The Chopin Manuscript: A Serial Thriller

Chapter Twelve Ralph Pezzullo

There was something about Fells Point that put Harold Middleton in a foul mood. Maybe it had to do with the fight at The Horse You Came In Saloon that got him booted out of West Point. Maybe it related to the scar on his left temple left by a bar stool — the one that still throbbed whenever the thermometer dipped below 40.

This dank place changed my life, he thought, entering the fog that clung like bad luck to Baltimore’s Thames Street.

Charley’s miscarriage; his ex-wife Sylvia’s violent death; the mayhem and destruction that trailed him since the meeting in Krakow: Now he was determined to right all that, coming on like St. George to slay the dragon as in the richly colored depiction by Raphael Sanzio he admired, even if Faust had chosen Kali’s Court in some sort of a sick cosmic joke. He smiled to himself. Wasn’t Kali the Hindu goddess of annihilation?

As he peered through the fog, Middleton reminded himself to focus. The forces aligned against him were vile and dark. The equation he followed was simple. He had come to slay evil, which had manifested in numbing complexity.

Nora Tesla’s voice squawked in his earpiece. “Target’s in. Alone.”

That’s strange, he thought, marching over the same cobblestones he’d been tossed to like trash so many years ago. “Kaminski isn’t with him?”

“I said, ‘Alone.’”

So you did. Middleton pushed his shoulders back, fixed the collar of his coat and entered the restaurant. A hostess with a frosted smile stopped him with hard blue eyes. “You have a reservation?”

“I’m meeting someone. A man. Mid-thirties, long dark hair, slicked back, tall. Just arrived…”

“I know him. Yes.” Suddenly flummoxed, she managed to smile and frown at the same time. “He said he was dining alone.”

“Not tonight, my dear.”

Middleton’s Dover Saddlery riding boots reverberated confidently across the walnut floor past Tesla and Lespasse in a nearby booth, along with an FBI agent and another man, ambiguously titled, but one whose job became clearer if you knew his phone number was an exchange near Crystal City, Virginia, the home of the Pentagon.

Outside, in a control van, were some other distinguished visitors: Emmett Kalmbach and Homeland Security’s Richard Chambers.

Such seniority at a surveillance operation was unusual. But Faust was such a wild card, and the recent shootings so troubling, that both the major agencies responsible for tracking foreign threats within the U.S. wanted direct involvement. Middleton knew Kalmbach. The man could be spineless but Middleton didn’t care; all the easier to get what he wanted from the feebies on Ninth Street. As for Dick Chambers, the regional director wouldn’t have much personal interest in Faust. The politics of the Balkans hadn’t intrigued him. He’d made one trip to the region during the conflicts, apparently deemed it solvable by underlings and headed off for the Middle East — where he saw more of a threat to the U.S., about which he was right, of course.

But Chambers’s presence here could be explained by a simpler reason: The DHS, the organization that brought us the color-coded threat levels and was charged with protecting our borders, had screwed up big time and, focused on people whose last names began with al-, had missed Vukasin, a known war criminal, and an unknown number of his goons sneaking into the country on phony papers.

Which wasn’t necessarily bad news for Middleton. It meant that Chambers needed to protect his image and could bring resources to bear in a big way. Middleton was confident that all the pieces were in place for checkmate.

Spotting thick black eyebrows protruding over the top of the Racing Form, Middleton stopped and lowered his chin. “Good evening, Faust,” he said deeply, placing the edge of his briefcase on the table. His heart was beating fast, palms moist. The man he’d been tracking for years was now in front of him. He seemed diminished, much smaller than Middleton expected, though he knew the physical details of the war criminal better than he knew his own.

“I rather liked Patty’s Special in the eighth running ten to one,” came the reply. Faust set down the paper and smoothed it carefully. “Colonel Harold Middleton.”

