“Think, Joanna,” he said. “Your Signor Abe is alive and so are you. I have the Mozart your uncle wanted to protect. Knowing that, tell me how you can believe I am the enemy.”

“You say nothing,” she said as she sat up, crossing her legs under her. “Niente. Nic. Nothing.”

“With the Mozart in my hand, I will go with you to meet Harold Middleton,” he replied. “The last man to see your uncle alive—except for the killer, that is.”

“You know who killed my uncle?”

Faust stood and held out his hand, beckoning her to leave the narrow row. “Of course,” he said, speaking in Polish. “The traitor Vukasin. The lowest of the lows. It’s a shame your uncle had to die in his presence.”

“Where is he?”

“Vukasin? No doubt he is within a kilometer or so of Colonel Middleton.”

Faust turned at the sound of the beverage cart rattling into the aisle.

“Come, Joanna,” he said, reaching for her. “They serve Champagne in first class. And Bavarian bleu cheese with a pumpkinseed bread—before lunch. I’m sure the effects of the panzanella and cantucci you had last night have long passed.”

Kaminski—no, Phelps—stood and wriggled her feet back into her worn shoes.

The arterial spray from Brocco’s severed throat had already dried on his heartbreakingly meager kitchen table, and rigor had begun to subside. Curiously, only his left hand was tied behind his back; his right hung limply, fingertips just above the blood- and urine-stained floor. Tesla saw the outline of a standard-sized reporter’s notebook on the table. Which meant the killer coerced Brocco to write something before he died. And getting Brocco to write something meant he was tortured before he was killed.

The killer also recorded Brocco’s voice—how else could a dead man call in sick after he died? Clever; a way to buy some time.

But what had he wanted Brocco to write? Tesla had been asked one pertinent question by Schmidt: Where is Harold Middleton? There are four immediate answers Brocco could have given: Middleton’s true location; a false one; a concession that he didn’t know where he was—as Tesla had—or a refusal to say anything. All but the first would lead to escalating pain and, if Brocco hadn’t known where his old boss was, he could have been compelled into speculation.

Tesla looked at her former colleague and, though his head was lolled back and his eyes opened wide and empty, she remembered tenderly his earnestness, his awkwardness around women, his passion for 18th century classical music, his unassailable belief in the power of a free press.

She peered into his mouth and saw that his tongue had been cut out. Which explained the dried blood on his lips and chin, and also whatever he wrote on the notebook’s page.