The Chopin Manuscript: A Serial Thriller

Chapter Three James Grady

The jetliner glided out of the night to touch down at Washington’s Dulles Airport 29 minutes early and 47 minutes before Harold Middleton killed a cop.

As soon as the plane’s wheels grabbed runway, Middleton text-messaged his daughter.

She hadn’t answered his calls from Europe, and state, county and city police had been vague about protecting a young couple just because a frantic father called from Poland. The D.C. suburban cops seemed skeptical of Middleton’s promises that Polish badges and American diplomats would echo his alarm as soon as their chains of command argued out who should contact whom.

Middleton’s text-message read: GREEN LANTERN EVAC SCOTLAND.

GREEN LANTERN: His then-wife Sylvia had scoffed at his family code word system to prevent their toddler from being deceived by two-legged predators, but little Charlotte judged the plan cool, especially when Daddy let her make their secret code his (and thus her) favorite comic book hero.

EVAC: Charlotte was nine when the Pentagon Military Intelligence Unit where Middleton spent most of his career ran an evacuation drill. She adopted the word EVAC as a mantra, with significant shifts in irony as she roared through her teenage years.

SCOTLAND. When Charlotte got married, Middleton let her use his suburban house for the wedding’s staging ground while he rented another lonely room in a hotel near the Capitol Hill garden for the marriage ceremony. Two nights before the wedding, father and daughter got drunk in the hotel bar as she introduced him to a hip single-malt Scotch. From then on, they called that hotel “Scotland.”

Told her what to do, thought Middleton. Where to go. That it’s really me.

If she got the message.

The seatbelt “ding!” launched Middleton into the plane’s aisle. Looping the shoulder strap on his soft black briefcase across his sports jacket kept his hands free. He didn’t know where the rest of his luggage was; didn’t care. His briefcase held his work, his laptop, iPod and toiletries airport security let him take onto an airplane, plus a paperback copy of Albert Camus’s The Stranger.

As Middleton was about to reach the plane’s door, a couple from First Class barged in front of him. The woman, who may have looked great 10 years and a million scowls ago, clutched a battered jewel case to suspiciously firm breasts as she and her sad-eyed husband shuffled up the jet way ahead of Middleton.

Middleton heard the wife huff, “I still can’t believe that sister of yours thought she could keep your mother’s jewels from me just by going to Europe!”

The husband’s flat voice knew its own irrelevance. “We all make mistakes.”

They bumbled ahead to Customs, where a surgical-gloved guard carefully examined the jewel box’s glittering necklaces, bracelets and earrings, comparing them to a transit document the wife kept tapping with her crimson fingernails. When he was through, the First Class couple trudged ahead of Middleton through the terminal.

Middleton’s jagged nerves keyed him into a detached hyper-vigilance he’d not felt since returning to the Balkans’ slaughterhouse. There, all he had to fear were the ghosts of strangers. Now he felt his own life crawl along the edge of a straight razor.

He smelled his fellow travelers. Damp wool scent of lived-in clothes. Deodorants’ metallic perfumes. Stale beer from the Englishman who’d tried to drown his fear of flying.

Middleton heard a child whine, and sobs from a Spec 4 soldier, who was all of 20 years old, as he marched toward a flight to Germany with connections to Iraq. An unseen CD blasted drums and crashing guitars: Middleton recognized Springsteen, and then remembered that expanding his range of classic rock music was the only debt besides Charlotte he owed his ex.

Night filled the terminal windows. Ads landscaped its walls. The musician in Middleton found melody in crowd movements synced with his rhythmic march to a bus for the main terminal. From there, he’d find his car in Long Term Parking, race to Scotland, working his cell phone the whole way. He saw all that with the absolute clarity of what is and what would be.

Looming beyond the shuffling first-class couple, Middleton saw a cop hurrying toward him. Saw the cop’s blue uniform. Saw his shoulder-holstered black automatic. Saw a second pistol on the cop’s black-leather belt along with handcuffs, ammo pouches, an empty loop for a radio.

They were 10 steps apart when Middleton matched the cop’s face to photos he’d seen in Poland of a murderer.

The fake cop unsnapped his hip holster.

