Until now.
Now, suddenly, it was all at risk. An agent with the US Fucking Justice Department had his photograph with Victor Orsini. If they caught him, he could lose everything.
On the long drive from Maine he had researched every “M. O’Shea” in Boston. One child. One eighty-six year old in a nursing home. And one Magdalena O’Shea, classical pianist.
Sugarman had visited one of them. His money was on the musician.
Dane said the name over once more, slowly, in his head. Magdalena O’Shea. Why would Sugarman show her the photograph? What connection could she possibly have with Victor?
With him?
“Nice fit,” said the tailor approvingly, entering the room. “Armani suits you.”
Dane stared at him.
“Never go to these galas myself,” said the tailor, to fill the silence. “But they say Washington has more black-tie affairs and limousines than any other city in the United States, including LA. You from the West Coast?”
Dane shook his head. He had only spoken once since he entered the shop, to give his suit size.
“Right out of GQ magazine,” said the clerk in a satisfied voice. He made one more adjustment, smoothed the broad shoulders one final time. “Big Fourth of July bash?”
Dane remained silent as he removed several one hundred dollar bills from his wallet. The tailor eyed the cash and the tall stranger warily. Dane watched the tailor’s hand touch the drawer beneath the cash register—where he kept his gun? Dane flexed his fingers, waited.
But the man just took the money and nodded.
Smart decision, Dane told him silently. And a lucky one. The only reason you are going home tonight is because I altered my appearance.
Dane lifted the garment bag and turned to the door. Behind him he heard the tailor let out his breath, unable to resist one last parting shot. “Knock ‘em dead tonight, Prince Charming!”
Dane closed the door behind him and stepped out into the rain. “Now that’s funny,” he said to the empty street.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
BOSTON. SUNSET, JULY 3
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
Laughter followed Maggie as she ran past the Swan Boats that floated in the bright lake in Boston’s Public Garden. The sun was setting in a shower of golden sparks and kids were smiling and it was just another day in the park.
My husband is gone, thought Maggie starkly, but life has to go on.
She dodged the traffic on Beacon Street, heedless of the angry horns, and turned right toward the Hill. Before her husband’s death, she had taken great pleasure in the row of narrow, gracious brownstones that lined the revolutionary street like fading dowagers adorned in their velvet and fluttering lace. But tonight she ran past the lovely old buildings without a glance.
In the darkest days, just after her husband’s death, Maggie had discovered that she could crowd out the memories with sheer, unrelenting physical activity. She’d started running, pushing muscles beyond endurance until she was too tired to think, too exhausted to do anything but pass out on her empty bed.
Running had become her one escape. Now Maggie ran every day, often at sunset when the evening air was cool and purple with twilight. After the first few miles, she would find herself deep in a trance-like oxygen high, lost in her own private, painless world.
Ironically, she’d found herself to be in the best physical condition of her life, hard and lean and strong. “I’ll be running in the marathon by spring,” she’d said to Luze with a trace of her old wry humor.
“There’s a huge difference between running and running away” Luze had answered. “Why must you go on punishing yourself?”
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
Because I’m angry, damn it. So angry I’m blind with it! Angry with Johnny for keeping secrets. For leaving me. Angry with Zach’s father for asking Johnny to find Zach. Angry with myself for asking Johnny to look for my godson. I run because a hurting body is infinitely preferable to a hurting heart.
If only you hadn’t gone to Europe, Johnny. Damn you! I hate you! Oh, God.
I love you.
Don’t think about Johnny. Don’t think about the letter and CD waiting unopened on her desk. Don’t think about a best friend who died trying to protect her little son. Don’t think about a sweet innocent child who vanished into the fog.
Just keep running.
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
Sugarman’s words pounded into her head as steadily as the worn Reeboks that pounded the cobblestones.
Will you go to Paris for your son?
She ran on, not slowing until she reached Revere Street.
