Beethoven's Tenth

by Richard Kluger

  Other than Mitch’s voicing abundant gratitude for the gent’s speed and efficiency in restoring him to freedom, the two said little on the taxi ride to the cavernous Tate Gallery Annex, the converted power station on the south bank of the Thames, where they found a river-view table in the sleek dining hall. “I don’t know what to make of all this,” Mitch began after their order was taken. “How the Yard got hold of these so-called reports about the way we’ve been conducting our authentication process—and the rest of it—is beyond me. At any rate, most of it is a gross distortion, even when there’s a grain of truth at the bottom of—”

  “I’m fully aware of that,” the solicitor assured him.

  Mitch was surprised. Drummond had said he was thrown into the breach in the middle of the previous night—that would have made him an exceedingly quick learner. “How so?”

  “Because I’m the one who passed on the tawdry information to the authorities.”

  Something very weird was going on here. “You did—what, exactly?”

  “You’ll have to forgive me, Mr. Emery. I’m afraid I’ve misrepresented myself to an extent.” The solicitor took a sip from his water glass and patted his lips dry. “You see, none of my firm’s partners are on close terms with your father-in-law, but it was a safe assumption on my part that in your distress you would be reaching out to him for legal assistance. Before I contacted our friends at the Home Office and presented myself at the Yard, one of my aides inquired at Unilever and learned that Mr. Hoitsma was abroad, so I was able to proceed with my not-entirely-innocent mission—which, of course, included your rescue.”

  By this point Mitch was thoroughly confused by what the stranger across from him was saying. It took him only a few moments to explain everything. Among his clients, Drummond related, was a very large Swiss bank that called upon his services from time to time. In this instance, the bank had come into possession of an electronic file revealing the procedures and machinations engaged in by Cubbage & Wakeham while authenticating the lately found William Tell Symphony—“and it was passed on to the Private Banking department, which, in turn, thought it might be of interest to one of its wealthiest clients, an Asian gentleman with a quite sizable numbered account in the Zurich office—”

  “Hold on—there is no such electronic file,” Mitch objected. “I’d be the only person to create and maintain one, and we have no need of it. Most of what we do is by oral exchanges—it’s a small shop—there’s no written record. So I can’t accept what you’re—”

  “I’m merely telling you what I was told, Mr. Emery,” Drummond replied laconically. “May I go on, or would you prefer to remain in the dark?”

  “Sorry—let’s hear it all.”

  The bank’s Asian client, who Drummond said operated out of Hong Kong and had made his fortune legitimately—“or so I’ve been advised”—was a fanatic music lover, and the thought of becoming the owner and disseminator of a suddenly unearthed Beethoven symphony had captivated his imagination. But he was also passionately averse to exposing himself during a public auction and a bidding war that might get out of hand, whereas he was more than eager to make a fabulous preemptive offer privately to purchase the Tell manuscript outright.

  “I don’t buy the story so far—the part about our nonexistent electronic file,” said Mitch, “but if this Hong Kong fat cat wanted to make a preemptive offer, why hasn’t he done so—why antagonize my company by trying to embarrass it with the British police by producing these scurrilous reports that he presumably knows are largely fabricated?”

  Drummond nodded.

  “Yes, I asked the same question when I was given this material last week and told to have a junior associate present it to Scotland Yard. The answer seems to be inscrutably Asian—though I fear that’s a politically incorrect comment to make nowadays.” The Hong Kong zillionaire had made several surreptitious approaches to people connected to C&W—“To your wife, actually”—to determine whether the manuscript was authentic and if the auction house would be open to a preemptive offer.

  “My wife?” Mitch asked. “Impossible—she’d surely have told me—”

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you on that score. All I’ve been told is that these approaches were rebuffed—by Mrs. Emery, as I understand it—and so the Swiss bank’s Asian client concluded that your firm and the manuscript’s owner were sufficiently greedy to reject any buyout offer in the hope that the auction would yield them a considerably higher reward.”