Middleton shoved the first-class woman into the pistol-drawing cop.

The fragile jewel case popped out of her grasp and flew toward the cop, who knocked it away. The case burst open. Glittering objects rained on the airport crowd.

First-class woman clawed at the cop: “Mine! Mine!”

Her bumped husband fell into an empty chair.

The fake cop pointed his gun at Middleton’s face, as the woman continued to flail at him.

The gunshot reverberated through the terminal to Gate 67 some 40 feet off to Middleton’s left where FBI Agent M.T. Connolly was snapping a handcuff onto her own wrist. The handcuffs’ other clamp already circled the wrist of Dan Kohrman, who wore a second set of handcuffs shackling his wrists in front of him. Connolly’s close-cropped brass hair came up to the shoulder of the husky Kohrman who’d been apprehended in Chicago on a federal Flight To Avoid Prosecution charge and extradited to D.C. Chicago cops passed him off.

Connolly hadn’t needed to double cuff Kohrman. True, he was a felony fugitive, but he’d embezzled funds as a lawyer. Not the kind of bad boy who’d give “14-years-on-the-bricks her” any trouble. No, she cuffed her left hand to his right hand because she didn’t feel like talking to the scumbag. Easier to jerk him where she wanted him to go.

He’d protested his innocence as Windy City cops led him off the plane toward Connolly and a uniformed Virginia state trooper who had been assigned to accompany the FBI during custodial transferals through the state’s jurisdiction to a federal lockup. After that…

Well, after that, the state trooper had the easy smile of a Dixie scamp. He seemed like a possible diversion from the storm of empty howling in Connolly. His eyes twinkled while they waited for the Chicago plane, indicating to her that he harbored similar thoughts. He introduced himself as George, and she knew he wouldn’t be around long enough for her to need to remember his last name.

“Look,” Kohrman had said as she clicked her handcuff on his wrist. “Have you asked yourself why I would be so stupid as to steal that money?”

As she tightened the handcuff on her left wrist, Connolly replied, “Like I care about why.”

Then she heard the high-caliber pistol shot crackle behind her. Crowd reacting. Trooper George facing the sound source. Screams and she turned, her .40 Glock filling her right hand.

She saw travelers stampeding.

Sensed the taller, trooper-uniformed George draw his gun.

Glimpsed a thick, black-haired American crashing onto a cop.

The roar of the gun in Middleton’s face deafened him. The muzzle flash novaed his eyes. But as the bullet cut wide, Middleton fell onto his would-be killer and the crazed woman from first class, and they crashed to the floor. The gun flew from the killer’s hand as hordes of airline travelers panicked in a 21st Century terrorism nightmare.

Middleton’s vision returned. But why can’t I hear? Why is there no noise?

He scrambled after a 9mm Beretta gliding silently across a jewel-strewn floor.

The fake cop chopped at the first-class woman’s throat. Jumped to his feet. Reached for his shoulder-holstered second pistol.

Middleton heard only the hammering of his own heart. He grabbed the Beretta and fired at the man who was drawing a second gun.

A glowing green neon Starbucks sign exploded on a wall beyond as the fake cop to a marksman’s stance and acquired his target. His black shoes crunched white pearls scattered on the floor.

The fake cop and Middleton fired at the same time.

His arm unsteady, Middleton’s bullet missed.

The fake cop’s bullet missed too because he slipped on pearls and tumbled back through the air.

Off to Middleton’s left, State Trooper George saw a uniformed police officer in trouble. Saw the cop fall. Panicked civilians ran between Trooper George and the gun battle. George glimpsed his target — tapped out two snap shots.

Missed!

Middleton saw a nearby black plastic chair shatter.

Instantly knew why, whirled. His eyes locked on a man wearing a blue uniform like the enemy’s. Middleton fired four slugs at that second uniform.

Connolly heard the whine of bullets, the roar of a gun.

As the fugitive Kohrman screamed, Connolly saw Trooper George. Flat on his back, a hole at the collar of the blue-uniformed shirt over his bulletproof vest. A red stream flowed from George’s neck. His eyes stared at the ceiling

Connolly lunged toward the fallen trooper, but Kohrman jerked her handcuffed left arm and she tipped back toward him.