There, finally, she stopped on the corner, bending at the waist and breathing deeply.
The two-story Bulfinch building across the narrow, crooked street sat on the corner in genteel glory. Caught by the setting sun, The Piano Cat’s deep-hued brick glowed golden with fire and the lavender window panes shined like antique mirrors. Tonight, even the beauty of light on ancient stone failed to calm her.
Tonight, waiting for her in the music shop, was the package from Simon Sugarman. Once more, she was struck by the sinking feeling that her life was about to change. Once more, not ready, she’d run. Run away. But it was time to stop running.
It was time to open Sugarman’s package.
CHAPTER TWELVE
WASHINGTON, D.C. EVENING, JULY 3
Simon Sugarman shifted down as he eased into Washington’s rush-hour traffic on the George Washington Parkway. Rain hurled toward him out of the black sky. Hell of a night to be on the road.
He’d been uncharacteristically moody and unsettled since his encounter with Maggie O’Shea in Boston. Why did she have to be a dead ringer for Sofia Orsini?
All these years, and he still couldn’t get Sofia out of his mind. They’d been friends, and then lovers. And now she was dead. It had all gone to hell when Victor Orsini surfaced in Italy. And it was Sugarman’s fault.
Sugarman listened to the metronome of the windshield wipers and let the memories spin into the darkness. He had first crossed paths with Victor many years earlier at Yale. They’d been house mates in the Gothic, residential Trumbull College, older than most of the other students, and eventually cautious friends. Orsini was a wealthy, brilliant scholar who double-majored in religious art and music, a man who preferred museums, libraries, and concert halls to the down and dirty bars of New Haven where Sugarman could usually be found. Yet they’d forged an unlikely bond during the long nights of that first year, sitting in front of the fire with full tumblers of good scotch, arguing politics, philosophy, and religion until the sky turned pink and the bells tolled in the clock tower.
And then Orsini was inducted into one of Yale’s powerful secret societies—Skull and Bones, a clandestine club for Yale’s brightest and wealthiest—whose veiled activities and powerful “cloak and gown” connections continued until death. Over the years, Orsini grew even more secretive and driven.
Sugarman went on to Georgetown Law, while Orsini surprised the hell out of everyone by moving immediately to Washington and, inexplicably, joining the intelligence community. Sugarman had watched as Orsini was drawn deeper and deeper into the darkness.
Orsini’s fall from grace had come, finally, in Washington, in the secret corridors of the CIA. Five agents lost their lives under his watch. And in 1985, Victor Orsini left the CIA and disappeared from the public eye.
Sugarman had been friends with two of the agents who died. Because of Victor?
Eventually Orsini had surfaced in Rome, an elusive, expatriate multimillionaire with a rumored museum-quality art collection. What had he been doing during those years he’d dropped off the radar? And where had all his damned money come from? Blood money, Sugarman was convinced. Oh, yeah, he had his suspicions, all right. But no proof. He’d needed someone on the inside.
But one of Sugarman’s agents was found floating in the Tiber River. The other found in a dirty alley near the Vatic
an, the apparent victim of a mugging.
And then, seven years ago, Sofia had called to tell him she’d been offered an extended tour at the US Embassy in Italy. Within a month, she’d met the fascinating expat named Victor Orsini in a Roman art gallery.
She never knew that Sugarman had orchestrated that introduction, hoping one last time to infiltrate Orsini’s organization.
Way to go, thought Sugarman. I decided to use the love of my life to infiltrate a terrorist organization.
The one thing he had never expected was the pregnancy. Or the hastily arranged marriage to Orsini. His very moral, very Catholic Sofia.
Sofia’s letters had described her husband as a Svengali-like mentor. “There is a Lippi oil of the Archangel Gabriel in Victor’s collection,” she’d written. “Victor sees himself in that painting—a powerful archangel in people’s lives.”
