The Conor McBride Series Books 1-3 Page 6

  “It’s no good trying to put a foot through the wall, you know,” she said lightly. “It doesn’t change the fact that you are now lying in a dark alley in Gwalior with a bullet in your side.”

  “Yeah, I don’t need the detailed narrative, thanks.” Conor shifted painfully against the wall. “The physical evidence of your handiwork is realistic enough. What the hell was that, anyway? Sure, I’d be dead right now if you’d clipped me in the head with it.”

  “It’s a small ball made of concentrated felt traveling at sixty-five miles per hour when it hits you.” Joanna gave him a serene smile. “And if I’d wanted to hit you in the head with it, I would have done.”

  “You might give me a vest or something for these exercises.” He rubbed a drop of sweat from his nose, still feeling peevish.

  “Ah, but you won’t have such luxuries in the field, now, will you?”

  “Yeah, and haven’t you been telling me I won’t have a gun in the field, either?”

  “I said we wouldn’t be issuing you a gun,” Joanna corrected him. “But you never know when someone might pitch one at you and tell you to start firing, so we think it’s wise to teach you how to use it. Now, let’s have a look. Ooh, yes. Nasty, that. Not much fun getting shot up, is it? Best avoided at all costs.”

  Conor pushed her hand away and yanked his shirt down over the spreading bruise on his side. He sat up a little straighter.

  “Was she carrying a baby in that bundle of rags or not?

  “Is that why you didn’t fire?” Joanna asked. “Because everything else was going splendidly. You assembled the Glock in record time. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone do it faster, working in the dark. We’ve already established that you’ve a quick draw and a deadly aim. You had plenty of time for a preemptive shot, and yet you didn’t take it. Is that why? You thought you might shoot an innocent baby whilst saving your own life?”

  She waited for an explanation, but when he didn’t offer one, she sighed and rose to her feet. The mischievous attitude fell away as she gazed down at him with an expression of cool disappointment. “It was just a bundle of rags. No baby. So you sacrificed yourself for nothing, you see. You should have taken the shot. You need to grow a bit more comfortable with moral ambiguity, Conor. Being able to act on the lesser of two evils might save your life someday.”

  She left him then and headed back to the control room, but at the sound of the Glock being once more stripped into pieces, she stopped and turned to face him. With deliberate care, and without taking his eyes from her face, he sent each piece sliding across the floor to rest at her feet.

  “With all due respect, Joanna, your little aphorisms are a nightmare to me, because the day I grow comfortable weighing a child’s death against my own survival is the day I will no longer know who the hell I am.”

  “The service doesn’t give a damn whether you know who you are, only whether you can act the part.” Her face assumed the flat, expressionless gaze of the model bureaucrat. “This simulation is completed, Mr. McBride. Thank you for your attention and participation. You may go now.”

  The control room door slid shut. He heard the muffled conversation of technicians as they powered down the facility. He continued sitting there for several minutes, looking pensively at the locked door. Finally, he levered himself off the floor and walked out into the fresh air.

  6

  Skimming through the briefing book spread out on his knees, Conor silently reviewed the details of his alias, absorbing it with the help of some internal commentary.

  Briefing profile for Con Rafferty.

  Brilliant. I’ve spent half me life telling people not to call me Con.

  Okay, then. anyway . . . Con Rafferty. unmarried, thirty-two years old. Born in Dundalk, parents dead, two brothers in Dublin, one sister in Minneapolis. Bachelor in Business Studies, trinity college Dublin, graduate degree . . . right, blah, blah.

  Present employment with eco-tourism company, Benefi . . . Benef . . . Hell, I can’t even say it, and I’m supposed to work there. Beneficent tours. There we go. Next item. Position of Director, New Product Development. Assignment to India, investigating the feasibility of trekking tours in Kashmir . . . past assignments . . . countries visited, passport number . . . medical history, inoculations, dangerously allergic to peanuts . . .

  Allergic to peanuts?

  Conor looked up from the briefing book. “Why am I allergic to peanuts?”

