Biting the inside of her cheek to stifle any sign of the satisfied smile that might draw attention to her, Kaminski pushed away from the table and started walking toward the taxi stands at the front of the airport. Before that, she needed to find a cambio, where she could convert her windfall of U.S. dollars into more readily spent euros. She knew she had time—Faust would be busy with the carabinieri for at least a couple of hours, she imagined—and she hoped that even a short delay would provide enough time for her to do what she needed to do and then disappear.

Meanwhile, the officials at the airport would be turning Faust’s luggage inside out as they looked for the pistol that showed up so clearly in the x-ray. Ultimately, probably in fairly short order, they’d find the source of their alarm.

She wondered if any of them would even smile when they realized that they’d mobilized dozens of policia because a businessman had covered a water pistol with a foil wrapper and stuffed it in one of the file pockets of his brief case.

Felicia Kaminski left the airport with none of her new clothes—none but what she wore, that is. Her fancy new suitcase was somewhere in the bowels of the airport, already checked and on its way to the aircraft that would dead-head it to New York. She kept the money too, but beyond that, she carried only those items that were rightfully hers—her backpack and her violin.

She had the taxi drop her at the foot of Via dei Polacchi, and she added a generous tip to the fare. What was the point of a windfall if it couldn’t be shared with others? The driver thanked her effusively and offered three times to wait for her while she ran whatever errand she was on, but after she’d steadfastly refused, he finally understood that her insistent “no” meant just that, and he drove on.

She waited until the taxi was out of sight around the corner before she started walking up the hill. She’d never actually visited the shop she was looking for—La Musica—but she’d sipped coffee with Abe Nowakowski, the proprietor, several times since she’d arrived in Rome. Signor Abe and her uncle had shared a childhood, it turned out, living only a few houses away from each other in the old country. Uncle Henryk had asked his friend to look in on her from time to time. During their last meeting, at a cafe near the Pantheon, only a few dozen meters from the spot where she had first encountered the man who called himself Faust, Abe’s demeanor had been different than it had been before. His easy humor seemed clouded by something dark.

During one of her visits, she asked, “Are you feeling all right?”