“I am, yes.” The Slav walked closer and looked down. “Ah, a Bosendorfer. One of Germany’s great contributions to culture.”
“Oh, yes,” the slight man said, caressing the black lacquer and gothic type of the company’s name. “It’s perfection. It truly is. Would you like to try it? Do you play?”
“Not like you. I wouldn’t presume to even touch a single key after hearing your performance.”
“You’re too kind. You say you’re looking for someone. You mean Anna? The French horn student? She was here earlier but I believe she’s left. There’s no one else, except the cleaning woman. But I can get a message to anyone in the orchestra or the administration, if you like.”
The visitor stepped closer yet and gently brushed a key-true ivory, the piano having been made before the ban. “You, sir,” he said, “are the one I came to see.”
“Me? Do I know you?”
“I saw you earlier today.”
“You did? Where? I don’t recall.”
“You were having lunch at a cafe overlooking that huge building. The fancy one, the biggest one in Warsaw. What is it?”
The piano tuner gave a laugh. “The biggest one in the country. The Palace of Culture and Science. A gift from the Soviets, which, the joke goes, they gave us in place of our freedom. Yes, I did have lunch there. But… Do I know you?”
The stranger stopped smiling. He looked from the piano into the narrow man’s eyes.
Like the assault of the sudden vehement chord in Haydn’s Surprise Symphony, fear struck the piano tuner. He picked up his tool kit and rose quickly. Then stopped. “Oh,” he gasped. Behind the stranger he could see two bodies lying on the tile near the front door: Anna, the horn player; and beyond her, the cleaning woman. Two shadows on the floor surrounded their limp figures, one from the entranceway light, one from their blood.
The Slav, not much taller than the piano tuner but far stronger, took him by the shoulders. “Sit,” he whispered gently, pushing the man down on the bench then turning him to face the piano.
“What do you want?” A quaking voice, tears in his eyes.
“Shhh.”
Shaking with fear, the piano tuner thought madly, What a fool I am! I should have fled the moment the man commented on the Bosendorfer’s German ancestry. Anyone with a true understanding of the keyboard knew the instruments are made in Austria.
When he was stopped at Krakow’s John Paul II airport, he was certain his offense had to do with what he carried in his briefcase.
The hour was early and he’d wakened much earlier at the Pod Roza, “Under the Rose,” which was his favorite hotel in Poland, owing both to its quirky mix of scrolly ancient and starkly modern, and to the fact that Franz Liszt had stayed there. Still half asleep, without his morning coffee or tea, he was startled from his stupor by the two uniformed men who appeared over him.
“Mr. Harold Middleton?”
He looked up. “Yes, that’s me.” And suddenly realized what had happened. When airport security had looked through his attache case, they’d seen it and grown concerned. But out of prudence the young guards there had chosen not to say anything. They let him pass, then called for reinforcements: these two large, unsmiling men.
Of the twenty or so passengers in the lounge awaiting the bus to take them to the Lufthansa flight to Paris, some people looked his way-the younger ones. The older, tempered by the Soviet regime, dared not. The man closest to Middleton, two chairs away, glanced up involuntarily with a flash of ambiguous concern on his face, as if he might be mistaken as his companion. Then, realizing he wasn’t going to be questioned, he turned back to his newspaper, obviously relieved.
“You will please to come with us. This way. Yes. Please.” Infinitely polite, the massive guard nodded back toward the security line.
“Look, I know what this is about. It’s simply a misunderstanding.” He larded his voice with patience, respect and good nature. It was the tone you had to take with local police, the tone you used talking your way through border crossings. Middleton nodded at the briefcase. “I can show you some documentation that-”
The second, silent guard picked up the case.
The other: “Please. You will come.” Polite but inflexible. This young, square-jawed man who seemed incapable of smiling held his eye firmly and there was no debate. The Poles, Middleton knew, had been the most willful resisters of the Nazis.
Together they walked back through the tiny, largely deserted airport, the taller guards flanking the shorter, nondescript American. At 56, Harold Middleton carried a few more pounds than he had last year, which itself had seen a weight gain of few pounds over the prior. But curiously his weight-conspiring with his thick black hair-made him appear younger than he was. Only five years ago, at his daughter’s college graduation, the girl had introduced him to several of her classmates as her brother. Everyone in the group had bought the deception. Father and daughter had laughed about that many times since.
He thought of her now and hoped fervently he wouldn’t miss his flight and the connection to Washington, D.C. He was going to have dinner with Charlotte and her husband that night at Tyson’s Corner. It was the first time he’d see her since she announced her pregnancy.
But as he looked past security at the awaiting cluster of men-also unsmiling-he had a despairing feeling that dinner might be postponed. He wondered for how long.
They walked through the exit line and joined the group: two more uniformed officers and a middle-aged man in a rumpled brown suit under a rumpled brown raincoat.
“Mr. Middleton, I am Deputy Inspector Stanieski, with the Polish National Police, Krakow region.” No ID was forthcoming.
The guards hemmed him in, as if the 5-foot, 10-inch American was going to karate kick his way to freedom.
“I will see your passport please.”
He handed over the battered, swollen blue booklet. Stanieski looked it over and glanced at the picture, then at the man in front of him twice. People often had trouble seeing Harold Middleton, couldn’t remember what he looked like. A friend of his daughter said he would make a good spy; the best ones, the young man explained, are invisible. Middleton knew this was true; he wondered how Charlotte’s friend did.
“I don’t have much time until that flight.”
“You will not make the flight, Mr. Middleton. No. We will be returning to Warsaw.”
Warsaw? Two hours away.
“That’s crazy. Why?”
No answer.
He tried once more. “This is about the manuscript, isn’t it?” He nodded to the attache case. “I can explain. The name Chopin is on it, yes, but I’m convinced it’s a forgery. It’s not valuable. It’s not a national treasure. I’ve been asked to take it to the United States to finish my analysis. You can call Doctor-”
The inspector shook his head. “Manuscript? No, Mr. Middleton. This is not about a manuscript. It’s about a murder.”
“Murder?”
The man hesitated. “I use the word to impress on you the gravity of the situation. Now it is best that I say nothing more, and I would strongly suggest you do the same, isn’t it?”
“My luggage-”
“Your luggage is already in the car. Now.” A nod of his head toward the front door. “We will go.”
“Please, come in, Mr. Middleton. Sit. Yes there is good… I am Jozef Padlo, first deputy inspector with the Polish National Police.” This time an ID was exhibited, but Middleton got the impression the gaunt man, about his own age and much taller, was flashing the card only because Middleton expected it and that the formality was alien in Polish law enforcement.
“What’s this all about, Inspector? Your man says murder and tells me nothing more.”