  “Aren’t you?” Frank asked.

  “No.”

  “It’s probably a typo. Different aspects of the profiles get recycled, and details occasionally get missed by the proofreaders.”

  “Is that so?” Conor closed the book. “I’m lucky you got my blood type right.”

  Considering the hazardous nature of the trip he was to begin, he felt in remarkably good spirits. He was back for one last night in the sumptuous surroundings of the suite at the Lanesborough. After spending ten weeks in the chilly, ascetic quarters of Fort Monckton, he had a greater appreciation for its comfortably snug environment. He was also gratified that some kind of productive action was finally on the horizon.

  In contrast with his cheerful mood, Frank was in an uncharacteristically sober frame of mind. He ignored the good-natured dig and indicated the second book near Conor’s elbow.

  “The second dossier contains all the information we know about your brother’s activities. Much of it is already familiar to you, but if there is any new information, you should read through it tonight and commit it to memory, because I will be taking back both dossiers in the morning.”

  “You can take that one now.” Conor pushed the file across the coffee table. “I took a look before you got here. There’s nothing in there Shelton hasn’t already told me.”

  “Excellent.” Frank slipped the documents into his briefcase and looked at him with a skeptical frown. “Have you any concerns? I realize it is a pitifully small amount of information with which to work.”

  “I’m fine with it.” Conor smiled. “You, however, seem a bit jumpy, which makes a nice change for me. What’s the story?” “Not at all,” Frank said briskly. His gaze slid away to the floor, and with an abrupt movement, he rose and reached for his coat.

  The dodge was transparent and clumsy, handled without any of Frank’s typical feline grace, and Conor had been trained to notice such things. He regarded the aristocratic face with heightened concentration.

  “‘Not at all,’ huh? Not too convincing—you’re a bit off your game there, boss. Having second thoughts about me, are you? Wishing you’d gone with a more orthodox plan?”

  “No, no, not at all.”

  “Yeah, ‘not at all.’ You said that already.” Conor scowled. “What the hell’s the matter with you? Here’s your newly minted agent cheerfully preparing to head out for crown and country, and there’s you looking like the eve of the apocalypse. Not much of a send-off, and it’s giving me a peculiar feeling.”

  Frank stood looking down at his fingers as they drummed against the back of the chair. Conor groaned in exasperation.

  “Will you ever just give over, for Jesus’ sake? Why am I always needing to winch it out of you? It’s a little late to be saying it, but if you think I can’t do this—”

  “That is not what I was thinking. Not. At. All.” Frank tapped the chair for emphasis and appeared to reach a decision. He sat down once more and faced Conor. “There is a complication with this operation that I did not anticipate. I am irritated with myself for not anticipating it, and more important, I am troubled by the possibility it will make your task more difficult and more dangerous than it already is.”

  “More difficult. More dangerous. Grand.”

  It was an uncomfortable piece of news, but notwithstanding the sincerity of Frank’s concern, he received it with ironic amusement. More dangerous compared to what, after all? Nothing in his life experience could serve as a yardstick for whatever he was about to begin, so what capacity did he have for measuring the degrees of
difference?

  “You’ll have seen in your brief,” Frank continued, “that upon arrival in Mumbai, you are to rendezvous with the agent who will serve as your controlling officer in country.”

  “Curtis Sedgwick, thirty-six, American, blond hair, thin, medium height,” Conor recited. “I’m to hang about outside the arrivals hall and let him find me.”

  “Correct.”

  “I was surprised. Didn’t realize you hired Americans.”

  “I was surprised as well,” Frank muttered. “Unpleasantly so. I’m familiar with Curtis Sedgwick, or more accurately, with his reputation. He is not an official member of the service. He works as a ‘NOC’—a nonofficial cover agent—in the South Asian sector, with mixed results, I might add.”

  “So, not one of your favorites,” Conor said drily. “What sort of repu—”

  “His performance is spotty, his habits are detestably foul, and his lifestyle exposes him to unacceptable levels of risk. When he is not on assignment—but for all we know, even when he is on assignment—he carries on a number of sordid commercial enterprises, some of which are criminal. He is exactly the sort of questionable asset that inevitably ends with the service writhing in embarrassment.”

