The Conor McBride Series Books 1-3 Page 3

  “Oh yes, I know,” Frank said with gleeful mischief. “Now, can you tell me the last time you wore one of them in London?”

  Conor rolled his eyes. “I suppose I could remember if I tried, but no doubt you’ve got the facts on the tip of your tongue. There’s something of the stalker about you, Frank. It’s a bit creepy. Go on and tell me.”

  “The Savoy, eight years ago. It was a gala charity event for the University College hospitals. You were the soloist for the Tchaikovsky concerto.”

  “Oh. Right.” Conor grew thoughtful. He absent-mindedly pushed stray breadcrumbs around the table, grinding them into the cloth under his finger, and looked out onto the street.

  They were seated in a secluded corner of the second-floor dining room next to a window overlooking Portman Square. Suffused with soft lighting and a subdued ivory-and-beige color scheme, the restaurant’s atmosphere seemed especially snug compared with the scene outside. An unseasonably cold rain obscured the small park below them. Waves of gusting wind shook leaves from the trees, and raindrops beat against the windows with rolling, staccato pops. Frank leaned forward to pour more wine, watching Conor’s profile with curiosity.

  “It’s not a pleasant memory?”

  “No, it is.” He shifted his gaze away from the window and smiled. “That was a good night. My . . . friend, Margaret Fallon, came over with me, just for the craìc. That means a bit of fun,” he explained.

  Frank nodded. “I’m familiar with the term.”

  “You’re also familiar with the details about Maggie, I’m sure.”

  “Of course.” Frank’s response was immediate, but his tone was neutral. “Something a bit more than a ‘friend,’ wasn’t she? You had plans to marry, I believe.”

  “Oh, I had a lot of plans a long time ago.” Conor waved his hand, a conscious parody of Frank’s habitual gesture. “Anyway, like I said, that was a good night. I nicked two bottles of champagne from the after-party. We drank them in the hotel room with a couple of cheeseburgers. Yeah, it was good . . . ”

  He trailed off, remembering that night in London—the gorgeous Art Deco theatre with its shimmering, multicolored curtain, the energy of the orchestra, and the current of connection he’d felt running from himself to the other musicians, to the audience members, and to Maggie Fallon.

  She was a black-haired, emerald-eyed beauty inhabiting a self-contained universe of pleasure and fun that he’d been happy to believe was real and could last. She wasn’t made to deal with trouble—at least not the sort of trouble he ended up bringing. He couldn’t blame her, really. At least she’d sent a letter. He wondered where she was now.

  While still lost in thought, another memory of that evening came to mind. He emerged from his reverie with a slight smirk.

  “You’re wrong, Frank. That’s not the last time I put on my tails in London. The Lord Mayor came backstage after the concert and asked if I’d come play at his house the next night. He was throwing a little party.”

  Watching Frank’s twitch of surprise gave him a devilish satisfaction.

  “A private recital?”

  “Yep. That one must have slipped by your lads in the office. Makes you wonder what else they might have missed, doesn’t it?”

  “Champagne, cheeseburgers, and a command performance for the Lord Mayor.” Frank shook his head. “You’re a rather unorthodox virtuoso, my boy.”

  “Sure, I heard that often enough.” Conor’s eyes narrowed. “And a lot of other things that weren’t meant as flattery. One critic said I played Vivaldi’s Four Seasons like it was a pub session.”

  “How could that not be construed an improvement?” Frank drawled. “I should have thought such a style refreshing.”

  “Some did but some thought it proved you can’t make a classical musician from an Irish fiddler. Anyway, I haven’t rattled anyone’s delicate sensibilities for a long while now.”

  “Thanks to your brother.”

  “Thanks to my brother and my own lazy stupidity,” Conor corrected. “I owned half the farm, but I never took any responsibility for it. Thomas wrote to Dublin, saying, ‘We’ll do this,’ and I wrote back, saying, ‘Right, good man.’ I’m sure you’ve seen the forms. My signature is all over them. Nothing was forged. Maybe if I’d ever bothered to read the feckin’ things, I’d have asked some questions. More likely I wouldn’t have, though. It was easier not to know.”

