“What kind of danger?”
The old man rose from the table to return to the stove. “Before today, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you. I think now we know. More tea, Felicia?”
She recoiled from the thought and tried to cover the reaction with, “I’ve been drinking coffee all day. I don’t need my hands to shake more than they already do.”
Nowakowski gave a knowing smile and limped back to the table. “Yes, I’ve been told that I make it a bit too strong. One of the hazards of not having very many guests, I suppose.”
“About the package,” she pressed. “Did you ever receive it?”
“I did.” He spoke the words as if his explanation was complete.
“What was it?”
Signor Abe’s gaze dropped again. Kaminski realized that this was his habit when he was embarrassed. “Dear Henryk asked me specifically not to open the package when it arrived. He told me that it would arrive double-wrapped, and that if anything ever happened to him, I was to open only the outer wrapping and then contact the name I found on the card taped to the inner wrapping.”
“But you opened it anyway,” she said, connecting the dots.
“Loneliness breeds weakness and curiosity,” he replied sadly. “And I’m afraid that I have been particularly lonely.”
“So what was in it?” She found the old man’s embarrassment charming, but she’d have ripped it open in a second if she’d have been in his place. No reason for shame there.
He thought for a moment, and then rose again from his chair. He disappeared into what must have been the bedroom, and then returned less than a minute later with a thick, mangled envelope. “I tried to re-wrap it,” he confessed, “but I’m afraid I made something of a mess.”
The envelope was a large one, more suitable to construction blueprints than a letter. He handled the package gently, with reverence, almost, as he placed it onto the table between them. When Felicia reached toward it, he shooed her hands away.
“Please,” he said curtly. “Allow me to do this.”
She folded her hands on her lap.
The old man wiped his hands aggressively with a napkin, and then carefully slid the contents into the daylight.
Kaminski leaned closer. She saw a stack of papers. Her first impression was that it was very old-yellow with the kinds of marks that could only be made with an old style ink pen. As more of the contents were revealed, she squinted and leaned even closer. “It’s a musical score,” she said, recognizing the rows of staves.
Nowakowski allowed himself a conspiratorial smile. “Much more than that,” he said. He gently placed it on top of the envelope and turned it so that she could better read his treasure.
My God. Could it be what she thought? There was no mistaking the long runs of sixteenth notes and the other musical notations, but as exotic as they looked written by hand, her eyes were drawn to the written signature at the top. In her circles, there was no more famous a signature.
“Mozart?” she gasped.
“An original,” he beamed. “Or at least I think it is.”
She didn’t know what to say. “It must be worth a fortune.”
“Three fortunes,” he corrected. “Priceless, I would think. It’s clearly a piano concerto, but I’ve searched the Koechel Catalogue and this isn’t there. I think this is an undiscovered work.”
She recognized the Koechel Catalogue as the internationally recognized indexer of Mozart’s myriad compositions. If Signor Abe was right, then there truly was no way to estimate the value of the manuscript. “This is fabulous,” she said. “But I don’t understand why it frightened Uncle Henryk. This could have answered all of his wildest dreams. Honestly, this is the kind of discovery that he would have given anything to make. Why would he keep it a secret? Why would he send it away?”
“All very good questions,” Nowakowski agreed. “But I have an even bigger one.”
She waited for it while the old man slid the inner envelope out from under the manuscript. She saw a name, but there was no address.
He said, “Who is this Harold Middleton and how are we supposed to find him?”
9
The moment her Nextel phone chirped, Special Agent M. T. Connolly had a bad feeling.
She’d just gotten into the elevator at the brand-new building that housed the FBI’s Northern Virginia Resident Agency, on her way back to her office. It was a cubicle, actually, not an office, but she could always dream.
Glancing at the caller ID, she immediately recognized the area code and exchange prefix: the call came from the Hoover building-FBI headquarters in D.C. Not good. Only bad news came from the Hoover building, she’d learned. She stepped out of the elevator and back onto the gleaming terrazzo floor of the lobby.
“Connolly,” she said.
A man’s voice, reedy and overly precise: “This is Emmett Kalmbach.”
He didn’t actually have to identify himself; she’d have recognized the prissy enunciation anywhere. Kalmbach was the FBI’s Assistant Director who oversaw the hundreds of agents in D.C. and Virginia who worked out of the Washington Field Office as well as her satellite office in Manassas, Virginia. She’d met Kalmbach a few times, enough to recognize his type: the worst kind of kiss-up, kick-down bureaucratic infighter. A paper-pushing rattlesnake.
Kalmbach had no reason to call her directly. At least, no good reason. And why was he calling from the FBI’s national headquarters, instead of from his office on Fourth Street?
“Yes, sir,” she said. She sounded blasé, but she felt her stomach clench. She watched the brushed-steel elevator doors glide shut in front of her. The two halves of a giant fingerprint, etched on the elevator doors, came together. The fingerprint had been some government committee’s idea of art, which was precisely what it looked like: art by government committee.
“Agent Connolly, who is Jozef Padlo?”
Ah ha. “He’s an inspector with the Polish National Police and he’s working a triple homicide in Warsaw that-
“Agent-Marion, if I may-”
“M. T., sir.”
But he went on smoothly, ignoring her: “-Our legat in Warsaw just emailed me a letter rogatory from the Polish Ministry of Justice, requesting that we grant immediate entry into the U.S. to this… Jozef Padlo. He says you personally guaranteed him clearance. Our legat is understandably ticked off.”
So this was what he was calling about. She hadn’t gone through channels, so some junior FBI paper-pusher, who’d picked the short straw and had ended up assigned to the American Embassy Bureau in Warsaw, had gotten bent out of shape.
“Obviously there was some translation problem,” she said. “I didn’t guarantee anything to Inspector Padlo. He’s provided invaluable assistance to us in a case at Dulles involving the murder of one, possibly two, cops. Since it seems to be connected to his triple homicide, he-”
“It ‘seems to be connected,’” Kalmbach interrupted. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Trying to conceal her annoyance, she explained as crisply as she could. “Padlo was able to ID the shooter at Dulles as a Serb national and a war criminal who-”
“Excuse me, Agent Connolly. He ID’d the shooter based on what?”
“Surveillance video taken at Dulles.”
“Ah. So Inspector Padlo viewed the video, then?”
She faltered. “No. I did. But Padlo made a positive ID based on my verbal description to him.”
“Your… verbal description,” Kalmbach echoed softly. Condescension dripped from every word.
“In fact-” she began, but Kalmbach cut her off.
“Do you understand how complex and involved the process is by which a foreign law enforcement official is granted entry into the United States? It involves weeks of legal findings and sworn affidavits by the DOJ’s Criminal Division, the Office of International Affairs. It’s a cumbersome and extremely sensitive legal affair and not one to be taken lightly. For one thing, there must be absolutely incontrovertible evidence of dual criminality.”