  Conor felt his stoicism giving way to a twinge of alarm. “Criminal in what sense of the word?”

  “In the most literal sense of the word,” Frank snarled. “Among other things, he is a small-time drug dealer, and if reports are accurate, an addict.”

  “An addict?”

  “To be more precise, a heroin addict.”

  “A heroin addict! Are you having me on, Frank?” For a long moment, he stared in speechless disbelief. Then, with a surge of incredulous rage, he exploded. “A fucking heroin addict? What kind of bullshit is this? I’ve signed papers that promise to string me up if I even think about straying from the straight and narrow. I even had to read a handbook on deportment, for God’s sake, and now you’re telling me that my supervisor, my guide, my all-important in-country controlling officer, is some drug-dealing junkie?”

  “I learned only this afternoon that he had been engaged for the operation,” Frank said.

  “And what are you going to do about it, then? Oh, no you don’t,” Conor hissed, seeing a familiar guardedness beginning to form in Frank’s eyes. “Don’t you give me some secret agent bollocks and tell me you can’t do anything, because I’m not having it. You’d better pull your socks up and do something or else find some other miserable bastard for this nonsense. There’s a limit to what I’m prepared to swallow, and we’ve bloody well reached it.”

  “I understand,” Frank said. “Your reaction is predictable and justified, which I expect is why I hesitated in sharing the information with you. The fact is, much as it distresses me, I cannot have him removed from this assignment. He has a unique qualification that makes it quite impossible.”

  “A unique qualification! Jesus and Mary, can you tell me at all what that might be? What sort of intelligence work does a heroin habit qualify you for these days?”

  “I can explain that to you in a minute, but I first wanted to—”

  “Explain it now!” Conor shouted. “I’m not listening to anything else you’ve got to say until—”

  “He knows your brother.”

  It took several seconds for the statement to catch up with his brain. When it did, he felt as though a pair of clammy hands had suddenly gripped the back of his neck.

  “He knows my brother? He knows Thomas? ” He swallowed hard. “What are you saying to me?”

  Frank raised his hands to forestall another eruption and quickly continued. “Not as a customer. I’m not saying that. There’s absolutely no evidence of anything of that kind, but they have crossed paths a number of times. Let’s not forget the main point here, Conor. Thomas did not go to India on holiday to visit the temples. He and Curtis Sedgwick travel in similar circles. They know the same people, and, as I’ve learned this afternoon, Sedgwick was the original source in Mumbai who confirmed that Thomas was there, and he was the officer MI6 hired to manage the agent we sent over. Although that endeavor was ineffective and counterproductive, there are legitimate grounds for viewing him as the most promising conduit to your brother.”

  “Unbelievable.” Conor shot a hostile glance at Frank as he paced around the suite. “It’s all been calculated, assessed and decided, has it? Quite the pack of clever puppet masters you are, and the rest of us just waiting on your pleasure, wondering what string you’ll yank on next.”

  “Listen to me,” Frank said with a resigned sigh. “He lies beyond my authority, but my authority where you are concerned is a different matter. If your concerns are overwhelming, I will release you. You would remain bound by the Official Secrets Act, of course, but your obligation to this mission would be removed. It is all I can offer.”

  Silently now, Conor continued to pace, struggling to retain the intensity of his self-righteous rage. It was pure and honest and represented what might be his last opportunity for rebellion, not just against the last ten weeks, but also against the last five years he’d spent paying the consequences for choices made by others.

  Try as he might, he couldn’t make it last. The rage evaporated as he finally admitted it was neither pure nor honest. He had been offered a choice. He’d thrown down the challenge to a tug of war and the rope had gone slack in his hands. He dropped back into his chair and regarded the silver-headed figure with a mixture of admiration and resentment.

  “You are so very good at this game, aren’t you, Frank? Do you still get that ticklish thrill every time you win, or does it wear off after a while?”

