The hunt for Faust was continuing at a fervid pace and several leads were beginning to pan out. He still had some unaccounted-for muscle in the country, and records from the prepaid mobile that Perez had called frequently, presumably Faust’s, showed that he made repeated calls to pay phones in a particular area of D.C., where his cohorts apparently lived. Stakeouts and electronic surveillance were immediately put in place.
But Middleton was, at least for the moment, not part of the hunt. He was more interested in his daughter’s recovery.
And in reconnecting with Nora Tesla and Jean-Marc Lespasse.
He’d invited them to the lake house for a few days. He wasn’t sure that they’d show up, but they had. His daughter seemed to have forgiven Tesla for what she’d thought was the breakup of her mother and father — though she also had clearly come to understand that the divorce was inevitable long before Nora Tesla entered the picture.
But the other issues loomed and at first the conversations among them had been superficial. The subject of the past finally arose, as it often does, and they broached the subject of the Darfur warlord killed by Brocco and the breaking up of the Volunteers because of the incident.
There was no concession by anybody and no apologies but neither was there any defense, and through the miracles of the passage of time — and friendship arising from common purpose — the incident was at last put to rest.
Tesla and Middleton spent some time together, talking much about things of little significance. They took a long walk and ended up on a promontory overlooking a neighboring lake. A family of deer sprung from the underbrush and galloped away. Startled, she grabbed his hand — and this time didn’t remove it.
Not long after the nerve gas was found Middleton got a phone call. Abe Nowakowski — presently under arrest in Rome — had cut a deal with U.S., Polish and Italian prosecutors. In exchange for a reduced sentence he would give up something.
Something extraordinary, as it turned out.
Overnight, a package arrived at Middleton’s lake house. He opened it and spent the next two days in his study.
“Holy shit,” was his official pronouncement and the first person he told wasn’t his daughter, Nora Tesla or J.M. Lespasse, but Felicia Kaminski, who came to his house in person in reaction to the news.
He displayed what sat on the Steinway in his study.
“And it’s not fake?”
“No,” Middleton whispered. “This is real. There’s no doubt.”
In payment for his services to Faust, Nowakowski had been the recipient of what Middleton had now authenticated: a true Chopin manuscript, previously unheard of, apparently part of the trove unearthed by Rugova at St. Sophia church.
It was an untitled sonata for piano and chamber orchestra.
An astonishing find for lovers of music everywhere.
Also, Middleton was amused to learn, for the government. Homeland Security officials had leapt on the news and, further brushing up the feds’ image after their nerve gas victory, had pushed for a gala world premiere of the piece at the James Madison Recital Hall in Washington D.C. Middleton called Dick Chambers personally and insisted that Felicia Kaminski be the principal soloist. He agreed without hesitation, saying, “I owe you, Harry.” Violin was her main instrument, of course, but as she joked in her lightly accented English, “I know my way around the ivories too.”
Middleton laughed. She grew serious then and added, “It’s an honor a musician only dreams of.” She hugged him. “And I will dedicate my performance to the memory of my uncle.”
Nora Tesla, Lespasse and Charlotte would attend, as would much of Washington’s cultural and political elite.
Several days before the concert, Charley Middleton found her father in the lake house study, late at night.
“Hey, Dad. What’re you up to?”
Dad? Been years since she’d used that word. It sounded odd.
“Just looking over the Chopin. How are you doing, honey?”
“Getting better. Step by step.”
She sat down beside him. He kissed her head. She took a sip of his wine. “Tasty.” What he used to say to her after sampling her milk at the breakfast table, long, long ago, to get her to drink the beverage.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” she asked, looking over the manuscript.
“To think that Frederic Chopin actually held these sheets. And look there, that scribble. Was he testing the pen? Was he distracted by something? Was it the start of a note to himself?”
Her eyes were gazing out the window at the black sheet that was the still lake. She was crying softly. She whispered, “Does it ever get better.”
“Sure, it does. Your life’ll get back on track again.”
And Harold Middleton thought, Yes, it gets better. Always does. But the sorrow and horror never go away completely.
Green shirt…Green shirt…
And a sudden thought came to Harry Middleton. He wondered if he’d used Brocco’s murder of the Darfur warlord as an excuse — to back away from the fight that he used to believe he was born for. He couldn’t save everybody, so he’d stopped trying to save anyone, and retreated into the world of music.
“I’m going to bed. Love you, Dad.”
“Night, baby.”
When she was gone, Middleton sipped his wine and examined the Chopin again, thinking of a curious irony. Here was a work of art written at a time when music was created largely for the glory of God and yet this piece he was looking at was part of a horrific plot to murder thousands, solely out of vengeful religious fervor.
Sometimes the world was simply mad, Harry Middleton concluded.
Chapter Seventeen
Jeffery Deaver
The men finished the work at midnight.
“I’m exhausted. Are we through?” The language was Serbo-Croatian.
The second man was tired too but he said nothing and looked uneasily at the third, his face dark, his black hair long and swept back.
The man who’d been supervising their handiwork — Faust — told them in a soft voice that, yes, it was all right to leave. He spoke in English.
Once they were gone, he walked through the basement, using a flashlight to inspect what they’d spent the last four hours doing: Running two-inch hose — it was astonishingly heavy, who’d have thought? — through access tunnels from three buildings away. Painstakingly, using silent hand pumps, they’d filled rubber bladders with gasoline, a total of close to 900 gallons of the liquid. Next they placed propane tanks and detonators between the bladders and, most difficult of all, rigged the electronics.
Alone now in the basement of the James Madison recital hall, Faust ran final diagnostic checks on the system. Everything was in order. He allowed himself a fantasy of what would happen later this evening. During the adagio movement at the world premier of the newly discovered Chopin sonata, a unique combination of notes would slip from the microphone above the soloist’s piano and be electronically translated into numerical values. These would be recognized by the computer controller as a command to small motors that would open the propane tanks. Then a few minutes later, when the score moved into the vivace movement, another combination of notes would trigger the detonators. The propane would flare, melt the bladders and turn the recital hall instantly into a crematorium.
This elaborate system was necessary because radio, microwave and cell phone jammers were in use in security-minded public venues in D.C. Remote control devices were useless. And timing devices could be picked up in sweeps by supersensitive microphones. Ironically, Felicia Kaminski herself would be the detonator.
Now Faust hid the bladders, tanks and wires behind boxes. He was satisfied with the plan. Middleton and the government had taken the bait Nowakowski offered them, the manuscript. And it was clear they believed the entire charade, all false information Faust had fed to Jack Perez and Felicia Kaminski — the code in the first manuscript pages, the nerve-gas attack, the binoculars at the Harbor court focused on a warehouse, the mysterious talk about deliveries and chemical formulas, the torture of the tattooed man in the closet…