The flood of emotion hit out of nowhere, all at once. “Uncle Henryk is dead,” she managed to say, but her next words were lost in her sobs.
Abe Nowakowski locked the door to his shop at mid-day, something he’d never done before, and helped his beautiful young friend up the back steps to his flat on the second floor. There he fixed her some tea and listened to her story.
Kaminski hated herself for losing control of her emotions this way, but there were times in the next hour when she feared that her tears would never stop. They did, of course, eventually, but she sensed that Signor Abe would have sat with her for as long as he needed to.
“These things take time,” he said. He was a little man, a round man, with leathery skin and thick white hair that could never be tamed by a comb. When he spoke softly like this, his normally strong voice grew raspy. “I lost my Maria six years ago now, and while sometimes it feels as though the hole in my heart has healed, there are days when the pain is as raw as the day she died. I’ve come to think of the pain as proof that I loved her as much as I told her I did.”
The tea was awful, overly strong and overly sweet. “Did you know this might happen to my uncle, Signor Abe?” she asked.
The question seemed to startle the old man.
“The other day, when we met for coffee, you asked me to make a promise. I made it, and here I am. But I was wondering… ”
She let her voice trail as Signor Abe let his gaze fall to his lap. The body language answered her question; now she hoped that he wouldn’t dishonor her uncle’s memory with a transparent lie to protect her feelings.
“I had an inkling, yes,” he said. “Your uncle called me shortly before you and I met. He seemed… agitated. He spoke hurriedly, as if he were trying to get his message out before he could be interrupted. Or perhaps before he could change his mind.” Nowakowski took a deep breath and let it go slowly. When he resumed speaking, his rasp had deepened. “He told me that he would be sending me a package for safe keeping. He said that it would be too dangerous for him to have the package with him and that by sending it to me it would truly be safe.”
“Did the package come?”
He ignored the interruption. “I of course agreed, but then he called the very next day. This time, he was clearly frightened. He said that he hadn’t thought things through very clearly before he mailed it and he was terrified that people might think that he had sent it to you instead. It’s what people would naturally think of anything he sent to Rome. He asked me to check in with you more frequently and to try and find out if you had been in any danger. He wanted me to do this without alarming you, of course.”
“What kind of danger?”
The old man rose from the table to return to the stove. “Before today, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you. I think now we know. More tea, Felicia?”
She recoiled from the thought and tried to cover the reaction with, “I’ve been drinking coffee all day. I don’t need my hands to shake more than they already do.”
Nowakowski gave a knowing smile and limped back to the table. “Yes, I’ve been told that I make it a bit too strong. One of the hazards of not having very many guests, I suppose.”
“About the package,” she pressed. “Did you ever receive it?”
“I did.” He spoke the words as if his explanation was complete.
“What was it?”
Signor Abe’s gaze dropped again. Kaminski realized that this was his habit when he was embarrassed. “Dear Henryk asked me specifically not to open the package when it arrived. He told me that it would arrive double- wrapped, and that if anything ever happened to him, I was to open only the outer wrapping and then contact the name I found on the card taped to the inner wrapping.”
“But you opened it anyway,” she said, connecting the dots.
“Loneliness breeds weakness and curiosity,” he replied sadly. “And I’m afraid that I have been particularly lonely.”
“So what was in it?” She found the old man’s embarrassment charming, but she’d have ripped it open in a second if she’d have been in his place. No reason for shame there.
He thought for a moment, and then rose again from his chair. He disappeared into what must have been the bedroom, and then returned less than a minute later with a thick, mangled envelope. “I tried to re-wrap it,” he confessed, “but I’m afraid I made something of a mess.”
The envelope was a large one, more suitable to construction blueprints than a letter. He handled the package gently, with reverence, almost, as he placed it onto the table between them. When Felicia reached toward it, he shooed her hands away.
“Please,” he said curtly. “Allow me to do this.”
She folded her hands on her lap.
The old man wiped his hands aggressively with a napkin, and then carefully slid the contents into the daylight.
Kaminski leaned closer. She saw a stack of papers. Her first impression was that it was very old-yellow with the kinds of marks that could only be made with an old style ink pen. As more of the contents were revealed, she squinted and leaned even closer. “It’s a musical score,” she said, recognizing the rows of staves.
Nowakowski allowed himself a conspiratorial smile. “Much more than that,” he said. He gently placed it on top of the envelope and turned it so that she could better read his treasure.
My God. Could it be what she thought? There was no mistaking the long runs of sixteenth notes and the other musical notations, but as exotic as they looked written by hand, her eyes were drawn to the written signature at the top. In her circles, there was no more famous a signature.
“Mozart?” she gasped.
“An original,” he beamed. “Or at least I think it is.”
She didn’t know what to say. “It must be worth a fortune.”
“Three fortunes,” he corrected. “Priceless, I would think. It’s clearly a piano concerto, but I’ve searched the Koechel Catalogue and this isn’t there. I think this is an undiscovered work.”
She recognized the Koechel Catalogue as the internationally recognized indexer of Mozart’s myriad compositions. If Signor Abe was right, then there truly was no way to estimate the value of the manuscript. “This is fabulous,” she said. “But I don’t understand why it frightened Uncle Henryk. This could have answered all of his wildest dreams. Honestly, this is the kind of discovery that he would have given anything to make. Why would he keep it a secret? Why would he send it away?”
“All very good questions,” Nowakowski agreed. “But I have an even bigger one.”
She waited for it while the old man slid the inner envelope out from under the manuscript. She saw a name, but there was no address.
He said, “Who is this Harold Middleton and how are we supposed to find him?”
9
The moment her Nextel phone chirped, Special Agent M. T. Connolly had a bad feeling.
She’d just gotten into the elevator at the brand-new building that housed the FBI’s Northern Virginia Resident Agency, on her way back to her office. It was a cubicle, actually, not an office, but she could always dream.
Glancing at the caller ID, she immediately recognized the area code and exchange prefix: the call came from the Hoover building-FBI headquarters in D.C. Not good. Only bad news came from the Hoover building, she’d learned. She stepped out of the elevator and back onto the gleaming terrazzo floor of the lobby.
“Connolly,” she said.
A man’s voice, reedy and overly precise: “This is Emmett Kalmbach.”
