The Lost Concerto

by Helaine Mario

  Someone had removed the sofa. Watery moonlight fell in a silver path through the French doors to illuminate an enormous bouquet of white lilacs. White lilacs, sent by a loving fan to Rachmaninoff…

  “Oh, Michael,” breathed Maggie.

  The flowers rested like tiny stars on a glowing baby grand piano.

  Like a sleepwalker, Maggie walked forward. She laid her palms on the beautiful, polished instrument. A Mason and Hamlin piano—they didn’t make these anymore. How, when had he arranged this?

  Very gently her fingers touched the smooth ivory and ebony keys. Slowly, she depressed the middle C, heard the note, pure and true, felt the familiar vibration move through the bone and muscle of her arm. Tonight, her need for release from all the pain was overpowering. Somehow, Michael had known.

  Maggie shook her head back and forth like a broken metronome. Nothing makes sense, she thought. My husband dies. Zachary Law is alive. The colonel is married—but he gives me a piano. It was too much. So many feelings locked deep within her trembling body, so many unshed, frozen tears. Suddenly she felt ready to shatter into a thousand brilliant shards of glass.

  * * *

  It was very late. The crisis with his wife had been handled. For now.

  Beckett poured a stiff drink and he and the Golden moved haltingly out onto his balcony to stare unseeing over the black hills.

  Maggie O’Shea had done the impossible. She had found Zachary Law. Tomorrow, he and Sugar would know about the Orsini boy, one way or another. If only…

  He couldn’t forget the look on Maggie’s face in the dark hallway. How could he betray her trust?

  The rain had blown off. He looked up at the stars winking through the clouds.

  He deliberately had withheld the location of Law’s winery from a euphoric Sugarman. Couldn’t trust Sugar not to charge in tonight, take the place by storm. No, they’d do it right.

  He could still give Maggie time to tell Law about their son before all hell broke loose. After all the lies, he owed her that much.

  He glanced once more toward her bedroom. Tonight, when he’d left her, her eyes had been too hard, too bright. I didn’t want it to be this way. Try to sleep now, Maggie. You’ve found the father of your son. The last act begins tomorrow.

  He listened to the quiet of the night. High above him, in the deep silence, the silver clouds raced across the face of the moon.

  Suddenly the silent night was shattered by a crashing, violent storm of piano chords. The tumultuous notes flung themselves out into the dark tempest of the night, fearsome and blistering, smoldering and swirling and full of fury.

  “Jesus,” breathed Beckett. His hand sought the dog and held on.

  He stood very still, bombarded by the fierce, turbulent music that burst like fireworks around him. Trembling, dropping, then soaring higher. What had she told him she would play? The hurtling, searing rage of Beethoven.

  For a long time, Beckett and the Golden listened in the darkness as she played wave after wave of savage, agonized notes. Played as if her heart, her very breath, were the notes that hurled like bullets through the air. It was the most aching music he’d ever heard.

  Then, finally, she struck the fearsome opening chords of music he’d never heard. The Grieg? The music she’d been playing when her husband died? Beckett felt as if the notes were being torn from deep within her haunted body.

  On and on, the music soared into the blackness.

  Suddenly there was an exhausted, final crash of chords, chords that spiraled up towards the shadowed moon and echoed out over the listening hills. The air rang and rang with the fading music until, at last, there was absolute silence.

  Beckett whispered, “Brava, Mrs. O’Shea.”

  And then her agonized, wrenching sobs filled the night.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  SOUTH OF FRANCE. NIGHT, JULY 9

  Victor Orsini swirled the wine in his mouth, then swallowed the rich, crimson Brunello. A good year for wine, he thought, lifting the glass to toast himself in the mirror. The man staring back at him was bull-faced and dark-visaged with a sheen of silver over the heavy jaw and eyes black and deep as agate. Burning like coals, yet without light. The large cross around his neck glittered gold against his skin.

