“Hey, Mrs. Guilty, whatever happens, I already got to know my father through you.”
She could feel her son searching for the right words. Finally he said, “Okay, sure, it hurts sometimes, can’t pretend it doesn’t. I would have liked my father to know me, my thoughts, my music, my dreams.” His voice changed. “Some nights, when I’m really playing well, I imagine that he is out there somewhere, in the audience.”
He stopped, embarrassed. “I know about my father. But he never knew about me. I never existed for him. I wish he’d known he had a son, Mom. And a grandchild, to carry on his legacy. That hurts. But I keep it inside because I have an amazing mom and I don’t ever want her to think she hasn’t been enough.”
“Bones. I would never think that. You’ve been a joy since the moment you were born. Before that.”
“Geez, Mom…” She heard Brian’s I-don’t-want-to-deal-with-this-emotional-stuff-now tone as he said, “One day at a time. Just go to France and look for my dad, okay? We’ll figure the rest of it out. Together. You just have to promise that you’ll call me every day. Twice.”
“I promise. I love you so much, Bones.”
“Me too, Mom.” His breath whistled out. “Hey, I’m late for the club. Ask Luze to send some of her cookies, will you? Chocolate chip. I’ll call Granddad. Just be safe!”
The phone clicked and Maggie sat on the wide bed listening to the humming dial tone. She didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.
Oh, Zach, you have such a fine, fine son. He’s a good man, he’ll be such a good father.
The thought echoed in her head. Present tense. Was she really beginning to believe that Brian’s father could be alive?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA. LATE NIGHT, JULY 3
Sugarman stood in the driving rain beneath the life size statue of Nathan Hale, his hands and feet bound, blank bronze eyes on the horizon. He squinted up at the spot-lit concrete wings that soared over the entrance to the original headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency. The futuristic complex of glass and steel, known as “The Company,” was tucked into the Virginia countryside just eight miles northwest of the White House.
Home sweet home to all the spies and analysts and all that budget-busting-state-of-the-art electronic equipment. Tonight, the rain blurred the words chiseled into the white stone, but Sugarman knew them by heart.
“…and the truth shall make you free?”
Not true, thought Sugarman. We all manipulate the truth when it suits us.
The son of a nightclub waitress and a railroad station redcap, Simon Sugarman had kissed his mama goodbye on his eighteenth birthday and left Harlem for Marine boot camp. Sent immediately to Southeast Asia, he was already a veteran of US intelligence by age twenty-two, and, in his own mind, came home de-humanized. The GI bill, Yale, and law school, saved his life.
Sugarman blinked in the rain, remembering.
It was during Sugarman’s final weeks at Yale—on a scholarship and his very large GI loan—when the CIA first approached him. “Interested in foreign travel? Access to senior US officials?” they had asked. “Meet the challenges of a rapidly changing world?”
He, and two of his house mates, had been actively courted. He was one of the two who declined. The third, Victor Orsini, had said yes without hesitation. Sugarman had never learned why his brilliant, artistic friend had made a choice so shockingly out of character.
The roads not taken, Sugarman thought.
But his road, too, eventually had led to Washington, and three weeks after earning his law degree he found himself climbing the white marble stairs of the Justice Department. Two days after that he was seated at an old metal desk in a smoky fifth floor cubicle in a nondescript building on lower Pennsylvania Avenue, just blocks from the White House.
Eventually he and his team took on Cultural Property Crimes. They knew that there was huge money in the theft of antiquities and art. Money that could finance acts of terror. They had been “following that money” ever since. And now Orsini was in his sights.
Sugarman looked up at the lights burning steadily in the seventh-floor corner office where the Admiral waited for him. Rain was seeping down inside his collar. He pulled the plastic ID from his trench coat and moved toward the locked doors.
