The Chopin Manuscript: A Serial Thriller

by Jeffery Deaver

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.”

  Chapter Four

  SJ Rozan

  Swift and silent as a cheetah after an antelope, the dust cloud chased the approaching Jeep. Almost, you could imagine it putting on a burst of speed, catching the Jeep and devouring it. Squinting over the sun-baked soil, Leonora Tesla gave in to an ironic smile as she found herself rooting for the dust.

  Since she’d come to Namibia she’d seen this contest often, the predator running the prey. Conscientiously, she told herself not to take sides—they were all God’s creatures, and they all had to eat—but her heart was always with the prey. And her heart was usually broken, because the predator usually won. Now she was on the other side, but–as usual, Leonora!–in a hopeless cause. The dust would lose this race, settling into defeat as the Jeep came to a stop in front of her hut.

  At least this time, she wouldn’t have to worry about heartbreak: This would not be a life-and-death struggle, only an annoyance in her day.

  “He’s a funder,” her program manager had said over the village’s single crackling telephone, calling from Windhoek, his voice equal amounts sympathy and command. “You will have to see him.”

  Leonora Tesla had come to the bush so she wouldn’t have to see anyone, except the HIV-positive women she worked with. After The Hague, after the hunting–after the shock of being called together and told by Harold the Volunteers must disband–even the smaller African cities had been too much for her. So she’d gone to the bush, traveling from village to village, staying not long in any one place. Her mandate was to establish craft co-operatives, micro-financing women’s paths to independence. The work suited her. Her days were filled now with distracting minutiae–finding hinges in one village so another’s kiln door could be repaired; lending the equivalent of four American dollars so a group could buy paper on which to keep records of baskets sold. And with beauty: the color-block quilts, the Oombiga pots whose tradition had almost been lost. Beauty suited Tesla too. Visual beauty: the way the women weaved echoed the stark subtlety of the African landscape. And musical beauty: The only artifact of 21st century technology she’d brought into the bush was an iPod loaded with–among other things–Bach preludes, Shostakovich symphonies and Beethoven sonatas. Reluctantly, she removed it now, cutting off Chopin as the Jeep neared. She hoped this wouldn’t take long. She’d ferry him around, this funder from…She’d forgotten to ask. She’d show him the kiln, the looms, the workshop. She’d rattle off her statistics on life-span extension and self-sufficiency, give him her little speech about hope for the next generation. The women would present him with a quilt or a pot for which he could have no possible use and he’d be patronizingly pleased with them and inordinately proud of himself for making this all possible. Then maybe he’d go away and leave them in peace.

  Oh, Leonora, at least try to smile.

  The other Volunteers used to say that regularly, and precisely because their work gave them little to smile about, she’d try. She did it now, a polite smile for the angular blond man who stepped from the Jeep. He smiled back and slapped his hat against his thigh to shake off the dust. He took off his sunglasses: well trained in the art of courtesy, at least.

  “Leonora Tesla? I’m Günter Schmidt.”

  He spoke in English with a soft accent she couldn’t quite place. Not German, but no law said his German name meant he was brought up in that country. That’s what the permeability of European borders was about. It was supposed to be a good thing.

  They shook hands. Schmidt’s was soft and fleshy, as befit someone who dispensed money from behind a desk. “You’ve had a long drive,” she said. “Sit down. I’ll get you something to drink.” She indicated a stool on the hard clay under the overhang, but he followed her into the house. He’d learn, she thought. In Africa the indoor, though shadowed and appealing, was never cooler than outside.

  Still smiling, Schmidt dropped himself onto one of the rough-hewn chairs at her plank table. She handed him a bottle of BB orange soda. In a hut without electricity, of course she had no refrigerator, but she’d learned the African trick of burying bottles in a box in the hut’s clay floor, so the drink was relatively cool. “We’ll be more comfortable outside,” she suggested, resigned to try to be pleasant to this intruder.

  “No,” he said, “I’d rather stay here. Leonora.”

  She bristled at the odd way he said her name, but his expression was mild as he looked about her hut. So she shrugged, wiped her brow with her kerchief and sat beside him.

  “You’ve lived here long?” Schmidt asked, taking a pull from his soda bottle.

  “No. I don’t live anywhere long. My work takes me many places.”

  “That would account for the…simplicity.”

  “And yet my possessions, few as they are, are more numerous than those of the women in our programs. When you’re rested, I’ll take you to see the kiln. We’ll be covering a lot of ground today if you want to see the full scope of our work.” She stood to reach her own Jeep keys on the hook by the door.

  “No, I think we’ll stay here. Leonora.”

  She turned sharply. His smile and the mild expression in his eyes were still in place, but his hand held a pistol, pointed at her.

  Calm, Leonora. Stay calm. “What do you want?”

  “Where is Harold Middleton?”

  Tesla’s heart, already pounding, gave a lurch. But she spoke calmly. “Harold? How would I possibly know?”

