The Chopin Manuscript: A Serial Thriller

Chapter Eleven Peter Spiegelman

Felicia Kaminski collapsed on the vast sofa that sat before the window that filled the wall of a suite atop the Harbor Court Hotel. The fat, silk-covered cushions nearly swallowed her whole. Far below, the lights of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor blinked yellow and white at her, and big boats bobbed like eggs on the black water. Was there something in the blinking lights — some pattern, a signal, a message meant for her? If there was, she was too tired to decipher it.

Beyond tired, really. She was spent — exhausted by fear and flight, and addled by too many time zones and Champagne that flowed freely in the first-class cabin. Faust had all but forced it on her, and he’d kept up with her glass for glass, all the while smiling like the Cheshire Cat. One bottle had led to another — so many bubbles — but the smiling Mr. Faust seemed entirely immune.

Kaminski closed her eyes, but she could still see his white teeth and those dark, stony eyes, could still hear that deep melodious voice speaking in Italian, then in French, in Polish, in German, and now in English as he addressed the hotel man. There was a rueful smile in his words. Without looking, she knew that the hotel man — not a bellman but the immaculate, blue-suited fellow from behind the desk — was smiling back and nodding. It was all smiles and nods and discreet bows for Mr. Faust, all along the way: on the airplane; in the executive lounge in Frankfurt as they waited to fly to the States; and from the man at Dulles who met them, retrieved their luggage and drove them in a shiny black BMW all the way to Baltimore. It was as if they all knew him, their oldest friend, dear Mr. Faust — who smiled and drank Champagne and spoke in many tongues, but answered questions in none of them.

Kaminski sighed and sank deeper into the cushions. Her head swam and the harbor lights blinked at her, even through her closed lids. She had smoked opium once, an oily black bead with that Tunisian boy — what was his name? — who played guitar near the Castel Sant’Angelo, and it had set her drifting like this. Floating, her worries no more than distant lights.

There was a sharp knock and she came to with a bump. She rubbed her eyes and sat up to see Faust opening the suite door. A man came in, squat and muscular, wearing jeans and a black-leather jacket. His hair was gray and cut short, and he greeted Faust in Italian, then glanced at his guest and switched to something else. Whatever it was sounded fast and harsh to Kaminski’s ears — Slavic, she thought, but otherwise no clue. Faust listened and nodded and checked his watch. He said something to the man — an order, a dismissal — and the man nodded and left.

Faust looked at her. “Another trip,” he said.

Felicia could barely find her voice. “What? Now? At this hour?”

Again the smile. “No rest for the wicked, Felicia, but we won’t be gone long. If you wish to wash up first, I will wait.”

She rubbed her hands over her face, rubbing life back into it. “No,” she said. “I’m tired of being dragged around, and now I’m done with it. Sono rifinito. Non sto andando.”

Even to herself she sounded like a child, but she was beyond caring. She looked at Faust, leaning so casually against the doorframe, his suit somehow without a wrinkle and every hair in place, as if he had stepped from a page in a fashion magazine.

He shook his head. “You are not staying here alone, Felicia.”

Anger welled in her. “No? And why not?”

“It is not safe.”

“I take care of myself.”

“Yes, I saw how well back in Rome.”

She said, “Screw you! I don’t need a goddamn babysitter.”

“You are the tough little urchin now, eh?”

“Tough enough,” Kaminski said, grinding her teeth. “I didn’t grow up in places like this, being waited on hand and foot.”

Faust’s smile widened. “You think that I did?”

“Let’s say you don’t look out of place.”

He chuckled. “You haven’t known the real romance of street life until you’ve experienced it in Buenos Aires, caught between the Montoneros and the Battalion 601 boys. Now those were charming fellows, and much more dedicated than your average Roman teppista.”

Kaminski massaged her temples, trying to get her brain to function. Buenos Aires? Montoneros? What the fuck? She’d read something once about the Dirty War, but she couldn’t remember what. “So you had it rough and now you’re up from the gutter — a real success story.”

“Something like that.”

“Good for you. You’ve earned all this! And never mind that you’re a thief or a spy or some kind of terrorist — someone who bullies old men, and kidnaps girls from the streets of Rome.”

“I’ve told you, Felicia, your friend Abe is fine, and I am no spy. I have no taste for politics at all. If I had to describe my profession, I’d say I was a broker. I match buyers with sellers, and take a fee. A modest fee, all things considered.”

“Buyers and sellers of what?”

Faust shrugged. “This and that. Odds and ends.”

“Like stolen music manuscripts?”

