The Conor McBride Series Books 1-3 Page 4

  “Why you? Indeed. I wonder that it took so long for you to ask,” Frank said. “After the initial failure with our own agent, I enlisted a local asset through contacts within the Indian Army. It was a blind assignment to seek out a ‘person of interest’ through a casual encounter, engage in a recorded conversation, and then send the tape back through Indian intelligence channels. Within two weeks, I had a transcript on my desk detailing the conversation from a two-hour drinking session with your brother at a local Mumbai watering hole. The transcript provided nothing in terms of actionable intelligence, but it persuaded me that you could be precisely what we need for the operation. It took some time convincing others within the service, but I ultimately prevailed.”

  “Again, why?” Conor asked with a weary sigh. “What was in the transcript?”

  “You,” Frank said softly. “You were in the transcript, all through it. They went on for a few hours, most of it inconsequential rubbish, but it always eventually and inexorably led back to the only thing Thomas wanted to talk about, which was you—the brilliant, talented little brother who can do anything, especially with a fiddle in his hands. He may not call or write, Conor, but he thinks about you. Clearly, he thinks about you quite a lot.”

  Although not embarrassed by it, out of some sense of decorum, Conor put a hand over his eyes to hide the sudden swell of emotion. He didn’t see Frank slip from his chair, so the gentle pressure of a hand on his shoulder a moment later startled him. He rubbed his fingers against his eyes and looked up with an apologetic shrug, not trusting his voice.

  “It’s enough for tonight, I think,” Frank said. “Let’s find you a cab. You could do with a good sleep.”

  4

  The following morning, Conor woke—as he always did—at exactly four thirty. He was still tired, but the internal clock regulating the rhythm of his days made no allowance for a break in routine. He had always been an early riser, even during the years in Dublin. Once a farmer, always a farmer, he thought wryly.

  As he shifted onto his back, a hint of warning tickled along his spine. He sat up, wiping the residue of sleep from his eyes, and strained to see in the darkness. The hotel room—a suite, in fact—was appointed in classically English style: tasteful, elegant, and conventional to the last detail. There were large Georgian windows with brocade curtains, and a sitting area in front of the bed with a sofa and chairs arranged around a small fireplace. There was also an unnerving stillness in the room, like a heavy, watchful presence.

  Conor stifled the sound of his breathing and sat listening, trying to interpret the silence. Before he could get a fix on it, the tension released, and the room seemed natural again in its early morning quiet. Still suspicious, he vaulted from the bed and went to the door. Yanking it open, he stepped out and looked up and down the hallway. Empty.

  He closed the door and leaned back against it, drawing a long breath. He was wide-awake now.

  It might not mean anything. He was skittish. It had been an eventful trip so far, and with the company he’d been keeping, it was hardly surprising that his imagination would find something sinister about a quiet room. On the other hand, the feeling was similar to other instances of heightened awareness he sometimes experienced—a faint echo of his mother’s stronger gifts. They usually meant something.

  Whether premonition or paranoia, the feeling was gone. His tensed shoulders relaxed and gently flexed again to propel him from the door. He glanced at the bed, dismissed the idea of returning to it, and looked at the illuminated clock on the bedside table. It was four thirty-three. Frank had promised to return at nine o’clock to reveal the next steps in his implausible engagement as a Crown Servant, and until then, Conor preferred not to think about it.

  He needed distraction, something to compensate for the absence of his morning drill. He went to the window, pushed aside the curtains, and looked out at the misty, half-lit city. It had stopped raining, but the pavement was still wet, darkly reflecting the streetlights with an oily gleam. The scene was not inviting, but he decided to go for a walk anyway. It was something to do.

  On the ground floor, he stepped off the elevator into a deserted lobby. Even the ubiquitous doorman was absent as he exited the hotel onto Hyde Park Corner, but as he crossed the street and automatically glanced behind him, a movement beneath the hotel’s portico caught his eye. A figure had moved abruptly back into the shadows.