  In the pause that followed, he drained his wine glass in one long gulp and pulled a packet of cigarettes from his pocket.

  “So, what’s he at now, Frank? Is he stealing something from someone again?”

  “Don’t smoke those horrible things.” Frank pushed his box of Dunhills at him. “When one is courting lung disease, one should at least do it with style.”

  They both lit up, and Frank blew a stream of smoke at the ceiling.

  “What’s he at now. Well, perhaps we should start further back to properly set the scene. It began . . . ” Frank hesitated. “Well, I can’t say ‘innocently.’ Let us say it began unremarkably. It’s not an especially clever or original idea to loot the European Union. It’s not even that difficult. These multilaterals are so choked with internal intrigue that they spend most of their investigative resources on themselves. Thomas was not a figure of distinction to anyone at this stage. He was just one of a crowd of thieves and con artists all eager to fleece the EU of the farming subsidies it scatters about like bread on the waters.”

  “‘Fleece’ is an apt term in this case, isn’t it?” Conor remarked. He smiled bitterly.

  “Yes, it is,” Frank agreed. “Awfully good at counting sheep, your brother. Let me see now, he inflated the number of his herd by approximately—”

  “By exactly one hundred percent. We don’t keep sheep at all. It’s a dairy farm. And he jumped up those numbers as well.” He didn’t need Frank to fill him in on this part of the story. He was already well acquainted with the circumstances leading to the arrival of two officers of the Garda at his Dublin flat on a Sunday afternoon in 1998—just over five years ago this week, he realized. One woman and one man, both polite and apologetic. Ordinarily, there would be no need to take him into custody, they explained, but since his brother had “done a runner,” they had to assume he might try it too. After all, his signature was on all the paperwork, wasn’t it?

  It had been a simple story to explain in the general sense. He was being arrested for conspiring with his brother to defraud the European Union of farm subsidy funding by falsification of records and documents related to the operations of their farm. Thomas had disappeared from the farm, from Dingle—from Ireland altogether, it appeared. He’d been gone for days.

  The Gardai took turns laying it out in straightforward language, and if they didn’t believe his blank incomprehension, they were diplomatic enough to hide it.

  “So far, you’re not telling me anything I don’t already know,” Conor objected.

  “I realize that, of course,” Frank said patiently. “I am merely trying to highlight the irony that this particular incidence of fraud—which ended your engagement and your career in music and which made you essentially a serf on your own land—was a subject of concern to very few beyond yourself. They made a token attempt to find your brother, but neither the authorities in Brussels nor Ireland were much interested. They had you to foot the bill, and they had other fish to fry—committee members taking bribes, that sort of thing. How much did it end up costing you?”

  “With the fines and legal fees, over a quarter million,” Conor said.

  Frank whistled, and after a brief pause, he continued. “At any rate, about eight months ago, Thomas became rather more interesting when someone at the EU—no doubt one of those tiresome auditor chaps who enjoy such minutiae—had another look at the documentation and noticed the grant payment had been wired to a bank account in Belfast. Rather suspicious, that, thinks the auditor chap, since neither Thomas nor his farm were anywhere near Belfast. The information got passed on to the Irish a
uthorities, who confirmed the bank as one with historical connections to the IRA.”

  Cursing internally, Conor poured the rest of the bottle of mineral water into his glass and drank it. He wiped his mouth, ran a hand through his hair, and lit another cigarette. After drawing deeply on it, he rested it against the ashtray and began flicking his thumbnail against the filter tip. The nervous gesture did not pass unnoticed.

  “Perhaps you’d care to have a brandy or a whiskey?” Frank asked.

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  His eyes wandered to the votive candle next to the ashtray and fixed on it. Inside its glass chimney, the flame burned straight and motionless, as if frozen. He no longer heard the quiet hum of conversation around him or the rain slapping against the windows. When the whiskey appeared at his elbow, he barely noticed it.

