hadn’t occurred to her that she would have to strip off articles of clothing.
“Are you going to walk through the process with me?” she’d asked when Peter had finished.
“No, Miss Phelps, I’m afraid that will not be possible. Security at the airport is very tight these days. I must stay with the car and drive away as soon as I drop you off. You will be on your own.”
“Where is Faust?”
Peter’s eyes found hers in the rearview mirror. For a long moment, he said nothing. “He will be where he needs to be at the correct time. What is most important is that you remember to show no sign of recognition if you see him again. Let him make that move.”
“I remember,” she said. I’m in no hurry to know him anyway.
Having arrived at the airport with nearly three hours to spare, Felicia moved quickly to get through the check- in process at the ticket counter, but then took her time heading for security. Befitting her first-class status, Faust had given her 300 U.S. dollars to fill her wallet, and she decided to put some of the windfall to good use at an airport coffee shop. She found a table at the edge of the concourse, one that offered a broad view of the security lines. It was a sea of people, shoulder to shoulder in a human corral.
On the far side of the crowd, she could see the first-class security area, where the crowds were much thinner and better organized, and that was where she concentrated her attention. It was there that she predicted that things were about to get exciting.
It took long enough that she had to order a second espresso-surrendering herself to the inevitability of being wide-eyed all night-but after 45 minutes, she saw what she’d been waiting for. Faust finally entered the line. In his business attire, he looked completely at home among the other wealthy travelers.
From 15 meters away, she watched as the man who’d saved her life shrugged out of his suit jacket and stepped out of his shoes. He placed his briefcase on the belt for the x-ray machine, then stepped through the narrow archway of the metal detector.
Kaminski’s heart hammered against her ribs as she began to wonder if something had gone wrong. There should be a reaction by now. There should-
Suddenly, an alarm erupted and a red light strobed urgently over the security checkpoint. It was the kind of noise and light that guaranteed attention and made people instinctively want to run away. All except for the carabinieri, that is, who swarmed from all over the concourse to respond to the threat.
Biting the inside of her cheek to stifle any sign of the satisfied smile that might draw attention to her, Kaminski pushed away from the table and started walking toward the taxi stands at the front of the airport. Before that, she needed to find a cambio, where she could convert her windfall of U.S. dollars into more readily spent euros. She knew she had time-Faust would be busy with the carabinieri for at least a couple of hours, she imagined-and she hoped that even a short delay would provide enough time for her to do what she needed to do and then disappear.
Meanwhile, the officials at the airport would be turning Faust’s luggage inside out as they looked for the pistol that showed up so clearly in the x-ray. Ultimately, probably in fairly short order, they’d find the source of their alarm.
She wondered if any of them would even smile when they realized that they’d mobilized dozens of policia because a businessman had covered a water pistol with a foil wrapper and stuffed it in one of the file pockets of his brief case.
Felicia Kaminski left the airport with none of her new clothes-none but what she wore, that is. Her fancy new suitcase was somewhere in the bowels of the airport, already checked and on its way to the aircraft that would dead-head it to New York. She kept the money too, but beyond that, she carried only those items that were rightfully hers-her backpack and her violin.
She had the taxi drop her at the foot of Via dei Polacchi, and she added a generous tip to the fare. What was the point of a windfall if it couldn’t be shared with others? The driver thanked her effusively and offered three times to wait for her while she ran whatever errand she was on, but after she’d steadfastly refused, he finally understood that her insistent “no” meant just that, and he drove on.
She waited until the taxi was out of sight around the corner before she started walking up the hill. She’d never actually visited the shop she was looking for-La Musica-but she’d sipped coffee with Abe Nowakowski, the proprietor, several times since she’d arrived in Rome. Signor Abe and her uncle had shared a childhood, it turned out, living only a few houses away from each other in the old country. Uncle Henryk had asked his friend to look in on her from time to time. During their last meeting, at a cafe near the Pantheon, only a few dozen meters from the spot where she had first encountered the man who called himself Faust, Abe’s demeanor had been different than it had been before. His easy humor seemed clouded by something dark.
During one of her visits, she asked, “Are you feeling all right?”
He’d smiled, but it wasn’t convincing. “I am just getting old, that is all,” he said. He paused a moment before adding, “I am concerned for you, Felicia.”
So that was it. “I enjoy my life, Signor Abe. I understand that you worry about me, but as I’ve told you before-”
He cut her off with a dismissive flick of his hand. “I know what you have to say, so let’s pretend that you have already said it and move on. I want you to promise me something.”
She cocked her head, waiting. When dealing with her uncle’s generation, it never paid to make a promise before all terms had been revealed.
“If anything happens to you, if ever you are in any trouble, I want you to come to me.”
Looking back on the conversation now, she wondered if Signor Abe hadn’t known something. Even at the time, she’d felt her pulse quicken with his sense of urgent mystery.
He’d read her expression exactly, and hurried to soothe her. “I don’t mean to frighten you,” he’d said. “As I get older I sometimes worry about things that perhaps I shouldn’t. But if there ever comes a time when you feel as if you are in danger-or even if there comes a time when you merely feel lonely or hungry for some of my fettuccini-I want you to promise that you will come by the shop. I worry that I am not showing you the hospitality that I should. I don’t want to disappoint my dear friend Henryk.”
That conversation had taken place only two weeks ago. Now, as she walked purposefully up the hill, she forced her mind to think of music. If she could bridge the synapses of her brain with triplettes and chromatic scales, maybe there would be no room left for her fear. No room left for the looming grief that awaited her when she finally confronted the fact of her uncle’s death.
She walked faster. The increased tempo brought to her imagination the sound of American bluegrass music- fiddle music instead of the violin-a music form that she’d never taken seriously until she’d listened to a CD that featured Yo Yo Ma bringing sounds out of his cello that she had never heard before. She heard alternating strains of joy and melancholy. She’d tried to recreate the sounds in her own violin, but could never quite discover them. It was as if those particular strands of musical DNA could not be found in an instrument played by a Polish girl whose childhood was steeped in classical training.
Kaminski saw the sign for La Musica from a block away, and instantly wished that the walk could have been longer. With a few more steps, perhaps she could have found the emotional strength she craved, the strength she needed before breaking terrible news to such a nice man. But it was not to be. She had arrived, and she could think of no reason not to enter the shop.
Passing across the threshold was like stepping backward a hundred years. Narrow, dark and deep, the shop reminded her of a cave; where there would be bats, dozens of violins and violas and cellos hung instead from the ceiling, each of them glimmering as if they’d been freshly dusted. Double basses lined the left-hand wall, and along the right, countless pages of sheet music peeked out from above their wooden racks. At the very back of the store…
Actually, she couldn’t see the back of the store through the shadows that cloaked it.
“Felicia?”
The voice came from behind her-from the cash register she had not seen, hidden away as it was around the corner at the very front of the store. She instantly recognized the heavily accented voice as that of Signor Abe, but she jumped anyway as she whirled to look at him.
“Felicia, what’s wrong?” Even as he spoke, he was on his way around to the front of the tiny counter, moving as quickly as his arthritic hips would allow him. “What has happened?”