Walking past the large granite CIA seal on the lobby floor, with its compass spokes representing intelligence data from all over the world, Sugarman stopped, as he always did, in front of the agency’s Memorial Wall. Flanked by the American flag and the blue-and-gold banner of the CIA, more than one hundred stars were carved into the smooth white marble, each representing an intelligence agent who died in the service of his country. At least a dozen had been his friends. Beneath the stars, the fallen agents whose names could be revealed were listed in the glass-enclosed Book of Honor. The other spaces on the page showed only stars.
The secret spies. Anonymous even in death.
He turned toward the security gate. “Hey, pal, how’ya doin’?” He flashed his laminated ID badge at the uniformed guard. “Long time no see. Yeah, same old, same old. I’m here to see the admiral.”
He passed through the security scanner and hurried down the hallway toward the small private elevator that would take him to the seventh floor.
He could feel the eyes of Wild Bill Donovan and all the past CIA directors watching him from the oil portraits that lined the long corridor. Sugarman saluted as he entered the elevator.
* * *
“Sugar! Come in and sit down. How are things at the DOJ these days?”
“Still too many bad guys out there, Admiral.”
“Any more news on the Orsini boy?”
“There’s a woman…”
Intense blue eyes flashed beneath a shock of pure white hair tied back in a thin ponytail. The eyebrows and mustache were jarring slashes of charcoal on the pale patrician face. “There’s always a woman, isn’t there?”
Sugarman shrugged. “Oh, yeah.” His thoughts touched on Maggie O’Shea, then away. Focus. “Two weeks ago, a woman came to me. A big deal in the DC art world. She’d met Victor Orsini at an art auction in Europe a few years ago, had an affair with him. When she wanted out, he said no. Seems he had his eye on a Fra Angelico Madonna, wanted her help. She was successful, married, with a kid, the perfect blackmail victim. But she understood she’d never be free of him, so she turned to me instead. We were able to arrange for the Madonna to be privately auctioned in Paris.”
“You lured him to Paris… Ah, so that’s what led to the now infamous photograph taken in the Café de la Paix. Orsini was celebrating, no doubt. But he slipped through your fingers.”
“Not for long.” Sugarman’s eyes shined. “I let it be known around town that I have that photograph.”
“You are the leak? How Machiavellian of you, Sugar.”
“Let’s just say that the lure’s been cast,” said Sugarman.
“We need Orsini’s damned journal, Sugar.” The breath rasped. “The bank accounts, networks of names. Correspondence, logs of recent activities, movements, liasons… Investors!”
“Yeah. Protect our own, take down theirs.”
“Just watch yourself, Sugar. Two weeks from now, I intend to be drinking the best French champagne at my granddaughter’s wedding. Not appearing before some Special Prosecutor because we overstepped our boundaries.”
For the first time that night, Sugarman grinned. “A wedding’s a better alibi than most.”
“Just make sure I don’t need an alibi. Have you heard from Magdalena O’Shea?”
“Not yet. But she’ll call. She’s the kind of woman who does the right thing.”
“Did she mention her husband?”
“Briefly. She doesn’t know. Doesn’t need to know.”
“Precisely.” The admiral looked down at his iPhone. “What are your plans for Paris?”
“There’s a guy I know. Career military, a good man in case of trouble. I’m sending him in with her. If only…�
��
“Don’t confuse weakness with morality, Sugar.”
“It’s been a long day, sir.”
“And not over yet. Welcome to Operation Bright Angel, Sugar. The code name for Magdalena O’Shea will be…” The Admiral smiled. “Concerto.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
WASHINGTON, D.C. LATE NIGHT, JULY 3
Dane walked across the first balcony of the Opera House, past the life-size sculpture of Poseidon and the two red-jacketed ushers. On his right was the central President’s Box, with its round presidential seal on the door. His contact had verified that the President and his staff were entertaining at Camp David this weekend. That meant no extra security.
He glanced back once more at the ushers. Both slight, in their fifties. Tonight, no one was expecting any trouble.
Satisfied, he moved quickly to his left. Around the curve, out of sight, he stopped in front of Box 11. He was alone.
Dane opened the door and entered a small, darkened anteroom—a coatroom, really—covered entirely in red velvet. A heavy crimson curtain hid the entrance to the box seats. Tonight, courtesy of Victor, he was the only patron in his box.