“The manuscript is in the closet, Felicia, behind lock and key. My own musical inclinations run more to Sinatra than Mozart.”

“Not music, then what — drugs, guns? Whatever it is, I’m sure it makes your family very proud.”

Kaminski felt the air change, going silent and thick around her. The smiling Mr. Faust was no longer smiling, and those dark eyes seemed to look right through her. Defiance and anger drained from her, replaced by choking fear. This time, the knock on the door was a relief.

It was the squat man again, and he looked nervously at Faust. Faust said something to the man — she didn’t know what — and walked out the door. The squat man turned to her.

“Come,” he said in gravelly English.

She was not inclined to argue.

Faust hadn’t lied about the trip. It was a short one in the back of the big BMW, through sodium-lit nighttime streets. Kaminski looked for signs and landmarks: Light Street, East Lombard, a big stadium off to the left, bathed in light and carpeted in impossible green, then a tangle of narrower streets, and old brick buildings. In 10 minutes, they pulled up in front of one of them.

Four stories and broad, the building looked to her like a warehouse or an old factory. And so it had been once upon a time, as she read on the shiny brass plaque near the modern glass entry: The Sail Cloth Factory–1888. Just above that plaque another, with the address: 121 South Fremont Avenue.

Home, she thought, her anger returning as she followed Faust inside.

Exposed brick and ornamental wrought iron whispered of the building’s industrial past; otherwise, the rest of the lobby — gleaming brass, etched glass and marble — proclaimed its current incarnation as a luxury apartment building. Faust crossed to the elevator and Felicia followed him in and then, on the fourth floor, out again. Around a corner, down a pale gray corridor, and to a black door at its end; Faust knocked twice. Then he took a key from his jacket pocket, worked the lock, and stepped inside. And stopped short.

Kaminski didn’t see the wiry, bearded man pointing a Glock 30 at Faust’s chest until she bumped into Faust’s back. Then she gasped and gripped Faust’s bicep.

“Jesus,” she whispered.

The bearded man smiled at Faust, who smiled back. “Que tal, Nacho,” Faust said.

“Nada, Jefe,” the man said, and slipped the Glock into a holster behind his back. “All quiet on the western front. Have a look for yourself.”

Faust gently removed Kaminski’s hand from his bicep, and followed Nacho to a window. She let out a long breath and looked around. The large loft apartment — brick walls, high ceilings, exposed beams and ductwork, shiny plank floors, and little in the way of furniture: a card table, some folding chairs, a dim floor lamp, and heavy white drapes across the windows. There was plenty of technical equipment: three laptops; several cameras wearing long lenses; and two massive, tripod-mounted binoculars. They were pointed at a narrow gap in the drapes, and now Nacho fiddled with one of them.

“Got the image intensifier on this one, Jefe,” he said as Faust bent to the eyepieces.

“When was the last delivery?” Faust asked as he looked.

“This afternoon. Maybe five o’clock.”

“You know what it was?”

Nacho looked at Kaminski and switched to Spanish. She tried to follow it, but it came too fast and the accents were strange, and anyway it sounded scientific to her, chemical terms maybe. She walked slowly to the binoculars while Faust and Nacho spoke. The men saw her but seemed not to care. She peered into the eyepiece.

Outside, the world was tinted green, as was a brick building, low and long, that seemed very close. It had a lot of windows, all shuttered, and she thought it looked abandoned. There was a loading dock in the center of the image, and the only thing that moved was a plastic bag, blowing in the warm night breeze.

Nacho pulled the drapes and the outside images went black. He looked at Kaminski and nodded his head at a chair in the corner. She sat, still straining to catch the conversation. It was less technical now, Faust asking something about someone—does he know…Does he know what? Horario. Was that like orario, meaning schedule, timetable? And who was this he?

It seemed as if Nacho was uncertain too. He shrugged at Faust and moved to a large closet’s double doors. He put his hands on the knobs. “Maybe you have better luck than me, Jefe,” he said in English, and swung the doors wide.

Kaminski screamed.

The man on the closet floor stared at her, though he was bound with wire and gagged with duct tape, and bleeding from a gash on his shaved head, which, she noticed, was tattooed with the likeness of the jack of spades. Nacho pressed a forefinger to his lips and made a shushing noise at her.

She had no idea how long it was before her head cleared, but when it did she saw Faust kneeling by the tattooed man. His hand rested gently on the man’s shoulder, and he spoke softly in his ear. The duct tape was off the tattooed man’s mouth and Kaminski could see that the man’s lips were split, and that he was crying. And speaking too, in urgent, terrified English.

