“There’s a Chopin manuscript in here,” Middleton said, tapping the briefcase’s lid. “It’s believed to be part of a stash the Nazis squirreled away in a church in Kosovo.”

“‘Believed’?”

“It’s a forgery. It’s not in Chopin’s hand. It’s been folded, mistreated—”

“And yet somebody thinks it’s worth nine lives?”

Middleton remembered the bodies strewn inside St. Sophia, and the dying teenage girl’s desperate cry. “Green shirt, green shirt . . . please.”

“A lot more than nine, Jack.”

They were on the highway now and Perez slid the Mercedes into the fast lane, pushing it up to 70, the sedan riding on a cloud.

“So I’m telling you, Jack, that you and Charley ought to go on thinking I was in Krakow to authenticate—”

“A manuscript that some other expert will know is phony too. Suddenly, you, who’s catalogued scores by Bach, Handel, Wagner—”

“Mozart,” Middleton added.

“—are fooled by an obvious forgery.”

“Jack, what I’m trying to say—”

“And with Charley ready to pop, you go to Poland. That’s not you, Harry.”

Middleton watched the maple and poplars trees rush by at the roadside. “Are you going to toss that Python?”

Perez had been driving with the .357 pressed against the steering wheel. “Hell no. At least not until you’re straight with me.”

Middleton sighed. “Better you don’t know, Jack.”

“Why?” Perez said, peering into the rearview. “You think it’s about to get worse?”

Though toughened by a native cynicism and the hardscrabble life of a street musician, 19-year-old Felicia Kaminski was too young to understand that a sense of justice and a blush of optimism raised by an unexpected success were illusions, no more reliable than a promise or a kiss. Still energized by caffeine and the vision of Faust as he was hauled off by airport security, she’d headed from Signor Abe’s La Musica shop to an internet café near the Colosseum—another sign of her cleverness: She fled Via delle Botteghe Oscure and hadn’t gone to the Pantheon or north to the Trevi Fountain, areas Faust had scouted; nor did she return to her home in San Giovanni. She’d begun to feel she was living a clandestine life, a purposeful life, in memory of her uncle Henryk.

Within the first minute at the computer, she’d learned Harold Middleton taught “Masterpieces of Music” at the American University in Washington, D.C.

Which was 40 miles—40.23 miles, to be precise—from the address in Baltimore Faust said was to be her new home.

There was a 6:45 flight from Fiumicino through Frankfurt that would arrive in Washington at 12:45. She could exchange her first-class ticket for a coach seat, and still have enough euros—no, dollars—to take a taxi to the college. Even if Professor Middleton was off campus, she could arrange to bring him back—the words “I am Henryk Jedynak’s niece” would be enough to earn his attention.