Krakow.
Where had this one come from?
And was it the reason her uncle was dead?
She took the manuscript back to the piano. She sat down, carefully setting the fragile papers before her. She began to play.
The first movement opened with throbbing D minor chords. She had to go slowly, the technical demands way beyond her skills. Her heart was pounding with excitement as she grasped that she might be the first in centuries to play this.
She was sweating by the time she reached the end of the first movement. She stopped suddenly.
My God. A cadenza.
She stared at the notes. Her father had taught her that Mozart himself often injected cadenzas-improvised virtuoso solos-into his music. But he never wrote them down. Modern performers usually filled the gaps with their own improvisations that tried to mimic the master’s intent.
She began to play the cadenza. But her ears began to pick up strange discordant sounds. Odd little dissonances and patterns. She could suddenly hear her father’s voice speaking to her from behind as she practiced.
With Mozart, my dear, with music so pure, the slightest error stands out as an unmistakable blemish.
Kaminski stopped, her fingers poised over the keys.
There was something very strange about this cadenza.
The restaurant was almost empty. Two waiters stood at discreet attention just beyond a red curtain. Middleton could see from their faces they wanted to go home.
Yet Faust seemed in no hurry to go anywhere.
“So you never suspected anything about the Chopin?” Faust asked.
Middleton wasn’t sure how much to tell him. He still didn’t trust the man.
He thought suddenly about his interrupted ride to Baltimore with the two dopers Traci and Marcus. How he had made them listen to a Schoenberg recitatif, and Marcus’s crack that it sounded like nothing but wrong notes.
All the easier to hid a message in, he had told Marcus.
How hard could it be then to encrypt a code within the mathematical beauty of Chopin?
“As soon as I saw it, I felt something was wrong with it,” Middleton said. “But I just chalked it up to a bad forgery.”
“Jedynak didn’t say anything?” Faust asked.
Middleton shook his head. “When we were going over all the manuscripts, he seemed very interested in the Chopin in particular. He insisted I take it back to the States for authentication. Even though I told him I was sure it was a fake.”
“Maybe he was trying to get it safely out of the country. Maybe he was trying to keep it out of the wrong hands.”
“Jedynak knew the VX formula was encrypted in it?”
Faust shrugged.
Middleton sat back in his chair. “So I was supposed to be some fuckin’ mule?”
Faust said nothing. Which angered Middleton even more.
“Can I see it?” Faust asked.
When Middleton didn’t move, Faust gave him a sad smile. “I told you. I am desperate. I need your help.”
Middleton reached down to the briefcase at his feet and pulled out the manuscript. He handed it to Faust across the table.
Faust looked at it for a moment then his dark eyes came back up to Middleton.
“I know chemistry. You know music.” He pushed it across the table. “Tell me what you see.”
Middleton hesitated then turned the manuscript so he could read it. The paper and ink alone were enough for him to offer Jedynak his initial opinion that it was probably a forgery. A good one, yes, but still a forgery.
But now, he concentrated on the notes themselves. He took his time. The quiet bustle of the waiters clearing the cutlery and linen fell away. He was lost in the music.
He looked up suddenly.
“There’s something missing,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Faust asked.
Middleton shook his head. “It’s probably nothing. This is, after all, just a forgery. But the end of the first movement-a piece of it is missing.”
“But you’re not sure,” Faust asked.
“I wish I had… ”
“You wish you had another expert eye?”
“Yes,” Middleton said.
“I have one for you,” Faust said. “Come. Let’s go… But we go alone. Not with any visitors.”
“Who else would go with us?”
Faust smiled and glanced toward the front of the restaurant, where Tesla and Lespasse awaited. “Alone… That is one of the immutable terms of the deal.”
“I’ll follow your lead.”
Faust reached forward and tugged on Middleton’s tiny wire microphone/ earbud unit. He dropped it on the floor and crushed it. He then paid the bill. “Wait here.” He made a phone call from the pay phone near the men’s room then returned to the table. No more than five minutes later sirens sounded in the distance, growing closer. The attention of everyone in the restaurant turned immediately to the front windows. Then, in a flurry of lights and horns, police cars and emergency trucks skidded to a stop across the quaint street from the restaurant, in front of a bar. The bomb squad was the centerpiece of the operation.
Middleton had to give Faust credit. Not a single person in the restaurant or outside was focused anywhere but on the police action. They’d discover soon enough it was a false alarm, but the distraction would serve its purpose.
Middleton slipped the Chopin manuscript back into his briefcase and rose to his feet. Faust gestured to the kitchen.
“Through the back. Hurry. Time is short.”
This was where Felicia Kaminski was, M. T. Connolly thought, and it was where Middleton and Faust would continue their rendezvous.
Connolly now knew what Middleton had that so many people had deemed valuable enough to kill for: a seemingly priceless manuscript created for pleasure but now corrupted with the possibility of mass murder.
Even sitting alone, outside this hotel, in the dark privacy of her own thoughts, she was a little ashamed to admit she was ignorant of the strange history of this Chopin score, and of the human value of such a find. More so, until tonight, she had been as unaware as most Americans about the tragedies at St. Sophia.
But she did understand a monster’s need for glory, no matter how twisted and unimaginable it might be to a sane person. And it was an interesting side note to the events of the last few days. Her colleagues in law enforcement were looking for Middleton because they believed he killed two cops. But, thanks to Josef, her angel in Poland, she knew better. Middleton had in his hands a formula for mass destruction, and though he had formed an alliance with Kalmbach and Chambers, she believed he needed her help to keep it away from Vukasin. Kalmbach and Chambers she did not trust. In the core of her being, she believed the only way to stop a chemical attack within the borders of the United States was to keep Harold Middleton alive.
She took a quick look along the street and checked her watch. There was no sense in going inside the hotel until Middleton and Faust arrived-because it was only then that Vukasin would appear. She had left her previous post inside the restaurant only seconds before Middleton and Faust, sure they would come here to confer with Kaminski, who could help them solve their puzzle.
Now the street was asleep and silent, few lights reflecting life, except in the windows of the Harbor Court
