The Chopin Manuscript: A Serial Thriller Read online

  Padlo took this information in, nodding as he lit another cigarette.

  “Not long after I was deployed there, the base commander got a call from a general in the British sector, near Pristina, the capital. He’d found something interesting and had been calling all the international peacekeepers to see if anyone had a background in art collecting.”

  “And why was that?” Padlo stared at the Sobieski hidden below eye-level.

  The smell was not as terrible as Middleton had expected but the office was filling with smoke. His eyes stung. “Let me give you some background. It goes back to World War Two.”

  “Please, tell me.”

  “Well, many Albanians from Kosovo fought with an SS unit–the Twenty-First Waffen Mountain Division. Their main goal was eliminating partisan guerillas, but it also gave them the chance to ethnically cleanse the Serbs, who had been their enemies for years.”

  A grimace appeared on the inspector’s heavily lined face. “Ah, it’s always the same story wherever you look. Poles versus the Russians. Arabs versus the Jews. Americans versus”—a smile “—everyone.”

  Middleton ignored him. “The Twenty-First supposedly had another job too. With the fall of Italy and an Allied invasion a sure thing, Himmler and Goering and other Nazis who’d been looting art from Eastern Europe wanted secure places to hide it—so that even if Germany fell, the Allies couldn’t find it. The Twenty-First reportedly brought truckloads to Kosovo. Made sense. A small, little populated, out-of-the-mainstream country. Who’d think to look there for a missing Cezanne or Manet?

  “What the British general had found was an old Eastern Orthodox church. It was abandoned years ago and being used as a dormitory for displaced Serbs by a U.N. relief organization. In the basement his soldiers unearthed 50 or 60 boxes of rare books, paintings and music folios.”

  “My, that many?”

  “Oh, yes. A lot was damaged, some beyond repair, but other items were virtually untouched. I didn’t know much about the paintings or the books, but I’d studied music history in college and I’ve collected recordings and manuscripts for years. I got the okay to fly up and take a look.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “Oh, it was astonishing. Original pieces by Bach and his sons, Mozart, Handel, sketches by Wagner—some of them had never been seen before. I was speechless.”

  “Valuable?”

  “Well, you can’t really put a dollar value on a find like that. It’s the cultural benefit, not the financial.”

  “But still, worth millions?”

  “I suppose.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I reported what I’d found to the British and to my general, and he cleared it with Washington for me to stay there for a few days and catalog what I could. Good press, you know.”

  “True in police work too.” The cigarette got crushed out forcefully under a yellow thumb, as if Padlo were quitting forever.

  Middleton explained that that night he took all the manuscripts and folios that he could carry back to British quarters in Pristina and worked for hours cataloging and examining what he’d found.

  “The next morning I was very excited, wondering what else I’d find. I got up early to return…”

  The American stared at a limp yellow file folder on the inspector’s desktop, the one with three faded checkmarks on it. He looked up and heard Padlo say, “The church was St. Sophia.”

  “You know about it?” Middleton was surprised. The incident had made the news but by then—with the world focusing on the millennium and the Y2K crisis, the Balkans had become simply a footnote to fading history.

  “Yes, I do. I didn’t realize you were involved.”

  Middleton remembered walking to the church and thinking, I must’ve gotten up pretty damn early if none of the refugees were awake yet, especially with all the youngsters living there. Then he paused, wondering where the British guards were. Two had been stationed outside the church the day before. Just at that moment he saw a window open on the second floor and a teenage girl look out, her long hair obscuring half her face. She was calling, “Green shirt, green shirt…Please…Green shirt.”

  He hadn’t understood. But then it came to him. She was referring to his fatigues and was calling for his help.

  “What was it like?” Padlo asked softly.

  Middleton merely shook his head.

  The inspector didn’t press him for details. He asked, “And Rugova was the man responsible?”

  He was even more surprised that the inspector knew about the former Kosovo Liberation Army commander Agim Rugova. That fact was not learned until later, long after Rugova and his men had fled from Pristina, and the story of St. Sophia had grown stone cold.