  The book he had been reading lay on the table beside him, still open, but facedown. It told the true story of an ancient Italian family in Sicily, one in which the father had ruled his family with an iron hand. Orsini had remembered his own father, slapping him hard across the face because he had not respected his mother. He’d been only seven or eight, and no longer had any idea what his act of disrespect had been.

  But he could still see his mother’s shocked face if he closed his eyes, hear his younger sister’s frightened wails, feel the sharp, bright sting of his father’s huge hand. “You will learn respect, Vittorio. Discipline.” He had slapped his own son, hadn’t he, in the garden in Rome, just before Sofia left him.

  Respect. Discipline.

  “The sins of the father…” he murmured. He took another deep swallow of wine, fingering the heavy cross at his throat. What would have happened that day if he had not slapped his son? If he had not threatened Sofia, but told her the truth? That he had to go into hiding. That he was afraid.

  What if he had told her about Ravello?

  He shook his heavy head. Would she have understood? Stayed with him? Or would the ending of their lives together have happened no matter what?

  I loved you once, he told her silently. But I loved another more. The truth is, I should never have married you.

  The sins of the father.

  He rubbed his cheek slowly, remembering. As a boy, as a young man, he’d had a powerful love for his father. Followed him, emulated him, revered him. Until he learned the shocking, unspeakable truth.

  His father’s intolerable secret.

  Orsini’s fingers tightened on the glass until his knuckles were white. His father’s blood ran in his veins. Tonight, he could feel the ghost of his father standing behind him. Feel the heavy hand on his shoulder.

  He turned sharply. No one there. Only shadows.

  He drank quickly then, finished the wine, poured another glass. And there, in the depths of the crystal, he watched the memory swirl and take shape.

  * * *

  His mother’s villa, pine shrouded and very old, stood at the end of a long, curving lane, on the edge of a hill high above Florence. From the blue-stoned terrace, you could see the lights of Firenze flickering in the distance.

  The old villa was totally dark, with an air of long abandonment, a looming black shape against the starless cobalt sky. Below the hillside, the lights of Florence flickered in the distance.

  Just one day after his mother’s funeral, Victor Orsini stood on the curving drive. Tall Tuscan pines surrounded the house, close together, silent and still as sentinels. The light from his flashlight played over the ancient gold stone with its rusting barred windows, the broad marble steps that led up to tall double doors. How many times had he run up those steps with his sister those long ago summers? Now a thick iron gate protected the doors, locked against intruders. The heavy, ornate metal key was in his hand.

  I don’t want to go in. I don’t want to find what I know is hidden there.

  He climbed the steps slowly, slipped the key into the lock. A scraping of metal, a push. The gate folded back, doors swung open with a protesting creak.

  Huge round foyer, smelling of must and decaying flowers. And, for just an instant, a faint breath of his mother’s perfume. Emeraude. A powerful surge of longing. Then it was gone.

  He knew, intimately, every room, every window, every door, every hallway. He turned to play his small light over the high foyer, the glassed conservatory to the left, the arched doorway to the formal living room. He glanced into the room. Hulking white shapes, covered in dusty sheets, forgotten. He turned away.

  His steps took him toward the high curve of staircase. Twenty-five steps to the landing, he remem
bered. Worn down over two centuries by his ancestors, his grandparents, his mother, his sister, himself.

  Down the long dark upper hallway. Somewhere to his left, the sound of dripping water. He walked like a man in prison to the end of the hall, where a floor-to-ceiling antique cherry bookcase held gilt-framed photographs of happier times and his mother’s dusty collection of colorful, never-used Tuscan pottery. Cortona, he remembered.

  He set the flashlight down, used both hands to grip one side of the case. He was a strong man, determined. Slowly, slowly, he angled the heavy case away from the wall. One large potter’s bowl tottered, crashed to the floor. He ignored it, continued to shift the bookcase until he’d exposed the narrow door behind it.

  He took a deep breath, inserted the key once more. Left, then right. The stairs led up into an opaque, musky blackness.

  He hesitated, unsure. He could not remember ever entering the locked, hidden attic.