  Once again his skin prickled, and the intuition was not as easy to shake a second time. Someone was watching him.

  Without breaking stride, he continued across the street, disguising the kinetic emotion that wanted to drive him forward at a more reckless rate. It wasn’t fear; it was anger, and he embraced it with a cathartic intensity.

  He had given years of his life as penance for signing his name in ignorance, but it still wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to have been his brother’s hapless pawn in a financial scheme that destroyed his career and future. Now, he was also expected to be the cat’s paw in some contorted intelligence game that was likely to get them both killed.

  To make the irony even more exquisite, when Frank had presented the papers, Conor had signed them without blinking, as if five years had taught him nothing. Well, he’d signed up for the match, and someone appeared to be wasting no time in getting it underway.

  “Let them come, then,” he said, resisting the urge to look behind him again. “Whoever the hell they are, let them come. Maybe we can get it over with fast.”

  He reached the large archway of Apsley Gate and passed under it into the park. It was more active than he would have expected for such an early hour. A small collection of runners and dog-walkers moved along the paths, and a group of Tai Chi practitioners was already gathered near the water’s edge of the Serpentine. After pacing off a quick hundred yards, he risked a furtive glance over his shoulder and detected one figure stepping along with a more purposeful gait.

  When he arrived at the Lido, he was alone again. The park’s sunbathing and recreational area was deserted, its facilities locked, shuttered, and swept clean. The Lido’s restaurant offered a temporary screen from observation, and he passed around its far corner before pausing to consider his options.

  Ahead of him, the path—with a wide, empty lot next to it—straightened out again, carrying on toward a bridge that spanned the Serpentine. A little to his left, an enormous weeping willow stood near the rear of the building. Its branches spilled down to the ground in a green curtain of lance-shaped leaves. Conor moved closer to study it, and then, parting the tangle of drooping branches, he stepped through to crouch behind the trunk. As the rustling leaves settled back into stillness, a broad-shouldered form appeared around the corner of the restaurant.

  Conor pressed against the trunk and squinted through the branches. The man carried a briefcase and was dressed in a dark blue suit and gray raincoat, looking like a businessman on his way to work. He had a head full of brown, curling hair, and as he passed the tree, Conor caught a brief glimpse of a square-jawed face. The man walked a few paces down the path and then stopped and rotated slowly, scanning the empty space around him, looking bored and irritated. He pulled a mobile phone from the pocket of his raincoat and impatiently stabbed at the keypad.

  “Yeah, it’s Shelton. I’ve lost him.”

  The voice was gruff, carrying the strong, matter-of-fact tone of an East London accent.

  “Well, I had to stay well back, didn’t I?” he snapped. “It’s a bloody big, open park. I had him in sight about two hundred yards ahead and then he went into dead ground and disappeared. Might have gone on to the bridge or he might have cut through the car park back to the street.”

  The burly figure turned. His eyes swept across the willow tree without pausing and looked back along the path in the direction he’d come.

  “Bollocks,” he snorted. “I told you I stayed well back. He couldn’t have noticed me. I think he’s either—ahh, what the hell?”

  “What the hell, indeed.” Conor grunted as
he flew forward, tackling the man in his muscular midsection.

  The two of them tumbled to the ground with Conor on top, but before he could establish a grip on his pursuer, he found himself flattened against the ground, with a knee planted on his back and his face slammed against the gravel path. From the corner of one eye, he saw a hand stretch out to retrieve the phone lying next to his head.

  “Jessie? Yeah, never mind, love. I’ve got him. You were right, though. Silly bastard was hiding from me. Send a car down to the Lido, will you? I’ve had me exercise for today.”

  The weight shifted on Conor’s back, and a hand grabbed him by the hair, lifting his bloodied face from the ground. A leather wallet covered in clear plastic was thrust in front of his eyes.

  “Metropolitan Police, Special Branch,” the voice growled above him. “You want to watch yourself there, Paddy. You’re a long fuckin’ way from Tipperary now, aren’t you?”