  Schmidt didn’t answer her. The gun moved slightly, as though seeking a better angle.

  “Isn’t he in America, in Washington? That’s where he lives.”

  “If he were in Washington,” Schmidt asked reasonably, “would I be here?”

  “Well, I haven’t heard from him in almost a year.”

  “I don’t know whether that’s true, though eventually I’m sure I’ll find out. But it doesn’t matter. Whether you’ve heard from him or not, you know where he’d go. If, say, he were in trouble.”

  In trouble? “No, I don’t.”

  “When you worked together—”

  “When we did, I might have been able to tell you. But I don’t know anything about his life now. He teaches music; I don’t even know where.”

  Neither of them had moved since Tesla had seen the pistol. Neither of them moved now, in the stretching silence. A breeze rustled the leaves in the acacia
behind the hut. Sweat trickled down Tesla’s spine.

  “Who are you? What do you want with Harold?”

  He laughed. “I suppose you had to ask that, but you know I won’t tell you. But it’s about your work, Leonora.”

  “The Volunteers?”

  His smile was bitter. “Your work. So. You really don’t know where Middleton is? Not even if I shoot you?”

  A gunshot roar ricocheted off the tin roof and mud walls; Tesla stumbled, grasped the plank table for support as clay shards flew everywhere. She found herself staring into Schmidt’s mild eyes. Wheezing a few breaths, quieting her heart by an act of will, she answered him.

  “Even if you shoot me. I don’t know.”

  Schmidt nodded. “All right. You don’t know where he’d go if he were in trouble. I suppose then we’ll have to depend on what he’d do, if you were in trouble.” He stood. “Come.”

  “What?”

  “As you said: We’ll be covering a lot of ground.”

  She walked ahead of the gun out onto the uneven baked earth. The glaring sunlight was unforgiving; she did not turn, but waited. There: a stutter in his step, a whisper of plastic on fabric. Behind her, Schmidt reached into his pocket for his sunglasses, she dropped down and rolled into him. He stumbled; she yanked his ankle forward, threw her weight sideways into his other knee. Dust boiled as he thudded to the ground. Another shot screamed, but out here in the endless bush it didn’t thunder, and she’d been prepared to hear it. The gun waved wildly, looking for her, but by the second shot she was in the hut and by the third she’d hurled a clay pot with the force and accuracy of Yaa Asantewa’s spear.

  In the whirling dust, Schmidt–and more important, the gun–was still.

  Forcing her breathing even, Tesla crouched by the door, waiting. When all had been motionless for a full minute, she crept to the table, reached down one of the soda bottles, and flung it at Schmidt’s head. On impact it smashed into glittering shards, but Schmidt didn’t move.

  Slowly, she rose. She made her way to where Schmidt lay in the settling dust. His blood trickled into the dry soil amid the shards of a once-beautiful pot. There, you see, Leonora? This time you were on the side of the dust. And the predator always wins.

  Her first steps back inside took her to the plastic water bucket in her makeshift sink. She scooped with her hands, splashed water over her face and head as though here, at the edge of the Namib, water was hers to waste.

  Then she made her way swiftly about the room, collecting the few things she would take. When her canvas bag was packed she used a knife to slit the seam she’d sewed on the thin mattress as she had on each mattress in each hut she’d stayed in. She extracted the envelope of American dollars and the small, battered portfolio she’d had with her since The Hague. She slipped them both into the side pocket with the iPod, zipped and she was done.

  Getting Schmidt into the Jeep was harder. She was strong but he was tall, and leverage was a problem. Eventually, his head wrapped in a towel to keep bloodstains from the seat, she’d maneuvered him into the back, fished the keys from his pocket and started the engine. Driving along the dust track the way Schmidt had come, she saw ahead the spot she’d been thinking of, where the edge of the road fell off steeply toward the wadi. She passed it and turned around so the Jeep was headed toward her hut. Then, on the curve, she yanked the wheel sharply, opened the door and jumped.

  Anywhere in the wadi would have worked, but her luck was better than she’d had the nerve to hope, and the Jeep smacked head-on into an acacia tree. When she reached it–limping slightly, she’d banged her knee–cracks spider-webbed the windshield. Excellent. Then came more sweat, strain and maneuvering, and finally Schmidt was half-in, half-out of the driver’s seat. Though the crack in his skull was clearly not from this crash, he was unlikely to be found for a while–except by the hyenas that skulked along this dry streambed. Once they were through, no one would doubt what had killed Günter Schmidt.

  Or whoever he was. And wherever he’d come from.

  She walked back to the hut, hoping she could walk out the ache in her knee. Once there, she stripped and washed in the little water she’d left herself. She changed clothes, took what she’d been wearing and the bloody towel in a pillowcase. Slinging it and her bag into her own Jeep, Tesla paused. Though she’d lived in and left too many places to make a habit of goodbyes, she took a moment to stare at the hut, and then turned to salute the wide brown land. She’d thought this might be home, but now she doubted she’d be back.