  “Your change in career is making sense now, Mr. Middleton. After the war you became an investigator to track him down.”

  “That’s it in a nutshell.” He smiled as if that could flick away the cached memories, clear as computer jpegs, of that morning.

  Middleton had returned to Camp Broadsteel and served out his rotation, spending most of his free time running intelligence reports on Rugova and the many other war criminals the torn region had spawned. Back at the Pentagon, he’d done the same. But it wasn’t the U.S. military’s job to catch them and bring them to trial, and he made no headway.

  So when he retired, he set up an operation in a small Northern Virginia office park. He called it “War Criminal Watch” and spent his days on the phone and computer, tracking Rugova and others. He made contacts at the ICTY and worked with them regularly but they and the UN’s tactical operation were busy with bigger fish—like Ratko Mladic, Naser Oric and others involved in the Srebrenica massacre, the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II, and Milosevic himself. Middleton would come up with a lead and it would founder. Still he couldn’t get St. Sophia out of his mind.

  Green shirt, green shirt…Please…

  He decided that he couldn’t be effective working from America nor working alone. So after some months of searching he found people who’d help: two American soldiers who’d been in Kosovo and helped him in the investigation at St. Sophia and a woman humanitarian worker from Belgrade he’d met in Pristina.

  The overworked ICTY was glad to accept them as independent contractors, working with the Prosecutor’s Office. They became known in the ICTY as “The Volunteers.”

  Lespasse and Brocco, the soldiers, younger, driven by their passion for the hunt;

  Leonora Tesla, by her passion to rid the world of sorrow, a passion that made the otherwise-common woman beautiful;

  And the elder, Harold Middleton, a stranger to passion and driven by…well, even he couldn’t say what. The intelligence officer who never seemed to be able to process the HUMINT on himself.

  Unarmed—at least as far as the ICTY and local law enforcement knew—they managed to track down several of Rugova’s henchmen and, through them, finally the man himself, who was living in a shockingly opulent townhouse in Nice, France, under a false identity. The arrangement was that, for ethical reasons, the Volunteers’ job was solely to provide the tribunal with intelligence and contacts; the SFOR, the UN’s Stabilization Force—the military operation in charge of apprehending former Yugoslav war criminals–and local police, to the extent they were cooperative, would be the arresting agents.

  In 2002, working on pristine data provided by Middleton and his crew, UN and French troops raided the townhouse and arrested Rugova.

  Tribunal trials are interminable, but three years later he was convicted for crimes that occurred at St. Sophia. He was appealing his conviction while living in what was, in Middleton’s opinion, a far-too-pleasant detention center in The Hague.

  Middleton could still picture the swarthy man at trial, ruggedly handsome, confident and indignant, swearing that he’d never committed genocide or ethnic cleansing. He admitted he was a soldier but said that what happened at St. Sophia was merely an “isolated incident” in an unfortunate war. Middleton told t
his to the inspector.

  “Isolated incident,” Padlo whispered.

  “It makes the horror far worse, don’t you think? Phrasing it so antiseptically.”

  “I do, yes.” Another draw on the cigarette.

  Middleton wished that he had a candy bar, his secret passion.

  Padlo then asked, “I’m curious about one thing—was Rugova acting on anyone else’s orders, do you think? Was there someone he reported to?”

  Middleton’s attention coalesced instantly at this question. “Why do you ask that?” he asked sharply.

  “Was he?”

  The American debated and decided to continue to cooperate. For the moment. “When we were hunting for him we heard rumors that he was backed by someone. It made sense. His KLA outfit had the best weapons of any unit in the country, even better than some of the regular Serbian troops. They were the best trained, and they could hire pilots for helicopter extractions. That was unheard of in Kosovo. There were rumors of large amounts of cash. And he didn’t seem to take orders from any of the known KLA senior commanders. But we had only one clue that there was somebody behind him. A message had been left for him about a bank deposit. It was hidden in a copy of Goethe’s Faust we found in an apartment in Eze.”

