She stared at him. In a blue-striped business suit, white shirt and a blue tie that matched the sky over the Atlantic, he was utterly composed as he stroked back his long black hair.
“You are very lucky you were not killed last night,” he told her.
“It wasn’t luck.” Her senses had begun to return.
“Well, you were hiding from me, I suppose, which is as good as hiding from them.”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
Faust looked around the rear of the jet. Stewardesses were in the back cabin, preparing the beverage service.
“Think, Joanna,” he said. “Your Signor Abe is alive and so are you. I have the Mozart your uncle wanted to protect. Knowing that, tell me how you can believe I am the enemy.”
“You say nothing,” she said as she sat up, crossing her legs under her. “Niente. Nic. Nothing.”
“With the Mozart in my hand, I will go with you to meet Harold Middleton,” he replied. “The last man to see your uncle alive-except for the killer, that is.”
“You know who killed my uncle?”
Faust stood and held out his hand, beckoning her to leave the narrow row. “Of course,” he said, speaking in Polish. “The traitor Vukasin. The lowest of the lows. It’s a shame your uncle had to die in his presence.”
“Where is he?”
“Vukasin? No doubt he is within a kilometer or so of Colonel Middleton.”
Faust turned at the sound of the beverage cart rattling into the aisle.
“Come, Joanna,” he said, reaching for her. “They serve Champagne in first class. And Bavarian bleu cheese with a pumpkinseed bread-before lunch. I’m sure the effects of the panzanella and cantucci you had last night have long passed.”
Kaminski-no, Phelps-stood and wriggled her feet back into her worn shoes.
The arterial spray from Brocco’s severed throat had already dried on his heartbreakingly meager kitchen table, and rigor had begun to subside. Curiously, only his left hand was tied behind his back; his right hung limply, fingertips just above the blood- and urine-stained floor. Tesla saw the outline of a standard-sized reporter’s notebook on the table. Which meant the killer coerced Brocco to write something before he died. And getting Brocco to write something meant he was tortured before he was killed.
The killer also recorded Brocco’s voice-how else could a dead man call in sick after he died? Clever; a way to buy some time.
But what had he wanted Brocco to write? Tesla had been asked one pertinent question by Schmidt: Where is Harold Middleton? There are four immediate answers Brocco could have given: Middleton’s true location; a false one; a concession that he didn’t know where he was-as Tesla had-or a refusal to say anything. All but the first would lead to escalating pain and, if Brocco hadn’t known where his old boss was, he could have been compelled into speculation.
Tesla looked at her former colleague and, though his head was lolled back and his eyes opened wide and empty, she remembered tenderly his earnestness, his awkwardness around women, his passion for 18th century classical music, his unassailable belief in the power of a free press.
She peered into his mouth and saw that his tongue had been cut out. Which explained the dried blood on his lips and chin, and also whatever he wrote on the notebook’s page.
Tesla went to the sink to retrieve a ratty dishtowel, and brought it to the old, newsprint-smudged yellow wall phone. She dialed 911, gave them Brocco’s address and then let the handset fall, the towel unraveling and landing on the worn linoleum.
As she turned to leave, she saw Brocco had five deadbolt locks on the door. His tattered khaki saddlebag, which hung from the knob, was empty.
The ultra-cautious Brocco had let the killer in. The killer stole Brocco’s laptop.
Brocco knew the killer, and the email addresses stored in the laptop weren’t enough.
Tesla hustled down three flights of stairs and stepped into the late-afternoon sun. Shaken, her thoughts occupied by Brocco’s brutal murder as well as by speculation on where Harold might be, she momentarily abandoned the vigilance she applied when she stepped off the Acela in Wilmington, only to taxi to BWI, scurry through the airport as if she were late for a flight, and then pop back on Amtrak to Union Station, buying a ticket using a credit card issued to a woman who worked as an extra at Il Teatro Constanzi in Rome. Now as she hurried to catch the Georgia Avenue bus as it wheezed from its stop, she suddenly remembered, with a startling vividness, an unexpectedly satisfying afternoon she’d spent with Harold at a house on Lake Anna. Were she the type to blush, she would’ve.
Lake Anna, she told herself, unaware that she’d failed to see a man in an old sun-baked Citroen sitting directly across from Brocco’s shabby building. He wore a black stocking cap atop his shaved head; the cap covered a black-and-green tattoo of the jack of spades.
When Tesla leaped onto the bus, the man turned the ignition key, folded the switchblade he’d been using to clean his fingernails, and eased the car out of the spot.
He was waiting when, 33 minutes later, the woman in black pulled out of the Budget lot at Union Station in a dark blue rental, sunglasses on her nose.
There was nothing else they could do. They had no choice.
The Mercedes had kicked up pebbles as Perez parked it at the side of the house. As Middleton hoisted his weary body from the car, Perez said, “Harry, no lights.”
“She’s sleeping?”
“Harry… ”
No, of course not. Charley sent her husband to “Scotland” to rescue her father. If she wasn’t pregnant, she’d have been there herself.
Perez pulled the Python.
Groping through darkness, they’d stepped inside the house, and as Perez climbed the stairs to the bedrooms, Middleton put down his briefcase and headed through the kitchen to the living room.
Through the picture window, he saw his daughter’s silhouette on the porch. She was slumped in a wicker chair.
“Charley,” he’d whispered. Then he said her name again, louder this time.
When she didn’t respond, Middleton called to his son-in-law and raced outside.
Charley had his Browning A-Bolt across her lap.
Beneath the wicker chair was a tiny puddle of blood that had been dripping from between her legs.
Middleton recoiled.
“Oh Jesus,” Perez said as he skidded to a halt. “Charley. Charley, wake up.” At that moment, Middleton understood that his daughter had lost her baby. He felt a muted sense of relief: For a moment, seeing the blood, he thought they had gotten to her as they had Henryk Jedynak, Sylvia and others-and had tried to kill him at Dulles.
Kneeling, Perez said, “She needs-”
“Yeah, she does.”
And now Charlotte Perez was recovering at Martha Jefferson Hospital. A private room, IV drip in place, and her husband at her side, barely awake in a lounge chair with a.357 Magnum in his jacket side pocket.
Honey sunlight streamed through the windows. Treetops swayed in the gentle breeze.
Felt like hiding in plain sight to Harold Middleton.
To Jack Perez too.
11
