It's a deadly game . . . and every move could be their last!As Constantine Rea and his best friend, Hannah, sit across a chessboard from each other, a rickety train takes them from their Vienna home to a dream ski vacation in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania. There, the sixteen-year-olds will be staying in style with Hannah's uncle-the American ambassador! But Con's VIP visions melt away when he opens a letter from his elderly friend Frau Maria Rozstoski describing a violent mystery from her Romanian youth and asking a rare favor: Could Con look into it on his vacation?This seemingly simple request leads Con and Hannah straight into the dark corners of Romania's anti-Jewish past, from a terrifying neo-Nazi rally to World War II secrets of the brutal Iron Guard. The closer they get to the truth, the greater the risk. And why does their search keep coming back to an orphan named Poppy?

When Con, an American teenager living in Austria, learns that Vienna is a center of international intrigue, his search for a spy entangles him in a mystery that leads back to the Holocaust.