  “Any leads?”

  “We thought possibly British or American. Maybe Canadian. Some of the phrasing in the note suggested it.”

  “No idea of his name?”

  “No. We gave him a nickname, after the book—Faust.”

  “A deal with the devil. Are you still searching for this man?”

  “Me? No. My group disbanded. The Tribunal’s still in force and the prosecutors and EUFOR might be looking for him but I doubt it. Rugova’s in jail, some of his associates too. There are bigger fish to fry. You know that expression?”

  “No, but I understand.” Padlo crushed out another cigarette. “You’re young. Why did you quit this job? The work seems important.”

  “Young?” Middleton smiled. Then it faded. He said only, “Events intervened.”

  “Another dispassionate phrase, that one. ‘Events intervened.’”

  Middleton looked down.

  “An unnecessary comment on my part. Forgive me. I owe you answers and you’ll now understand why I asked what I did.” He hit a button on his phone and spoke in Polish. Middleton knew enough to understand he was asking for some photographs.

  Padlo disconnected and said, “In investigating the murder of the piano tuner I learned that you were probably the last person—well, second last—to see him alive. Your name and hotel phone number were in his address book for that day. I ran your name through Interpol and our other databases and found about your involvement with the tribunals. There was a brief reference to Agim Rugova, but a cross-reference in Interpol as well, which had been added only late yesterday.”

  “Yesterday?”

  “Yes. Rugova died yesterday. The apparent cause of death was poisoning.”

  Middleton felt his heart pound. Why hadn’t anyone called? Then he realized that he was no longer connected with the ICTY and that it had been years since St. Sophia was on anyone’s radar screen.

  An isolated incident…

  “This morning I called the prison and learned that Rugova had approached a guard several weeks ago about bribing his way out of prison. He offered a huge amount of money. ‘Where would he, an impoverished war criminal, get such funds?’ the guard asked. He said his wife could get the amount he named—one hundred thousand euros. The guard reported the matter and there it rested. But then, four days ago, Rugova had a visitor—a man with a fake name and fake ID, as it turned out. After he leaves Rugova falls ill and yesterday dies of poison. The police go the wife’s house to inform her and find she’s been dead for several days. She was stabbed.”

  Dead…Middleton felt a fierce urge to call Leonora and tell her.

  “When I learned of your connection with the piano tuner and the death on the same day of the war criminal you’d had arrested, I had sent to me a prison security camera picture of the probable murderer. I showed the picture to a witness we located who saw the likely suspect leaving the Old Market Square recital hall last night.”

  “It’s the same man?”

  “She said with certainty that it was.” Padlo indulged again and lit a Sobieski. “You seem to be the hub of this strange wheel, Mr. Middleton. A man kills Rugova and his wife and then tortures and kills a man you’ve just met with. So, now, you and I are entwined in this matter.”

  It was then that a young uniformed officer arrived carrying an envelope. He placed it on the inspector’s desk.

  “Dzenkuje,” Padlo said.

  The aide nodded and, after glancing at the American, vanished.

  The inspector handed the photos to Middleton, who looked down at them. “Oh, my God.” He sucked cigarette-smoke-tainted air deep into his lungs.

  “What?” Padlo asked, seeing his reaction. “Was he someone you know from your investigation of Rugova?”

  The American looked up. “This man…He was sitting next to me at Krakow airport. He was taking my flight to Paris.” The man in the ugly checked jacket.

  “No! Are you certain?”

  “Yes. He must’ve killed Henryk to find out where I was going.”

  And in a shocking instant it was clear. Someone—this man or Faust, or perhaps he was Faust—was after Middleton and the other Volunteers.

  Why? For revenge? Did he fear something? Was there some other reason? And why would he kill Rugova?

  The American jabbed his finger at the phone. “Did he get on the flight to Paris? Has it landed? Find out now.”

