Jeffery Deaver - Watchlist

Oh, and the cactus.

“Then I can leave.”

“You know, we have anti-smoking laws here. I think that’s your doing, your country’s. You give us Burger King and take away our cigarettes.” The inspector shrugged and lit a Sobieski. “No, you can’t leave. Now, please, you had lunch yesterday with a Henryk Jedynak, a piano tuner.”

“Yes. Henry… Oh no. Was he the one murdered?”

Padlo watched Middleton carefully. “I’m afraid he was, yes. Last night. In the recital hall near Old Market Square.”

“No, no… ” Middleton didn’t know the man well-they’d met only on this trip-but they’d hit it off immediately and had enjoyed each other’s company. He was shocked by the news of Jedynak’s death.

“And two other people were killed, as well. A musician and a cleaning woman. Stabbed to death. For no reason, apparently, other than they had the misfortune to be there at the same time as the killer.”

“This is terrible. But why?”

“Have you known Mr. Jedynak long?”

“No. We met in person for the first time yesterday. We’d emailed several times. He was a collector of manuscripts.”

“Manuscripts? Books?”

“No. Musical manuscripts-the handwritten scores. And he was involved with the Chopin Museum.”

“At Ostrogski Castle.” The inspector said this as if he’d heard of the place but never been there.

“Yes. I had a meeting yesterday afternoon with the director of the Czartoryski Museum in Krakow, and I asked Henry to brief me about him and their collection. It was about a questionable Chopin score.”

Padlo showed no interest in this. “Tell me, please, about your meeting. In Warsaw.”

“Well, I met Henry for coffee in the late morning at the museum, he showed me the new acquisitions in the collection. Then we returned downtown and had lunch at a café. I can’t remember where.”

“The Frederick Restaurant.”

That’s how Padlo found him, he supposed-an entry in Jedynak’s PDA or diary. “Yes, that was it. And then we went our separate ways. I took the train to Krakow.”

“Did you see anyone following you or watching you at lunch?”

“Why would someone follow us?”

Padlo inhaled long on his cigarette. When he wasn’t puffing he lowered his hand below his desk. “Did you see anyone?” he repeated.

“No.”

He nodded. “Mr. Middleton, I must tell you… I regret I have to but it is important. Your friend was tortured before he died. I won’t go into the details, but the killer used some piano string in very unpleasant ways. He was gagged so the screams could not be heard but his right hand was uninjured, presumably so that he could write whatever this killer demanded of him. He wanted information.”

“My God… ” Middleton closed his eyes briefly, recalling Henry’s showing pictures of his wife and two sons.

“I wonder what that might be,” Padlo said. “This piano tuner was well known and well liked. He was also a very transparent man. Musician, trades-man, husband and father. There seemed to be nothing dark about his life…” A careful examination of Middleton’s face. “But perhaps the killer thought that was not the case. Perhaps the killer thought he had a second life involving more than music…” With a nod, he added, “Somewhat like you.”

“What’re you getting at?”

“Tell me about your other career, please.”

“I don’t have another career. I teach music and authenticate music manuscripts.”

“But you had another career recently.”

“Yes, I did. But what’s that got to do with anything?”

Padlo considered this for a moment, and said, “Because certain facts have come into alignment.”

A cold laugh. “And what exactly does that mean?” This was the most emotional Harold Middleton usually got. He believed that you gave up your advantage when you lost control. That’s what he told himself, though he doubted that he was even capable of losing control.

“Tell me about that career, Colonel. Do some people still call you that, ‘Colonel’?”

“Not anymore. But why are you asking me questions you already seem to know the answers to?”

“I know a few things. I’m curious to know more. For instance, I only know that you were connected with the ICTY and the ICCt, but not many details.”

The UN-sanctioned International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia investigated and tried individuals for war crimes committed during the complicated and tragic fighting among the Serbs, Bosnians, Croatians and Albanian ethnic groups in the 1990s. The ICCt was the International Criminal Court, established in 2002 to try war criminals for crimes in any area of the world. Both were located in The Hague in Holland, and had been created because nations tended to quickly forget about the atrocities committed within their borders and were reluctant to find and try those who’d committed them.

“How did you end up working for them? It seems a curious leap from your country’s army to an international tribunal.”

“I was planning to retire anyway. I’d been in the service for more than two decades.”

“But still. Please.”

Middleton decided that cooperation was the only way that would let him leave anytime soon. With the time difference he still had a chance to get into D.C. in time for a late supper at the Ritz Carlton with his daughter and son-in-law.

He explained to the inspector briefly that he had been a military intelligence officer with the 7,000 U.S. troops sent to Kosovo in the summer of 1999 as part of the peacekeeping force when the country was engaged in the last of the Yugoslavian wars. Middleton was based at Camp Broadsteel in the southeast of the country, the sector America oversaw. The largely rural area, dominated by Mount Duke which rose like Fuji over the rugged hills, was an ethnically Albanian area, as was most of Kosovo, and had been the site of many incursions by Serbs-both from other parts of Kosovo and from Milosevic’s Serbia, which Kosovo had been part of. The fighting was largely over-the tens of thousands of ironically dubbed “humanitarian” bombing strikes had had their desired effect-but the peacekeepers on the ground were still on high alert to stop clashes between the infamous Serb guerillas and the equally ruthless Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army forces.

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?