  Frank accepted the victory and the backhanded compliment with a bow of his head, but his answering smile was forced, and brief. “It does wear off, son. More quickly than you can imagine.”

  7

  He tried to stay relaxed as he joined his fellow travelers in a switchback crawl through the airport security line the next morning, the passport for his alias dampening in his hand. After passing through without incident twenty minutes later, Conor found Frank waiting for him on the other side.

  “You might have taken me round by the back door as well,” he complained mildly. “Seems like I’m not getting many perks out of this gig. Economy class ticket, too. Nothing but the best for the rookies.”

  “We needed the extra money for your laptop.” Frank gave him an arch smile. “Let’s go have a drink.”

  “At nine o’clock in the morning?”

  “My dear boy, this is Heathrow. It is never any particular time of day here.”

  It wasn’t the first time Conor had nursed a beer before noon, and as they sat surrounded by the general tumult of a population in transit, he appreciated the symbolic truth of Frank’s statement. The duty-free zone was a municipality unto itself where the natural progression of day into night existed only in theory. Immersed in the bright, unblinking atmosphere of perpetual commerce, its temporary citizens were left to decide for themselves which time zone best suited their needs. Their self-selected position in the twenty-four hour rotation was most notably evidenced by their menu selections, and Conor was intrigued that the demand for eggs and toast seemed evenly matched against that of sushi and white wine.

  “I brought you a bon voyage gift.” Frank reached into his briefcase and handed over a brown bag with a smaller plastic one inside it. “A mixture of Chinese herbs. Mix them with hot water, and they serve as a wonderful sleep aid. Perfect for long plane rides.”

  Conor took a drag at his cigarette and squinted through the smoke at what looked to be a small bag of dirt. “Jayz, what a great gift. I’m touched. Really. I’ll be sure to bring you back something nice as well. What do you fancy? Some powdered elephant tusk, maybe? Sprinkle it on your oatmeal?”

  Frank lightly braced his hands against the counter and laughed—not a phony, pedantic warble but a spontaneous, honest-to-God guffaw. It was a good sound. It made Conor laugh too, and he found himself wishing he had more time
to spend with this cagey cipher who had thoroughly upended the natural order of his life. Maybe if they could get good and drunk together, some of the secrets might start to spill. Maybe he’d get a glimpse of the interior man. Maybe they’d even get to be friends.

  Not enough time for it today, though. His gate number would appear on the screen in another ten minutes. He flexed his foot up and down on the rung of the bar stool and stared up at the screen, conflicted between wanting the wait to be over and wanting the clock to stop. He glanced again at his watch.

  “Nervous?” Frank asked, looking not at Conor but at the surrounding scene, as though watching a passably interesting piece of theatre. In contrast, and as usual, he was the very image of relaxed enjoyment, sipping from his drink with leisurely pleasure.

  Another droll remark leapt to the tip of his tongue, but before he got it out, Conor changed his mind. He took a swallow of Guinness and nodded. “I am, yeah. Any last words of wisdom for me? To be honest, I feel like I could use a few.”

  “None that would be of any practical use, I’m afraid,” Frank said. “But since my first gift was found lacking, let’s see if this suits better.” He took a small felt pouch from his pocket and slid it along the bar.

  “Looks a little more promising.” Conor picked up the pouch and spilled the contents into the palm of his hand. His eyes widened as he recognized what he was holding—a circle of black silk cord with St. Brigid’s Cross hanging from it.

  “Nach álainn é!” In his surprise, he uttered the exclamation in Irish and smiled in bemusement. “Sorry. What I meant to say was it’s lovely.”

  “Tuigim go maith,” Frank replied, gently. “I understand you perfectly.”

  Conor gave a short laugh, shaking his head. “That’s right, I’d forgotten—the fella from Kildare. You’re a man of many parts, Frank. I can’t make you out at all. Quite the character.” His face grew thoughtful and remote. “My mother’s name is Brigid,” he added in a low voice.