  When the hand abruptly released him, Conor allowed his forehead to settle wearily back onto the bits of stone and dirt. He’d always hated that song.

  “Well, I see we needn’t waste much effort training you up for antisurveillance. You appear to have a natural aptitude for it.” Frank studied Conor’s bruised face with a faint smile. “That will free up some time to counsel you on the inadvisability of attacking your followers. Depending on the nature of the surveillance, you will almost certainly wind up either arrested or dead.”

  “Why did you have me followed anyway?” Conor slipped his tongue out across his swollen upper lip and winced in pain and annoyance. It hurt like hell every time, but he couldn’t seem to stop doing it.

  “To see where you would go, naturally. Stop talking and put the ice back on before it starts bleeding again.”

  They were back in the hotel suite, where Special Branch Officer Lawrence Shelton had deposited Conor without ceremony or sympathy before disappearing again. He had returned a short while later, bringing Frank and a bucket of ice along with him. The two of them now sat comfortably arranged around the fireplace drinking coffee. They watched him—Frank with amused pity and Shelton with a sneer of contempt—as he gingerly dabbed at his lip with a towel wrapped around the ice cubes.

  “To see if you’d bolt for home or someplace else,” the officer added in a flat voice. “To see if you were going to be as useless as your good-for-nothing brother.”

  “Now, Lawrence,” Frank chided. “I’m sure it rankles to have your surveillance exploded by a mere amateur, but accept it as a learning experience. There’s no cause for incivility.”

  “He baited me,” Shelton retorted and would have continued, but Frank’s icy stare stopped him in mid-sentence.

  “Yes, I think it’s rather obvious that he did. But tell me, how is that less humiliating?”

  Shelton’s face tightened, but he subsided into silence, and Frank turned his attention back to Conor. “Perhaps you could relieve our concerns. You were up and about awfully early this morning. Where were you going?”

  Conor exhaled a sigh and tossed the towel into the ice bucket. “I’m always up and about that early. You’re forgetting what I do for a living. I woke at half-four, like always, and thought I’d go for a walk. Is that not allowed now? Do I need a pass to leave the premises?”

  “Of course not. We just weren’t aware of your plans.” Frank shot a sidelong glance at his colleague. “Obviously, you caught us a bit off guard.”

  “Obviously.” Unexpectedly, he found himself amused by the eccentric pair. “Why don’t you give me your home number, Frank? I’ll be sure to ring with the news next time I go off to the jacks. And to be honest, I hadn’t even considered ‘bolting,’ which is a shame, really, since it would have been fairly easy to get away.”

  He couldn’t resist the dig at the Special Branch officer, whose hostility seemed excessive since he’d already taken his revenge. Shelton did not acknowledge the remark but slapped his cup and saucer onto the table and got to his feet.

  “I’ve got work to do if I’m to take him to Gosport today,” he grumbled. “What time do you want him there?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Frank said. “There’s nothing planned for today. Try to get a few hours’ sleep first, Lawrence. It will improve your mood.”

  Without responding, Shelton lifted his raincoat from the back of a chair and moved to the door with a step that seemed unusually light in comparison with his bulk. Before leaving, he swung back toward Conor with a baleful glance. “Be out front at two thirty, packed and ready to travel. Don’t make me wait.” Conor expected the door to close with a punctuating crash, but instead it slid shut without a sound, which somehow felt more menacing.

  “Looks like I’ve made a friend,” he said, hoping the remark sounded more rakish than he felt.

  Frank laughed. “Don’t take it personally. Lawrence is the quintessential misanthrope. He despises everyone.”

  “And you’re expecting me to get in a car with him and ride to Gosport?”

  Frank tapped the tips of his fingers together and gazed at him without expression. “It would be more accurate to say I require it of you. This is part of the bargain you agreed to, and you bloody well need to understand it from the beginning. You are nothing so melodramatic as a prisoner, but you are not entirely free. There are plans in place for this operation that involve others besides you. At some point, lives may depend on your capacity to take direction when it is given. We cannot continue having this conversation.”

