The Chopin Manuscript: A Serial Thriller

by Jeffery Deaver

  “I couldn’t keep going after that. I disbanded the group. You’ve got to play by the rules. If you don’t, their side wins. We’re no better than they are.”

  “It looks like it bothered you very much,” Kaminski said.

  “They were my friends. It was hard.”

  And one of them was much more than just a friend. But this was part of the story Middleton didn’t share.

  His phone beeped. He glanced at the screen and read the lengthy SMS message. “Speak of the devil…It’s Lespasse and Nora,” he explained. “This is interesting…They talked to one of our old contacts. He found out that machinery that could be used to make a bio-weapon delivery systems was shipped to a factory in downtown Baltimore yesterday.” He looked up. “I’ve got an address. I think I’ll go check it out.” He said to Perez, “You take Felicia someplace safe and—”

  The man shook his head. “I’m going with you.”

  “It’s not your fight, Jack.”

  “These are terrorists. It’s everybody’s fight. I’m with you.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “You’re not going anywhere without me.”

  Middleton gave him an affectionate nod. He then subtly pulled his service Glock from his waistband and, holding the gun under the table, checked the ammunition. “I’m short a few rounds. Let me see your Beretta.”

  Perez slipped him the weapon, out of sight.

  Middleton looked over the clip. “You’ve got twelve and one in the hole. I’m going to borrow three or four.”

  “Ah, you don’t have to pay me back,” his son-in-law said, grim-faced. Then smiled. “Give ‘em to Faust instead.”

  Middleton laughed.

  They left the diner and walked Kaminski to a hotel up the street. Middleton gave her some money and told her to check in and stay out of sight until they called.

  “I want to go,” she protested.

  “No, Felicia.”

  “My uncle’s dead because of this man.”

  He smiled at her. “This isn’t your line of work. Leave it to the experts.”

  Reluctantly she nodded and turned toward the hotel lobby.

  Middleton climbed into the driver’s seat of Perez’s car and together the men sped over streets that grew progressively rougher as cobblestones showed through the worn asphalt.

  He said, “The delivery was to Four Thirty Eight West Ellicott Street. It’s about a mile from here.” Middleton then glanced to his right. Perez was shaking his head, smiling.

  The father-in-law squinted in curiosity. “What?”

  “Funny. You and your friends.”

  “Who? Lespasse and Nora?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about them?”

  The voice was now sharp with sarcasm. “Supposed to be so fuckin’ good at your job. And here you are, chasing down a bum lead.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  The Beretta appeared fast. Middleton flinched as he felt the muzzle against his neck. His son-in-law took the Glock, tossed it in the back, along with Middleton’s cell phone. Then he undid his father-in-law’s seatbelt, but kept his own hooked.

  “What’s going on?” Middleton gasped.

  “The gas delivery system was shipped to Virginia, not Baltimore. We drove it up. Whatever’s on Ellicott Street, it doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

  “Us?” Middleton whispered. “You’re with them, Jack?”

  “’fraid so, Dad. Turn right here. Head to the waterfront.”

  “But—”

  The black automatic prodding Middleton’s ear. “Now.”

  He did as he was told, following directions to a deserted pier, lined with old warehouses. Perez ordered him to stop. The pistol never wavering, he directed Middleton out of the car and pushed him through an old doorway.

  Faust glanced up as if they were guests right on time for a party. In overalls, wearing thick gloves, he was standing at a cluttered worktable littered with tools, tubing and electronic or computer parts. A pallet of gas tanks was nearby. There were 50 or so of them. “Danger–Biohazard” was printed on them in six languages.

  Faust gave a fast appraisal of Middleton. “Search him.”

  “I already—”

  “Search him.”

  Perez patted him down. “Clean.”

  Middleton shook his head. “I don’t get it…Jack shot Nacho.”

  Faust grimaced. “We had to sacrifice the greasy little prick—so you’d believe Mr. Perez here and give us the real musical code. I doubted you’d be honest with me back there.”

  “He wasn’t,” Perez confirmed. “He claimed he wasn’t thinking clearly. But I’m sure he was lying. He told me how it works.” He explained what Middleton had said about adjusting the pitch of A and using a simple electronic tuning device to decode the formula.

  Faust was nodding. “Hadn’t considered that. Of course.”

  Middleton said, “So Jack coming to our rescue in the Harbor Court was all part of the plan.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “I’m just a businessman, Colonel. The world of terrorism is different now. Too many watch lists, too much surveillance, too many computers. You have to outsource. I’ve been hired by people who are patriots, idealists, protecting their culture.”

  “Is that how you describe ethnic cleansing?”

  Faust frowned. “Protecting them from impurity is how they describe it. You meddled in their country. You’ll pay for that. A hundred thousand people will pay.”

  “And you, Jack?” Middleton snapped.

  The young man gave a grim laugh. “I have my own ideals. But they’ve got commas and a decimal point. I’m making ten million to keep an eye on you and help them out. Yeah, I went to law school and gave up the family business…And it was the worst mistake of my life. Going legit? Bullshit.” He gazed at his father-in-law contemptuously. “Look at you, Mr. Harry Middleton…The star of military intel, the musical genius…Faust led you all over the world like he had you on a leash.”

  “Jack, we don’t have time,” Faust said. “I’ll try the adjustment to the formula. If it works and we don’t need him anymore, you can take care of him.”

  Middleton said, “Jack, you’re willing to kill so many people?”

  “I’ll donate some of the ten million to a relief fund…” A grin. “Or not.”

  Then he stopped talking. Cocked his head.

  Faust was looking up too.

  “Helicopter,” the younger man muttered.

  But Faust spat out, “No, it’s two. Wait, three.”

  Faust ran to the window. “It’s a trap. Police. Soldiers.” He glared at Jack. “You led them here!”

  “No, I did what we agreed.”

  Middleton could hear diesels of Jeeps and personnel carriers in the distance, closing in fast. Spotlights shone from on high.

  Faust slapped his hand on a button on the wall. The warehouse was plunged into darkness. Middleton lunged for Faust but saw the man’s vague form run to a corner of the warehouse, open a trap door and vanish. A few seconds later, a powerboat engine started up.

  Hell! Middleton thought. He swept the light switch on. He ran to the trap door. Tried it, but Faust had locked it from below.

  Sweating, frantic, Perez pointed his gun at Middleton. “Harry, don’t move. You’re my ticket out of here.”

  Middleton ignored him and started for the front door of the warehouse.

  “Harry!” Perez aimed at Middleton’s head. “I’m not telling you again!”

  Their eyes met. Perez pulled the trigger.

  Click.

  Middleton pulled a handful of bullets from his pocket. He displayed them. When pretending to take just three or four bullets from the clip in the diner, he’d taken them all–and the one in the chamber too.

  His eyes bored into the younger man’s. “That text message I got earlier? It wasn’t from Nora and Lespasse. It was from Charley. ‘Green Lante
rn.’ It’s our code for an emergency. And she text-messaged me who I was in danger from. You, Jack. I knew you’d lead me to Faust. So I text-messaged Lespasse and Nora and told them to follow me from the diner.”

  Middleton leapt forward and slammed his fist into Perez’s jaw, then easily twisted the automatic away. He dropped a round into the chamber, locked the slide, aimed at his son-in-law.

  “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 J.M. 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, for the government. 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 h
er 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 used 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.