  Mitch was baffled. Had Clara really been approached and, for some reason, not told him?

  “Well, some Germans approached us more or less in that fashion,” he acknowledged, “but I don’t know of any Asian gentleman with deep pockets who came to us—”

  “You weren’t supposed to know,” Drummond advised. Having been stymied in his earlier indirect methods, the Asian Croessus bitten by the Beethoven bug opted for coercion as the only effective tactic to gain C&W’s undivided attention.

  “It may not have been the most gentlemanly approach,” said the lawyer, “but his prior success in financial ventures strengthened his resolve. And so I had an extensive memo prepared by our office drawing upon the revelations in the electronic file the bank gave us—which you say doesn’t exist—of your company’s dubious behind-the-scenes activities and sent it by courier to the Home Office, which promptly passed it on to Scotland Yard for investigation—and thus your compromised condition at the moment.”

  “But you know much of what you passed on in this memo are lies and distortions?”

  “Exactly. And they’ve had the desired effect, as you’ve seen.” But if C&W and Jake Hassler were now open to the preemptive offer the Swiss bank’s secret client was prepared to make for the Tell manuscript, Drummond was ready to advise the Home Office that the bank had learned, much to its embarrassment, that the information handed over to the Yard had been badly garbled as an act of reprisal by unnamed individuals enraged because the purported Beethoven manuscript had wound up in American hands. “In short, the dogs will be called off you and your firm the moment a deal is struck with our Hong Kong friend,” Drummond wound up. “So I recommend you hear the terms of his offer.”

  Mitch was dumbfounded by the temerity of the misguided plot. “I don’t believe this.”

  “Nevertheless,” said the solicitor, who drew an envelope from his inside breast pocket and consulted the numbers jotted on its front. Payments were to be made of $20 million to Jake Hassler, $10 million to C&W, and $5 million to Mitch personally, all to be deposited in secret accounts at the Swiss bank—“which I presume will also receive a considerable fee on the side for facilitating the sale,” Drummond inserted—so the payoffs from the transaction could escape IRS scrutiny. The Hong Kong plutocrat promised to establish a nonprofit foundation to protect the manuscript, see to its being edited and scored in keeping with the highest artistic and academic standards, and then presented in a worldwide tour by a specially assembled multinational orchestra. After which, recordings of the symphony would be released in a global marketing blitz, with the net income from the tour, the recorded version, online downloads, and all future performing rights to be donated to fighting famine in Africa, Doctors Without Borders, and other impeccably humanitarian causes.

  “Well, he’s thought everything through,” Mitch conceded. “But suppose our people think the offer is too low? There’s no way of knowing how much the manuscript would sell for at auction, given all the publicity already stirred up—and that our company plans to intensify.”

  “I’ve been told to say that the bank’s client won’t pay a farthing more than I’ve stated.”

  Their lunches arrived, but Mitch was too distracted to do more than pick at it. “Well, this is all very fascinating—but insanely conceived. Your bank’s Hong Kong customer is a psychopath, if you don’t mind my saying so,” he told Drummond. “And what’s to stop me from telling Scotland Yard ev
erything you’ve just told me? You’ll deny it all, I suppose—”

  “Certainly—I was summoned for my services, remember? I’m a QC of unimpeachable standing—and you’re a desperate man who’ll make up any story that he thinks can get him off the hook, and your company will be seen as a pack of desperados.”

  Mitch smiled wryly at the conniving lawyer. “Whatever happened to British honor?”

  “I wonder myself sometimes. Shocking what we’re called on to do for clients nowadays.”