“I wanted to make it big!” screamed Kohrman. “All right? I admit it! Just don’t shoot—”

“Shut up!” Connolly shouted as she broke his nose with the butt of her pistol.

Kohrman crumpled, dead weight she dragged to Trooper George bleeding on the floor. Dropped her gun, pressed her free right hand over the gushing hole in the trooper’s neck.

“You’re going to make it!” she screamed at the fallen officer.

But she knew that was a lie.

Can’t hear!

Middleton saw the second uniformed man who’d tried to shoot him crash to the floor. Middleton whirled his deaf attention to the nearby fake cop, who scrambled to his feet on the floor’s glittering debris and fled through an emergency exit door.

Get him before he gets me! Or my daughter!

Battling in a world of silence, Middleton saw men and women dive for cover behind waiting room chairs. He saw their muted screaming faces.

First-class husband slumped in a black plastic chair, his face contorted like a laughing clown, staring at the tiled floor where his buxom wife lay gasping for air.

Middleton’s eyes followed the husband’s focus.

Saw flecks of gold paint on the tiles.

Saw broken shards of red and green and white stones.

Saw glittering glass ground to dust.

Saw a fallen cell phone spinning to a stop amid the rainbow rubble.

Middleton scooped up the cell phone as he burst to the emergency exit, broke out to the night from a facility designed by Homeland Security to prevent people from storming into it and its planes, not to keep people from running away.

Swallowed by cool air, Middleton stood at the top of metal stairs leading to the vast fields of runways where jets taxied, landed, took off — all in terrible silence.

A baggage caravan rolled silently across the dark tarmac. No sign of the fake cop. Middleton suddenly realized he stood spotlighted by the door’s white light — a perfect target.

He ran down the stairs. Ran toward the glowing swoop of the main terminal.

A jumbo jet dropped out of the sky, skimmed over his head as he staggered across a runway. He ran under a second airliner as it climbed into the night. The pressure changing wakes of those jet engines popped his gunshot-deafened ears.

Suddenly, blessedly, he heard jet engines roar.

Get to Scotland, he thought. Got to get to Scotland.

The strap of his briefcase boa-constrictored his chest as he gasped for oxygen. Sweat stuck his shirt to his skin. His leg muscles burned and felt as if someone smashed a baseball bat into his right kneecap.

He knew better than to try for his car. They — whoever they were — might be waiting for him in the parking garage.

Pistol shoved in the back waistband of his pants, Middleton loped to the front of the main terminal. No one paid much attention — people run through airports all the time. A long line of people stood waiting their turn for a taxi.

To his left, he saw a young couple exiting a Town Car. He burst between them, leapt into the back seat before the driver could protest.

“Go!”

The man behind the wheel stared into the rearview mirror.

“Two-fifty,” Middleton said, digging into his pocket for U.S. currency.

He sank into the backseat cushion of the taxi as it shot away from the terminal. “Capitol Hill.”

The driver let him out in front of the Supreme Court that glowed like a gray-stone temple across from Congress’ white-castle Capitol. Middleton walked through a park and saw no one but the nocturnal outline of a patrolling Capitol Hill policeman and his leashed German shepherd.

Scotland was a hotel built back when visiting Washington wasn’t a big business. Middleton passed through the hotel’s glass doors, walked straight to the registration desk.

“No sir, no young woman by that name is registered. No Mister and Missus either. No sir, no messages. Yes sir, I’ll call you at the bar if anything changes. Oh wait, what was your name? Excuse me: Sir? Sir?”

In the dark lounge, Middleton told the bartender, “Glenfiddich, rocks.”

After the ice melted in his drink, Middleton concluded that his daughter wasn’t coming. Wasn’t here. Wasn’t where she was supposed to be.

He laid the cell phone he’d snatched off the floor beside his glass on the bar. A pre-pay. Not his. He fished his phone from his briefcase. Ached to call someone, anyone. But he couldn’t risk a monster hacking and tracking his calls. Besides, who could he talk to? Who could he trust now? Maybe killers had infiltrated Uncle Sam’s badges too.