“No, no — not weeks! It’s days, a matter of days. Maybe less!”

Faust spread the duct tape over the man’s mouth again and patted him, almost affectionately, on the back. Then he stepped away and shut the closet door. Nacho looked at Faust and smiled.

“Still got the touch, Jefe,” he said.

Faust smiled minutely. “You call if there’s any more activity,” he said. To Kaminski, he added, “We return to the hotel.”

She stood and followed numbly. As they were about to step into the corridor, she touched Faust’s arm and spoke in a whisper. “What will happen to him — the man in the closet?”

“Nacho will see to him,” Faust said. “Now come, we have dinner plans to make.”

It was nearly black in the hospital room when Jack Perez came awake, the .357 in his hand. The only light came from the orange glow of the call buttons on the wall, the green digits on the blood pressure monitor, and the pinkish scatter of streetlight through the shaded window. It was nearly silent, too — only the sounds of his wife’s steady breathing, the quiet whir of air in the vents, and the electric ping of some sort of warning bell reached his ears. About right for two a.m.

But something had woken Perez from his brittle sleep. His father-in-law going out? Someone in the corridor?

Perez wiped a hand across his eyes, rose from the lounge chair and crossed the room without a sound. He leaned against the doorframe with one hand on the knob and the .357 down along his leg. He took a deep breath and opened the door a crack.

Middleton was down the hall, his back to Perez, and he was talking quietly to a man and a woman. The man was lanky and pale, and his jaw was darkened by a three-day beard. His eyes were shadowed and darting. The woman was tall, tanned, and broad-shouldered, and her dark hair was cut short. Perez hadn’t made a sound, but somehow Middleton knew he was there.

“Come meet some old friends, Jack,” he said, without turning around. Perez pocketed the Python and closed the door to his wife’s behind him.

“This is Jean-Marc Lespasse and Leonora Tesla, former colleagues of mine. Nora, J.M., this is my son-in-law, Jack Perez.”

Lespasse nodded at Perez, and Tesla put out a warm hand. “Harry has told us all that’s happened, Mr. Perez. I’m so sorry for what you and your wife have been through. Will she be all right?”

“She’s lost a lot of blood, but the docs say she’ll recover. All right is another story. I don’t know that either one of us will be all right again after this.”

As Tesla nodded sympathetically, Middleton said, “Nora and J.M. have been through the wringer themselves the past couple of days. A man nearly killed Nora in Namibia, and J.M. narrowly avoided abduction in Chapel Hill.”

“Jesus, Harry, is all this about—?”

“We think so,” Middleton said. “The man who attacked Nora was looking for me.”

“I didn’t hang around to find out what those clowns in the parking lot were after,” Lespasse added in a raspy whisper, “but I heard them speaking Serbian, and they were carrying those cheap shit Zastavas.”

“And this is all about…what? That fucking manuscript?” Perez asked.

Tesla and Lespasse shifted nervously. Middleton said nothing.

“For Christ’s sakes, Harry…” Perez said, shaking his head. He looked at Tesla. “How did you two manage to find us?”

“We both saw the news reports of Harry’s difficulty at Dulles, and knew that he was…in flight. We both guessed that he might turn up at the lake house.”

“I ran into Nora there,” Lespasse said.

“…and nearly blew my head off.”

“We saw the blood and thought the worst,” Lespasse added. “We started checking hospitals, closest ones first, and there you were.”

Perez turned back to his father-in-law. “Not too difficult. And the guys who are after you, whoever they are, seem fuckin’ relentless. How much longer before they turn up here too?”

Any answer Middleton might have given was interrupted by the night duty nurse. “You and your father-in-law will have to quiet down, Mr. Perez, and your friends will have to come back during regular visiting hours.”

Middleton seized the opportunity. “Yes, ma’am, and we’re very sorry. I’ll just see these folks out so Jack can sit with Charley.”

He took Tesla’s arm and led her and Jean-Marc toward the elevator, leaving Jack Perez grinding his teeth in the darkened hallway.

Outside, the air was warm and close. The hospital parking lot was nearly empty. Jean-Marc Lespasse lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and blew a column of smoke into the night sky.

Harry Middleton recalled the last time he’d seen Lespasse and Val Brocco. A blisteringly hot day at chaotic Kenyatta Airport. He remembered too his farewell to Nora Tesla. It had been somewhat after his final meeting with the two men and the location was much nicer — an Algerian-influenced inn on the Cote d’Azur — but the moment was no less difficult.

Events intervened…

She glanced at him once and then her eyes fled. Words seemed easier.