  Fuck, he said to himself. Just do it.

  The stairs creaked beneath his weight. Cobwebs, tiny drifting filaments in the shine of his flashlight, brushed over his face, his hands. Now he could smell, very faintly, wood. And something else.

  He shined his light around the low attic space.

  They were there, in the corner, under several white sheets. He tore at the sheets, closing his eyes against the dust that rose like clouds of insects.

  He caught his breath. Stacks upon stacks, the canvases facing in against the wall, leaning against each other. And boxes, large and small, one on top of the other.

  Reaching out his hand, he gripped the ornate golden frame nearest to him, turning the canvas so that he could see it in the light. The glow of huge spinning snowflakes…

  Jesus God.

  Monet. The Street at Argenteuil? Jesus God.

  Quickly now, one canvas after another. Murillo. Klimt. Michelangelo’s Madonna of Bruges. Dalí, Titian. Christ on the Cross. Botticelli. A flash of a red vest. Cézanne?

  JesusGodJesusGodJesusGod.

  He reached for the Murillo, best known for his religious works. Two saints—sisters, potters, martyrs. Facing each other, holding a small tower between them. Rufina and Justa? He vaguely remembered reading about this piece. Very slowly he turned the canvas over. The back of the frame contained the number R1171. He froze, knowing, from his studies at Yale, that it stood for the Rothschilds—the 1,171st object stolen from the family by the Nazis during the war. My God, it had to be worth ten million dollars.

  He shook his head back and forth, sickeningly aware that he was looking at millions and millions of dollars’ worth of looted art. Overwhelmed, barely able to breathe, he turned to the boxes. Tipped the cover off the first one. Shined his light over the contents.

  An instrument case of beautiful inlaid wood. Engraved with the letters The Felix Hoffmann Gallery. Pain, knife-sharp, speared through his chest. He sprang the latch, raised the lid slowly.

  A violin. A del Gesù? He lifted it gently, checked the label in the frail light. A Roman cross. My God, he thought. Felix Hoffman’s del Gesù. He thought he was going to be sick. Then he thought of his sister, and how she could make such a beautiful instrument sing. With reverence, he placed the violin back into its case, re-set the cover and turned to the next box, also labeled The Felix Hoffman Gallery.

  He held his breath as he lifted the cover.

  Music.

  Scores.

  He’d never come close to having the concert quality brilliance of his sister, but he could read music, play the piano with fair competence. Enough to recognize Benjamin Britten. Bach. Chopin, an autographed Vivaldi. But also sheaves of music he could not recognize at all.

  Old, stained. Some with signatures or writing too faded to read. Manuscripts, dozens of pages of musical phrases, notations. Very carefully, he shifted several pages, searching deep into the box. Lifted one fragile, ink-marked score to the light. Covered in hand-written notations, blotched with ink. Cracked, faded, the edges browned. But—

  He squinted, bent to examine the signed manuscript closely.

  No. Impossible. Jesus God.

  PART III

  Found

  …for the touch of a vanished hand…

  —Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA. JULY 10

  It was just after midnight in Virginia, the air still and swollen with heat, when the eyes-only email account in the seventh floor CIA office hummed to life.

  To the Deputy Director, 7/10, 12:01 a.m.

  From S. Sugarman

  Re: Operation Bright Angel

  ZL alive. Concerto seeking child today.

  They were in!

  The silver-haired Admiral swung his wheelchair to the tall windows behind his desk. Just dawn in France, he thought. Sugar’s photo hadn’t lied. Zachary Law was alive. The O’Shea woman had found him. Now she just had to find the boy.

  And if she did? A Commando-style abduction wouldn’t work in a quiet French village. He could just hear the Special Prosecutor’s rant over that one.

  But if he knew Sugarman, he’d find a way. You’re between a rock and a hard place, he told himself. Orsini’s client names and accounts are the key to your political survival.

  And the key to your destruction.

  He had to get his hands on Orsini’s journal before anyone else saw it.

