Always

The seventh and final book in Morris Gleitzman's "Once" series brings together two narrators: Wassim, a ten-year-old boy of mixed heritage living in Eastern Europe, and Felix Salinger, an eighty-seven-year-old retired surgeon in Melbourne, Australia, whose childhood survival of the Holocaust was chronicled in the preceding novels.

Wassim lives with Uncle Otto, his late mother's brother, a car mechanic forced to serve the Iron Weasels, a violent gang of racist football hooligans. The Weasels threaten Otto and target Wassim because of his brown skin. At the public library, Wassim discovers a newspaper article about Felix, whose wartime childhood in Poland matches a name in a secret note from his late Grandpa Amon. The note directs Wassim to find Wilhelm Nowak, Felix's wartime alias, promising that this man will help because of something Amon gave him at a Nazi command center called Speerkopf. Two teenage Weasels harass Wassim at the library, and he recklessly tells them Felix is on his side.

That night, Weasels visit the workshop. Through the door, Wassim hears a grating voice he has never encountered threatening Uncle Otto. When Wassim intervenes, a Weasel grabs him by the throat until he collapses. Afterward, Uncle Otto reads the article about Felix online. Over the following days, Otto secretly sells stolen iPads for cash and takes Wassim to the airport, revealing they are leaving the country.

In Melbourne, Felix has just said goodbye to his granddaughter Zel, who is departing for Syria to work in war-zone hospitals. Days later, a boy in a heavy winter coat bangs on Felix's door and asks if he tried to blow up the Speerkopf center in 1942. Wassim shows his grandfather's note, and Felix recognizes the name Amon Kurtz: the Hitler Youth boy who befriended Felix during the war and gave him a birthday gift from Zelda, a six-year-old friend whom the Nazis killed. Wassim then presents a second note from Uncle Otto, who has flown back to fight the Weasels alone and asks Felix to care for the boy.

Felix takes Wassim in. Wassim insists they cannot involve police because some Weasels are officers. Felix's phone receives a text from Cyryl Szynsky, the person who as a boy helped deliver Zelda into Nazi hands. Now elderly, Cyryl claims to regret his past and proposes working with Felix to protect Wassim, using a locket Grandpa Amon gave Felix at Speerkopf. Felix is nauseated but conflicted, as the Szynsky family has grown powerful and well connected.

Felix takes Wassim to a memorial grave for Zelda and digs up the locket, a small metal heart containing stick-figure drawings with dancing chickens scratched inside. Wassim notices three of the four chickens are drawn differently, with deeper scratches. When he runs to the car for a magnifying glass, he finds Felix's dog Jumble dead, throat slit, the Weasels' symbol smeared in blood on the car door. They return home to find Felix's house burned to the ground, with another Weasels symbol left behind. Texts from Cyryl urge them to flee to Europe, where tickets await.

Felix's oldest friend, Ruby, arranges secret flights. On the plane, Wassim examines the locket and discovers the unusual chickens contain hidden numbers and letters scratched into the metal by Grandpa Amon. One chicken yields letters Felix assembles into the German word Schatz, meaning both treasure and precious person. Two others yield numbers with the letters N and E, matching latitude and longitude format. Felix explains the legend of a Nazi treasure train hidden in Eastern Europe. Wassim reveals his great-grandfather was a Nazi train driver, and they theorize Amon encoded the treasure's location as atonement for failing to save Zelda.

Wassim tells Felix his parents' story: Police claimed they drowned in a canal, but his mother disliked swimming and his father, an African refugee who survived hours in the ocean, could not plausibly have drowned. The bodies were never found. Privately, Wassim constructs a hopeful theory that his parents faked their deaths to protect him. A man named Gavin Grotzwicz, posing as a grateful former patient, appears on their connecting flight, confirming the Weasels are tracking them. They evade him by faking a medical emergency at the airport.

In Eastern Europe, police with Weasel connections confine them to their hotel. A sympathetic concierge helps them sneak out to Uncle Otto's empty workshop, where his car, gun, rubber tubing, and volatile chemicals are missing. Felix realizes Otto took the chemicals to make weapons. A football newspaper reveals the next day's match will draw media attention because Daouda Ndione, a celebrated Senegalese footballer, is playing.

At the stadium, Weasels hurl racist abuse at Ndione. At halftime, Wassim gives Ndione an apple while a TV crew films. In the second half, Ndione scores the winning goal and lifts his shirt to reveal a message dedicated to Wassim. A reporter interviews Felix and Wassim; Felix shows Wassim's bruised neck on camera and names the Iron Weasels, creating a protective shield of public visibility.

Afterward, a black Mercedes arrives. Wassim recognizes the driver's grating voice as the one that threatened Uncle Otto. The man is Kcruk Szynsky, Cyryl's son and the true leader of the Iron Weasels. At the gang's clubhouse, Cyryl appears on a walking frame, his right hand missing. Kcruk reveals the text was bait to lure Felix to Europe; the Weasels killed Jumble and burned Felix's house to frighten him into coming. Kcruk plans to kill Wassim in front of Felix to inflict maximum suffering. He reveals the Szynskys forced Grandpa Amon to reveal the treasure, which led to Amon's death. He then delivers the worst blow: The Weasels murdered Wassim's parents as a warning to European women not to marry men like Wassim's father. Uncle Otto secretly recovered and buried their bodies.

Felix offers the treasure coordinates for Wassim's life. As Kcruk advances with a knife, everyone grows dizzy and collapses. Uncle Otto has piped carbon monoxide through the building's windows from his car's exhaust using rubber tubing. He drags Felix and Wassim out under gunfire that wounds his arm, rigs Kcruk's Mercedes to explode, and speeds them away.

Wassim argues they cannot let the Weasels find the treasure. At dawn, they reach the coordinates near a mining town. Following an old railway track, they find a cliff face concealed behind ivy, its cavity packed with rocks laced with explosive booby-trap wires. A message from Kcruk warns them to walk away. Felix agrees, but while he tends to Otto's wound, Wassim slips off and descends a shaft into a vast cavern containing the treasure train: a rusted locomotive and carriage. Inside, piles of gold glint beneath hundreds of small human bones. The Nazis covered the treasure with murdered children's bodies so the train would resemble a routine victim transport. In the locomotive cabin, Wassim finds a tattered linen bag marked with Zelda's name in Amon's handwriting. The bag is empty; he places some small bones inside.

Kcruk and 20 Weasels arrive and capture Felix and Otto. Felix uses hidden lock-picking tools to free himself. The booby trap detonates, obliterating the Weasels near the entrance and Cyryl. Wassim survives by burying himself in sand and breathing through tubing. Felix collapses in the shattered cave, believing Wassim dead, until a small voice calls out. Wassim emerges and presents Felix with the linen bag, apologizing that the bones may not truly be Zelda's. Felix gazes at them, then at Wassim, and tells him gently that Zelda is here.

In spring, they bury Zelda's remains beside Wassim's parents' graves. Zel, who has returned from Syria, and Uncle Otto are present. Felix speaks about Zelda's life. As Felix and Wassim fill the grave together, they share a wordless look of permanent understanding. In a final chapter, Felix lies in a hospital bed at the end of his life, surrounded by faces both living and remembered. Wassim hands him pathology results folded into an origami bird. The vision of young Zelda appears, asking her familiar question. Felix addresses the reader, promising that all who shared his story will remain in his heart, alive and full of hope.