Sugarman shook his head as he eased the car onto the rain-slick exit for Arlington. When, how—why—had the darkness replaced Victor’s light? The questions throbbed in his brain, insistent as the rhythm of the windshield wipers.
The letters had stopped when Sofia gave birth to her son. He remembered the icy foreboding and helplessness he’d felt. He’d broken his own rules then. Called and told her his suspicions about Orsini.
But she’d stayed in Rome. Because of the child.
Sugarman slowed for the right turn into his condo parking entrance. End of the line. And the end of Sofia’s story. Because last September one final letter had come. The words still haunted him.
“I’ve discovered the truth about my husband,” she’d written from a remote French island. “It’s all in a journal I found hidden in his safe. Victor is a criminal. Worse, a traitor. I’ve taken my son away from him. Soon, God willing, I will place the proof in your hands.”
Her last sentence had chilled him. “Victor fell from the sky like a proud and faithless Lucifer with his wings on fire—the brightest Dark Angel of all.”
And every bit as tormented and dangerous. But what had caused his fall from grace?
Eventually the letter had found its way to his desk in Washington. But Sofia Orsini never came home. She was never able to give him Victor’s journal.
Traitor. For years, Sugarman’s team of hand-picked agents from the CIA, FBI, NSA, DIA, and Justice had been searching for the dangerous cadre of men who financed acts of terror. Terrorists needed money, big money, to succeed. Somehow, he was sure, Sofia had stumbled on the information he needed. The financial structure of Orsini’s organization—the secret clients, bank accounts, network of contacts, targets. Follow the money.
“Where did you hide Orsini’s journal, Sofia?” he said into the silence of the car.
And the journal wasn’t all she’d taken from Orsini.
He closed his eyes, saw again the empty cardboard tube he’d been given at the small police station in Brittany—left behind by Sofia when she’d run from the convent. An eighteen-inch long tube that could have held a small, rolled up canvas. Something from Orsini’s private collection? A painting, a manuscript? Music? What had been in that tube?
He pulled into an empty parking space, turned off the engine and lights, and sat alone in the rain-filled darkness.
Did you confide any of your secrets in all those letters to your best friend, Fee? Does Maggie O’Shea know more than she’s let on? Because then she could be the next to die.
“You do what you gotta do,” he murmured. Just don’t get caught...
But on the bad nights, like this one, Simon Sugarman still wondered how much he was to blame for Sofia Orsini’s death.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
BOSTON. EVENING, JULY 3
“So the good news is,” said Luze, “Brian’s father could be alive.”
“And maybe the bad news as well…” Maggie murmured into the phone.
“What can I do, Maggs? Shall I come over?”
“I’m a soloist, remember? We’ll talk in the morning. Love you.”
I’m a soloist.
Maggie clicked off her phone, pulled the quilt around her shoulders, and hugged her knees to her chest. Now, alone in her bedroom, she had to face the questions—and the doubts—raised by Sugarman. And the anger.
Closing her eyes, she allowed the anger to wash over her in waves. How could Zach have just stopped loving me? Why would he let me think he was dead? Where did he go? What has he been doing for thirty years? What happened to his music?
The answers could well be waiting for her in the package sent to Zach’s father. She eyed the small envelope, tossed unopened on her quilt. Sugarman had said it contained a CD of music and a letter mailed to Zach’s father from Vienna last summer.
Vienna. I want to take you to Vienna someday, Slim. It’s a city of music. More composers have lived there than any other place. Music is literally in the air...
She’d gone to Vienna years later. Alone. And now—whatever this package held, it had been enough to convince Cameron Law that his son might still be alive.
She reached for the manila envelope, shook it slightly, examined the address. She did not recognize the handwriting.
Don’t open it.
Maggie took a deep breath and tore open the package.
* * *
Father, the letter began.
Had Zach written the words? The dark script with the big uneven letters did not look at all familiar.
It seems that Fate decided to play a huge joke on both of us and spare me. I am well. As I trust you are, despite the years, since you always said that only the good die young.
