Once they were gone, he walked through the basement, using a flashlight to inspect what they’d spent the last four hours doing: Running two-inch hose—it was astonishingly heavy, who’d have thought?—through access tunnels from three buildings away. Painstakingly, using silent hand pumps, they’d filled rubber bladders with gasoline, a total of close to 900 gallons of the liquid. Next they placed propane tanks and detonators between the bladders and, most difficult of all, rigged the electronics.

Alone now in the basement of the James Madison recital hall, Faust ran final diagnostic checks on the system. Everything was in order. He allowed himself a fantasy of what would happen later this evening. During the adagio movement at the world premier of the newly discovered Chopin sonata, a unique combination of notes would slip from the microphone above the soloist’s piano and be electronically translated into numerical values. These would be recognized by the computer controller as a command to small motors that would open the propane tanks. Then a few minutes later, when the score moved into the vivace movement, another combination of notes would trigger the detonators. The propane would flare, melt the bladders and turn the recital hall instantly into a crematorium.

This elaborate system was necessary because radio, microwave and cell phone jammers were in use in security-minded public venues in D.C. Remote control devices were useless. And timing devices could be picked up in sweeps by supersensitive microphones.

Ironically, Felicia Kaminski herself would be the detonator.

Now Faust hid the bladders, tanks and wires behind boxes. He was satisfied with the plan. Middleton and the government had taken the bait Nowakowski offered them, the manuscript. And it was clear they believed the entire charade, all false information Faust had fed to Jack Perez and Felicia Kaminski—the code in the first manuscript pages, the nerve-gas attack, the binoculars at the Harbor court focused on a warehouse, the mysterious talk about deliveries and chemical formulas, the torture of the tattooed man in the closet . . .

His enemy’s defenses were down. He thought of an apt metaphor: They believed the concert was over; they never suspected he’d arranged a spectacular, unexpected crescendo.

Faust now slipped out of the basement, troubled as he pictured Felicia Kaminski dying in the conflagration. He wasn’t concerned about the young women herself, of course. He was troubled that, if she used the original score to perform from, the manuscript would be destroyed.

After all, it was easily worth millions of dollars.

The crowds began assembling outside early, the queue stretching well past a construction site next door to the James Madison hall. Many were people without tickets, hoping for scalpers. But this was a world-premiere of Chopin, not pre-season Redskins, so there were no tickets to be had.

Harold Middleton made a brief backstage visit to Kaminski, wished her well and then joined his guests in the lobby: Leonora Tesla, JM Lespasse and his daughter Charley.