Deadly Score

Since 1976, former spy Mark Holland has been managing classical musicians on tour. Ten years later in Tokyo, another agent, shot and dying, entrusts him with a message and Mark suspects that the games being played by his former bosses and international competitors are dirtier than before. Conferring with former colleagues in America and England, Holland intuits a sordid conspiracy in the making. He has no facts, however, as he leaves for Berlin to confer with a client, the renowned conductor Konstantin Steigel. Hoping to secretly buy recently discovered Gustave Mahler scores, Steigel asks Holland to handle the deal in East Berlin. Tense events reach a horrifying climax, with Holland seized and tortured, released only after an ``arrangement'' between British and Soviet agencies. He is traveling again, out to settle the ``deadly score,'' as the author, a classical record producer, ends the story on a note of quivering suspense. (June)