  He’d been reluctant about coming here for this story, and now more than ever, he didn’t want to hear it. He continued staring into the candlelight, his mind searching for an avenue of escape and telling himself it wasn’t too late. He could demand that Frank stop, or he could leave London, pretending not to have understood any of it. He might persuade himself that it was the right decision and that there was nothing he could have done.

  Conor finally noticed the older man’s silence and looked up. Apparently, there was no need to think of ways for stopping him. The story had reached its natural tipping point, and Frank’s eyes had shifted, their sympathy displaced by professional appraisal. For the first time, he felt the full impact of an intelligence officer’s cold-blooded stare.

  “It’s time to decide, Conor,” Frank said evenly. “You can finish your drink now and bid me a fond farewell. I won’t try to stop you. If you choose to stay, however, I will take that decision to mean commitment. You’ll be making it without understanding what will be asked of you. It is neither comfortable nor fair, but there it is: commitment nonetheless. I warn you now that I shall take it very seriously.”

  They watched each other warily, until at last Conor shifted in his chair. “Go on with the rest of it,” he said.

  “Are you quite certain?”

  “Of course I’m not ‘quite certain,’” he snapped, shattering the spell of Frank’s scrutiny. “The only thing I’m certain of is that it’s not up to me. I have no decision to make. So, let’s you and I stop pretending that I do and get on with it. Tell me the rest. It’s what you brought me here for, isn’t it? Tell me what’s going on and then what the fuck you expect me to do.”

  Frank removed a document from his inside pocket, unfolded it, and placed it before Conor with a fountain pen on top. “The Official Secrets Act. You need to sign it before we continue. Take a few minutes to read it over, if you like.”

  Conor impatiently skimmed through the document. “How does this apply to me? I’m not a Crown servant or government contractor.”

  “You are about to become one.”

  “The hell I am.”

  “You are being tiresome,” Frank said irritably. “Sign or do not sign, whatever you choose, but if you do not sign, our business together is—”

  “Oh, shut up, Frank.” He signed his name and shoved the paperwork across the table. “You’re pretty tiresome yourself.”

  The document disappeared into Frank’s jacket. Settling back with a satisfied sigh, he warmed his brandy glass between his hands and smiled.

  “Good. Very good. By all means, let us continue. MI5, the UK’s domestic service, is engaged in a number of complicated activities involving the IRA, and as you’ve perhaps read in the papers, some of them have gone rather poorly. No one welcomed a new case that didn’t fit their existing profiles, so the file floated up and down the hierarchy for a few weeks before someone had the bright idea of tossing it to me. Because of my . . . unique . . . connections with the Irish network—I serve as the MI6 liaison to MI5 in IRA-related matters—they thought I might be useful to them. I think they’d also grown weary of having me at their meetings dissecting their various cock-ups. They wanted to get me busy with something that didn’t involve them directly.”

  “What’s so unique about your connections to Ireland?” Conor asked.

  Frank playfully swirled a mouthful of brandy around in his cheek before responding. “I spent the first thirty years of my life there—born in Kildare, grew up in Monaghan. I’m as Irish as you are, Conor. Have I surprised you?”

  “Go on outta that, Frank.” Conor threw back the whiskey and reached for the decanter that had been left on the table. “You’re spreading it a bit thick now. You don’t seriously expect me to believe that?”

  “I confess that I expected you would. It pains to hear you have so little trust in my word. I flattered myself we had established some rapport.”

  “Rapport is not the same thing as trust.”

  Frank acknowledged the retort with a nod and watched him pour a generous measure of whiskey into his glass. “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” he asked.

  Conor raised an eyebrow at him. “On the contrary, I don’t think I’ve had half enough, and if you were really Irish, you’d know the difference. Don’t stop now, though. This is good. Tell me all about your Monaghan boyhood and how it made you the perfect recruit for MI6. Because the British love telling their secrets to the Irish, don’t they? We can hardly shut them up.”

  “All right. Never mind.” Frank shook his head in bemusement. “It’s irrelevant whether you believe me or not, and it’s a different story altogether. We don’t have time for it now.”