Dane parted the curtain and peered out into the shadowed theatre. Down on the stage, Cio-Cio San began to sing a lullaby to her son as she waited for the lieutenant to climb the hill. Dormi amor mio. Two boxes to his right, Victor’s traitor and her guests sat transfixed by the doomed soprano.
The surgical gloves were in his back pocket. The silver dagger slipped easily from the back of his cumberbund into his fingers. The French Laguiole knife, with its signature bee at the tip of the fold, had originated with the shepherds in the rugged hills of the Massif Central. Now, it was his weapon of choice as well.
He glanced once more toward Box 7. The woman raised her eyes to look at him. Had she felt his eyes on her? He smiled, and she looked away.
Dane ran a finger along the razor edge of the blade and eased open the door onto the darkened balcony.
He edged around the curved velvet wall, saw the two ushers talking quietly near the far stairs, and waited until they turned away. Screened by the sculpture of Poseidon, he moved quickly to the door of Box 7 and disappeared inside.
Dane stood motionless in the dark anteroom. Beyond the heavy curtain, the traitor who had betrayed Victor and his organization sat listening to the tearful farewell.
Just a few moments more.
Cio-Cio San’s voice rose, the music welled up.
It was the moment he always waited for, the moment when he stood alone on the very edge of the chasm. He felt no fear, just an incredible sexual rush. He moved to the edge of the curtain.
Out in the darkness, Butterfly’s voice soared higher.
Dane parted the curtain, stepped silently into the shadowed box.
The traitor sat forward, spellbound, in her chair.
The soprano’s voice shimmered to its highest note. Held.
Dane leaned down until his mouth was against the woman’s ear. “Here is a message from Victor Orsini,” he whispered to the beautiful Director of the National Gallery of Art.
The woman twisted around.
Dane smiled at the fear in her eyes and slid the dagger into her heart.
The woman slumped forward into the darkness with a soft sigh of surprise. He was already through the velvet curtains when her goblet of champagne fell to the carpeted floor.
As he descended the curving staircase, he heard the muffled shout. Walk, don’t hurry, he reminded himself. Don’t call attention to yourself.
Out into the dark wet night, the sound of sirens in the distance. Now, he could enjoy that glass of Absolut.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
BOSTON. LATE NIGHT, JULY 3
It’s not over, Maggie.
In the shadowed bedroom, Maggie swung around. Her husband’s face looked out at her from the antique mirror above the desk.
Oh, Johnny, I need you. I heard Zach’s music tonight. A concerto. I thought it was lost forever, but…Zachary Law may be alive, in France.
Talk to me.
That’s not Zach on the CD! Another pianist is playing his concerto. So Zach may well be dead, after all.
The answers are in France, Lass. Find your godson.
But that means I might have to face Zach. All the lies...
Then find the truth, Lass. Your son should know his own blood.
The phantom image of her husband reached out. Stopped in mid-air. Began to fade.
Begin with me.
Maggie opened her eyes, gazed around the quiet bedroom. She was alone.
I don’t want to find Zach if it means Brian will be hurt.
But I won’t abandon my godson.
The orange cat leaped onto the bed and stared at her. “You knew I’d go all along didn’t you, Gracie?” said Maggie, stroking the soft fur.
She pulled his robe more tightly around her, closed her eyes, and tried to imagine her husband breathing next to her.
Begin with me... What had Johnny meant? An image from her nightmares swam into her head. The small white sailboat spinning through black water. Her eyes flew open.
I know where I have to go.
“You found something in France, Johnny. I’ll begin with you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
MARTHA’S VINEYARD. LATE AFTERNOON, JULY 4
She’d gotten the last seat, in the last row, on Cape Air’s midday commuter flight to Martha’s Vineyard. Good thing Fourth of July was a family holiday, thought Maggie. Not much call for a single seat.
Now, relieved to be off the tiny six-seat Cessna, Maggie stood on the weathered cottage porch and gazed out over Menemsha Pond. In the late afternoon light the water was the color of seaweed and smooth enough to reflect the high white clouds.
