mind. “The picture of the dead man, Kavi Balan. What you didn’t notice was the very peculiar green brown tint to his eyes. That may be normal. But it may be a symptom of copper poisoning, due to very heavy exposure to the metal. Look up Kayser-Fleischer ring for more information. The discoloration is caused by copper deposits in the eye.”
She looked at her notes then checked her watch. Six minutes to the end of the Bach. Then she really would practice.
“Fact two. India is the world’s largest producer of heavy water. This is a very resource-intensive exercise. Depending on the process it can take up to 340,000 tons of ordinary water, H2O, to make one ton of heavy water, D2O (that’s deuterium, Harold-look it up). Maybe this is why your people are looking for new sources.”
The tea was getting tepid.
“Remember what I told you about Chernobyl and heavy water? You don’t always need it. But if you want to produce weapon-grade plutonium it’s a wonderful way of bypassing the uranium enrichment process, which involves a lot of technological infrastructure that’s impossible to hide. Not that heavy water is easy to manufacture but the process is a little like distilling cognac from wine. The difference is the conventional process uses a phosphor-bronze system to handle the distillation process whereas liquor is traditionally made using a copper still.”
She looked at the words on the page and felt proud of herself. Or, more accurately, of Bicchu, which had thrown up the answers so quickly she could scarcely believe the ease with which they had been assembled.
“Fact three. Eleven years ago, a patent was filed in the U.S. for a new heavy-water development process. As far as I can see it’s never been put into industrial production because some of the technology isn’t in place to go large scale yet. The patent was lodged by the U.S. subsidiary of an Indian company that appears to be a shell outfit. At least I can’t see any financial filings for it in the U.S. or in India.” She’d retrieved the entire submission from the U.S. Patents Office database for free and saved it as a separate document.
“Sikari’s name is on the patent too, along with a couple of other people. According to the patent submission the process would halve the amount of feed water normally needed to distill heavy water, shorten the process considerably and allow for minimal startup costs. You could almost see it as a DIY kit for making the raw material for a plutonium plant. And… ”
Always save the best for last. The dead Henryk Szeryng, bowing away at his Guarneri in the background, did.
“The particular circular piping structure used for the process is at the heart of the patent. It’s what makes it unique. The filing calls it ‘the copper bracelet.’ Except this one happens to be thirty feet tall.”
She finished the cold tea and listened to the music enter its final, closing phase.
The doorbell rang as she hit send. Felicia cursed the interruption. One of the less attractive aspects of Lamb’s Conduit Street was the number of people who came to private houses trying to sell everything from fake DVDs to Chinese paintings. Middleton had a little sign by the front of the house: no hawkers. It was useless. This being England, he didn’t have a door video camera. There was trust in a quiet, upper-class street like this, along with big powerful locks and a high-tech alarm system.
The bell rang once more while she was walking out of the living room into the corridor.
“I don’t want any,” she shouted, and was surprised to hear an American twang in her voice. Two years in New York did this to you, she guessed.
She unlocked the latch and half opened the door. A stocky man of Middle Eastern appearance was standing there. He was no more than 30, wore a Chelsea football shirt under a jacket, a trendy slicked-back haircut and the kind of stupid self-satisfied grin some young London men liked to sport when they encountered the opposite sex.
“I don’t want any,” she repeated with a sigh.
He looked pleased with himself and held up what looked like a brand new iPhone. Her email to Harold Middleton was there, with the last few paragraphs including the words “except this one happens to be thirty feet tall” visible in large black lettering. Puzzled, Felicia Kaminski blinked.
“You got it anyway,” the man said.
She drew back to slam the door in his face. The wood hit something along the way. She heard a yelp of pain but he was through, and there was no way of getting him outside again. A glancing blow struck her cheek and she stumbled toward the living room and grabbed the wooden inner door, sending it flying behind her.
He got struck hard in the face a second time and yelled again. Anger. Hurt. She liked both of them.
She propped herself against the sofa, trying to think, trying to locate something that might pass as a weapon.
“Hey,” he said.
He had his hands up and looked offended. His right eye had gone purple from where the door had caught him.
“We just want to talk,” he said. “That’s all.”
“Who wants to talk?” she asked, still looking, feeling behind the sofa with her right hand.
“Some big guys. They don’t mean you no harm. They told me that. They just want you to visit.”
“There are nicer ways to ask.”
He reached into his jacket with his free hand and took out a handgun.
“There are nastier ones too. Alive isn’t the same as undamaged. You choose, little girl. One way or another you’re coming with me.”
Szeryng was playing one of her most cherished passages. Felicia Kaminski hated this anonymous man for ruining it.
She looked him in the eye and said, “They won’t hurt me? That’s a promise?”
“A promise.”
He still had the iPhone in his left hand. She watched the way he held it. The obvious affection he had for the thing.
She put a hand to her head and let down her long brown hair she had fastened for practice. He watched her, smiling again.
“Isn’t that, like, the new version?” she asked, pointing at the phone. “The one with GPS or something?”
They all loved them. Sometimes it seemed there was nothing more precious on the planet.
“Yeah… ” He held it a little higher and pressed a button. A video of MIA began to play on the screen. “I got… ”
She was wearing the pointed leather boots she’d bought in a Gucci outlet place near San Giovanni. Those needle-like toes were going out of fashion but she liked them. She took one strong step forward, let her right leg fall back a little to gain momentum, then let loose with a kick, as hard as she could manage-right where it hurt most.
He screamed. The gun went sideways. She took his wrist and punched it back against the sharp edge of the wardrobe that contained Harold Middleton’s armory. The weapon clattered to the floor. The iPhone he held on to, but not after the second kick. By then he was on the ground, squirming, looking madder than ever.
If he gets up, I’m dead, she thought.
Her hand strayed to the nearest available object. She felt it and wanted to cry. It was the precious Bela Szepessy that Harold Middleton had bought for her. The finest musical instrument Felicia Kaminski had ever owned.
She smashed the bone-hard composite chin rest hard into his face. The bottom of the fiddle tore away from the body immediately. It was gone and she knew it. So she took the neck in both hands swung the century-old instrument round like a mallet, dashing the jagged wood into his head until he fell once more to the floor, his nose a bloody mess, his eyes filling with pain and fear.
There was an old vase, big and heavy within reach. She let go of the ruined violin, picked up the vase and threw it at his head, hitting him square on the temple.
He went quiet.
Quickly, efficiently, she snatched a set of spare metal strings from her fiddle case, kicked him over onto his chest, put one knee on his spine and bound his hands behind, then his feet.