  “Oh, sure. You need a bit more time to come up with a proper stem-winder? Christ, spare me that. You’re about as Irish as the Prince of Wales.”

  “Fine. Suppose we return to our principal theme?”

  “Fine.”

  Frank took a deep breath before continuing. “We made the usual round of inquiries around Belfast. No one had ever heard of Thomas McBride from Dingle, and no one knew of any large amounts of cash filtering into IRA coffers from fraudulent EU grants. Eventually, though, information surfaced about a skunk-works operation within a cast-off element of the IRA. It seems some financial wizard has set up a system to support money-laundering projects developed with hundreds of thousands of euro cadged out of the EU. One of the operation’s clients is rumored to be a Mumbai group fronting the cost of weaponry for a paramilitary group in the Jammu-Kashmir region of South Asia. They need to disguise the money as well as its purpose. In return for a hefty commission, this quasi-IRA group provides its services, and they have placed a man on the ground in India to manage the client and the flow of money.”

  “You’re saying this man . . . ” Conor paused to stifle his shrill incredulity and started again more quietly. “You’re saying this man is Thomas?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ridiculous. He’s not capable of it. He’s not that bright, Frank. Apparently he’s a con artist—no argument there, although even that was hard to believe—but I can tell you for certain he’s no technical or financial wizard.”

  “We’re not talking about anything so awfully complicated,” Frank said. “The system is already in place for him. All he needs is a bank account, a laptop, and a satellite connection for electronic transfers. Beyond that, we have established proof of his connection to two known representatives of an IRA splinter group originating in Armagh.”

  Hunched forward with his elbows on the table, Conor tried to explain the disparity of Frank’s description with the man he knew. “It doesn’t sound like Thomas at all. I can’t believe this is something he would—”

  “He’s there,” Frank said with finality. “We have a contractor in India who confirmed your brother’s presence in Mumbai, and MI6 sent an agent over to investigate.”

  Frank leaned forward across the table, his eyes locked on Conor’s. “Now, listen to me,” he said, his tone low and vehement. “Believe or don’t believe whatever you like about me. It means fuck-all to me what you think. But if you are going to be any use to me, or your brother, you will believe this: Tho
mas has allied himself with a group of IRA cast-offs. He is a primary figure in an international money laundering operation. He is in regular contact with a group of terrorists based in Kashmir, and he is in shite up to his eyeballs. I understand it is painful to hear. I realize it is difficult to absorb. I also know it is quite possible you represent the only chance he has to come out of this alive, so it is imperative that you begin hearing and absorbing it as quickly as possible.”

  He noticed Frank’s elegant upper-class accent had changed. Just for a moment, it had taken on a hint of the lilt and cadence of Northern Ireland. Conor felt his resistance collapsing and closed his eyes. “Yes, all right. I believe you,” he whispered. His throat tightened. “What are you going to do?”

  “I am going to send you to India to get him and bring him back to us.”

  He opened his eyes and stared at Frank in confusion. “You just said you already sent a man over there to do that. What happened to him?”

  “That agent was not the ideal resource for the assignment.” Frank scowled. “We need to have your brother’s cooperation, and with the right approach, he might be persuaded to offer it.”

  “Why do you need his cooperation? Why can’t you just arrest him and be done with it?”

  Frank offered a thin smile of patient pity. “We believe this to be a global money laundering operation. There might be any number of field operatives running projects within it to prop up terrorist networks. We just happened to get lucky in identifying one of them. We don’t want the field operatives; we want the person running them. We want the wizard. Your job will be to reach Thomas and talk him into helping us with that. If he does, we’ll be able to help him.”

  A shiver passed through Conor even as a trickle of perspiration rolled down the side of his face. His hands were ice cold, and his head was pounding. Maybe he had drunk too much. Pinching his fingers against the bridge of his nose, he could think of only one last question to ask. “Why me? For God’s sake, Thomas hasn’t cared enough to contact me even once in more than five years—not even a postcard to say he’s alive. Why would I have any more influence than your last agent?”