  Conor placed his head back against the plush upholstery of the chair. He opened his mouth and this time consciously sought the tender spot where his lip was swollen and split. When he found it, he pressed against it until his eyes smarted and he tasted a warm trickle of blood running over his tongue. “What’s in Gosport?” he asked, staring up at the ceiling.

  “Everything you need to know.”

  He briefly lowered his gaze to glare at Frank but let the cryptic remark pass without challenge. “How long will I be there?”

  “Ten weeks.”

  He allowed the news to sink in, his fingers tightening on the arm of the chair. “After that, I go to India?”

  “Correct,” Frank said, and then continued in a softer tone. “I know that personal circumstances make this difficult for you, Conor, and I regret it. Of course, you’ll want to let your mother know you’ll be away, and . . . out of contact, for some time. We can’t allow you to share specifics, however. It’s for the best—for her safety as well as yours.”

  Lifting his head from the chair, Conor nodded and retrieved the towel from the ice bucket. He would make the call, naturally, but the information would be redundant.

  I’m afraid it will be a long journey for you, my little love.

  She’d known it already on the day he left, and even after all he’d learned in the past two days, he expected that on some level, she still knew more than he did.

  When Shelton appeared at two thirty, Conor was encouraged to see the officer had apparently taken Frank’s advice. It would be a stretch to say his attitude was friendly, but he looked rested and refreshed and less inclined to violence.

  With more than two hours of driving before them, he thought it was worth another try with the Special Branch officer.

  “Can you tell me at all what I’ll be doing in Gosport, Lawr . . . er, Officer—”

  “Shelton. Just call me Shelton.”

  “Right. Shelton. And you can call me—”

  “Whatever the hell I please,” Shelton snapped. “Look, it’s not a little trip to get to know each other, is it? We’re not going to be chatting all the way down to the seaside. I’ll sit here and drive, and you sit there and shut up, right?”

  “Yeah, right. Whatever.” He turned to watch the outskirts of London passing by, adding in an audible murmur, “Wanker.”

  He heard a low grunt of amusement, and after a moment, Shelton spoke again in a more temperate tone. “They’re having you down there for training at Fort Monckton. It’s where MI6 sends it
s recruits to prepare for field operations.”

  “Does Frank do any training?” Conor asked.

  “No.”

  “He’s just a recruiter?”

  “No.”

  “Well, what’s he do, then?”

  Shelton’s eyes continued to focus on the road in front of them. His large, square face remained neutral. “Frank’s got his finger in a bit of everything.”

  “Meaning what?” Conor asked.

  “Meaning exactly what I just said, smartass,” Shelton snarled. He pulled into the passing lane, and the police car shot down the motorway. Flipping on the flashing lights, he scowled a warning at him. “Chat’s over, Paddy. Shut it now, right?”

  “Right.” He sighed, and settled back into his seat for the long ride to Fort Monckton.

  They had to cross a golf course to get to it. It was a small detail, but it accentuated Conor’s sense that he had stepped onto the stage set of some absurdist theatre piece. Sitting at the tip of a peninsula overlooking Portsmouth Harbor—mere yards away from the scene where pensioners duffed their way around the sand traps—Britain’s most secretive installation was taking in recruits and training them up to be players in the deadliest game of all.

  They rolled to a stop in the courtyard, and as he stepped from the car, a tall, angular woman with graying blond hair greeted him. She introduced herself with a brisk, utilitarian manner that belied her exotic name—Valencia Mathers— but offered nothing to identify her position within the Fort’s hierarchy. From her smooth blend of deference and authority, he thought she could be anything from the housekeeper to the senior agent in charge.

  She escorted him to his room, which proved a stark contrast to the plush coziness of his suite at the Lanesborough. It was spacious enough but almost devoid of decoration or character. Its austere atmosphere seemed perfectly designed for the nameless recruit whose purpose was to become expert at being nondescript.