The swarthy-skinned man with the lopsided grin looked up briefly, then snapped his fingers at the nervous waiter with the puff of blond hair. “Bring a glass for my friend.” Then to Middleton, he said, “I hope you don’t mind Beaujolais.”

The American beamed at his quarry’s attempt at gamesmanship. “I have you, Faust,” he said as he pulled out a chair and sat. “We can do this anyway you want.”

Faust folded the paper and fixed him with intense black eyes. “‘Unhappy master, who unmerciful disaster followed fast and followed faster, till his songs the burden bore; till the dirges of his hope, the melancholy burden bore of Nevermore, of Nevermore.’”

“I deplore people who play with other people’s lives.”

“So do I.”

“It’s over.”

“Let’s hope not, Colonel.” The man took a bite of food, which he seemed to relish. He then said, “One thing I’ve never thanked you for. My name.”

“Your name?”

“That was your creation. I believe you found some documents in a volume of Goethe’s masterpiece, and dubbed me after the hero.”

“You think Faust was a hero?”

“Protagonist then.” He raised his glass. “So here’s to selling our souls to the devil.”

Middleton let his wine glass sit, untouched.

They confronted each other’s stare. Middleton wanted nothing more than to reach over and wring the younger man’s neck.

Faust said, “The great Edgar Allen Poe died at Church Hospital, very close to here. Few grieved. The poor mad genius was placed in an unmarked grave. His last words: ‘Lord help my soul.’”

“It seems you identify with him.”

Faust shook his head. “I was thinking he was more like you. Condemned to walk the earth as a marked man. Walking down the avenue of life stalked by demons. Using his will to bend his torment into art.”

Middleton drank down his wine then slammed his fist onto the table. “You’re a criminal! A fiend! I still dream about the slaughtered children of Kosovo and Racak.”

Faust laughed into his fist, adding fire to Middleton’s anger. Then he held up his hand. “Easy, my friend. Why it is that you Americans always assume that everything is black and white?”

“In this case, it is.”

“So if it has a pink ribbon tied around it it’s a birthday present?”

“Maybe you didn’t pull the trigger yourself, but you backed the man who did.”

“Rugova was a pig. May he rest in—”

“I hope he’s rotting in hell.”

“He was useful.”

Middleton stabbed a finger toward his rival’s chin. “You stink of guilt.”

“I like you, Colonel. I need you. That’s why I must stop you from continuing to demean your own intelligence.”

Before Middleton could reply, Faust snapped his fingers at the waiter, who skittered across the dining room. “My guest here will have the lacquered octopus to start; for me, the pear and caramelized walnut salad. We’d both like the whole Bronzini. No salt.”

Faust lifted his glass. “Here’s to the beginning of our partnership. Success!”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Tens of thousands; maybe hundreds of thousands of people are counting on us, but don’t know it.”

“Music lovers?” he asked darkly.

“I know a great deal about you, Colonel. I’ve studied you carefully. You’re a man who is relentless in pursuit of what you consider a worthy goal. I hope you’ll excuse me if I say that your goals so far have been wrong-headed.”

The salad and octopus arrived and were soon treated to showers of fresh black pepper.

“I bet you the price of this meal that we’ll be working together by the evening’s end,” Faust offered.

Middleton nodded his acceptance.

In a small bookkeeper’s office in a corner of the lemon-and-brine-scented kitchen of Kali’s Court, M.T. Connolly sat listening with desperate attention to the two men at the table not 50 yards from her, their voices traveling through an earbud.

Kalmbach. At his disposal were hundreds of Bureau agents and yet, in a display of typically unnecessary bravado, he drove to Martha Jefferson Hospital by himself, unaware Connolly was behind him. Now, hours later, Kalmbach, with Dick Chambers in tow, had led her to Middleton. And Faust, who was beginning the next phase of his dissertation with an anecdote about his father.

Connolly listened hard. The bug was under Faust’s bread plate.

“…Invitations to dance made with simple nods,” Faust said. “The intense courtship…”

She jumped as her cell phone rang. She stretched her leg and snapped it quickly from her belt. “This is Connolly.”

