Alicia now believed that Ray’s Strad was somewhere in this chain, being passed around from one crook to another—the ransom was just a red herring, a means of generating additional income. Finding the violin itself was the best way of ensuring its recovery.
“You think the Lezenkov family stole it?” Ray asked. “Hired people to steal it, I mean?”
Alicia was sitting in the armchair near the window, looking out over Belgrade’s blank-fronted buildings, which looked like warehouses. “So their kid would win the Tchaikovsky Competition?” She shook her head, playing with the gold necklace around her neck. She was dressed in some sort of long flowing skirt and turquoise scarf—she looked very European. “Seems like a long shot, honestly, but the father is very competitive. Apparently he really forced the kid to play all the time. Didn’t seem like much of a life, honestly.”
She went on to tell him that a wealthy Serbian dealer had reached out via several intermediaries to let people know that, along with the Lezenkov family, he, too, had a client who was in the market for a very nice violin, no questions asked. This client would pay up to 1.3 million euro—vastly more than the thieves would get just from passing it off as collateral for guns or drugs.
“Who’s the client? Do you know him?” Ray asked.
Alicia fumbled in her purse, handed him her passport. “Me,” she said. “I’m an intermediary interested in purchasing a very nice violin for an anonymous client.”
“You? Seriously?”
She took back the passport, opened it. Marie Hodges of Galveston, Texas, stared back at him from Alicia’s photograph.
“Holy crap. Is this real?”
“Sure. This is my job, remember? I have a whole deep background created for Marie Hodges, which is why having you here is a serious impediment. Anybody can google Marie Hodges and find a lot of information on her. Where she went to college, a LinkedIn page, everything. It’s an alias that will hold up under serious scrutiny.”
“That’s really cool,” he told her. “So now what? We’re just waiting?”
“I told you not to come,” she reminded him.
She was right. He could have stayed in Moscow, practiced his repertoire for the Third Round—but he could practice it just as well in Belgrade. Without his accompanist and without the Moscow Orchestra, true, but closer to his violin.
He was really glad to be gone.
In Belgrade, he spent the next day busking—treating the good folk, residents, and tourists alike, to his Third Round repertoire: the Mozart and the Tchaikovsky, repeating both pieces over and over in different parts of the city. A few people dropped coins in his open violin case.
Between pieces, he wandered around the city streets—some charmingly cobblestoned, others with uniquely disturbing murals, still others that looked like they’d been dropped from a communist labor camp.
He switched up the Third Round repertoire for Adele and Taylor Swift, and the money was much better. When he played “Let It Be” and “Viva La Vida,” a small crowd gathered, ten or fifteen people, swaying to the music. He smiled at them, and they smiled back.
The day passed, and then the next. Much of Belgrade must have heard the Third Round music by then. He was trying to decide when he should return to Moscow when the music dealer in touch with the thieves confirmed with Alicia that his contacts would be willing to part with the violin for 1.33 million euro. The transfer would go down two days from now, in a suburb about an hour’s drive from the city center. Alicia, as Marie Hodges, would carry a briefcase filled with papers that weighed about as much as 1.33 million euro. Serbian police would be undercover.
“Two days?” Ray said. “I have to leave tomorrow.”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I hear something.”
“Ask them if you can get it tomorrow. Tell them you have to leave Belgrade. You have to play the Third Round in the Tchaikovsky Competition.”
She stared at him. “Seriously?”
“Well, just ask if you can get it a day earlier. Say there’s another five hundred thousand dollars if you can have it tomorrow.”
“You know, that’s actually not a bad idea, to show that I’m a very serious buyer.”
So she asked the dealer, who relayed it to the thieves. Eventually word came back that the thieves had agreed. The price now was 1.85 million euro.
On the evening of the transfer, Alicia, as Marie Hodges, disappeared early. Ray, in the meantime, hired a town car to take him to the village where the sting would go down. He passed miles of crumbling buildings interspersed with brightly lit new restaurants and shops; eventually the buildings spread out and the evening grew quieter. Yesterday Alicia had donned sunglasses and a wig and reconnoitered the area; she’d drawn him a map showing where he could wait. He handed the map to the driver, who eventually pulled into a parking lot, cut the engine, and pulled out his phone to play a game. Ray’s violin was, possibly, just a few feet away.