“Hello…? Sam … are you there?”
I pushed on the door and jumped as it swung open. Sam rarely left his door unlocked even when he was home, and from the hollow darkness inside I could tell that he likely wasn't here. I called again but only silence echoed back. Pushing the door wide open, I called out in dismay as the hallway light splilled onto the disarray inside. Furniture had been pulled apart, papers were strewn everywhere and even to my untrained eye, it was obvious that my friend’s apartment had been the subject of a thorough search.
I groaned in dismay. This is not what we signed up for. The ASIO agent who had recruited us had promised it would be safe, that we would just be receiving and passing on low-level information. They had wanted someone in the orchestra who could move information around without arousing suspicion and for the past year we'd been carrying information for them, taking delivery of a memory stick just before an interstate or overseas gig, then dropping it in a predetermined secret cache at our destination. We never saw a soul in the execution of the deliveries, the work was easy, and the generous cash payments that awaited us at each drop-off had doubled our modest musicians' income. Thus Samuel and I had been recruited into the shady world of international espionage and intelligence. I guess we were spies, but really, I had never thought of myself as anything but a cellist, and Sam was still just my violinist friend to me.
Last night when he'd failed to show up for our dinner date I’d been too annoyed to even call him, but this morning when I’d received the strange text message from Sam I realised we may be in serious trouble. My concern had grown to panic when I tried to call back and discovered his phone was off, so I’d raced over here to check on him. I had a suspicion now what his text message meant, “Rubinstein Op.42”. Short but to the point. Neither of us had known much about the composer Anton Rubinstein before our trip to the secluded campsite overlooking the beach a few hours north of here, but we’d spent much of our week there (when we weren’t geocaching or swimming), swinging in the hammocks we'd mounted in the trees listening to the orchestral waves of his Opus 42, his 42nd piece, a symphony called “Ocean”. And I guessed now that Sam had left me this message to let me know he'd fled to that haven by the beach. As I made my way down the hallway I flicked the light switch. The small storage cupboard where I'd helped him put away his camping gear was open, the few remaining contents spilling onto the floor, but I noted with relief that there was no camping equipment at all. So Sam was safe.
But where was the memory stick that I knew he’d picked up yesterday? When he'd confided in me that he felt uncomfortable, I’d made fun of him. We’d never had problems, and I'd ridiculed him for being melodramatic.
“Forget that James Bond rubbish,” I’d told him. “It’s just a few coincidences. Stop worrying”.
Surveying the chaos in the lounge room, I bent to pick up a few pieces of sheet music that had fallen off the music stand and one of them caught my eye. Not one of our orchestra pieces, I had never seen this piece and my eye fell on the composer. Dedicated to me- an apology for being stood up last night, perhaps?
I hummed a few notes aloud- what an odd tune. The longer I looked at it, the more convinced I became that this was more than a sweet gift of apology, but I had no idea what to make of it. Suddenly a shiver ran down my back, and I was overcome with a desperate urge to get away from there. I shoved the sheet of music in my bag and slid back out the door.
Now as I sit here back in my own apartment, I keep puzzling over the strange music. What does it mean? Is it a message? Did Sam hide the memory stick before he took off to safety? If only I could work it out …