  The drive to Windhoek Airport took a little more than three hours. Once there, she used all four of her credit cards to withdraw as much cash as she could. With what she’d taken from the mattress, she’d be all right for a while. On one of the cards she bought a ticket on the connecting flight through Munich to Washington D.C. Then she exited the terminal and boarded the long-distance bus to Cape Town.

  She didn’t know if her credit cards were being monitored, but she had to take the possibility into account. In Cape Town, she’d buy a ticket in cash.

  To New York.

  Where you could catch a train to Washington, Harold had told her, a dozen times a day.

  Hugging her bag to her, feeling the portfolio’s stiffness through the canvas, Leonora stared out the window at the dry land, the lonesome trees.

  A dozen trains a day.

  That ought to be enough.

  Chapter Five

  Erica Spindler

  Charlotte Middleton-Perez cracked open her eyes, disoriented. Not home. Not the dining room at the Ritz.

  Bright, antiseptic white. Shiny surfaces, stiff sheets. She hurt. Ached everywhere, especially her lower back.

  The squeak and rattle of a cart broke the silence. Muffled voices followed. She shifted her gaze. Her husband Jack by the bed, head in hands. The picture of grief.

  With a shattering sense of loss, she remembered: standing up. Seeing the blood. Crying out, then gasping as pain knifed through her belly.

  She brought a hand to her abdomen, vision blurring with tears. She’d had a life growing inside her. A baby boy. She and Jack had begun picking out names.

  Had. Past tense. Now, no life inside her. No little boy with Jack’s blue eyes and her dark hair.

  Her tears spilled over, rolling down her cheeks, hot and bitter.

  He lifted his head. His eyes were red-rimmed from crying.

  “Charley,” he said.

  The one word conveyed a world of emotion–despair and regret, love and need. For comfort. To understand–how could this have happened?

  They’d reached the second trimester. Safe, they’d thought. Out of the woods. Common wisdom validated their belief.

  Her fault? Working too hard? Not enough rest?

  As if reading her thoughts, Perez stretched out a hand. She took it and he curled his fingers protectively around hers. “Not your fault, Charley. The doctor said these things…happen.”

  She shook her head. “That’s not good enough. I need to know why.”

  He cleared his throat. “They’re going to run some tests. On us. On our…The miscarriage. He suggested an ultrasound of your uterus, an x-ray, too.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut as he tightened his fingers on hers. “This is a setback. It really hurts, but we’ll have—”

  “No.”

  “—other childre—”

  “Don’t. Please.” Her voice cracked. “I wanted this baby…I—I already loved him.”

  “I understand,” he said with apparent sympathy.

  And he always seemed to. She didn’t know what she had done to deserve his love. They’d met at Tulane University in New Orleans. She had been stunned when he asked her out, when he pursued her. She wasn’t an extraordinary beauty. Just pleasant looking—average face, average figure. And Jack was off the charts handsome. Smart. Educated. From an influential Louisiana family. His falling for her had been as much a mystery as a miracle.

  “Have you heard from Harry?” she asked. She’d
stopped calling her father Dad on her thirteenth birthday. She was Charley, he was Harry and her mother was perpetually horrified by the both of them.

  “Not yet.”

  “You left a message—”

  “At the restaurant. And just a bit ago on his cell phone. It went automatically to voicemail.”

  He was delayed, still in transit. “You didn’t tell him—”

  He squeezed her fingers again. “Just that we were here. To call on my cell. I left my number.”

  She swallowed past the sudden rush of tears. “Mother?” she managed.

  “No answer, home or cell.”

  “Ms. Middleton?”

  They turned. Two men stood in the doorway, expressions solemn. Both men, dressed in dark suits, were pin neat and pressed, despite the hour. She wasn’t surprised when they introduced themselves as federal officers. “We need to ask you a few questions.”

  “Now?” Perez asked as he stood. “Here?”

  “It’s about your father,” the taller of the two said, producing his Department of Justice ID.

  “About Harry?”

  “Harold Middleton, yes. When’s the last time you spoke with him?”

  The hair on the back of her neck prickled. “Before he left for Europe. A week or so before.”

  “Did he seem himself?”

  “Yes. But why—”

  “Did he express any concerns about the trip? Any anxiety? Unexpected excitement?”

  “My father was a seasoned traveler, Agent—”

  “Smith,” he offered. “Did you get the sense this trip was different from others he’s taken?”

  “None at all.”

  “You planned to meet last evening? At the Ritz dining room?”

  “Yes…But how—” She didn’t finish the thought. The feds could find out anything. Harry had taught her that. “For a late supper. I didn’t make it.”

  Her throat closed over the words. The agents seemed unmoved by her pain. “We’re sorry for your loss, Ms. Middleton, but—”

  “Mrs. Perez,” her husband corrected, voice tight. “As I said, this is not a good time. Either tell us why you’re here or leave.”