"Harry, you don't understand. I was just faking. Playing along to find out who was involved. I'm a patriot."
"No. You're a traitor who was willing to murder a hundred thousand citizens . . . " His eyelids lowered. "A hundred thousand and one."
"One?"
"My grandchild. Charley told me what you did. How could you do something like that? How?"
Perez's shoulders slumped. He looked down and gave up all pretense of lying. "A baby didn't fit my new lifestyle."
"And Charley didn't either, did she? So after losing the baby, my daughter was, what? Going to kill herself in despair?"
He didn't answer. He didn't need to. Middleton grabbed him by the collar, forced the trembling man on his knees, touched his forehead with the muzzle. He felt the pressure closing on his index finger.
This man killed your grandchild, was going to kill your daughter. We're in the middle of a takedown, he attacked you . . .
Nobody'll care if you take him out.
Now, do it! Before anybody comes in.
Perez squinted, sealing his miserable eyes. "Please, Harry. Please."
Green shirt, green shirt, green shirt . . .
Middleton lowered the gun. He shoved Perez to his belly on the floor. The door burst open. A dozen soldiers and men in FBI jackets filed into the room. The agents cuffed Perez as a bio-weapon containment unit, looking like astronauts in their protective gear, headed straight to the gas tanks and equipment on the worktable, sweeping them with sensors. After a few minutes one of them announced, "Nothing's been mixed yet. There's no danger."
A grizzled man in a uniform with major's stripes strode into the room. Major Stanley Jenkins's face was grim.
Oh, no . . . Middleton deduced what the man had just learned.
"Colonel, sorry. He got away."
Middleton sighed.
Well, at least they'd secured the nerve gas. The city was safe.
And Faust would be the subject of one of the most massive manhunts in U.S. history. They'd find him. Middleton would make sure of that.
A half hour later, Jack Perez was in detention and Middleton was outside with Tesla, Lespasse and Jenkins--his former colleague from the Army. A car pulled up. Unmarked. Did the feds think people didn't recognize wheels like that? It might as well have had We Serve and Protect in bold type on the side.
Two men climbed out. One was Dick Chambers, the Homeland Security man, and the other FBI Assistant Director Kalmbach.
"Emmett."
"Colonel, I--"
Chambers interrupted. "I don't know what to say, Harry. Your country owes you a huge debt. You saved thousands of lives."
Middleton hoped Kalmbach was used to being snubbed. After stumbling and letting Vukasin and his boys into the country, Chambers was going to milk the win for everything he could.
He added, "We have to debrief you now. We'd like--"
"No," Middleton said firmly. "Now I have to go see my daughter."
"But, Colonel, I have to talk to the director and the White House."
But all that Chambers was talking to at the moment was Harry Middleton's back.
She would be fine.
Physically, at least. The mental battering from losing her child and the betrayal of her husband was taking its toll, though, and Middleton had whisked her away to the lake house.
They spent a lot of time in front of the TV, watching the news. As he'd predicted, Dick Chambers and other officials from Homeland Security took most of the credit for stopping the nerve-gas attack and finding the terrorists who'd slipped into the country--"owing to extremely well-done forged papers," he pointedly added. The FBI got credited in a footnote.
Harry Middleton was mentioned not at all.
Which was, of course, how this game worked.
The post-mortem of the case suggested that Faust was in charge of the plot to seek revenge against America for the peace-keeping operation. Rugova worked for him but got tired of prison and was going to bribe his way out with loot stolen to support the terrorists.
That's why he was eliminated by Vukasin. Stefan Andrzej, the tattooed man, who'd killed Val Brocco, was probably a traitor, and murdered for that reason--and for his incompetence.
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 JM 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 that. 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 use
d 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.
17
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 . . .
His enemy's defenses were down. He thought of an apt metaphor: They believed the concert was over; they never suspected he'd arranged a spectacular, unexpected crescendo.
Faust now slipped out of the basement, troubled as he pictured Felicia Kaminski dying in the conflagration. He wasn't concerned about the young women herself, of course. He was troubled that, if she used the original score to perform from, the manuscript would be destroyed.
After all, it was easily worth millions of dollars.
The crowds began assembling outside early, the queue stretching well past a construction site next door to the James Madison hall. Many were people without tickets, hoping for scalpers. But this was a world-premiere of Chopin, not pre-season Redskins, so there were no tickets to be had.
Harold Middleton made a brief backstage visit to Kaminski, wished her well and then joined his guests in the lobby: Leonora Tesla, JM Lespasse and his daughter Charley.