Breathe. Breathe.

You’re a musician. Be like Beethoven. Hear the full, true symphony.

Do what you do best.

Interpret. Authenticate.

Whatever this was started in Europe. Could still be evolving there with other assassins, other terrors. Started way back with Kosovo, a war criminal, and a phantom mastermind. Was worth killing for. Worth dying for.

From Poland, the fake cop rode the plane that Middleton was supposed to be on. He might have spotted an airport cop getting off shift, followed him to his parking spot, snapped his neck, stuffed the dead cop in the trunk of his own car, stripped the corpse of clothes, weapons and IDs. As a cop in uniform, the killer strolled into the airport to meet every plane from Paris.

But who were his partners?

Focus on what makes sense.

I know something. Or someone. That’s why they wanted to kill me. I have something that somebody wants. Or am something. I did something.

But the truth is, I’m not that important.

Wasn’t. Am now.

That new truth is calibrated in blood.

In his mind, Middleton heard random notes, not a symphony. He flashed on jazz. When asked how a musician could slip into a free form jam that he’d neither started nor would finish, legendary pianist Night Train Jones said: “You gotta play with both hands.”

Middleton put his cell phone inside his shirt pocket.

Stared at the cell phone he’d found spinning on the floor in a combat zone.

The phone had been turned on when Middleton grabbed it. If someone could locate a cell phone just because it was turned on, they were already rocketing toward him. Middleton found the “recent calls” screen. On the inside front cover of the paperback Camus novel, Middleton wrote the phone number that this cell phone had connected to for three minutes and 19 seconds. That same number sent this phone one text message:

Baltimore, thought Middleton. A 40-minute drive from this bar stool. A train ride from Union Station kitty-corner to the hotel. A few blocks north of the train station was a bus depot from which silver boxes roared up Interstate 95 to Charm City where Middleton spent a lot of time at the Peabody Conservatory of Music.

Middleton wrote the address inside the novel’s cover.

He went to the men’s room and, in the clammy locked stall, counted his remaining cash: $515 American, $122 in Euros. Credit cards, but the second he used one to buy a ticket, meal or motel, he would pop up on the grid. He checked the ammo magazine in his scavenged Beretta: eight bullets.

Can go a long way and nowhere at all on what I’ve got, thought Harold Middleton.

Back on the bar stool, he realized he reeked of frenzy. The bar mirror made him flinch. He looked terrible. Burned out and all but buried. Worse, he looked memorable.

Middleton left enough cash on the bar, walked toward the night.

He turned away from well-lit streets, still not ready to risk a phone call or a train or a bus or shelter for the night. Walked past empty office buildings.

Out of the darkness loomed a man brandishing a butcher knife.

Middleton froze two paces from a blade that would’ve punctured his throat.

Butcher-knife man growled: “Give it up! Cash. Wallet. Hurry!”

So Middleton reached under his gray sports jacket and came out with Beretta steel.

“Go, baby!” yelled the robber to a waiting car. He dropped the knife.

“Freeze, baby,” Middleton shouted, “or I’ll blow his head off, then kill you too!”

Middleton kept the robber in his vision while turned toward the rusted car idling at the curb, its front passenger door gaping open like the maw of a shark.

Never heard it roll up behind me. Never saw it coming. Wake up!

The robber said: “We want a lawyer!”

Middleton jerked his head toward the open car door — but kept his gun locked on the robber. “Get in and you might get out of this alive.”

The hands-high scruffy man eased into the shotgun seat of the idling car. Middleton slid into the backseat behind him, told the boney young woman with blazing eyes behind the steering wheel, “Do what I say or I’ll blast a bullet in your spine.”

“Baby!” yelled her partner. “You were supposed to beat it outta trouble!”

Not anger, thought Middleton, that’s not the music. More a plea. And sorrow.

“Fool! He’d have lit you up! Word, Marcus: I ain’t never gonna leave you go.”

“’Knew you weren’t meant for no thug life.” Notes of pride. Sorrow.

“Where?” the woman asked the dark silhouette in her rearview mirror.

“We’re going to Baltimore,” Middleton said. “Drive.”