She loved the cottage, left to her so long ago by her mother. Leaning over the wooden railing, she breathed deeply. She could smell clam shells and the sea in the salted air. And maybe a hint of offshore rain.
Here in Chilmark, in the tiny fishing village of Menemsha on the southwest corner of the island, Maggie was in a secluded world far away from the tourists and pleasure boats—a world of winding dirt roads and ancient stone walls following the curve of hills. Wildflowers blooming across moors, sea pines tumbling down to lonely, windswept beaches.
She had come to this old gray cottage when she was happy and run to it when her life was shattered. As a child she’d practiced her scales on the old upright piano under the skylight in the living room. As a young woman, she had shared quiet walks with Sofia down to the pond and sat alone gazing into the fire on cold snowy nights. Brian had been born upstairs in the old brass bed, and when he was older, she’d taken him fishing off that pier. And years later, from this very spot on the porch, she had waved to Johnny on the deck of the Green Eyed Lass.
Now she searched the waters, willing her husband’s distinctive white sails to appear on the horizon. But the Green Eyed Lass was in dry dock at the Menemsha boatyard, and her husband would never sail these waters again.
She turned her head, caught her breath as she saw Johnny’s boots by the cottage door.
Oh, God.
Last October, when word had come of his death, she’d flown immediately to the South of France and stood alone on the Mediterranean beach of Hyères, stoic and dry eyed, looking out to sea, searching, waiting for her husband. In the distance she could see the Îles d’Or, the three Golden Islands, where Johnny’s sailboat had disappeared. For almost two weeks she had waited while the French police searched the islands and deep water. Shattered remnants of the sailboat were recovered. But there was no sign of her husband. On the fifteenth day, she shook the hand of the sad-eyed gendarme, accepted the small package he placed in her numb fingers, and returned to Boston.
But home would never be the same. When she’d sat down at her beloved Steinway, her hands were still too cold and numb to play. And that night, the nightmares struck. At dawn she’d fled to the Vineyard, to run like a woman possessed across th
e wild autumn beach, shouting her husband’s name into the roaring dark.
Late last night, she’d remembered the package given to her by the kindly French policeman. It was one of the reasons she’d come to the Vineyard.
The other reason was Sofia Orsini’s letters.
Maggie straightened her shoulders, searching for her key as she reached for her suitcase. Then she stepped through the tall French doors into the cottage.
Tall spruce and pines were framed like paintings in the huge windows, their silhouettes strong and dark against the sky, and beams of sunlight shafted through the many glass panes, burnishing the high-beamed great room with a soft glow. She took a deep breath, comforted as always by the clutter of books and family photographs and the shabby chairs gathered around a fireplace fashioned of local stone.
No one to share it with anymore...
The cushions on one chair were out of place, and, after setting them right, she walked over to the old upright piano against the wall, laid a finger on a cold ivory key. Maybe if she—
Footsteps on the deck.
She froze as the silhouette of a man in a dark hooded sweatshirt passed by the window. Then he rattled the doorknob, walked slowly into the cottage, and came toward her.
“Stop right there!” cried Maggie. The man came closer, pushing the hood from his face, and she let out her breath. “Tully!”
The old lobsterman, her neighbor and caretaker of the cottage for decades, stepped from the shadows. “Missus.”
“Sorry, Tully, you frightened me for a moment. I wasn’t expecting to see you this afternoon.” And then, seeing his expression, “What’s wrong?”
“You’ve had a break-in, Missus. I discovered it this morning, when I came over to turn on your lights and heat for you.” He flung out a gnarled hand. “That there back window was jimmied.”
She swallowed, looking at the window with its shiny new latch. “When?”
“Not rightly sure, Missus. And I don’t know if anyone got inside, everything looked in order, but…” The old man shrugged bony shoulders. “I’ve been watching for ya. Didn’t want you in the cottage alone until I checked it out again.”
The Lost Concerto Page 8