  Mitch agreed to phone Harry Cubbage straightaway and advise him of the blunderbuss offer. “It’s a big decision, as I’m sure the bank you represent—and its overzealous client—will understand,” he told the solicitor. “You’ll have to give us a few days to ponder the matter, but I can assure you there’s no way our company or I—and Mr. Hassler, in all likelihood—would accept payment deposited in a Swiss bank account. It’s a blatant form of tax evasion that Switzerland encourages foreign citizens to practice against their own countries’ interests —and the Swiss ought to be shamed into banning it or shunned as a nation of international thieves.”

  Drummond eyed him closely, then began busily attacking the turbot on his plate. “I commend your moral ardor,” he said. “Naturally, your people and you are free to accept our buyer’s price and pay the resulting taxes in full—the Swiss account option is simply a courtesy offer.”

  “And what if we don’t accept your buyer’s price?”

  “Then you’ll need to arrange for legal representation of your own,” said the solicitor, “to fend off whatever charges Scotland Yard chooses to pursue against you and your firm. And I wouldn’t count on an early return to America if I were you.” When Drummond dropped him off at his hotel, he said, “Pleasant meeting you, Mr. Emery. No need to call me—I’ll be in touch.”

  .

  when mitch phoned him with the news that could well doom his company, Harry wanted no part of the deal being offered by their depraved Asian suitor through his equally shameless Swiss bank and its contemptible London solicitor. He was dismayed that their stormtrooper tactics seemed to have co-opted Scotland Yard but even more unnerved by all the internal information about C&W’s handling of the Tell manuscript that had been fed, in largely corrupted form, to British authorities. “Who the hell else has access to all our little skull sessions?” Harry asked. “There’s only you, me, and Gordy. Our support people know only pieces of it—”

  “I haven’t a clue,” said Mitch.

  Harry told him to sit tight while he arranged for a top-flight solicitor to take charge of his dealings with Scotland Yard. A moment later, Mitch phoned Clara and briefed her on the sticky situation. And if Scotland Yard was listening in, so much the better, he calculated—it would only add substance to what he had told them: his interrogators were being duped into harassing C&W and threatening criminal sanctions.

  Clara listened raptly, emitting an occasional cry of disbelief. “How could these people know all that and twist it against us?” she burst out. “Someone’s a traitor, for sure.”

  “Seems like that,” he said and then related the bank’s claim that it had somehow come into possession of an alleged electronic file of C&W’s confidential dealings and records in the Tell matter. Instead of dismissing the story as a transparent lie, Clara reacted with sudden silence. “Sweetheart—are you okay?” he asked.

  Her mind had frozen, locked on to the one time she had let her laptop out of her sight. That snake Aurelio! She remembered clearly now his studied detachment when she had first proposed changing her doctoral dissertation topic and ardently explained to him the special insider vantage point she enjoyed as the Tell authentication process was unfolding. It might be the biggest event in the classical music world in ages, she had suggested to arouse his interest. As her thesis adviser, the professor had kept resisting the idea and claiming too little was known yet about the legitimacy and merits of the newfound work. But he had nevertheless kept asking her to apprise him of developments, even suggesting that it would benefit her request to change her thesis topic if she could produce a sampling of Tell’s text for the music department’s appraisal. They were all subtle but in retrospect pointed hints that Mark Aurelio was trying to use her and the Beethoven bombshell to impress his departmental colleagues who were to decide shortly whether to grant him tenure. And she had handed it all to him on a silver platter. And he had apparently passed it on somehow to the people now victimizing Mitch and C&W.

  “God in heaven!” she cried. “What an idiot I am! This is all my goddam fault, Mitch—I know just what happened. I could shoot myself for being so thoughtless—”

  “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “I’m the traitor—I’ve been keeping notes on my laptop—for the dissertation, if they allow me to do it. I’ve summarized everything I’ve seen and heard at your office, everything you’ve told me about what’s been going on—how else could I reconstruct a narrative for my thesis? And of course none of it was supposed to be shared with outsiders until well after the manuscript was auctioned. I guess I didn’t mention it because I of course intended to show you the whole finished text so you could edit out anything that might prove embarrassing to C&W—”

  Mitch was stunned by her confession. “You made a record of everything I shared with you? That was all highly proprietary information, Clara—you were told it in confidence—”

  “I know, I know,” she said, voice quavering, “but I wasn’t going to share it with anyone until everything was done and settled. It was just supposed to be raw material for me to draw on when I got to the writing stage. And I always guard my laptop with my life if I ever take it out of the house—like for making notes at the library—”

  “So?”