  Orsini’s organization had been “extremely helpful” to America’s interests in the past. But now alarm claxons clamored in his head, reminding him of the days when he’d commanded his own sub. Take action. Dive! The beast, so useful to him in the past, had broken out of its cage.

  The Admiral’s call to Vanessa Durand had been frustrating enough to cause a blistering argument. Orsini had gone to ground, and the art gallery dealer did not know how to reach him. Time was running out. Only forty-eight hours until the reception in New York. The President’s guests arrived late tomorrow.

  Somehow, he had to stop Orsini. He lit a cigar and closed his eyes as a cloud of smoke enveloped his head.

  I can’t wait any longer.

  The wheelchair spun back to his state-of-the-art computer terminal. He thought for a moment. Then his hands began punching the keys.

  Ninety seconds later, new instructions were received and acknowledged in a small office in Geneva. And in the blink of an eye, over three million dollars were transferred from one private Cayman bank account to another.

  * * *

  “Don’t go, Maggie.”

  It was dawn in Provence. Beckett stood on her balcony, Shiloh sitting on guard by his side. They were surrounded by a watery mist that locked them in a silent gray world.

  She was very still. Then, “You’ve started calling me Maggie.”

  “I gave you lilacs,” he said. “I wanted to kiss you. I’d say that crossed the professional boundaries line, wouldn’t you?” He held out his hands.

  She thought about the night before and gestured toward the grand piano with its huge bouquet of flowers. “No one has ever given me white lilacs.”

  “Now that’s a shame, ma’am.”

  “Thank you, Michael. For the piano. For the music.”

  “You’re crazy talented. You brought your music back. Not me.”

  “I can’t help wondering, who is this man standing in the mist on my balcony?”

  “What I do is who I am. I’m just a man, Maggie. Not a hero. I get beaten up. I make mistakes…”

  “Was last night a mistake, Michael? Was I wrong about you?” She looked away. “About us?”

  The silvery eyes locked on hers. “No. We surely did open up something between us. And I don’t know how to close it.”

  “Do you want to close it?” Do I?

  “All I know is that I can’t take the place of a ghost for you.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You’re married. I will not be ‘the other woman.’”

  “It matters, all right. But because you’re not ready. Yes, I’m married, I never lied about that. But I don�
��t park my car in that garage anymore. Haven’t for fifteen years.”

  She watched his face, confused. “So you live alone?”

  “I am alone. But this isn’t about my wife. This search—it isn’t over for either one of us. I’m not the man you think I am. The reality of my profession is that you hurt the people you love.”

  “What has hurt you so much?”

  He was quiet for a long moment. Finally he said, “My wife and I, we’d been through…a really horrific time.” His eyes turned black, remembering. “After my wife became withdrawn, depressed, full of anger and blame. Then all of a sudden, she was going out again in the afternoon, coming home late. All perfumed, with gin on her breath. Her eyes secretive.

  “I didn’t know what to do, so I brought her flowers. Yellow, her favorite color. She began to sob. Flowers couldn’t fill the emptiness, she said. I couldn’t fill the emptiness.”

  He looked away. “But apparently other men could. Men and booze. After a while, she just crawled inside a bottle. Then one day I came home and she was gone. Never gave a woman flowers again. ’Til you.”

  “What counts to me, Colonel, is that your wife can still count on you. You’re there for her.”

  “I have to be. Because too much of it was my fault. Jeannie and I live separately, have for a long time. But she still needs someone to take her to AA, hold her head when she gets sick. She keeps promising to change, Maggie, and I want to believe her.”

  “You still love her.”

  “Yes. But the way I would love a hurting child. Not a woman.” His eyes held hers. “I just never had a reason to go beyond our separation. Until now.”

  “Don’t blame yourself for loving her.”

  “You can’t be my damned bandage, Maggie.”

  “You’re right, of course.” She took a step away, looked out over the gauzy hills. “Zach is waiting for me. I should be leaving soon.”

  “Don’t go, Maggie,” he said again. “I don’t want you to do this.”

  “I have to do this.”