At the risk of disappointing you one final time, Father, I never did become that man you always hoped for. I tried, but it all went very wrong.
Until a few months back, when someone came into my life. Someone who reawakened long-buried feelings. Helped me to stop blaming the past, take responsibility for my own actions. To know what it is to feel love again. I’m sending you one of the results—perhaps, after all these years, you will understand your only son when you listen to the CD. Perhaps not. Either way, for me it is a validation.
The note was signed, simply, Zach.
That was all. She re-read the words slowly.
To love again? What happened to you, Zach?
She touched the small silvery disc in her lap. After all this time, would she hear his voice? Somehow, she knew, whatever was on this disc was going to change her life.
She slipped the CD into the slot, held her breath, and pressed the “Play” button. She heard the whir of the CD. Then a piano began to play.
Maggie felt her body quiver like a cello string as the first minor chords—D minor, that haunting, saddest of keys—beckoned and promised. The orchestra answered with its beautiful, nostalgic opening theme, rising like a moon in a black night sky. Then the piano once more, mesmerizing as a first love, casting its spell around her. The throaty sonority evoked images of starry darkness and soft winds around the hot white moon. The music was haunting, elusive and yet…familiar, like a half-forgotten dream.
I’ve heard this music before.
Maggie felt suspended in the calm before the storm as elements of classical jazz, pure and turbulent, began to weave in and out of the theme, gathering power.
She closed her eyes, felt the notes touch her, reach inside.
The music sent her spiraling back into the past. Hot summer nights, the piano, the feel of demanding hands on her skin. God, we were so young. But her body still remembered.
* * *
She’s seventeen, in her first year at the New England Conservatory of Music.
On a late autumn morning, she walks into the rehearsal room—and finds a young man sitting at the battered Steinway. Tall, dark-haired, and very thin, he has intense brown eyes and the spare, bony face of an artist. His glasses, slipping low on the jutting nose, are alarmingly askew. She can see his long fingers on the keys, hears the Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 2 played the way she’s never heard it played before.
Sudd
enly aware of her presence, he stops playing, lifts his glasses impatiently to his high forehead, and turns to stare at the flustered girl with the waist-length hair who stands frozen in his doorway.
“You look like someone who plays the harp,” he says in low, quick, New York syllables.
She shakes her head with indignance. “No. Piano.”
“Then God help you. What are you working on?”
“Chopin’s Concerto in E minor.”
“Impossible.” He rises abruptly from the piano bench, reaching for her. Long fingers easily encircle her slender wrist. “You’re thin as piano wire, Slim. Way too slight to play this piece. You need to be much stronger, fierce—”
Wrenching her hand away, she shoots him a look and sits down, still and straight, at the piano. She can feel his eyes on her.
She plays the Chopin—his crazy difficult Concerto in E minor. When she is done, the stranger raises his black eyebrows. “Are you busy tonight, Slim?” he asks her.
And she is lost.
Three months later she celebrates her eighteenth birthday by moving in with him. Zachary Law is her first lover—and her first real love. One spring night, after a rehearsal, she returns very late to their tiny Cambridge apartment. A single candle burns low on the window ledge, waiting for her. In the flickering light, Zach’s black shape is framed against the blue night that fills the open window.
She stops on the sidewalk to watch him.
Then music fills the night and she stays in the shadows, listening, as Zach plays. He is playing music she’s never heard before. She climbs the steps, drawn inexorably by the haunting melody, and lets herself into the room.
He sees her, and stops with an angry crash of chords.
“Zach,” she whispers. “That was so beautiful. What is it?”
“A work in progress, Slim. A piano concerto.”
“But, you never told me—”
“Because I can’t finish it! I don’t know how.”
She blows out the candle and moves into his arms. “You’ll finish your concerto one day, Zach. You’ll know how.”
The Lost Concerto Page 6