He said hello to some of the music professors from Georgetown and George Mason, and a few of the Defense Department and DOJ folks from his past life. Emmett Kalmbach came by and shook his hand. "Where's Dick?" he asked.
Middleton gave a laugh and pointed across the hall to the head of Homeland Security. "Gave his ticket to his boss."
The FBI man said, "At least I appreciate culture."
"You ever heard Chopin before, Emmett?"
"Sure."
"What'd he write?"
"That thing."
"Thing?"
"You know, the famous one."
Middleton smiled as Kalmbach changed the subject.
The lobby lights dimmed and they entered the auditorium, found their seats.
"Harry, relax" Middleton heard his daughter say. "You look like you're the one performing."
He smiled, noting how she referred to him. The lack of endearment didn't upset him one bit; it was a sign she was recovering.
But as for relaxing: Well, that wasn't going to happen. This was going to be a momentous evening. He was bursting with excitement.
The conductor walked out on stage to wild applause. He then lifted his arm to the right and nineteen-year-old Felicia Kaminski, in a fluid black dress, strode out on stage, looking confident as a pro. She smiled, bowed and stole a glance at Harold Middleton. He believed she winked. She sat down at the keyboard.
The conductor took his place at the stand. He lifted his baton.
"Dick, something interesting here."
Chambers was in his office at the Department of Homeland Security, working late. He was thinking about the concert and wondering if his boss was appreciative he'd been given the ticket. He looked up.
"Might want to talk to this guy," his straight-arrow aide said.
The caller was a restaurant worker near the James Madison recital hall. As he was leaving work early that morning, he explained, he'd seen a man leave through the hall's side door. He'd gotten into a car near the site. Thinking it seemed suspicious--the hall had been closed all day--he took a picture of the car and the license plate with his cell phone. He meant to call the police earlier but had forgotten about it. He'd just now called D.C. police and was referred to Homeland Security, since the concert would be attended by some high-ranking government officials.
"Nowadays," the restaurant worker said, "you never know--terrorists and everything."
Chambers said, "We better follow up on this. Where are you?"
He'd just gotten off work, the man explained. He gave the address of the restaurant. It was now closed so Chambers told him to wait in a park near the place. He'd have agents there soon.
"And thank you, sir. It's citizens like you that make this country what it is."
On stage at the recital hall, Felicia Kaminski was playing as she'd never played in her life. She was motivated not by the fact that this was her first appearance as a soloist at a w
orld premiere, but because of the music itself. It was intoxicating.
Musicians grow familiar with the pieces in their repertoire, the same way husbands and wives grow comfortably close over the years. But there's something about meeting, then performing, a new work that's like the beginning of a love affair.
Passionate, exhilarating, utterly captivating. The rest of the world ceases to exist.
She was now lost in the music completely, unaware of the thousand people in the audience, the lights, the distinguished guests, the other members of the chamber orchestra around her.
Only one thing intruded slightly.
The faint smell of smoke.
But then she came to a tricky passage in the Chopin and, concentrating hard, she lost any awareness of the scent.
A dark sedan pulled up fast, near a small park in northwest D.C., where a middle-aged man in food-stained overalls sat on a park bench, looking around like a nervous bird.
He flinched when the car stopped and only after spotting the plate Official Government Use and the letters on the side, DHS, did he rise. He walked to the man who got out of the car.
"I'm Joe. From the diner," he said. "I called."
"I'm Dick Chambers." They shook hands.
"Please, sir," the worker said. He held up his cell phone. "I have the picture of the license plate. It's hard to read but I'm sure you have computers that can make it, you know, clearer."
"Yes, our technical department can work miracles."
A man climbed from the car. He called, "Dick, just heard a CNN report on the radio! A fire in the recital hall. It looks big. Real big!"
Dick Chambers smiled, then turned to the man who had just shouted to him from the car.
It was Faust. His two thugs stepped out of back of the car and joined him.
"There, he's the man I saw," cried the agitated restaurant worker. "You have arrested him!"
But then he shook his head, seeing that Faust's hands weren't cuffed. "No, no, no." He dropped the cell phone, staring at Chambers. "You're part of it! I am dead!"
Yeah, you pretty much are, the Homeland Security man thought.
Chambers asked Faust, "What's going on at the hall?"
"They are just preliminary reports. No one can see anything. The streets are filled with smoke. Fire trucks everywhere."
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