The Violin Conspiracy(92)

The elderly judge with the quavering voice called Mikhail’s name, and a moment later Mikhail’s name flashed golden and enormous on the screen: Mikhail Lezenkov. There it was. Ray was sitting next to a finalist. Ray could feel eyes on him and felt flattened by them. As the crowd roared out, Ray couldn’t help nodding, agreeing with the judges’ choice. Of course Mikhail was chosen. Ray reached over and pounded Mikhail’s back, and Mikhail gripped his hand. Both their hands were sweaty.

The applause was dying down, the ancient pianist judge was moving on, saying stuff, but Ray felt like he was underwater, the sound blurred and ragged. The closed-captioned letters flashed like fish in an aquarium, wriggling away before he could read them.

And there it was, his name, alien in the judge’s foreign mouth—so alien that if he hadn’t seen his name snap into glittering gold on the screen, he might not have believed it.

Rayquan McMillian.

He wanted to jump up, fist-pump, scream “Fuck yeah!” as loud as he could. Instead he clenched his hand on the armrest—the hand inches from Mikhail’s arm—and watched his dark fingers turn almost white from the pressure. Fuck yeah. Dimly, as if in another room, he could hear the crowd roaring his name, but sounds filtered in dimly, as if from underwater, or from space.

Was this real? Could it be a mistake?

And then Mikhail was turning, shaking his hand, and Nicole was pounding his back and he was hugging her and, fuck no, it was not a mistake. It was real. He was a fucking finalist in the Tchaikovsky Competition.





Chapter 30


    Day 42: Serbia


Third Round: the honor and the pressure were immense—the media clamoring for interviews, programs being shoved at him for autographs, three record companies calling to ask when he’d have “five minutes for a quick conversation.”

He knew he should milk it for everything he could. He should plaster his face over every media opportunity with a link to his crowdfunding page and a plea to donate just a dollar/euro/ruble so he could ransom back his violin.

And he had every intention of doing just that.

Then, late that night, after the latest round of gala cocktails and glasses of champagne and vodka floated past, after the chatting and the backslapping and the adulation, Alicia texted: Hi I’m in Serbia. Theres a violin that’s going on the black market. Will let you know when I learn more.

Serbia? Black market? No time to text: he called her. “So it’s there?”

“Calm down,” she said. “There is a violin here. I haven’t seen photographs yet.” A few weeks ago, she told him, one of her informants in Italy mentioned a violin somewhere in the Baltic states, newly up for sale.

A few other similar rumors floated in: It was in Montenegro; no, Croatia; no, Serbia. It was in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade. Alicia’s contact had reached out to the Belgrade police. A week ago, just after the start of the Tchaikovsky Competition, the chatter grew louder: a wealthy Serbian family of musicians was interested in purchasing a high-end violin. Money was no concern. Were any such violins available?

“Mikhail Lezenkov’s family,” Ray said.

“Quite possibly,” she said. “Whatever you said to him seems to have shaken things loose.”

“I’m coming,” he said. “I’ll be on the next plane.” He was sitting on the edge of his hotel bed with Nicole hovering somewhere in front of him.

“Absolutely not,” she said. “No. Don’t even think of coming here.”

“But if I see it, I’ll know immediately if it’s mine or not.”

“So will I,” she said. “I have enough photos to identify it in the dark.”

“You need backup,” he said.

“What are you going to do, serenade them to death?”

“I’m serious,” he said. He worried that he sounded like he was whining.

“Look,” she said, “I could be here for days. Weeks, even. This kind of thing takes time. I’ll let you know how things go. You just go practice your Tchaikovsky and win a gold medal, will you?”

“Okay,” Ray said, already pulling his suitcase out of his closet. “Keep me posted, will you?”

They hung up, and Ray packed.

Nicole begged to go with him, but he thought it would be better if he went alone. She and Janice could stay at the hotel, tell people that he was holed up in his room with a stomach bug. She could run interference for any competition officials who came to check in on him. Besides, he told her, he needed her and Janice to rearrange his practice session with the Moscow Philharmonic. He needed her in Moscow.

At last she relented. “We Greenwich girls hold it down for our men,” she told Ray, sending him off with a hug and a deep kiss as he went to catch the first flight out to Belgrade.

After a three-hour flight, as soon as he had a cellular connection, Ray texted Alicia: Hi where r u

No immediate response. Was she still asleep? It was almost 9:00 a.m. Was she in the shower? Still, he was illogically disappointed. After he collected his suitcase and waded through customs, he took a cab to Belgrade’s city center, passing a motley collection of ornate nineteenth-century buildings interspersed with blocky Soviet concrete monoliths. Alicia was staying at the Sky Hotel, she’d told him. He arrived and checked into an ultramodern mash-up of open white spaces and slanting plate glass.