“Your family has no idea?” Leonora Tesla asked Middleton.

“No. I never told them — never thought I’d have to. I thought I could protect them from…all this.”

She clutched his hand, an instinctive gesture, and released it fast. “This isn’t your fault, Harry, but your son-in-law is right. It wasn’t difficult for us to find you, and it won’t be difficult for anyone else who’s looking. It’s not safe.”

“It’s safe enough for a little while — long enough for me to think things through. The Soberski woman asked about Faust. She thought I was into something with him.”

“So you said, Harry, and I told you, Eleana Soberski was a sociopath and a congenital liar,” Tesla said. “You have to assume that anything she said was meant to mislead and to manipulate. Faust was our boogeyman — our white whale — and she knew that. What better way to get you attention than dangle his name?”

“She didn’t have to dangle anything, Nora. She had a gun in my ribs.”

Blowing out more smoke, Lespasse said, “She thought she was going to be interrogating you, Harry. She was laying groundwork, putting you off balance. She—”

Before Lespasse could finish, Middleton’s cell phone burred. He found it in a pocket, flipped it open and heard only static. And then a faraway voice, old and struggling in English.

“Colonel Middleton? My name is Abraham Nowakowski. I’m calling from Rome and I have a message from Felicia Kaminski — Henryk Jedynak’s niece. An urgent message.”

Harold Middleton listened intently for several minutes. Then he said, “Ciao, Signor Abe, mille grazie.” Closing his phone, he let out a massive breath. Tesla and Lespasse looked at him expectantly.

“Speak of the devil, and the devil appears,” Middleton said. “Faust. He’s in the country, and close — up in Baltimore. He’s got something Henryk Jedynak was holding for me, and he’s got Jedynak’s niece too.”

“Baltimore? What the hell is he doing in Baltimore?” Lespasse asked.

“I don’t know. Jedynak’s niece managed to get a call out to a family friend in Rome — that’s who was on the line. From what he said, it sounds like Faust has some sort of operation going on there, but the girl was cut off after a minute.”

“Did she say where in Baltimore Faust is?” Tesla asked.

“No, but she did tell her friend where she and Faust would be tomorrow — check that — tonight. A place called Kali’s Court, on Thames Street. Apparently the two of them are going there for dinner. Just the two of them. I’m thinking that maybe we should join them.”

Tesla and Lespasse looked at Middleton. Tesla shook her head. “Join them? You can’t be serious, Harry — with only three of us.”

“We need backup for something like that, Colonel,” Lespasse said. “Unless what you want is in and out, bang, bang, bang.”

Middleton shook his head. “That’s appealing, but not smart. No, we need to talk to this guy, and at length. So backup it is.” Harry opened his phone again and clicked through his list of contacts. He stopped on an entry marked E.K. and hit dial.

The phone rang once.

The voice in Middleton’s ear said, “It’s about time you called, Harry. But then I guess you’ve had your hands full lately.”

“I need a team, Emmett,” Middleton said. “In Baltimore.”

“Sure you do, Harry. And what about what I need?”

“We can talk about that too, after we settle Baltimore.”

“We can fuckin’ talk about it now.”

“It’s been real bad luck for people to run into you lately, Harry. We’ve got bodies at Dulles, downtown on Sixteenth Street and two assholes with fake Bureau IDs in a bar nearby. Okay, sure, self-defense. But you still have to answer questions. And we can’t stop the local boys from bringing you in if they find out. Jesus, you should’ve told us from the beginning what was going on.

“Guess what, Emmett. Somebody forgot to send me an agenda. I didn’t know what was going on. And I still don’t.”

“Be that as it may, we need to talk.”

“No time, Emmett. My battery’s running low.”

“Not to worry, Harry, we can talk about it over coffee. Say in five minutes, in the hospital cafeteria.” Middleton looked left, right, overhead. On the phone Kalmbach laughed nastily. “On your left,” he said. “Across the street.”

Middleton peered into the darkness and a pair of headlights of a Bureau-issued car winked once, twice at him. Emmett Kalmbach was still laughing. “Cream and two sugars for me, Harry.”

In his suite at the Harbor Court Hotel, the man known as Faust answered the muted beep of a cell phone. The voice on the other end was faraway and old. Faust listened intently, and a small, satisfied smile played on his lips. “Well done, Signor Abe,” he said.

Faust put his phone down and looked across the sitting room, into the smaller of the suite’s two bedrooms. A splash of light fell across the king-sized bed, and in it he could see Kaminski’s pale face on the pillow, and a spray of blond hair.

“Charming,” he said again, to no one in particular.