  “I know exactly what happened—and I’m mortified that I could have been so fucking careless!”

  She explained how she had brought the laptop with her to make notes at the Columbia Library after her appointment three weeks earlier with Professor Aurelio. But first she had to add some material and make some other changes he had requested to strengthen her memo to the departmental committee asking her to change her thesis topic to the Tell discovery. Aurelio had provided her with a nearby vacant office to work in, and like a fool, she had left her laptop running while she went out to grab lunch and take a short walk. When she got back, the office she was working in was locked—the departmental secretary told her that Aurelio had passed by, noticed the laptop open and running, and as a security measure, asked her to lock the door till Clara returned.

  “That creep must have gone in, locked the door while he was in there, searched my files, and found the one I titled ‘Ludwig’—clever, right?—and opened it—and found all my notes on C&W and the Tell. He must have scanned it fast and sent the whole file as an attachment to someone—someone who used it to get you and C&W into trouble with the Brits.” Someone, she suddenly realized, whom Aurelio must have alerted earlier about her special involvement with the Beethoven find, probably someone or some organized group with money on its mind and menace it was not hesitant to use—someone who had tried to reach out to her. Which would almost certainly explain her scary encounters while jogging along the river and around the park reservoir—episodes she had never mentioned to Mitch out of fear he would have promptly ended her involvement in the seductive adventure to insulate her from further danger.

  “But how—and why? How would it help Aurelio?” Mitch asked.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe a money kickback for the information he stole from me, or to help his professional advancement—he’s up for tenure,” she said. “I always thought there was something slippery about him. Only I don’t see how I can confront him without risking his wrath, unless I have some firm evidence against the bastard. But I’m sure that’s how it happened. God, I’m such a fool. Will you ever forgive me?”

  Mitch tried to rein in his chagrin. Clara fully re
alized her spacey lapse of vigilance. Now was the time for damage control, not berating his cherished partner.

  “Okay, hon—what’s done is done. Stay close to the phone.”

  With his cell phone, he reached Johnny Winks at his for-emergencies-only number. On hearing the whole story, including the part about his potential exposure to the authorities, Johnny was riled. “This could put me the fuck out of business, Mitchell, if not in some gulag—you need to give the missus a nasty spanking.” Having vented, he recognized the urgent need for a punishing counter-move. “I’ll put my American friends right on it—we’ve got a world-class hacker on board,” Johnny said. “But I need this Aurelio bloke’s email address quick as hell.”

  Clara gave Mitch her thesis adviser’s contact information, transmitted seconds later to Winks, and the rest unfolded with blazing speed. By Tuesday afternoon, the retaliatory blow was struck against the Swiss bank and its Hong Kong client.

  Johnny’s star US hacker broke into Professor Aurelio’s “Sent Mail” file and, after reviewing 147 outgoing messages in the ten-day period following Clara’s last visit to his office, discovered that her strong suspicions were not misplaced. He had forwarded her entire “Ludwig” file to the office of Larry Aurelio, his brother, who proved to be the manager of the Montclair, NJ, branch office of the brokerage firm of Browning & Bryant, lately acquired by Swiss banking leviathan Helvetica Reliance. Mark’s covering email message to his brother read:

  Hope this may be of additional use to your parent company in the musical matter previously called to your attention. The material was generated by a student whose knowledge of the subject I believe to be unimpeachable. Info should be of interest to the party pursuing this matter. Maybe it will help get you a leg up in the organization, maybe even a piece of the action. Love, big bro Marco.