“Hello, Buttercup.”

She walked toward a corner, away from the kitchen staff’s prying eyes. “Padlo,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Where are you?”

“Sono a Roma,” he replied, his Italian accented with as much American English as his native Polish. “Someone wants to say hello.”

“Josef, wait—”

“Oh, and by the way, his English is…Actually, it’s non-existent.”

Connolly sighed as Faust and Middleton continued in her other ear.

“Buona sera, Signora Connolly,” an old man said nervously. “Il mio nome è Abe Nowakowski. Posso aiutarlo con il vostro commercio.”

“I’m sorry—‘Commercio’? I don’t—”

“Business,” Padlo said, taking the heavy black handset in the old man’s shop. “Which is still finding Middleton, I presume.”

“I’ve got Middleton,” Padlo heard her say. “And Faust.”

When Padlo repeated the names, the old man recoiled.

“They are together?” Padlo asked.

“Together, and negotiating.”

Nowakowski, who had lived in terror since the moment he first saw the Mozart score, said, “Dove è il Felicia?”

Padlo saw that the old man trembled. “A young girl,” the deputy said to Connolly. “Felicia Kaminski. Jedynak’s niece.” Recalling her photo, he began to describe her.

“She’s not here,” Connolly said.

“Harbor Court,” the old man told Padlo.

Padlo repeated the hotel’s name.

Not now, Connolly thought as she shut her cell phone.

Out in the dining room, Faust had made his play.

Faust said, “My father was a relatively old man when he married my mother. They met in at a type of tango bar we call milangas in Buenos Aires. A scratchy Carlos Gardel record, seductive glances filled with subverted desire. Invitations to dance made with simple nods. The intense courtship begins with toe-tangling turns and kicks under crystal chandeliers. Before they speak, it seems to my father that they’re making love.”

“What’s your father got to do with this?”

“As a young man, my father was a chemist in Poland. He said my mother reminded him of his first wife, a gypsy, Zumella. She died in Europe during the war.”

“Along with million and millions of others. If we didn’t stop that madman we’d all be speaking German.”

“He called my mother Jolanta — violet blossom. He was a sentimental man. He met his first wife selling violet blossoms in Castle Square in Warsaw.”

“I fail to see what this—”

“Colonel Middleton, in all your travels or investigations for the government have you ever heard the name Projekt 93?”

“I don’t believe I have.”

“Are you familiar with the work of Gerhard Schrader?”

Middleton shook his head.

“A German chemist who experimented with chemical agents. He invented Tabun, which was originally used to kill insects, then adapted as a lethal weapon against mankind. The Nazis produced twelve-thousand tons of the stuff at a secret plant in Poland, code named Hockwerk.”

Faust dipped into a briefcase at his feet and removed a photocopy of a document from the Nuremberg Tribunal. “My father worked at Hockwerk. His name is fourth on this list.”

“Kazimierz Rymut?”

“You’ll note the asterisk, which refers to the footnote at the bottom. It might be hard to read so I’ll quote it for you: ‘This individual has been exculpated due to cooperation he provided regarding experiments conducted on human subjects.’”

“I’m not sure I know what that means.”

“It means that my father heard that some of the chemical agents he was working on — agents that he assumed would be used to kill rats and other rodents — were being used on human beings. On October 14, 1944, Doctor Josef Mengele removed approximately five thousands gypsies from Sachsenhausen concentration camp outside Oranienberg and had them trucked into a wooded area near Rudna, Poland. There they were sprayed with Sarin gas. Within hours, every single man, woman and child died.”

“Isn’t that the same material that was used in the subway attack in Tokyo?”

“By the Aum Shinrikyo cult. Yes.”

