“So if it has a pink ribbon tied around it it’s a birthday present?”
“Maybe you didn’t pull the trigger yourself, but you backed the man who did.”
“Rugova was a pig. May he rest in—”
“I hope he’s rotting in hell.”
“He was useful.”
Middleton stabbed a finger toward his rival’s chin. “You stink of guilt.”
“I like you, Colonel. I need you. That’s why I must stop you from continuing to demean your own intelligence.”
Before Middleton could reply, Faust snapped his fingers at the waiter, who skittered across the dining room. “My guest here will have the lacquered octopus to start; for me, the pear and caramelized walnut salad. We’d both like the whole Bronzini. No salt.”
Faust lifted his glass. “Here’s to the beginning of our partnership. Success!”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Tens of thousands; maybe hundreds of thousands of people are counting on us, but don’t know it.”
“Music lovers?” he asked darkly.
“I know a great deal about you, Colonel. I’ve studied you carefully. You’re a man who is relentless in pursuit of what you consider a worthy goal. I hope you’ll excuse me if I say that your goals so far have been wrong-headed.”
The salad and octopus arrived and were soon treated to showers of fresh black pepper.
“I bet you the price of this meal that we’ll be working together by the evening’s end,” Faust offered.
Middleton nodded his acceptance.
In a small bookkeeper’s office in a corner of the lemon-and-brine-scented kitchen of Kali’s Court, M.T. Connolly sat listening with desperate attention to the two men at the table not 50 yards from her, their voices traveling through an earbud.
Kalmbach. At his disposal were hundreds of Bureau agents and yet, in a display of typically unnecessary bravado, he drove to Martha Jefferson Hospital by himself, unaware Connolly was behind him. Now, hours later, Kalmbach, with Dick Chambers in tow, had led her to Middleton. And Faust, who was beginning the next phase of his dissertation with an anecdote about his father.
Connolly listened hard. The bug was under Faust’s bread plate.
“…Invitations to dance made with simple nods,” Faust said. “The intense courtship…”
She jumped as her cell phone rang. She stretched her leg and snapped it quickly from her belt. “This is Connolly.”
“Hello, Buttercup.”
She walked toward a corner, away from the kitchen staff’s prying eyes. “Padlo,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Where are you?”
“Sono a Roma,” he replied, his Italian accented with as much American English as his native Polish. “Someone wants to say hello.”
“Josef, wait—”
“Oh, and by the way, his English is…Actually, it’s non-existent.”
Connolly sighed as Faust and Middleton continued in her other ear.
“Buona sera, Signora Connolly,” an old man said nervously. “Il mio nome è Abe Nowakowski. Posso aiutarlo con il vostro commercio.”
“I’m sorry—‘Commercio’? I don’t—”
“Business,” Padlo said, taking the heavy black handset in the old man’s shop. “Which is still finding Middleton, I presume.”
“I’ve got Middleton,” Padlo heard her say. “And Faust.”
When Padlo repeated the names, the old man recoiled.
“They are together?” Padlo asked.
“Together, and negotiating.”
Nowakowski, who had lived in terror since the moment he first saw the Mozart score, said, “Dove è il Felicia?”
Padlo saw that the old man trembled. “A young girl,” the deputy said to Connolly. “Felicia Kaminski. Jedynak’s niece.” Recalling her photo, he began to describe her.
“She’s not here,” Connolly said.
“Harbor Court,” the old man told Padlo.
Padlo repeated the hotel’s name.
Not now, Connolly thought as she shut her cell phone.
Out in the dining room, Faust had made his play.
Faust said, “My father was a relatively old man when he married my mother. They met in at a type of tango bar we call milangas in Buenos Aires. A scratchy Carlos Gardel record, seductive glances filled with subverted desire. Invitations to dance made with simple nods. The intense courtship begins with toe-tangling turns and kicks under crystal chandeliers. Before they speak, it seems to my father that they’re making love.”
“What’s your father got to do with this?”
“As a young man, my father was a chemist in Poland. He said my mother reminded him of his first wife, a gypsy, Zumella. She died in Europe during the war.”
“Along with million and millions of others. If we didn’t stop that madman we’d all be speaking German.”
“He called my mother Jolanta — violet blossom. He was a sentimental man. He met his first wife selling violet blossoms in Castle Square in Warsaw.”
“I fail to see what this—”
“Colonel Middleton, in all your travels or investigations for the government have you ever heard the name Projekt 93?”
“I don’t believe I have.”
“Are you familiar with the work of Gerhard Schrader?”
Middleton shook his head.
“A German chemist who experimented with chemical agents. He invented Tabun, which was originally used to kill insects, then adapted as a lethal weapon against mankind. The Nazis produced twelve-thousand tons of the stuff at a secret plant in Poland, code named Hockwerk.”
Faust dipped into a briefcase at his feet and removed a photocopy of a document from the Nuremberg Tribunal. “My father worked at Hockwerk. His name is fourth on this list.”
“Kazimierz Rymut?”
“You’ll note the asterisk, which refers to the footnote at the bottom. It might be hard to read so I’ll quote it for you: ‘This individual has been exculpated due to cooperation he provided regarding experiments conducted on human subjects.’”
“I’m not sure I know what that means.”
“It means that my father heard that some of the chemical agents he was working on — agents that he assumed would be used to kill rats and other rodents — were being used on human beings. On October 14, 1944, Doctor Josef Mengele removed approximately five thousands gypsies from Sachsenhausen concentration camp outside Oranienberg and had them trucked into a wooded area near Rudna, Poland. There they were sprayed with Sarin gas. Within hours, every single man, woman and child died.”
“Isn’t that the same material that was used in the subway attack in Tokyo?”
“By the Aum Shinrikyo cult. Yes.”
Faust’s hand drifted toward his briefcase. “I have in my possession the official report, but will spare you the details. Suffice it to say, the results were ghastly. When rumors of this event reached my father, I’m sure he refused to believe them at first. He was a man, like many, who tried to insulate himself from the ugliness of the world around him. He listened to Vivaldi, tinkered with coo-coo clocks, baked pastries, wept at the faces of young children. He was not like us, Colonel. And yet when confronted with the horror of what was going on around him, he acted.”
Middleton said, “Sounds like your father was a hero.”
“He became a hero and a great example to me. I won’t go into all the details of what he did except to say that he found a way to pass details of the chemical weapon program at Hockwerk known as Projekt 93 to the Allies, which helped them target the plant before it could cause any more damage.”
“Thank God.”
The waiter arrived with the Bronzini, which gave off a faint scent of orange blossom under a delicate brown crust.