“You could leave. No one expects you to be here.”

“There’s Rolly, though.”

“True. Any final advice from the movies?”

“Yeah,” said Crosetti, “whatever your plan is, it’ll have a flaw.”

“Because…?”

“You can’t think of everything, one; and two, you need a reversal in the last six minutes to keep the tension up.”

“Well, at least we won’t have a fistfight in the abandoned factory. Let me go greet our guests.”

Mishkin walked out of the kitchen and Crosetti went to the window. As he did so, he heard the engine of the boat cut off and observed that they now had it tied up and people were getting off: the tall man in the leather coat, who had gone out on the deck, then a medium-size man in a camel hair overcoat and a fur hat (the Boss), then a linebacker-size fellow, also coated in black leather, leading two children, a boy and a girl, then a woman in a white parka, with the hood up over her head, then a man wearing a Burberry and a tweed cap, with the lower part of his face swathed in a striped woolen muffler, and finally another black-leather guy, only this one’s coat came down to his shins. Crosetti went into the living room. Mishkin was poking the huge fire he’d just started and it was ablaze, filling the room with the scent of burning resin. The fatal envelope still sat on the table, but the laptop was gone.

The front door slammed open and two of the thugs tromped in-the big one and the long-coated one, who had a pale ill-formed face like the monster Pillsbury Doughboy from Ghostbusters. Then came the man Crosetti knew must be the famous Shvanov. He said something in Russian to his boys and they immediately grabbed Mishkin, beat him to the ground, and started stomping him. As this proceeded, the rest of the boat party entered, pushed along by the Deckhand. Crosetti noticed a number of things at once. First, Mishkin was taking the beating without resistance, although in London Crosetti had watched him toss a big guy through the air like a Frisbee. Next, the children: Imogen very angry, started to go to her father’s aid, and would have, had the Deckhand not grabbed her; there was something wrong with Niko, his head held at an unnatural downward angle, and his hands moving in meaningless little patterns. He seemed to be humming or talking to himself and he smelled of vomit, traces of which smeared the front of his parka. Finally, the woman. She had pushed back her hood on entering the room, revealing neck-length dark hair, not too clean, and her face, upon which was a look of horror at what was being done to Mishkin. The man in the Burberry was also staring at the beating, but not with horror-morbid fascination maybe, or even satisfaction.

This all in a quite short time, which seemed longer, an interval, Crosetti knew, that would be drawn out for well over a minute on the screen. The woman shouted at Shvanov to stop it and Shvanov shouted back at her, but he told his men to stop. They dragged Mishkin to his feet, holding him by his arms. He blinked, he wiped at the blood and saliva issuing from his mouth, he said to his children, “I’m sorry, kids, this wasn’t supposed to happen. Did they hurt you?”

The girl said, “Not really. But Niko was sick on the boat and he’s acting weird.”

Shvanov strode forward and slapped Mishkin hard on the face.

“This is entirely your fault, Mishkin,” he said. “I try to act in a civilized manner to obtain property that is rightfully mine, and what do I get? Respect? No, I have to chase you here, which is a colossal inconvenience, and you require me to also kidnap children. This is unconscionable. Osip Shvanov does not kidnap children, as I have told you before, but you don’t listen. And now we have come to this. So, now, at last, hand me over my property, namely one manuscript of William Shakespeare.”

But Mishkin was staring at the woman. He said, “Hello, Miranda. Why did you change your hair? And your eyes.”

The woman was silent. Shvanov slapped Mishkin on the face again, spraying blood in a wide pattern against the wall above the fireplace. “No, don’t look at her, look at me, you stupid pig lawyer! Where is my property?”

“It’s in the envelope on that table,” said Crosetti.

Everyone in the room turned and stared at him.

“Who is this man?” Shvanov demanded.

“This is Albert Crosetti,” said Mishkin, “the man who found the original Bracegirdle manuscript and sold it to Professor Bulstrode. Or so he claims.”

Shvanov went to the table and removed the contents of the envelope. He gestured to the man in the Burberry, who hurried to his side.

Mishkin said, “While we’re making introductions, Crosetti, that is Professor Mickey Haas, the world’s foremost Shakespeare expert. Or so he claims.”

Haas took the stack of papers from Shvanov, sat at the table, stuck reading glasses on his face, and began to peruse the first sheet. Crosetti could see that his hands were shaking. For almost half an hour, the only sounds in the room were the crackling of the flames, the muttering of the boy, and the rustle of the stiff old paper.

“So? What do you say, Professor?” said Shvanov.

“It’s astounding! Obviously, there are technical tests to go through, but I’ve seen a lot of seventeenth-century manuscripts, and as far as I can see this is genuine. The paper is right, the ink is right, the handwriting is…well, we don’t actually have any examples of Shakespeare’s hand aside from some signatures and of course there’s the so-called Hand D from the partial manuscript of the Thomas More play, but there certainly, I mean most probably-”

“Bottom line, Professor, is it a salable property?”

Haas replied in an odd strained voice, speaking with unnatural precision, “I think, yes, the language, the style, my God, yes, I believe that subject to various tests as I’ve mentioned, that this is a manuscript of an unknown play by William Shakespeare.”

Shvanov clapped Haas on the back hard enough to loosen his glasses. “Good! Excellent!” he crowed, and all the thugs smiled.

Then Mishkin said, “Osip, what did you expect him to say? The thing is a fraud. He set the whole thing up with the forger, Leonard Pascoe. I have proof.”

Haas leaped up from his chair and snarled at Mishkin, “You son of a bitch! What the hell do you know about it? This is real! And if you think you can-”

Shvanov poked Haas hard in the arm and he stopped talking. Then Shvanov stepped closer to Mishkin until he was staring up into the bigger man’s face. “What kind of proof?”

“I’ll show you. Make them let go of me.”

A nod and Mishkin was released. He went to a magazine rack by the fireside couch and took out a FedEx envelope, from which he removed some papers and a compact disk. He said, “First the documentary evidence. This”-handing a sheet to Shvanov-“is a copy of the original Bracegirdle manuscript. This is a sheet on which Leonard Pascoe forged Bracegirdle’s hand. Even a novice such as yourself, Osip, can see that they are identical. Your pal over there found a seventeenth-century letter from a dying man and interpolated a sheet or two in a forged hand and then concocted the whole cipher business out of whole cloth and then arranged for this so-called play to be found in just the place called for in the ciphers.”

“That’s insane!” shouted Haas. “Pascoe’s in prison.”

“A country club,” said Mishkin, “which we visited, as the people Osip had following us have no doubt informed him. Osip, didn’t you wonder why we stopped by there?”

Crosetti saw Shvanov exchange a quick glance with the Deckhand.

“We stopped by for this,” said Mishkin. He held up the compact disk. “Leonard Pascoe is quite proud of his trade, and this was his biggest coup. He’ll have a nice little nest egg waiting for him when he gets out, courtesy of Mickey, or I should say courtesy of Osip Shvanov, because the money he used was the money he got from you, or part of it. It was a perfect fix for him. How much is he into you for by the way?”