Red Rabbit - Tom Clancy [246]
The bathroom was crowded in their room. Irina worked hard and long to get her face right. It was easier for her husband, and easier still for their daughter, for whom a wet washcloth across her grimacing face was enough. Then they all got dressed in their best clothing. Oleg buckled his little girl's shiny black shoes over the white tights to which she'd taken an immediate love. Then she put on the red coat with the black collar, and the little Bunny was all ready for the adventures of the evening. They took the elevator down to the lobby and caught a cab outside.
* * *
FOR TRENT IT was a little awkward. Staking out the lobby ought to have been difficult, but the hotel staff seemed not to notice him, and so when the package left, it was a simple matter of walking out to his car and following their cab to the concert hall, just a mile down the street. Once there, he found a parking place close by and walked quickly to the entrance. Drinks were being served there, and the Zaitzevs availed themselves of what looked like Tokaji before heading in. Their little girl was as radiant as ever. Lovely child, Trent thought. He hoped she'd like life in the West. He watched them head into the theater to their seats, and then he turned to go up the stairs to his box.
* * *
RYAN AND HUDSON were already there, sitting on the old chairs with their velvet cushions.
"Andy, Jack," Trent said in greeting. "Sixth row, left side of center, just on the aisle."
Then the houselights started flickering. The curtain drew back, the meandering tones of musicians tuning their various instruments trailed off, and the conductor, Jozsef Rozsa, appeared from stage right. The initial applause was little more than polite. It was his first concert in the series, and he was new to this audience. That struck Ryan as odd—he was a Hungarian, a graduate of their own Franz Liszt Academy. Why wasn't their greeting more enthusiastic? He was a tall and thin guy with black hair and the face of an aesthete. He bowed politely to the audience and turned back to the orchestra. His little baton stick—whatever it was called, Ryan didn't know—was there on the little stand, and when he lifted it, the room went dead still, and then his right arm shot out to the string section of the Hungarian State Railroad Orchestra #1.
Ryan was not the student of music that his wife was, but Bach was Bach, and the concerto built in majesty almost from the first instant. Music, like poetry or painting, Jack told himself, was a means of communication, but he'd never quite figured out what composers were trying to say. It was easier with a John Williams movie score, where the music so perfectly accompanied the action, but Bach hadn't known about moving pictures, and so he must have been "talking about" things that his original audiences would have recognized. But Ryan wasn't one of those, and so he just had to appreciate the wonderful harmonies. It struck him that the piano wasn't right, and only when he looked did he see that it wasn't a piano at all, but rather an ancient harpsichord, played, it seemed, by an equally ancient virtuoso with flowing white hair and the elegant hands of… a surgeon, Jack thought. Jack did know piano music. Their friend Sissy Jackson, a solo player with the Washington Symphony, said Cathy was too mechanical in her playing, but Ryan only noted that she never missed a key—you could always tell—and to him that was sufficient. This guy, he thought, watching his hands and catching the notes through the wonderful cacophony, didn't miss a single note, and every one, it seemed, was precisely as loud or soft as the concert required, and so precisely timed as to define perfection. The rest of the orchestra seemed about as well practiced as the Marine Corps Silent Drill Team, everything as precise as a series of laser beams.
The one thing Ryan couldn't tell was what the conductor was doing. Wasn't the concerto written down? Wasn't conducting just a matter