Faust’s hand drifted toward his briefcase. “I have in my possession the official report, but will spare you the details. Suffice it to say, the results were ghastly. When rumors of this event reached my father, I’m sure he refused to believe them at first. He was a man, like many, who tried to insulate himself from the ugliness of the world around him. He listened to Vivaldi, tinkered with coo-coo clocks, baked pastries, wept at the faces of young children. He was not like us, Colonel. And yet when confronted with the horror of what was going on around him, he acted.”

Middleton said, “Sounds like your father was a hero.”

“He became a hero and a great example to me. I won’t go into all the details of what he did except to say that he found a way to pass details of the chemical weapon program at Hockwerk known as Projekt 93 to the Allies, which helped them target the plant before it could cause any more damage.”

“Thank God.”

The waiter arrived with the Bronzini, which gave off a faint scent of orange blossom under a delicate brown crust.

“Yes, thank God,” Faust said as he sampled the fish, deeming it delightful. “The maniacs were stopped. But evil men have a way of rediscovering the most horrifying things.”

Middleton nodded. “I do believe that evil is an active force in the world.”

Faust leaned closer and almost whispered, “And you and I are going to stop it.”

“How?” Middleton was confused. A part of him wanted to believe Faust; another part was hugely skeptical. “I still don’t understand how this relates to us, here, tonight.”

“Because, Colonel, some of the manuscripts that you found hidden in St. Sophia, in the Czartoryski Collection, were not about music. This is what your friend Henryk Jedynak was on the verge of telling you. That’s why he was killed.”

“Why?”

“Because encrypted in the musical notes are formulas for a number of V-agents — highly stable nerve agents that were developed at Hockwerk, many times more lethal that Sarin or Tabun. The most potent of these is known as VX. Scientists call it the most toxic synthesized compound known to man.”

“If this is true—”

“It’s undoubtedly true! I’ll provide the supporting documents,” Faust said. “I assume you’ll thoroughly check out the story yourself.”

“Of course.”

“The clock is ticking, Colonel. We don’t have much time.”

“Why?”

“I don’t think I need to tell you which formula is encrypted into the Chopin manuscript.”

“VX.”

“Correct.”

Middleton’s mind worked feverishly, tracking back over all that had happened since he first saw the manuscripts in Pristina.

Faust tore into a piece of bread. “Vukasin must be stopped!”

“The Wolf is behind all this? He thought of Sylvia, his ex; and Charley, who was still at risk.

“Absolutely. His plan is horrifying. Unimaginably cruel.”

“But Rugova…Where did he fit in?”

“Sometimes one doesn’t have the luxury to choose the most favorable allies. When I learned about the existence of the manuscripts, I hired Rugova to help me. He wasn’t particularly reliable or sympathetic. I was, I regret to say, desperate. I’m even more desperate now.”

Vukasin knew he was alone now — alone amid perhaps five police cruisers, nine uniformed cops and maybe twice as many in plainclothes who had come to the Martha Jefferson Hospital. Someone had been smart: They had told local law enforcement that Middleton, the man they believed had killed two policemen at Dulles, had been spotted at the hospital and would soon return. So right now Charlotte Middleton-Perez was as protected as anyone inside the Beltway. She could not be Vukasin’s next victim. Too bad, he thought. He would have to draw out Middleton in some other way.

And he would have to do it. Andrzej, his last reliable agent in the States, had failed to contact him after trailing the Volunteer Tesla from the house at Lake Anna to who knows where; Vukasin imagined the killer and his shaved head, with its ridiculous jack of spades tattoo, had been served to pigs in the countryside. Soberski had failed too — getting her head blown off in the middle of the street a short walk from the White House. Briefly, he wondered what the sadist’s last utterance had been.

Well, Vukasin thought, as he retreated in the forest behind the hospital. With all the work comes all the honor. Tens of thousands of dead Americans, and the credit will belong only to me.

But one last chore.

The Harbor Court Hotel, near the next Ground Zero, was only 150 or so miles north. Driving with caution, he’d be there in four hours.

He smiled at the thought of what would occur after he arrived.