  Padlo’s tongue touched the corner of his mouth. He lifted the receiver and spoke in such rapid Polish that Middleton couldn’t follow the conversation.

  Finally the inspector hung up. “Yes, it’s landed and everyone has disembarked. Other than you everyone with a boarding pass was on the flight. But after that? They don’t know. They’ll check the flight manifest against passport control at De Gaulle—if he left the airport. And outgoing flight manifests in case he continued in transit.”

  Middleton shook his head. “He’s changed identity by now. He saw me detained and he’s using a new passport.”

  The inspector said, “He could be on his way to anywhere in the world.”

  But he wasn’t, Middleton knew. The only question was this: Was he en route to Africa to find Tesla at her relief agency? Or to the States, where Lespasse ran a very successful computer company and Brocco edited the Human Rights Observer newsletter?

  Or was he on a different flight headed to D.C., where Middleton himself lived?

  Then his legs went weak.

  As he recalled that, showing off proud pictures, he’d told the piano tuner that his daughter lived in the D.C. area.

  What a lovely young woman, and her husband, so handsome…. They seem so happy.

  Middleton leapt to his feet. “I have to get home. And if you try to stop me, I’ll call the embassy.” He strode toward the door.

  “Wait,” Padlo said sharply.

  Middleton spun around. “I’m warning you. Do not try to stop me. If you do—”

  “No, no, I only mean…. Here.” He stepped forward and handed the American his passport. Then he touched Middleton’s arm. “Please. I want this man too. He killed three of my citizens. I want him badly. Remember that.”

  He believed the inspector said something else but by then Middleton was jogging hard down the endless hall, as gray as the offices, as gray as the sky, digging into his pocket for his cell phone.

  Chapter Two

  David Hewson

  Felicia Kaminski first noticed the tramp outside the Pantheon when she was playing gypsy folk tunes, old Roman favorites, anything that could put a few coins in the battered gray violin case she had inherited from her mother, along with the century-old, sweet-toned Italian instrument that lived inside. The man listened for more than 10 minutes, watching her all the time. Then he wa
lked up close, so close she could smell the cloud of sweat and humanity that hung around people of the street, not that they ever seemed to notice.

  “I wanna hear Volare,” he grumbled in English, his voice rough and carrying an accent she couldn’t quite place. He held a crumpled and dirt-stained 10-euro note. He was perhaps 35, though it was difficult to be precise. He stood at least six feet tall, muscular, almost athletic, though the thought seemed ridiculous.

  “Volare is a song, sir, not a piece of violin music,” she responded, with more teenage ungraciousness than was, perhaps, wise.

  His face, as much as she could see behind the black unkempt beard, seemed sharp and observant. More so, it occurred to her, than most street people who were either elderly Italians thrown out of their homes by harsh times, or foreign clandestini, Iraqis, Africans and all manner of nationalities from the Balkans, each keeping their own counsel, each trying to pursue their own particular course through the dark, half-secret hidden economy for those trying to survive without papers.

  There were other more pressing reasons that made hers a bold and unwise response. The money her uncle had given her had not been much to begin with, though more generous than his meager living as a Warsaw piano tuner ought to have allowed. Two months before, on the day she turned 19, he had abruptly announced that his role as her guardian was finished, and that it was time to seek a new life in the west. She chose Italy because she wanted warm weather and beauty, and refused to follow the stream of Poles migrating to England. The grubby, slow bus to Rome had cost 50 euros, and the room in a squalid student house in San Giovanni swallowed up a further 200 each week, as did the language-school lessons in Italian. Her adequate English meant she could get some bar work but only in tourist dives at what the owners called “the Polish rate”–four euros an hour, less than the legal minimum wage. She ate like a sparrow, pizza rustica, pre-cooked, often disgusting, but less than two euros a slice. She never went out and had yet to make a friend. Still each week the money from Uncle Henryk went down a little further. She could not, in all conscience, call and ask for more.