What was happening? Who was Mozart? Had Jack heard from Harry? Had he lied about that? Why would he? Was Harry really okay? Suddenly, she didn’t understand anything. The miscarriage. The abortion pills. A secret phone with coded addresses. Her heart thundered in her chest. Her mouth went dry. She needed answers.
She pressed the button for MOZART, thumbed back to the call log, and pressed the button for the MOZART profile. It contained no real name, no email and no other information except for the phone number, which had too many digits. What did that mean? Then she realized there was a country code in front of the number. She didn’t know which country it was, but she knew it was an international number.
She pressed the buttons for two more profiles, HANDEL and LISZT. Both profiles were international calls, too, with no other information, like real name, email, or home phones. Why would Jack have a cell phone entirely-and solely-of international numbers? He’d never even traveled abroad; she was the world traveler of the two.
What about the baby?
She pushed the button and recalled MOZART, whoever the hell that was. The phone rang three times.
“Vukasin,” answered a man, in a thick accent she couldn’t identify.
She pressed End, her heart hammering. Who was Vukasin? What was going on? She couldn’t puzzle it out fast enough. Something was horribly wrong, and Jack would be back any minute. She didn’t know what to do. Confront him? Then she realized that this Vukasin guy could call back and blow her cover.
There was only one thing to do.
She hurled the cell phone to the hospital floor with all her might. The phone’s plastic back sprung open, and the slim orange battery flew out, skidding to the wall in front of the chair.
Just then Perez appeared grinning in the doorway. “Honey, I’m home!”
She arranged her face into a wifely mask and turned sheepishly to the door. “Please don’t be mad,” she said, willing herself to act natural. “The nurse gave me your phone but I dropped it.”
“Damn, Charley.” Annoyance flickered over his handsome features. “It was a new one.”
“I noticed. Sorry.” She eased back into bed, watching her husband with new suspicion. “Did you buy one of those insurance contracts for it?”
“No.” He strode to the chair, bent down, and began picking up the pieces of the cell phone. “Looks like all the king’s horses and all the king’s men…”
“… can’t put it back together again?” She finished his sentence with ersatz remorse.
“Nah, but that’s OK.” He slipped the plastic shards of the phone into his jacket pocket and turned to his wife with a smile she had loved so much it broke her heart.
Did you kill our baby?
Did you try to kill me?
But she wouldn’t ask him anything, just yet. She had to calculate her next move. Until she knew more, the best course was to keep her mouth shut and her eyes open.
She wasn’t Harry Middleton’s daughter for nothing.
14
Kaminski stood at the window staring down at the inner harbor. A fog had rolled in and the lights of the buildings blinked back at her like eyes in the dark.
Her head was pounding-from bone-deep fatigue and the lingering effects of Faust’s Champagne. But also from fear.
She had never really felt fear like this before. Not when her parents disappeared and she was left on her own. Not when she had felt the press of the violin string against her neck when the man tried to kill her in Rome. Not even after she found out Uncle Henryk had been murdered.
But an hour ago, seeing the tattooed man bound in the closet, his bald head pouring blood, the cold, hammering fear began. It built as she heard him whimper as Faust whispered in his ear, as she saw his terrified tears, smelled the stench of his urine.
Shivering, she now moved away from the window, rubbing her hands over her arms. She scanned the suite’s living room, its oriental carpets and colonial furnishings. A mahogany bar dominated one corner, a gleaming baby grand piano the other. Off to the left, through open French doors, she could see one of the two bedrooms. Faust’s Vuitton duffle sat on the four-poster bed.
After the trip to the apartment, Faust had dropped her back at the hotel, and without another word, locked the door behind him and left. The man he called Nacho had been told to watch her. When he finally dozed off in the chair by the door, gun in hand, Kaminski had thought of running.
But where would she go? Faust had taken her passport, the one with the Joanna Phelps name on it, and her money. She knew no one in this country.
No, that wasn’t true. She knew of one person: Harold Middleton, who taught at the American University in Washington, D.C., and whose name was on the package containing the Mozart manuscript Uncle Henryk had sent to Signor Abe days before he was murdered.
Kaminski shut her eyes, Abe Nowakowski’s offer of help echoing in her head. She had tried to call him again in Rome, but the operator told her there was a block on her phone. No calls in or out. And so she was Faust’s prisoner, and she didn’t know why.
Nacho stirred, but went back to his snoring.
Kaminski paced slowly across the living room.
Her eyes found the piano in the corner and she went to it.
She ran a hand over the sleek black surface then slowly lifted the keyboard’s lid. The keys glowed in the soft light.
Suddenly, the image of her father was in her head. She could almost see his long fingers moving over the keys of the old piano in their home. Her little hands had tried so hard at her lessons to please him.
He had been so disappointed when she chose the violin, her mother’s instrument. Almost as if she had chosen her mother over him. But it had never been like that. She had loved her father so much, missed him so much.
And when he died, Uncle Henryk had been there for her to take his place.
Now the tears came. Kaminski did not stop them.
She sat down at the piano.
She played one chord. Then a quick section from a half-forgotten song. The Yamaha had an overly bright sound and a too-light action. But it didn’t matter. Just hearing the notes was soothing.
She played a Satie Gymnopedie then started Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, a piece Uncle Henryk had so loved.
She stopped suddenly.
Mozart.
She wiped a hand over her face. The Mozart manuscript Signor Abe had given her: Was this the reason Faust had brought her here?
She glanced over at Nacho, who watched her with tired eyes.
She went quickly to Faust’s bedroom. He had said the manuscript was “safe,” locked in a closet. She threw open its louvered doors. The closet was empty. She turned and spotted his slender black briefcase sitting on the bed near the duffle.
There was nothing in it but an automatic gun, with an empty clip nearby, and a copy of Il Denaro. She stared at the date: four days ago. She picked it up and unfolded the paper.
Several yellowed manuscript papers fluttered to the bed. Where better for a man like Faust to hide a priceless Mozart manuscript than in plain sight, bundled in the financial news?
She carefully gathered the pages. Back at La Musica, when she had first seen the manuscript, she hadn’t had time to really look at it. But now everything registered. The black scratchings were unmistakable. The fine strokes of faded ink. The distinctive signature. And finally, in the left corner very small: no. 28.
Her heart began to beat fast. She knew there were only twenty-seven catalogued Mozart piano concertos. Many of the originals that had resurfaced after the war were now housed in the Jagiellonska Library in
