Three days later, Pawkins received a call from an obviously distraught Felicia James.

“What can I do for you?” the detective asked.

“I’m at my uncle’s house. You must come right away.”

“Whoa, slow down. You sound upset. What’s going on there?”

“Please, Detective, it’s very important.”

Ms. James met him at the door. Her face mirrored the distress in her voice. They went to the main room that had served as Musinski’s study and office. Ms. James handed Pawkins an opened envelope. The address indicated that it had been sent to her home, and was marked REGISTERED, RETURN RECEIPT REQUESTED.

“What’s this?” Pawkins asked.

“Read it. It’s been at the post office. I have a box there. I didn’t have the energy to pick up my mail before today.”

The return address was Aaron Musinski’s. Pawkins opened the envelope and read the one-page letter it contained.

“Wow!” he said, handing it back to her.

“It’s not here,” she said flatly, indicating the room with a sweep of her hand.

“Are you sure?”

“I’ve looked everywhere. I picked up Uncle Aaron at the airport when he returned from London. He’d gone there to meet with a friend, another Mozart expert. My uncle and this friend had worked together for years searching for missing Mozart scores. Uncle Aaron was an expert on all of Mozart’s works-operas, symphonies, string quartets, even the one ballet he wrote. But his special interest was in a series of string quartets supposedly written by Mozart with his idol, Franz Joseph Haydn. Those scores have never been seen by anyone, at least as far as the world knew. But as you can see by the letter, Uncle Aaron and his colleague in London found them.” She leaped up from her chair and exclaimed, “They actually found them! Do you know how monumentally important that is?”

“I can imagine,” Pawkins said. “You said whatever he found isn’t here. How do you know?”

“Because I’ve searched everywhere.” She went to the corner where the briefcases were stacked and held one up. It was a battered, supple leather case. Judging from the way it hung from her fingers, it was empty.

“Uncle Aaron had this with him when he returned from London. It was bulging when he came through Customs. I even asked him what was in it; he said it was just a lot of junk. That’s what he called it, ‘junk’! Now it’s empty. Don’t you see? He had the Mozart-Haydn scores in it, and now they’re gone. Whoever killed him knew about those scores and murdered my uncle in order to have them.”

“That could be,” said Pawkins. “Any idea who might have known what your uncle found and would kill to get it?”

“Some of his jealous detractors,” she answered. “I can give you a list.”

“That will be helpful. I’ll follow up on it.”

The murder was never solved, nor were the Mozart-Haydn scores ever recovered.

Annabel read a final line from one of the websites devoted to the Aaron Musinski murder and the disappearance of the scores.

When asked about the possible whereabouts of the scores that allegedly were behind the murder of Aaron Musinski, the lead detective, Raymond Pawkins, said, “Lord knows. There’s a large, black hole out there into which priceless works of art disappear, with wealthy men in it who’ll pay anything, and even kill, to possess them. I doubt if we’ll ever know.”

EIGHTEEN

The white Chevrolet Suburban had been sitting at the Al-Karama-Trebil border checkpoint between Iraq and Jordan for the better part of an hour. Finally, the driver, an Iraqi dressed in a flowing white dishdasha, was allowed to pull up to where Jordanian troops checked the steady flow of vehicles heading for Amman on the heavily traveled Baghdad-Amman highway, the infamous and dangerous Route 10. The driver rolled down his window and handed the security guard the necessary papers. The guard frowned as he examined them, handed the papers back, and poked his head through the window to see the passenger in the rear seat.

“Hello,” the passenger said with a wan smile. He extended a hand that held his British passport. The guard went to where another uniformed soldier leaned against the gate smoking a cigarette. They both looked at the document. One said something that made the other laugh. The passport was returned, the gate opened, and the vehicle was allowed to enter Jordan.

The passenger settled back and closed his eyes. He’d dreaded the six-hundred-mile trip since being told to go to Amman by his superior in the Baghdad office. He might have opted out of the assignment, using his senior status and age in the British Foreign Service-he was within a year of retirement-but decided to make the journey. This was important, he knew. Sending a younger, less experienced case officer would not be prudent. The man was Milton Crowley, the only son of a British father and Jewish mother. The Jewish side of his heritage was seldom acknowledged, especially since being posted to Iraq. The flames were high enough there without fanning them further.

His driver had said little during the leg from Baghdad to the Jordanian border, for which Crowley was grateful. Both he and the driver had been on the alert for any sign of “The Group of Death,” an Iraqi insurgency group that had recently been attacking vehicles on Route 10. Twice they’d had to pull far off to the side of the road to allow U.S. military convoys to pass, their soldiers’ weapons trained on the white Suburban. But now that they were in Jordan, the driver visibly relaxed and became verbose, looking in his rearview mirror while talking although somehow keeping his eyes on the road. Crowley could have done without the chatter. He wanted to nap but knew that was impossible. The endless, singsong flow of words from the driver, coupled with an inborn inability to sleep in vehicles or on planes, kept the slight British diplomat awake the entire trip.

They eventually reached downtown Amman and pulled up in front of the Le Royal Hotel in Jebal Amman, on Zahran Street, the Third Circle. The city’s newest luxury hotel, thirty-one stories high, was the tallest building in Amman. Crowley had stayed there before on a previous trip and suffered the same reaction he always had when in hotels, a profound yearning for his quaint, peaceful cottage on a river in Wareham, Dorset, England. One year to go before returning there permanently. It could not come fast enough.

His senior status would have allowed him to choose one of the suites on a high floor, with sweeping views of the city. But views no longer meant anything to Crowley. You’ve seen one view from a hotel window, you’ve seen them all. Besides, he was uncomfortable being surrounded by windows. A lesser room, on a lower floor, with but a single window was more to his liking.

He napped in the darkened room. Somewhat rested, he showered and shaved. His image in the mirror was not what he wished to see. He showed his age-the chicken neck, the sparse, unruly gray hair, and the gray stubble on his chin and cheeks. A discernible weariness in his eyes testified to there being far fewer days ahead for him than behind.

He dressed in the same wrinkled blue suit and the same shirt and tie he’d worn during the drive and went to one of the hotel complex’s thirteen restaurants, where he had a lager, a pasta dish, and a salad. His watch said he had another hour before he had to leave. He sat in the lobby for a few minutes but found it too busy. Two thousand people attending an affair in the Ishtar Ballroom kept spilling out into the lobby; nostalgia for his idyllic English countryside cottage was almost painful.

He returned to his room and passed the rest of the hour there before taking a cab from the hotel to the town of Debbin, approximately fifty miles to the north of Amman. After consulting a slip of paper, he instructed the driver to let him off at an entrance to the Debbin National Park, thirty miles of pine forest stretching from Debbin to Ajlun. The driver expressed his concern at letting the little Englishman off in such a dark and secluded spot, but Crowley assured him he would be fine. “Someone is picking me up any minute,” he said. The moment the taxi pulled away, a silver Mercedes that had been parked a few hundred feet away, its lights extinguished, came to life and approached. M.T., the burly Brit who’d been Ghaleb Rihnai’s handler, rolled down the window. “Evening, mate,” he said.