The men in this organization were told by Churchill—you do know who Churchill was—”

  “Prime Minister of Britain,” said Matt.

  “Right. Tough old codger. He told them to ‘set Europe ablaze.’”

  “Set it on fire?” Matt raised his eyebrows in confusion.

  “In so many words. Infiltration, sabotage, reconnaissance, even assassination. They often took photographs and sent them back to England. Just like what’s on your microfilm here.”

  Matt nodded, a little awestruck. “Real spy stuff. And somebody in my family was in this spy group? In Holland?”

  “It would appear so,” said Mr. Sachs.

  “I wish I knew more about him,” said Matt.

  “Or her,” said Mr. Sachs. “There were women spies, too. In fact many of the bravest, toughest agents were women. They refused to talk when the Nazis interrogated them.”

  “Do you mean tortured?” asked Sarah.

  “Yes,” said her father, “but many of them didn’t crack. They didn’t give away their network. That saved a number of lives.”

  “All right,” said Matt. “I wish I knew more about him or her.”

  “It’s good we’re in a library,” said Mr. Sachs.

  “Oh no. I don’t want to read about them.”

  “How else will you get to know them?” He rose from the viewer and strode out the doorway into the main area of the library. Matt and Sarah trailed him reluctantly. Sarah’s dad plunked himself in front of a computer beside the bookshelves and began clicking. Soon he had a long list of SOE sources. He jotted down the call numbers and stalked off towards a seemingly endless row of thick volumes on World War II. He withdrew three books from the shelves and tossed them to Matt.

  “They’re rather good,” he said. “They’ll tell you everything you need to know about Special Operations.”

  “What’s this one?” asked Matt. He tapped a book called Camp X.

  “That was one of their training camps here in Ontario.”

  “They had one here?” asked Matt, a little too loudly because the librarian looked up from sorting books at a cart and glared.

 

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